/ic/ - Artwork/Critique

And I know what you're thinking: just study other people's styles and learn from there. But what if you just cannot get to the point where you can emulate certain styles? Usually, you can see an artist's personal style bleed into others when they try to branch out.

you can't be possibly this retarded

>>4637454
But I can.

>>4637446
>>4637446
I think composition and color theory are pretty tangible skills in so far that you can grasp what you personally find appealing or not and there are teachings regarding the two.
Consume a lot of good shit you like, so you are able to gauge how shit you are in comparison. This can be dangerous and lead to impostor syndrome, but I believe if done healthily, it can help you a lot.
All I can say is consume good shit, and hopefully your shit will smell kind of good.

>>4637446
I've been frequently told my faces are technically good, but unappealing. I use photos and models for reference, so they tell me it occasionally results in the "uncanny valley" look. You look like you have a similar style.
However, half the time feedback is good and viewers don't have a problem at all. I think it's just something to subtly mitigate and keep in mind, Not something to revamp your whole style over. Also, blog?

I fear this all the time

>>4637446
I don't think my style is ugly but I do think people consider it outdated. A lot of contemporary art is unappealing to me, so I referenced old american illustrations like pic related when I was learning how to draw. I notice my work doesn't get a lot of likes on social media (30 at most, anywhere) yet people tell me that I'm good in person. Kinda sucks because I was hoping to make some income off my artwork but that doesn't seem like it's ever going to happen.

>>4637446
Definitely. I see terrible /beg/s with soulful and appealing styles all the time, my stuff looks crude and mechanical in comparison. I'm just hoping it will get better with time, because I don't believe this can change by will alone.

my friends keep saying that my stuff looks weird. they say that I have shit aesthetic. mostly I just ignore them because my skills aren't ripe yet, but sometimes I do think about it. what if they're right?

>>4637553
>what if they're right?
pyw and we will tell you :)

>>4637553
My normie friends always seem to love everything, even when I directly ask for criticism. Then I post something here and it gets axed, kek. Some people view art with a non-critical eye and some view it with a very critical eye. In any case, if you can get positive feedback on /ic/ even half the time you're doing pretty good.

>>4637556
Normies find everything great because they compare your art to their own ability and not to other artists. Compared to them, almost everyone on /ic/ is an art god.

>>4637446
It's called talent

>>4637548
Can i see your work? I also have an interest in American illustrations.

>>4637588

>>4637599
oops, wrong tag, I meant to reply to >>4637555

>>4637599
doesnt look particularly weird or unappealing to me, but you shouldn't be lazy and stop with a piece this early.

>>4637599
Right off the bat I notice muddy values and blending and unappealing colors. Do you have anything completed

>>4637624
>>4637619
yeah that one is just a doodle, posted that one because the only other one worth showing is this which I've been showing here over and over again

>>4637642
That one on the other hand does look weird to me, the face looks pretty bad.

>>4637446
Wtf are you trying to say exactly. Me thinks it's a another bait thread.

>>4637686
Really? Is pretty easy to understand
Sometimes art can be unappealing yet show a lot of skill.

>>4637446

Style is just Fundies + Taste.
You cant level up Taste like a videogame, though. Its all about looking at the world, and choosing to emphasize certain things that are interesting to you in your work. The pic you attached to your post has neither Fundies nor Taste.

>>4637691
This. When someone says your art is unappealing they're not necessarily saying it isn't good

>>4637588

>>4637446
Nonsense. Maybe if even the artists they look up to are objectivelly unappealing, then it might be a sign of a bad taste, but generally only their own art sucks.
Appeal and design are also the fundamentals, you can study them, deconstruct how they work and learn to use them in your work. It's a tiny more abstract than learning perspective, but still in the same ballpark.

I get comments saying the characters I draw are cute, but my only work that get attention are gag comic strips

>>4637599
>>4637642
>>4638218
You shouldn't be even worrying about style yet when like none of your fundies are there yet. Color, anatomy, value, nothing's at /int/ level yet.

>>4638218
Damn dude that's really fucking nice. Pass your social media acc.

>>4637848
you can.
Fundies = mechanical skill attained through drawing
Style = preference in technique attained through drawing
If you don't like your style, or it's unappealing to you yourself, that just means you have not been studying style. Think of the way painters use their brush strokes. To create a Leyendecker and to create a Mucha, they both are "painting" but the way they handle shapes and forms are completely different. Study the artists you wish to mimic in style. Trace and more importantly; understand their forms and emphasis on certain details.

Absorbing these techniques and processes into your own workflow will cause your style to shift in a different direction and cause it to develop and change. Having multiple inspirations is vital and key to this to develop your own thing. OP's style looks unappealing because there is only 1 technique; lines and solids. The squigly hairs may be his and his way of adding temperature to the lights but I feel it comes off more as a cheap trick rather than proper lighting techniques in this case and the hair just feels lazy compared to the clean lines.
I say clean, but now I also notice that they are very squigly and rough.

tl;dr OP: You don't have a style yet, all you did was draw a simplified face and slammed some color in the form of solids on it (which is almost like coloring in a line drawing).
Study style, methods. Even in something like manga there are many different ways to do crosshatching for example.
I feel like there is more love put into the diamonds and conscious thought in the background than in the portrait itself.
Ask yourself not "why is it unappealing" but "how can I make it more appealing"

>>4640046
Another example to this is comparing european ala prima painters which focus more on planes to korean drawpainters which go to sculpt in detail with penmanship and the russian style which is a mix of both who go from big to small and letting the brushwork maintain the energy in the piece

Why’s would you ever, EVER want to paint and immortalize a nigger?

>>4637446
your style is unappealing because you have no art parents

>>4637446
I don't find this "unappealing" at all, am I the only one?

>>4640245
I hate to tell you this, but you might just have inherently shit taste tbqh

>>4637548
No, I don’t think it’s outdated.
However some styles can age very badly but American illustration doesn’t age badly at all.
The truth is, people have utter shit taste and very very bad art culture, and all they want to see is fan art and fan art and more fan art, for the most part.
Today’s issue is that so called artists don’t learn with good references, don’t go to museums to meet and see what a real painting is (a painting on instagram will never be the same experience than a painting hanged on a wall).

>>4637446
Inherently unappealing art styles don't exist.
Tons of people hate tumblr and cal-arts style, but there are just as many people who draw it and follow artists who do that style because they earnestly love it. Tons of people hate anime style, and there are plenty of people who love anime art and have their sole goal to make anime art indistinguishable from that of a Japanese person's. Plenty of people hate the capeshit art style, and still there are tons of people who love comic book art and want to become illustrators for Marvel/DC.
No matter how much you hate an art style, there's probably someone else out there who loves it.

>>4640245
I don't find the face unappealing because it matches the character's aesthetic, but I've seen the OP image art style enough to know the artist probably draws other characters the exact same way

>>4637446
Bigger eyes, bigger boobs

>>4637446
They have no understanding of color