Everyone, Ergo Josh, and I'm going to be really honest with you here...
...I didn't really accept this as being something that was true until recently.
But yeah, it is very difficult to be good at something to work hard, at something
to enjoy something if you're not really good at it yet, but that's OK .
Before I get more into the details, I want to quickly talk about what
I'm using here in case you have any questions.
I'm working on the iPad Pro 12.9 inch model, the 2021 model with the M1 chip.
It's about one terabyte and I'm working in Procreate.
Beware, though, if you're using this model, please
don't update to the latest procreate because it is pretty glitchy right now.
Hopefully, they will fix it soon, but it's the worst performing
I've ever had procreate on my iPad since I've ever tried it.
So this beware.
This is why eventually move on to clip studio paint at the end of the video.
And that's where I'm testing out some new brushes for Clip Studio,
and the one I'm using in Procreate
are my regular painting brushes from my Ergo Index pack.
But one of the brushes is new.
It's the one I'm using the most to paint with, and it's inspired from my clip
studio brushes because those, you know, blending Clip Studio is just so great.
Both of those will be coming out this Friday on my Gum Road page.
The stand that I'm using is called the Park Slope by twelve south.
I use an assortment of stands depending on what's going on,
and this is my favorite stand to use when I'm working on camera.
All right, so let's get into this topic here.
I used to think that everybody could find a way to enjoy doing art or something,
regardless of how good they are at it, because my thought process was okay.
Everybody likes to do art as a kid, right?
Everybody enjoyed it.
You didn't really need anyone to tell you to do it,
something that you give a kid drawing utensil of any sort.
They would just start drawing on things.
Kids have drawn walls.
You know, kids are given crayons at restaurants.
Sometimes it's just something fun that we do pretty naturally.
But at a certain point, we start to recognize
how good things are in comparison to others, especially because I think
a lot of artists today are inspired by other artists or inspired
by heightened knowledge of how animations that they really enjoy are created.
And so they want to join in.
They want to create their own comics.
They want to create their own characters and shows.
And that's what is the initial source of fun.
But it's also not fun where you hit a wall and you realize
you can't do the things that you see in your head.
You can't convey the stories and messages you want to because your skills
are just lacking.
And it's it's kind of like a double edged sword or this endless cycle
because you need to spend a lot of time to work on art in order to get good.
But it's hard to spend a lot of time on something that you don't enjoy,
and it's hard to enjoy something that you're not good at yet.
It really is.
I myself, since I'm on this never ending journey
to become a self-sustained independent artist, I realized recently
after reading some comments on my videos that I did come from quite an experienced
background with art, even though I feel like I wasted my time
doing a lot of things like using the grid method and tracing for
I basically did only worked from reference until well.
I graduated from college and I didn't draw freehand until nearly
graduating from college, so I didn't really do any good,
healthy fundamental exercises until very late in my life, you know?
Well, everybody's late is different, but for me, it's pretty late.
But I still realize that I developed a decent amount of skill
when it came to drawing faces and portraits because I would just spend
hours agonizing over those details, trying to make each little grid in the box
match with the celebrity portrait that I was drawing at the time.
I learned a decent amount about values and rendering from there
and just that kind of slow process of using pencil on paper
and just slowly building values up working in layers.
And since I was working in school and I just had the opportunity
to use Photoshop a lot, and so I was familiar with that environment
before I really got serious in digital painting.
Art is really one of those things
that people say you really need to love it in order to do it.
This is something that they also said
in architecture school when I was working in architecture.
You really need to love it in order to do it because it will be very,
very draining on your mental and spiritual.
Every single energy source after a while.
And if you don't love it, you're simply
not going to want to do it anymore because a lot of time it is just pain.
There's memes out there talking about how artists are all basically masochist
because we love to do this thing
that is the greatest source of our pain and frustration and agony.
And yet we keep doing it.
I think, yes, that is true.
We probably do
enjoy a little bit of pain here and there, but I think the reason we do
keep doing it is because there's something that we do like about it.
You're at a certain place where we do enjoy something about the work
that we make and we just keep chasing that high, really.
It's it's the cycle that the better we get, the more impressive
our art becomes, the more times we kind of feel that excitement.
But then our standards raise ever higher every single day.
So it's kind of never ends.
I have
found very recently that my greatest suggestion to you,
if you want to be able to get through this, if you really want to do art
and you're or if you're just starting and you want to figure out,
how do I enjoy this thing, I'm not good at it yet.
And honestly, like I said in the beginning of the video, that's OK.
I want to let everyone know that's OK to not want to do something because you're
not good at it yet, because it really does get a lot better once
you know how to do certain fundamentals, especially if it's within.
If you found out what you actually really want to make with art like, for example,
if you love creating characters and people, once you start understanding
the basics of anatomy, things get a lot more fun when you can draw your own poses.
Things get a lot more fun.
So my recommendation to start is to focus on something very,
very small that you can try to master within a few weeks.
Very small, depending on whoever you are, right?
Pick something that is small but also fun for you.
And don't worry
about the fundamentals as much and do your best to just master that.
So if it is in a certain way, a certain artist paints jewelry.
Just draw tons of jewelry.
Copy how they do it.
Try to make it look great, just like how they do it.
It's just just try to copy that and create something
on a canvas or paper that you're like, Damn, I actually painted this right?
That level of excitement can take you really far with your artwork.
And if you're like me and you're coming from a place
where you already have a decent amount of art skills,
you can be stubborn and pick something bigger.
So I didn't realize it, but I did this.
Not really.
Early on, I'd say maybe three years ago and I picked faces.
I remember at my one of my lowest points.
I think it was my lowest point in my art progress.
I was working in architecture and everyone left the certain studio.
We are in now still there
because I liked the environment and I wanted to wait for traffic to die down.
And so I was just drawing on my iPad there, and I was really frustrated
for some reason.
Everything I was drawing
that day was just turning out terribly, and I was bargaining with myself like, OK,
if I could just draw,
maybe I don't have to color like, Oh, actually, I started before that.
If I could just not every color could I just get good at drawing and rendering?
And then that could be my thing.
And then I was like, No, maybe I just draw right.
If I could just draw anything, I'd be cool.
Like Kim Jong-Il.
Like, if you never did any of those other paintings he did, he'd still be super
popular and respected.
I'd be happy if I could draw the stuff you could do if I could just have that.
And then I was like, even further,
what if I just focused on portraits because I love people and I love faces?
And that's the thing I really get the most excited about if I can just do that.
And so I kept bargaining all these different combinations
of skill and subject matter, and little did
I know I was really doing this healthy activity of trying to find a way
to get my passion back, to have fun with art again .
It's easy to look at that as a negative thing and see it as like, Oh wow, you're
you're giving up on your dreams or you're you're
letting go of fundamental important things that you have to learn to draw.
But I think having fun and enjoying yourself is the most important thing
because that's what takes you through these hours
that you're going to spend developing these skills over the years.
And then,
you know, eventually when you're going to get to a place where people are like,
How the hell did you get here?
So, yeah, for me, it was literally portraits and faces,
and that could be it for you.
And you decide I just want to get good at being able to display
different characters and different designs that way from the shoulder up.
And as I'm working on revisiting these portraits that I've done lately,
that's pretty much what I'm doing, and I noticed that I was really excited
and I could just as soon as I could get a little bit of something
a little bit impressive to me working, I could just spend hours
on end on these portraits,
and I haven't felt that kind of simple pleasure in my work in a long time,
especially with the one you're
looking at now and related to a painting I did earlier.
I was painting it in great skill and I was like, Man, the values are great.
I wish I could just do this in color.
I try to add a little bit of color to it
using the color layer, and it looked better.
It had a better impact than the grayscale one, and I immediately
just threw myself into the next 1012 hours trying to get those colors to work well.
And it was a great time.
I really enjoyed it and I thought I learned a lot
and that told me that, wow,
I really need to see how much further I can go with this.
And now I feel like I've made a ton of improvement.
With color in the last year, and I'm kind of taking the
my own medicine that I keep telling you guys is just like, you know, take it
step by step with every single topic if you know nothing.
Try to know a tiny percentage more of how to paint something
in the next couple of days and that you just need to keep going
from there, even though what you make overall may still be crap.
And I'm just telling myself that,
and there's still a lot of things about this painting that I don't like.
I'm like, How the hell can I do it like this artist or that artist?
But when I look at the one before, I'm like, Damn, that's a lot of improvement.
Now I just have to forget the fact that it's not like the references
I'm using and just keep going, keep going because I'm learning.
And I had a lot of fun with this.
Focusing on that, that smallest thing that you could do
to have fun, some other ideas could be like painting noses.
A lot of people like how I paint noses.
There's artists who I love, how they paint noses.
Maybe you just copy those noses, look at a reference
and try to paint it like another artist did.
Just get really good at painting noses.
Maybe it's the colors. Maybe it's lips.
Lips are really fun to paint.
Maybe that's what it is, and you just want to
figure out how to paint lives really, really good.
Maybe it's your hairstyle, your certain hair texture.
Get really good at painting that if its eyes or ears or noses,
you just want to paint and my eyes really well, just go all in on that.
Try to paint the most juicy like eyes that look like they contain
an entire universe and just go all in on something like that and have a great time.
Get to a place where you've put in enough hours on it
to where people are like, Damn, how did you do that?
Even if it's something so simple,
you could find that people are actually impressed by what you're doing.
That kind of satisfaction is the thing that really drives.
I think a lot of us artists, and I think that will tell you
if you're meant to follow this honestly and if you're going to have a long,
enjoyable career in it.
So that's all I wanted to say with that topic.
I hope that gives you some ideas. Please let me know in the comments.
If you have struggled with trying to feel satisfaction with your work
and if it's related to feeling like you're,
you have the skills to create what you see in your head.
Let me know if you've found any strategies to kind of work
through that or if this is something that you're going to look into trying.
I will say a few words about the actual painting that I'm working on,
and what I'm doing right now is after learning,
I had some big epiphanies about color and just painting in general.
It was so significant that I wanted to quickly
look at a few of my other portraits that I painted and rework them,
and I've been having a great time with that.
I won't get into all the details here, but basically I've realized that
I just need to reduce a lot of the details and simplify large areas , let
the brain kind of fill in the rest of it, try to minimize the strokes that I use.
And in doing that, I've really, really enjoyed the results
that have been coming out and I've been going back to other artists
that have been like my first inspiration for this type of portrait work,
and it's been really, really clear how they've been doing things.
And so basically, what I do with these is that I blur my previous version.
I kind of mess with the colors and then I paint over it and then also
kind of fix the sketch as well.
Because for some reason, around the middle of last year, the portraits that I drew,
the way I drew things, the style I drew things, and it was kind of odd.
I it wasn't how I drew things earlier in 2020,
and it wasn't how I like to draw things now.
So I don't know what happened.
Maybe it's just all part of the journey.
But in doing that, I've been having a really good time.
It's a lot of trial and error, a lot of trial and error
you're going to see in this painting process.
Not much gets done.
If you want to see the entire process as like a time lapse or something.
Check me out on Patreon.
But I thought this would be interesting to see a pretty decent portion
of the painting process to take it from a very rough thing
to something that has pretty much everything dialed in.
And I just need to work through getting specific areas to be maximum
precision crispness and then certain areas to let them go back and be faded out.
But I'm really, really enjoying this portrait here.
I'm really excited to share it with you all.
This might be the end, or I'll let you watch
some more of the painting process, but regardless.
Thank you all so much for watching, and I will see you all in the next one.
Keep drawing and stay positive. Peace.