Man, I suuuuck at drawing and painting. But (up until the last couple weeks I guess) I’ve been making and posting my shitty ass, MS Paintesque paintings and collages. Why?
Because you and I are humans and creative expression is our fucking right.
Because you don’t get better at anything unless you keep doing it.
Because people, at least here, prefer a technically shitty artistic effort to a better looking image made by a insanely thirsty software architecture owned by greedy technocrats.
Lol, here is just fine. I usually put my crap on Art Share (originals using few/no collage elements), or Low Effort Memes (a blissfully permissive community that hasn’t given me too much shit for my collage stuff yet).
Without going into another diatribe, I’m a firm believer that it’s OK to be a beginner in public. Yes, you might get downvotes/people saying you suck/whatever. You might also get tips to improve, or encouragement to keep going. At very least you can point at something publically and say “Hey, I made this!”. Maybe someone else points at it and says “I can do better than this”, then picks up a tool to try and prove it. Bam - you just made another artist.
This is a good start! Hell, this is what 90% of my drawings looked like when I was a young guy. At a certain point I stopped, and didn’t approach art of any kind for decades. An old friend of mine at pretty close the same skill level kept doing it, sharing the results with interested folks, kept honing their craft, and now they’re a professional animator with credits in award-winning shows. Thank you for sharing!!
I consider myself to be alright by hobbyist standards, at least, but here’s a watercolor and watercolor crayon painting of a pair of bunnies skating on a frozen pond at night.
And yeah, I kinda love watercolor crayons as a medium, at least in combination with watercolors, and I’m a newbie to watercolor crayons.
Plus, here’s an acrylic painting of a mouse building a snowman at night for a bonus pic, and yeah, I know the snow and mouse are supposed to be white, but I gave that whole scene a pink/purple tint for the sake of cuteness.
Also, I very, very much have a preference for traditional media over digital tools mainly because traditional media have always been fun for me to play with, painting in particular I tend to get lost in for hours at a time.
Finally, I’m adding a wax crayon drawing to this post because why not, but here’s a wax crayon drawing of Pichu and Dedenne building a snowman, and I’ll stop here before this post gets too spammy. And just like with the mouse painting above, I gave this scene a pink/purple tint because that’s cute, also, wax crayons are one of my fave drawing media currently alongside oil pastels and chalk in any order.
These are cute as fuck and I love them! Definitely understand the appeal of traditional media over digital (my stuff’s digital mostly because of accessibility).
Thanks! And I’d argue that traditional is more accessible on some metrics than digital, eg. having a lower entry fee because you can just get a box of crayons and a pad of paper for a pittance and go to town, vs. three figures at minimum for a usable PC to do digital stuff on, for example.
You can even get a set of paints and some brushes for pretty cheap if you’re interested in that as well; craft paints will do just fine for acrylics, for example, although you’ll want some heavy watercolor paper or at the very least construction paper for a working surface that can handle wet media reliably, plus paints in general can get kinda messy for something else to be aware of, but that’s a big part of why they’re fun.
Good point, and I understand where you’re coming from. My counterpoint is basically “the best tools to start making art are the ones you already have”.
In my case, I had a phone and the ability to download Pocket Paint (think OSS MS Paint), and that’s what got me started. For others, it might be basic paints and paper/cheap canvas from a dollar store. For others, it might be crude pigments made from old coffee grounds and charcoal remnants from a hobo fire they came across, applied to junk mail newspaper with kitchen utensils. For still others, it could be a rock and another, harder rock for etching.
You can always explore different techniques and materials as your interests develop and/or budget allows, but for the person who just wants to start making something, whatever you have on hand that captures your fancy is the best first choice IMO.
Man, I suuuuck at drawing and painting. But (up until the last couple weeks I guess) I’ve been making and posting my shitty ass, MS Paintesque paintings and collages. Why?
Because you and I are humans and creative expression is our fucking right.
Because you don’t get better at anything unless you keep doing it.
Because people, at least here, prefer a technically shitty artistic effort to a better looking image made by a insanely thirsty software architecture owned by greedy technocrats.
Because fuck it, we can.
Post those drawings homie.
Uh… Where, exactly?
(Rough drawing of a confused girl.)
I’m not very good… •_•
Lol, here is just fine. I usually put my crap on Art Share (originals using few/no collage elements), or Low Effort Memes (a blissfully permissive community that hasn’t given me too much shit for my collage stuff yet).
Without going into another diatribe, I’m a firm believer that it’s OK to be a beginner in public. Yes, you might get downvotes/people saying you suck/whatever. You might also get tips to improve, or encouragement to keep going. At very least you can point at something publically and say “Hey, I made this!”. Maybe someone else points at it and says “I can do better than this”, then picks up a tool to try and prove it. Bam - you just made another artist.
Quoting from noted philosopher Violent J: “If he knows what’s so dope he should make it himself, and quit fucking judging every-fucking-body else”
This is a good start! Hell, this is what 90% of my drawings looked like when I was a young guy. At a certain point I stopped, and didn’t approach art of any kind for decades. An old friend of mine at pretty close the same skill level kept doing it, sharing the results with interested folks, kept honing their craft, and now they’re a professional animator with credits in award-winning shows. Thank you for sharing!!
I consider myself to be alright by hobbyist standards, at least, but here’s a watercolor and watercolor crayon painting of a pair of bunnies skating on a frozen pond at night.
And yeah, I kinda love watercolor crayons as a medium, at least in combination with watercolors, and I’m a newbie to watercolor crayons.
Plus, here’s an acrylic painting of a mouse building a snowman at night for a bonus pic, and yeah, I know the snow and mouse are supposed to be white, but I gave that whole scene a pink/purple tint for the sake of cuteness.
Also, I very, very much have a preference for traditional media over digital tools mainly because traditional media have always been fun for me to play with, painting in particular I tend to get lost in for hours at a time.
Finally, I’m adding a wax crayon drawing to this post because why not, but here’s a wax crayon drawing of Pichu and Dedenne building a snowman, and I’ll stop here before this post gets too spammy. And just like with the mouse painting above, I gave this scene a pink/purple tint because that’s cute, also, wax crayons are one of my fave drawing media currently alongside oil pastels and chalk in any order.
These are cute as fuck and I love them! Definitely understand the appeal of traditional media over digital (my stuff’s digital mostly because of accessibility).
Thanks! And I’d argue that traditional is more accessible on some metrics than digital, eg. having a lower entry fee because you can just get a box of crayons and a pad of paper for a pittance and go to town, vs. three figures at minimum for a usable PC to do digital stuff on, for example.
You can even get a set of paints and some brushes for pretty cheap if you’re interested in that as well; craft paints will do just fine for acrylics, for example, although you’ll want some heavy watercolor paper or at the very least construction paper for a working surface that can handle wet media reliably, plus paints in general can get kinda messy for something else to be aware of, but that’s a big part of why they’re fun.
Good point, and I understand where you’re coming from. My counterpoint is basically “the best tools to start making art are the ones you already have”.
In my case, I had a phone and the ability to download Pocket Paint (think OSS MS Paint), and that’s what got me started. For others, it might be basic paints and paper/cheap canvas from a dollar store. For others, it might be crude pigments made from old coffee grounds and charcoal remnants from a hobo fire they came across, applied to junk mail newspaper with kitchen utensils. For still others, it could be a rock and another, harder rock for etching.
Shit, there’s people out there making paintings with Excel.
You can always explore different techniques and materials as your interests develop and/or budget allows, but for the person who just wants to start making something, whatever you have on hand that captures your fancy is the best first choice IMO.
This energy is peak! 💯