/ic/ - Artwork/Critique

>>3583820
You should be doing it to learn.

In my experience, most people don't notice. They're usually looking at their phones or occupied talking to someone else. The average person has extremely poor observation skills.

I have little old ladies come up to me in parks and we chat awhile, I also have truckers come up to me when I paint at rest stops and take photos.

>>3583836
>little old ladies
>truckers
>not single hot girls
dropped desu

>>3583820
Horde of chinese tourists were screeching something in their insect language and aggressively taking picture of me and my drawings when I was on plein air. Other than that nobody was ever giving a fuck.

>>3583820
Do it sometimes in the nearby park here. I always have the idea drawing there gives me a fresh breath of air for the mind. Subjects of drawing are people doing people things, trees and clouds...
No-one gives a fuck here in Holland, they're too busy with themselves or their phones. The people that do seem interested are often outlanders. (We've got a nearby art college so they probably presume I am a student there).

>>3583820
Plein air is fun

I know it's a frequent advice to draw from real life. What I don't know is, why?
I know it helps, but how?

>>3584556
If you draw an intersection or a part of a plaza, what you'll find is that later on at your desk you'll be able to visualize the same scene from any angle.

>>3584558
Slow fucktard here, so what you are saying is that by drawing from life you are building a little library of content in your head?

>>3584563
>>3584558
im /beg/ , but to add on to what he said, think of it like a videogame. go into a competitive game like counter strike or guilty gear and you're gonna get wrecked often. but if you understood every little bit of the game right down to the bugs, framess, exploits, matchups, etc, you can do crazy off the wall stuff that looks cool and entertaining.

illustrating is kinda like that. when you understand the rules and nuances of reality, you can make it your plaything, all while wowing any viewers, hopefully yourself included.

If I draw in public, will I get a gf? I’m decent looking I think, I have over1k matches on tinder.

i like to draw in public but hate people approaching trying to talk to me, so yeah op, if you want to meet people you can meet some but it's difficult to meet someone actually interesting

>>3583820
I've done it a few times. Rarely get noticed, sometimes someone might comment and say the work looks nice.

>>3583820
Is it a good way to meet people?
short answer: If you are that type of person, yes. But if you like to work concentrated and are the shy type, no.

I have mostly made drawings in nature and in public places, not paintings. The reason is that it is much easier for me to set up a medium sized paper and go at it with charcoal. I can apply fixative spray, pack up and leave within a minute and it's even easier with sketchbooks. You have to be able to concentrate enough in order to ignore constant looking over your shoulders in crowded places. My experience is that most people don't have any idea how approaching an artist works and are irritated if you give them your card. So you need to determine whether a person is going to understand what you are on about with what you are doing or if they are just being nice and have never seen someone draw something since they were in highschool.

Most people that came up to me and talked to me were just going to give me nice compliments. Some of them will encourage you to "do something with it" or some other cute "duh" tier stuff. If you are like me and you want to work with concentration, you need to find a nice way of being grateful about them giving comments and then kind of letting them know that you want to continue. If there's anything more damaging than accidentally spilling stuff on the paper, it is me not being 100% in it while I draw and people distracting me are doing exactly that (and it will show).

So why draw and paint outside anyhow? You are working directly in the scene, with your own eyes and not a single filter inbetween. If you make a photo and work from that, you have already captured a moment that will remain unchanged. But drawing from nature let's you react to the slight changes and the liveliness of a space. You will have to work much more diligently to make your artistic decisions. Where do you plan the edges? What composition interests you? ... cont

>>3583820
I'm finna build a super cool smock that I can wear with a brush rollout and interior transparent pockets for holding paint tubes or whatever and exterior pockets for snakcs and fluids or whatever.

>>3583820
>>3585117
cont.

What is going to be your focus and how do you outweight it with other elements in the picture?
The challenge with drawing outside in my opinion is that you build the picture as you go and it might shift in a totally different direction. You learn how to focus on certain areas in a picture, how to bring them together as a whole, what contrast you want to use, how you translate the textures you see.

pic related is one of my works. Some of my landscape drawings might capture a sort of ugliness that civilization causes, like the power lines that spoil the view. I'm not whitewashing, so I wish that some aspects in the drawing are soothing and familiar, while others are cold, harsh and uninviting.

Working outside is incredibly rewarding for me, as I leave with a sense of having done something, having made some sort of translation of time and the space around me. I can fully understand the motivation of past generations of artists in that sense, as it is one of the most direct ways of getting in touch with the problem of displaying what you see with just a piece of paper and charcoal. It is even more challenging to work with colors, but I have yet to make that step. It's just three times as much effort with all the stuff you need to set up, but I'll be trying to make some landscape oils paintings in the future.

I also draw a lot of people, when I'm in public places. The difficult part is the recognize which ones are going to "sit for you" - people waiting, on their phone, reading ... If they stand up and run away, you need to memorize the rest of the figure really well. There are lots of things to learn and it's also very rewarding to get a sense of that.

>>3584556
>>3584563
When you draw from life there is no lens distortion and when drawing from a picture the camera has already converted the 3d forms into 2d shapes. When you draw from life it's up to you to figure out how to represent the 3d forms in 2d space.

>>3585125
Great details in your picture, I can feel the place and I love it. The water is a bit off for me, for some reason. Anyway, about the colors - you don't mention watercolor. There are some really nice portable sets.

>>3585166
Thank you! You mean the water feels off in a bad way? I remember the wind changing a lot and ending up with a mix of ripples from one spot to the next. The lower right water part seems undecided, when I look at it now.

But I really appreciate you saying that you feel the place. That is one thing I'm always anxious about. Sometimes I feel like I draw too prosaic. Do you draw from nature yourself? Got some works to show?

>>3585166
And yeah watercolors are a great choice. I have a medium set of St. Petersbourg colors. But I find it hard to work with them outside the studio. I always seem to end up frustrated and lost. For colors, I need the stationary feel of the studio.

>>3585170
>>3585176
I guess you could say the ripples are going into conflicting directions. The rest of the picture is really confident, especially the branches and especially those far away ones. I don't think I'd ever manage to convey them that well. When I sketch outside, I draw from nature sometimes (I love trees - so interesting and can never go wrong with them, can't fuck up perspective), but I don't often get the peace of mind that I need to just go, sit and calmly sketch for a few hours. And for watercolors I need the calm and concentration even more so. Though for quickies it can be a very nice and fun accent. I generally sketch people the most.

>>3585222
Those are some sweet sketches. I like the watercolor one, where I think your gesture that shows in the pencils works better with the softness of the aquarell brush. The portrait is also cool, I love sketching people as well. I keep buying these pocket calenders that look like little bibles (I get them for half the price in summer). They are really good for quick sketches.

I discovered that I like drawing trees as well. Large trees have this really great property of creating dimension in a picture, as they range from bellow the horizon line to the very top. And what I still find most challenging is how you deal with the problem of detail in leaves and the contrast. When I look at old landscape paintings from the 18th and 19th century, I keep thinking about what a pain in the ass it might have been for the painter to add that amount of detail. Really trains your perception.

Good way to meet models, get a good reputation with the college age girls and their friends will eventually hear about you and you'll have a network of free models for paintings.

>>3585327
nice tits, but the hair is a bit over the top stylized (esp. the sky blue).

>>3583820
I am trying to learn to draw to make my own fanart, and since I cant focus on home, I usually hit up local cafes, whichever is more quiet at the time. Noone has ever even glanced in my direction so far

>>3583837
>not wanting to have a nice chat with little old ladies
pleb

>>3583837
normie

>>3585125
Great work, pleaz gif advice/books sensei

>>3585125
I love your sketch works anon (: do you have any finished works you could post?

>>3586551
>>3586796
Thank you
I consider the charcoal drawings as finished works. This one for instance is around 11 x 7.8 inches, just needs a frame. As for books to read, I can't really tell you any recommendations. I have never worked from books, neither from those that try to explain techniques nor the Loomis, Proko or any other guided learning curve stuff - I don't believe they work at all. The most important thing I think is that you really want to discover what you can do, not what others have learned and are trying to teach to you. You will want to go outside, draw as much as you can, really sink your teeth in it.
Do portraits of your friends, take a sketchbook along wherever you go, never lose touch with your practice. It's the hard way, but I'm conciously and seriously keeping up my practice for some 17 years by now (since the first time I ever consciously thought "hey, this could be something!"). Do like this anon >>3585327 for instance and have your friends sit for you. It is really the most rewarding and exciting exercise to work from life. And once you take up the courage to do it, it isn't all that bad and embarrassing as you might have thought.

>>3585318
Thanks! Those were some of the ones I like, I have plenty of bad sketches, lol. I really like how you tackle the trees, I can indicate how the tree and foliage generally looks like when it's a background element in my picture, but when I draw a specific interesting tree I get fixated on drawing it as it is, with what's interesting about it, and can get lost in all the branches and details. So I have this thin line distinction between drawing it as it is, and drawing to relay the feeling of the place.

I buy the pocket "notebooks" with clear pages from Daiso and MUJI - those are cheap, thin paper but enough pages, while the cost is extra if it's a "sketchbook". With cheap ones I don't have the pressure of drawing something great and can practice freely and allow myself to not feel bad if I draw badly.

>>3585318
>>3587901
The watercolor one is an example of when I went more for the feeling of the tree, than a true likeness. It probably makes for a more appealing result, I like it as well. There is again a thin line between the relaxed deep focus when drawing, and the more shallow focus of speed drawing - with some more gesture and confident strokes from the latter.