Dads And Drags.

good artist tips

there’s always gonna be someone better than you. try to work less on comparing yourself to their work and instead learning from them and turning envy into a personal challenge for your own stuff. i know its hard, trust me.

the best way to get better at art is to practice. there is no special trick to improving, no secret method. practice makes perfect is a tired old saying that im sure you dont want to hear but unfortunately, its true.

draw as much as you are able to. i wont say draw every day!!! because i know that there are folks that dont have this sort of luxury, whether it be because of physical or mental restrictions, or simply because they dont have time. draw whenever you can and have the strength to. try not to be too upset if you miss a day or a week or even months. shit happens, do the best you are able to.

if you get bored or stuck, try another way. change mediums if you can, flip the canvas, do something weird that you wouldnt normally do. sometimes this is the best way to un-stick yourself from art block.

dont be afraid to ask for help. this is so important! its ok to ask for assistance from other artists you admire (given that they have time to give pointers.) even if asking for help is straight up asking for a redline of your work, its ok to ask for it. improvement doesnt come without outside assistance, more often than not.

references are 100% a legitimate resource. i’m not really sure where the idea came from that real artists dont use references, but its not true. every renaissance painter used references in the form of in-house models. disney artists use references of animals and people to correctly model and then correctly exaggerate their designs. you cant learn to draw the world around you without actually studying it. use references, even if its just google searching.

your art is not an island. you will pick up styles from other people like tape picks up pet hair. its inevitable, and its not something that should be seen as a negative. artists inspire other artists. use your discretion, and study what you like about another artist’s work. every artist’s style is a mashup of a hundred other artists. its ok, experiment.

youre not going to make masterpieces all the time. youre gonna suck more often than not. but youre putting effort into something you enjoy and in the process you are getting better, slowly but surely. you arent going to see your stuff improve overnight, be patient.

please be kind to yourself. you are making a unique form of artistic expression, regardless whether you see it that way or not. youre doing fine, please keep going and pat yourself on the back for getting this far.

one time i was hanging out with these two friends of mine, women i admire very much, and we reached this twilight zone moment where we realized that each of us had, at one point:

dated a man who treated us very badly

and for whom we made many sacrifices

and who we defended to our friends

because we needed to be supportive

of his “genius”

yes, he treated us badly but he was so smart and talented that maybe it was unfair to expect him to play by society’s rules, we told ourselves

and it felt kind of embarrassing to demand something as gauche as kindness (ugh) or maturity

from a “genius”

we lived in fear of being The Nagging Girlfriend/Wife Who Doesn’t Understand Her Man’s Unique Vision. 

you know, the woman from the first half of any biopic about a great man. the first wife, the one he divorces before act two.

instead we dreamed of being The Good, Supportive Girlfriend/Wife Who Knows Sometimes You Must Make Compromises. 

you know, the woman from the later half of any biopic about a great man. the second or sometimes third wife, depending on how long he lived or how many affairs he had.

it was genuinely chilling, because the longer we talked, the more it felt like all three of us had been handed the same invisible and very detailed script. we are all extremely liberal feminists and yet we’d still bought the whole narrative hook line and sinker, and i don’t think any of us fully realized how fucked up it was until we heard it from each other’s mouths. 

i should note, maybe, that these two friends of mine are two of the most brilliant, talented, competent people i know. they were, in both cases, just as brilliant as the boy they sacrificed for. also they were, in both cases, capable of maintaining this brilliance while still tending to their own needs like an adult and treating the people around them with a fundamental level of respect.

so in case it helps anyone out there right now, struggling white knuckled to last into the second half of an imagined Great Man biopic: there is no level of intelligence or skill high enough to exempt a man (or a woman or anyone anywhere else on the gender spectrum) from the basic requirements of human decency. i don’t care if he is moving shit around with the power of his mind like matilda, he still has to say “please” and “thank you” and consider the feelings of the people around him. if he cannot or will not do these things, he is not a genius, he is a baby. AT BEST.

also, you are not the love interest of this movie. you are the fucking protagonist.

Original: Dangan Ronpa 4koma Kings vol. 4

Artist: 神崎りゅう子 (Kanzaki Ryuuko)

[aggressively supports and encourages young artists]

Mosspaca Advertising Department’ by @坛九 and @old先, translated by Yaoi-blcd. *any ads removed to avoid conflicts of interest, profit or gain. *untranslated or originally not tagged under MAD by authors. our numbering system’s only for the strips we translated.

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Liar event CGs. Want more Kazumi 😭

And that’s where seenzone exist.