Painting general

[Anonymous No.3485815]

How does one become a good painter?

>Inb4 practice

[Anonymous No.3485824]

Start with watercolor and never give up.

[Anonymous No.3485834]

>>3485815
smart practice. its highly underrated what to learn at what moment in what depth. this is also quite diffucult because it requires exact observation of your mental state as well as honesty with your own work.

[Anonymous No.3485872]

>>3485815
You are either born with a talent or a burning desire. Things sort themselves out from there.

[Anonymous No.3485901]

>>3485815
If you want to be a really top notch painter in a traditional medium like oils, ateliers are the way to go - the intense work load and small class size, working with masters is the only way to get the focused education that the old masters typically would get. If I were starting out now, I'd be looking at them pretty seriously - art schools are more focused on "modern" art and don't drill down, except the top schools like Pratt or ArtCenter, that still respect the traditional techniques.

On top of that, being a good painter means thinking like one. Forget anime, forget game design, forget furry porn - if you want to paint, dedicate to it, and immerse yourself. Spend your time painting, reading about painting, talking to other painters about painting, and go look at paintings. Like any creative pursuit, you have to get obsessed, and stay obsessed, and train your mind to not get distracted by other things.

And yes, you have to practice. A lot. There's simply no shortcuts. Your goal is the same as a woodworker, or a guitarist, or any creative type - you have to get to know your tools, yourself, and learn confidence and intimately know your tools so you're working from not only intent, but intuition and familiarity. You can't master something like painting overnight, it's gonna take years, starting from zero.

[Anonymous No.3485934]

>>3485901
Thank you. That was motivating

[Anonymous No.3486001]

Bump

[Anonymous No.3487308]

Just paint.

[Anonymous No.3487319]

>>3487308
how much work is that not sped up?

[Anonymous No.3487334]

>>3487319
I dunno, an hour?
Does it really matter?

[Anonymous No.3487734]

>>3485815
> posts question
> doesn’t want correct answer

[Anonymous No.3488070]

>>3487734
There must be more to it than just practice huh, like >>3485834

[Anonymous No.3488084]

>>3487334
yes because i'm asking

[Anonymous No.3488087]

Watch some bob Ross nigga

[Anonymous No.3488605]

>>3488084
Are you painting yet?

[Anonymous No.3488608]

>>3485824
>start with gouache

FTFY

[Anonymous No.3488636]

>>3488608
>start

FTFY for you.

[Anonymous No.3488652]

>>3485815
just paint bro

[Anonymous No.3488660]

Jeff Watts iirc said that working with ink is probably the fastest way to get better at drawing due to the permanence requiring careful planning and confident decision making. Does that mean learning watercolor is a good way to learn painting?

[Anonymous No.3488697]

>>3488636
>star

FTFABG

[Anonymous No.3488812]

>>3488660
see >>3488636

[Anonymous No.3488824]

>>3488660
It shares some things with other media, but watercolor is it's own headspace, it's a transparent medium where you work lightest to darkest, using the white of the page for white. Oils and acrylics and other opaque mediums generally work from dark to light, using white paint to create lighter values and hues.

You can carry some of what you learn from watercolor over, but it's not the same thing at all.

[Anonymous No.3491195]

>>3485815

I think people who complain about the advice "just practice" as shitty advice really don't understand how much that implies.

Obviously don't mindlessly copy anatomy and retain 0 knowledge. Study theory, study reference, try and apply what you've learnt without reference, Repeat. That's proactive learning.

Got it? Good.

Now do that for over 4000-5000 hours and you'll start to understand how much further you need to go. You'll get good enough to understand that all it truly is, is practice.

[Anonymous No.3491198]

>>3491195
following up on this. Most /begs/ I see here spend an hour a day, draw a shitty bunch of pieces, then look at their pile of shit and go
<inb4 just practice is shit advice

The artists you look up to have fucking MOUNDS of shit piles. That's all it is.

[Anonymous No.3491200]

>>3491198
Lastly, i'm a retard who can't format greentext
>practice

[Anonymous No.3491204]

>>3485815
1) Start by painting every day.
2). Figure out what are your goals? Get good at Oil Painting landscapes?
3). Experiment with different materials, Oil on canvas vs Oil on wood panel.
4). Study different painting methodologies. Under painting, drawing methods; Flemish technique; 7-layer painting.
5) Adopt a methodology that works for you and study that methodology.
For me:
Draw in my sketchbook different composition studies of my subject.
I do the final drawing in vine charcoal on the canvas
Then I do a burnt umber line drawing on top of the drawing.
Next I do different value studies painting the background dark colors and working forward.
Then I do the mid tones
Finally the highlights are last.

But I keep trying new things all the time. Try alla prima painting, and do it all in 1 sitting on location.

[Anonymous No.3491213]

You don't want to hear it. but it is practice. I used to be good at realism painting when I was a teenager. I stopped painting for 6 years. now getting back into I have lost all my ability and don't remember most of the important skills I used to have. constant practice is extremely important. your skills can degrade. you can't learn to plow a field by reading a book. you must plow the field yourself to understand the true intricacies of the process. Practice; draw and paint as much as you can as often as you can.

[Anonymous No.3492106]

>lel practice
Everything else said before

A foundation in drawing and color theory will strongly improve your work.
Also while this may sound redundant use the highest quality materials and paint you can get.
Student grade paint and brushes are crap and you will actually spend more money going though shit paint then professional grade art paint. It will also mean you have a lot less working against you when you do put pen to paper.

This man has a good water color youtube channel despite being a jew.
https://youtu.be/Zmmk6M7qgYQ

[Anonymous No.3492681]

>>3487308
>just draw the rest of the owl

[JP No.3492690]

>>3491204
Certainly agree with your points, overall I think OP needs to really just get painting and create his method, personally I only use Raw Umber with my underpaintings, but that’s also not until I completely strip my canvas of its cheap texture with gesso and then sand paper. It really all depends on the person and their preferences, and a hefty supply of Hennessy.

[Anonymous No.3492691]

>>3485824
>>3488608
is there something wrong with acrylic?

[Anonymous No.3492692]

>>3492691
There's nothing "wrong" with acrylic, but it tends to be over-bright, and hard to get the same subtleties as oils or watercolors or goauche. You can use mediums to blend, but it's a lot more work than it's worth, when other mediums are a lot easier to get the same results. There are artists who have used them successfully, like Micheal Whelan.

Me, I say try all of them, you have no idea which one will appeal to you the most, without at least trying them. I love oil, goauche, watercolor, and egg tempera. I've tried acrylics and gotten good results, but I always felt limited using them.

[JP No.3492694]

>>3492692
I personally started with acrylics and felt really constricted to what I was making, then when I made the leap to Oils I really just blossomed, cliché, but I’m still mastering my techniques.

[Anonymous No.3492700]

>>3492692
good to know, thanks

[Anonymous No.3492885]

>>3492692
When I painted with them (it wasn't for that long tho) I resorted to basically 'drawing' in hatched lines wherever I had to blend since it was such a pain in the ass. Nowadays there are some acrylics and mediums that make the paint more buttery like oils so that they're easier to work with.

[Anonymous No.3492903]

>>3492106
>despite being a jew.
hey, at least he like Jordan Peterson.

[Anonymous No.3492915]

>>3492691
my art school worked solely in acrylics for some odd reason. I blindly used them for years. all my teachers always warned against how hard oils were. but when I switched to them later after using acrylic for years I was pleasantly surprised how much easier they were to use. they actually cover. you can easily thin or thicken them as you wish. its a lot easier than people make it out to be and I regret not using them earlier than I did.

[Anonymous No.3493059]

>>3488660
I worked for watercolour for a few years and I still can't used to using enough white in my oils. So maybe not.

[Anonymous No.3493298]

>>3491195
>>3491198
Why is it so hard to understand that it IS shit advice when we're talking about beginners. Most don't KNOW how to practice which is why there are mounds of examples of people who have stagnated in art their entire lives. It's the most useless piece of advice for beginners anyone can give. There are multiple ways you could rephrase it, making it less pointless.

You might aswell just say nothing if you're not willing to elaborate on the meaning of 'just practice.' Without the explanation you gave it's completely meaningless because to a person inexperienced enough to ask questions like this it's obviously not likely they would be aware of these methods.

You're not wrong but that doesn't change that the approach 'just practice' is terrible.

[Anonymous No.3493347]

I just spend some 25 euros on a decent mop brush for watercolor.
Honestly I was a bit on the fence at first because "25 euros for a single brush when you can buy sets of 10 for 5 bucks" but damn it's so satisfying to paint with.

Only thing I can say, for some media it's not okay to cheap out on tools, I painted with cheap brushes on cheap paper before but once you invest a little and get a taste of quality paints, papers and brushes, painting becomes a lot more enjoyable.

At least that is my experience with watercolor.
I don't spend a lot of money on things other than art supplies, as a matter of fact I've lived very poorly so I can afford some artist-quality tools and I'm glad I did.