#I wanted to redraw this bc I’ve grown a lot

[inumbrapugnabimus-maybe]

Great explanation 👍

Redraw of this

[inotanzen]

hiii! i really admire your art skills. and the fact that you improved so much in just 6 months is inspiring! do you have any tips on how to improve? i'm 26 and i want to improve but i feel like ive neglected my art for so long and now it's too late. :(

THANK YOU SO SO MUCH OMG ?? oh man i’m so bad with feeling and gratitude but this seriously means more than i can express so i worked really, really hard on narrowing down my best tips! so here’s

Eli’s Top 5 Rules To Be a Totally Cool Awesome Badass Artist In As Long As It’s Going To Take (In Order) :

Most important rule of all is it should be FUN. be disgustingly self indulgent, draw what you want and LOVE, not what you think you should or what everyone else is, or how everyone else is! don’t vibe with doing sketches first? hate lining? despise complicated painting styles? find shortcuts, don’t do them!!! if you’re doing digital maybe draw your sketches traditionally first and scan them/take a photo to draw over, try a lineless style, cel shading, or mixing mediums, the options are endless! this is where your “style” will come from. all “style” is, is an artists shorthand.

You are your only competition. never compare your progress to anyone but your past self, it’s not a race in terms of how good you are at X age after X amount of time spent practicing. i saw it illustrated in this comic a few years ago (that made me cry at the time, because i hadn’t started drawing yet) as seeing your skills as a beautiful potted plant- just because some people are walking around with theirs fully grown and thriving, doesn’t mean your little sprout will stay small forever. just be patient, keep watering it, and eventually, it’ll be a beautiful flower all your own. ❀

Use references Obsessively. this includes tracing! (ethically) there’s a ton of resources out there, redraws of frames from movie or shows are great too! play around with it, try using the perspective but change the style or turn it into a character au for a fandom you love. (this is part of that first tip!) mashing together images past the point of original intelligibility is acceptable as well. the goal isn’t to obsess over accuracy or stop using references altogether though, just to use them differently over time.

Inspiration/motivation won’t be gone forever. don’t force yourself to practice drawing, or you’ll end up resenting it altogether. i’ve had my tablet and pencil since january but i say 6 months bc there were two (almost three) entire months where i had no inspiration and just did Nothing. take time to consume new media for ideas or look at what inspires you instead! keep folders of the things you find most appealing to pull up when you need them. art can be a freeing escape if you allow it to be!

Look at art you admire and think about Why you admire it. why does it look good, what catches your eye most? is it the colors? the lighting? the shapes and perspective? the varied line thicknesses or the overall layout composition? everything can be broken down into components, hone in on the ones you like most and try to emulate them. we’re all just flowing down the stream of shared inspiration together. :)

bonus digital art tip: you will always need more layers than you think you do. give each element its own layer like it’s the most introverted mf you’ve ever met, i swear on everything good in this cursed world you will thank me later. layer/item selection and transform are your best goddamn friends for life.

there’s also a lot of art related posts in this tag and on my art twitter ♡ thank you endlessly again and good luck on your journey!!