/ic/ - Artwork/Critique

[Anonymous No.3218930]

Does anyone have tips when it comes to composition?

[Anonymous No.3218990]

>>3218930
make it good

[Anonymous No.3219025]

Look to nature.

[Anonymous No.3219035]

>>3218990
Thanks

[Famous Artist Anon No.3219063]

>>3218930
Check the art books thread for Famous Artists Advanced Program, you can also find it on CGPeers. It's 11 volumes of artists talking about their approaches to composition/"picture-making".

I also have another set of instructionables on composition. They are on their way, but they won't be here for another two weeks I think.

[Anonymous No.3219780]

>>3218930
thumbnails

[Anonymous No.3220697]

>>3218930
Loomis- Creative Illustration

[Anonymous No.3220700]

>>3218930
Here, we’ve had an autism festival on composition recently
>>/ic/thread/S3209684

[Anonymous No.3220728]

>>3220697
all of these "rules" are completely meaningless and even refuted in fine art with numerous examples. Loomis teaches design, nothing even close to fine art.

You can literally find examples for each of Loomis' "no go"s in well established art pieces.

"too equal", "don't give the eye two paths" … "too centered" ….
https://static01.nyt.com/images/2015/11/20/arts/20MORANDIJP2/20MORANDIJP2-master675.jpg

"too straight", "figure centered"
http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Americangothic.jpg

and directly in contrast to the first example on the upper left, Edvard Munch
http://media1.faz.net/ppmedia/aktuell/feuilleton/4179447653/1.1979763/default/faire-rueckgabe-edvard-munchs.jpg

[Anonymous No.3220758]

>>3220728
Come on man, these are arresting and striking images, not pleasant ones. Munchs is known for making his viewers uncomfortable and capturing unpleasant emotions, the Morandi piece is fairly ugly (intentionally) and the American Gothic is arresting, awkward, alien, strange. They are talented, evocative, arresting but I would never call them beautiful in the way a Rembrandt or Titian is beautiful and majestic, nor would I say they capture the beauty in realism and nobly sublime aspects of the ordinary and realistic, in the way a Pre Raphaelite like Waterhouse did. Loomis' rules are probably developed looking at "beautiful" fine art, the masters of which were dedicated to the pursuit and understanding of beauty, which your artists are either subverting or weren't focussed upon. It doesn't mean his guidelines and rules are meaningless, they're just designed for a different aim and understanding of art.

[Anonymous No.3220770]

>>3220758
This your stance on art. You say yourself that you dislike art that makes you uneasy, uncomfortable and has ambiguous notions and you prefer art that is uplifting, pays tribute to beauty and realism. The thing is that art has a wide spectrum of themes and possibilities. Even the most gruesome images, like the decapitated head of Medusa by Rubens, can have a beauty and fascinating shock, yet a strange sense of calm all at the same time.

My whole point in this discussion about Loomis is that for the majority of the people, he will be teaching you how to be successful on the illustration end of the spectrum. Even his teaching, like I've pointed out with the artworks that he would deem "unpleasent" in composition, speaks the same language.

If you want to improve in fine art, Loomis is definitely not your starting point. Rather the opposite, he will be indoctrinating you with construction, schematics and other methods that contradict any free approach.

If you know what you're doing and you have a strong confidence in your own style, you can take Loomis and other literature in parts with a grain of salt, extracting parts that may lead you to individual art works. But this whole "how to" construction deal is pure poison for an openminded beginner who would have potential in fine art.

[Anonymous No.3220774]

>>3220770
cont.

…. and Loomis' >>3220697 way of saying here "you can't use this composition, because it's bad and unpleasing" is just a restrictive, idiotic stance.

>>3220758
You saying that Morandi paints "fairly ugly" pieces is quite an unpopular opinion, as he has earned his place in art history. I would bet that you would change your mind, if you stood infront of one of his originals. They have a very captivating aura. But then again, everyone is entitled to their opinion.

http://www.museivaticani.va/content/dam/museivaticani/immagini/collezioni/musei/collezione_arte_contemporanea/19_01_Morandi_Natura_morta.jpg/_jcr_content/renditions/cq5dam.web.1280.1280.jpeg

Art history has shown that you can both propagate an artists' importance through constantly pushing him (Peggy Guggenheim was an expert) and that artists automatically earn their place in art history by the quality of their works, despite being poor in their lifetime (Van Gogh as an obvious example).

[Anonymous No.3220777]

[Anonymous No.3220788]

>>3220777

proving once again that design rules have absolutely zero to do with the possibilities in fine art.

[Anonymous No.3220790]

>>3220788
>design rules
This is not rules

[Anonymous No.3220793]

>>3220790
what's the outcome of the test? probably telling you whether you have a good eye for pleasent design or not. he is deviding these possibilities in "good" and "bad" categories.

[Anonymous No.3220801]

>>3220793
>he is deviding these possibilities in "good" and "bad" categories.
you doing same with your ramblings about illustrators, Loomis and anime art.

[Anonymous No.3220806]

>>3220801
>you doing same

I'm saying, most of /ic/ stuff in illustration, manga and concept art has nothing to do with fine art.
That is without judgement, it is simply a question of definition. Loomis is not the kind of literature that will lead you on the way to becoming a free-minded artist.

[Anonymous No.3220807]

>>3220806
Define fine art.

[Anonymous No.3220808]

>>3220801
All I hear from anons in /ic/ is that they are butthurt that you would make such a distinction. But these are hard facts. You won't find any pleb illustration artist with a digital print in a Sotheby's auction for a good reason.

Anyone who starts out and expects to improve in his individual art by jumping right on to crutches offered by Loomis, Huston and the likes, is fooling himself.

You can draw a clear line between the goal of drawing an anatomically correct digital sketch of a character and working on an art piece on paper or canvas which will stand on its own.

[Anonymous No.3220810]

>>3220777
the funny thing is 5b is actually better than 5a but i understand this is about creating depth with overlapping forms and avoiding tangents.

[Anonymous No.3220813]

>>3220807

The main judge of the importance of an artist is time. if your art endures and lives on even after your death, i has earned its place.

As I mentioned before, an artist can be discovered very late in his/her life, and they can be inflated and propagated as well. Like her:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmen_Herrera

There are many ways of how an artist becomes a landmark in art history. There are also many artists who in their lifetime experience a very low, locally focused approval and may never reach a high level of success.

You asking me for a definition is wrong, as I can only tell you my opinion through observation.
I've seen a lot of artists who had a really fresh start be sucked into the whole Loomis and "painting for Dummies" vortex and never ever recovered to create their own works. This is the basis of my scepticism against such literature. I don't believe that the suggested literature in /ic/ guides will allow you to develope freely, but rather the opposite.

I'd like to hear your observations on where Loomis leads you.

[Anonymous No.3220814]

>>3220808
>You won't find any pleb illustration artist with a digital print in a Sotheby's auction for a good reason.
What is merit of art? I assume money?
>You can draw a clear line between the goal of drawing an anatomically correct digital sketch of a character and working on an art piece on paper or canvas which will stand on its own.
Both of those things have different purpose. That doesn't make fine art better than digital art.

[Anonymous No.3220818]

>>3220814
>Both of those things have different purpose. That doesn't make fine art better than digital art.
It would be silly to say that either of the two is "better", as they don't compare. But /ic/ fags quickly call themselves "artists" in a complete state of self-delusion.

>What is merit of art? I assume money?
the art market is a part of the art world. yet many artists strongly disagree with its inherent rules. Gerhard Richter and others have stated, it is insane which prices their works are sold for.
so, no, art prices, auctions and reselling is not the merit of art. it is a part of the art market, which has its own set of rules.

[Anonymous No.3220819]

>>3220813
>I've seen a lot of artists who had a really fresh start be sucked into the whole Loomis and "painting for Dummies" vortex and never ever recovered to create their own works.
And you can said same about a lot of artists who never studied anything and failed in achieving anything. This is nothing but demagogy. All those books gives you tools. Same tools that used by Old Masters. Same tools that you can develop at your own. They safe your time. It's like inventing bike. They help you to invent your first bike and later you will use this gained knowledge to invent your own bike without any help.

[Anonymous No.3220825]

>>3220818
>But /ic/ fags quickly call themselves "artists" in a complete state of self-delusion.
What do mean? Traditional vs Digital threads? Just a tools. Artist is person who create art. And digital art is art by definition. Yes, /ic/ fags are artists.

[Anonymous No.3220826]

>>3220819
>Same tools that you can develop at your own. They safe your time. It's like inventing bike.

Yeah, the thing is, it's not the case. As I said, most of the shit I've seen that comes from people excessively relying on workshops, "how to" drawing courses, books and the likes …. they just suck and dont ever recover. Even worse, they don't realize that they suck and create uninspired sketches of stereotypes - boring landscapes with your usual spiky mountains, same color pallets all over, same character designs with clichéd facial characteristics.

I know only one guy who successfully branched out into creating very decent digital art. But guess what, he hardly ever resorted to anything close to Loomis, but instead studied a lot of books on historic clothes, armor, knows a lot of classic movies and is basically self-taught for years.

[Anonymous No.3220829]

>>3220825
>And digital art is art by definition. Yes, /ic/ fags are artists.

Nope, digital art is digital art. fine art is fine art. /ic/ fags are digital artists, not fine artists.

[Anonymous No.3220833]

>>3220813
The current art world values Jackson Pollock and Picasso as more important than someone like Frederick Leighton, who only endures because he himself was a rich Lord and his work was so closely embroiled with the Victorian family and literally built into the architectural space of the V&A museum and his house in London. Yet I'd say Lord Leighton has more aesthetic value, more talent, more skill, more thoughtfulness and culture and interesting ideas and nobility than most contemporary artists, yet he's practically abandoned and won't be taught in any art course. He practically doesn't endure because the vogue and mode of the day doesn't value the particular pursuit of beauty and meaning he valued, so "what endures" is not a good measure of a work's value.

Case in point - the watercolour pop culture star wars drawing garbage on instagram with 3 million followers will probably "endure" as some significant milestone and impact on the 21st century's culture, a defining feature of our generation, but it really has very little value as art, being how explicitly derivative, unimaginative, often poorly executed and cynical a lot of it is.

[Anonymous No.3220834]

>>3220829
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artist

Both are artists.

[Anonymous No.3220840]

>>3220826
>As I said, most of the shit I've seen that comes from people excessively relying on workshops, "how to" drawing courses,
This is your personal experience. I can say same about people who don't cares about fundamentals. Uninspired amateurish scribbles made from typical mistakes. Same cliche. This is nothing but demagogy. People have different goals. Someone can fulfill his artistic goals and achieve peace of mind by drawing shit or landscapes. And someone has talent.

[Anonymous No.3220841]

>>3220833
>Yet I'd say …

>Case in point - the watercolour pop culture star wars drawing garbage on instagram …
I hardly think that it will go down in the canon of fine art history. You have to understand that it is an entirely different area, the whole digital art, including interface studies and art works, are an entirely different branch with different sets of rules.
The reason why people still (at least partly) work with traditional materials is because a medium like painting is open and is influenced directly by the time, culture and aesthetic impression of its time (ideally).

That being said, works that endure and are talked about far beyond the artists death did earn relevance by definition.

But the art world remains complex and it's also bad art that gets very due attention:
http://www.museumofbadart.org

>Leighton has more aesthetic value
That is your personal preference, if you are honest. But there are also people who would prefer contemporary works rather than traditional works, because of their zeitgeist and immediate relevance. in literature Charles Bukowski, Haruki Murakami, Michel Houellebecq … in music György Ligeti, Conlon Nancarrow, even Aphex Twin … in art Jackson Pollock, Julian Schnabel, Marlene Dumas …

rather than your usual nostalgia of "Oh, look how majestic the Renaissance painters could paint! What a shame nobody can do that nowodays"

There is a time for a specific type of art and that time may pass.

>>3220834
in the most generalized way, yes. But that's the point, /ic/ and /beg/er faggots will confuse themselves with fine artists and make a lot of judgement in that area when in reality, they sit in a completely different boat.

[Anonymous No.3220843]

>>3220840
You are missing my point. I'm saying, books from Loomis and Huston and whatever their names are can be venus traps to artists, who might have had a very fresh outlook to creating their very own approach. If a gullible, insecure artists is told, "that's how you do it! that's how you draw a face!", he may never recover from that doctrine. All I'm saying is, be sceptical, take it with a pinch of salt, don't solely rely on this literature and expect to have become a fine artist after you've copied each drawing to the last page and sticking to construction forever.

[Anonymous No.3220849]

>>3220841
Not only /ic/ hates contemporary art . A lot people hates contemporary art . And a lot fine artists hates modern art, but most of them just can't talk very loud as we can.

[Anonymous No.3220850]

>>3220849

There's a lot of completely useless shit art out there today. Take "protest art", basically it's like a vegan burger : It has nothing to do with art.

Doesn't mean there is no good contemporary art out there.

[Anonymous No.3220851]

>>3220843
You should read those books. No one of them talk like this. Especially Huston. Check this video. Should be interesting for you
>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Var92xzU_Y

[Anonymous No.3220852]

>>3220843
And this hardcore training is "academical way". Russian one. But no one of them teach this way. It's mechanical.

[Anonymous No.3220875]

>>3220852
>>3220851

That is nice of him to stress all of this. It doesn't weaken the point that such books are possibly highly misleading and restrictive to beginners. As far as I've seen, at least half of the people who are sworn in on the Loomis doctrine are unable to develope away from it or have even understood how he stresses to find your own way.

[Anonymous No.3220898]

>>3220843
>reinvent the wheel to express your feefees better

We don't reinvent the wheel, we continually analyse the wheel for its value, refine the wheel, use the wheel to build bigger and more visionary things (e.g. cogs, waterwheels, electric dynamos), and see if we can use a superior alternative (e.g. using a rolling sphere instead of a disc).
Critical theory, the type promulgated by Jews, wants to break down everything, but never really seeks to present a better alternative. Case in point - flood Europe with third worlders to break down toxic white culture >why? to make the new generation of "new europeans" like Kalergi Coudenhove imagined. Deconstruct, dismiss and reinvent Europeans for no reason other than "New and Different = Better".

Let me give you an example of why we don't reinvent the wheel:
- Pagans study life observations, make stylised and "naive" art
- Egyptians study pagan art and combine it with their culture and religion, make stylised sculptures and hieroglyphs
- Ancient Greeks study Egyptian art, combine it with philosophy, anatomy, athlete culture to make Greek sculptures
- Romans study Greek art, combine it with wealth, reverence of leaders, mythos, literature, political goals, aesthetics to make Roman statues, architecture and engineering
- Da Vinci studies Roman statues and engineering, combines it with zoology, physics, anatomy to make incredible inventions, medical studies, theories and illustrations
(obviously this is simplified, anachronistic and absurdly reductive but you get my point)

There's a reason art and understanding of perspective seemed to regress in the Medieval period, it's because the isolation of the monasteries producing highly religious art didn't have the access to the previous work of entire civilisations' milieus.

>TL;DR the wheel is valuable anon, don't dismiss it because it's been around forever, don't be a knee jerk rebel

[Anonymous No.3220907]

>>3220875
Loomis is just a meme. You should not fight or take memes seriously. His books are not very good for beginners but they're /ic/ history. The real God of /ic/ is Vilppu.

[Anonymous No.3220911]

>>3220898
>Deconstruct, dismiss and reinvent Europeans for no reason other than "New and Different = Better"
There's a reason anon, a millenia of hostility and resentment by God's Chosen towards the most powerful goyim, the arrogant belief that between the Diaspora and the Ethnostate jews are now invincible and can weather the storm of shaping the world to their Tikkun Olam vision, that and a Frog and the Scorpion spiritual attitude.

[Anonymous No.3220912]

>>3220907
How to get into Vilppu?
Should I watch drawing essentials, the figure drawing videos or the anatomy ones?

[Anonymous No.3220918]

>>3220912
drawing essentials > figure drawing > anatomy

In drawing essentials he will explain the process and how to study old masters and life. It's very short chapter.

[Anonymous No.3220922]

>>3220898
why do you abruptly stop at davinci? do you think modern painters didn't introduce new concepts from physics and technology into their work?

>There's a reason art and understanding of perspective seemed to regress in the Medieval period
quality of life took a nosedive. people got deeply religious in abstract impoverished ways. if artists were isolated but quality of life was better the art imo would have been very interesting. alas historicism is bullshit and we will never know.

as for your criticism of deconstructionism: deconstruction is itself an a powerful mechanism that has evolved from the same lineage you use in example to argue against it. deconstruction and breaking things to see how they truly work is *for* improvement. having everyone just toppling onto the same knowledge treadmill makes for a very poor knowledge-discovering strategy. it's akin to one mega-organism versus a wide diverse zoo.

[Anonymous No.3220935]

>>3220898
and here's the moron who brings politics into it for no fucking reason, jeez.

>>3220898
the greek have had mosaics for mare detailed and skillful than most medievil icons and cartoons.

http://twistedsifter.com/2014/11/2200-year-old-mosaics-discovered-in-ancient-greek-city/

art in history is not a linear developement. that's why you have naive art and art brut, still around in 2017 and with a large fandom.

skill, technique or anatomical accuracy alone says ansolutely nothing about the value or significance of an artwork.

David Hockneys pool pictures feature distorted perspective, oddly simplified people, poor realism in the display of The Splash …. by your judgement, it's shit.

[Anonymous No.3220937]

>>3220922
>having everyone just toppling onto the same knowledge treadmill makes for a very poor knowledge-discovering strategy. it's akin to one mega-organism versus a wide diverse zoo.
very well put.

[Anonymous No.3220977]

>>3218930
imagine the canvas as a board balancing on the end of a long stick. Try to add stuff to the board s that it will never lose balance and topple off.

[Anonymous No.3221042]

yeah ppl don't like symmetry unless that's the point

[Anonymous No.3221047]

jesus christ dude, you've shitted up at least two other threads with your walls of text bitching about loomis, could you please fuck off

[Anonymous No.3221068]

>>3218930
Composition is the art of composing elements in an image to support the theme of the image. So how you do it is quite personal and depends on the purpose of the image.

[Anonymous No.3221354]

So... uhm... does anyone have advice on composition?

[Anonymous No.3221952]

>>3221354
That's like asking how to compose a song. Depends on what genre of music it is, the target demografic or the message of the song. You need to be more specific in your question because different rules apply in in different contexts and have different purpouses.