Why 99% of Artists NEVER Improve

Summary

In the video, "Why 99% of Artists NEVER Improve," the creator SomeNormalArtist explores the reasons why many artists fail to advance in their skills, despite consistent practice. Contrary to common advice, it's not about secret tricks but understanding the fundamental units and elements of art. The creator discusses how misconceptions about art basics, overconfidence, and improper focus can hinder progress. By breaking down the elements like balance, contrast, and form, and connecting them with personal experiences, artists can truly improve their work's depth and perception.

Highlights

• The video challenges common notions like "there are no rules in art." ⚖️
• Compares learning art to building a house by learning to decorate first. 🏠
• The creator shares personal breakthroughs with the fundamentals of art. 🖌️
• Highlights the importance of verbalizing and understanding artistic techniques. 🗣️
• Stresses on the necessity to study and reflect on the fundamental units of art. 🔍

Key Takeaways

• Understanding the fundamental elements of art is crucial for real improvement. 🎨
• Misconceptions about basics lead to overconfidence and stagnation. 🤔
• Personal reflection on art fundamentals helps reveal key learning insights. 💡
• Incorporating learned fundamentals into practice leads to consistency and growth. 📈
• Art doesn't have strict rules but knowing the elements helps in purposeful expression. 🎭

Overview

SomeNormalArtist dives into the misconception that consistent practice alone leads to improvement in art. The video takes viewers through the often overlooked fundamentals of art which include elements like balance, contrast, and form. The key message is that while practice is important, understanding and reflecting on these fundamentals is what truly elevates an artist's work.

The creator uses personal art evolution stories to demonstrate how lacking knowledge in art's basic elements leads to significant limitations. By breaking down complex concepts like form and unity, the artist reveals personal "aha" moments that reshaped their perspective and skills. This approach makes the advice relatable and encourages aspiring artists to delve deeper into their craft.

Concluding the video, SomeNormalArtist emphasizes that there are no strict rules in art, yet understanding its fundamental elements can clarify and enhance an artist's expression and purpose. By categorizing artistic challenges within these frameworks, artists can identify issues and grow beyond them, making every drawing an opportunity for improvement.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction and Common Art Advice The chapter titled 'Introduction and Common Art Advice' challenges conventional art improvement tips like practicing consistently and comparing art with others. The narrator questions the effectiveness of these pieces of advice, suggesting that they might not significantly help artists improve. The speaker, self-identified as a favorite artist, promises to reveal why most artists don't see progress despite consistent practice, and how one can identify what's lacking in their art to join the top 1% of improving artists. The focus is on correcting a core mistake rather than relying on secret techniques.
• 00:30 - 01:00: The Myth of No Rules in Art The chapter challenges the common perception that there are no rules in art, questioning how we can judge the quality of art without rules. It suggests that believing strictly in either rules or no rules reflects a deeper misunderstanding of art. The chapter aims to provide a reality check on this notion.
• 01:00 - 02:00: Understanding Art Basics and Units This chapter delves into the fundamentals of art, emphasizing the common misconception among individuals who overrate their understanding of artistic concepts. It explains how many people assume they know everything about art due to their own limited perspective, which often leads to overlooking foundational advice. The chapter aims to shift the reader's mindset and encourages a more humble and open approach to learning and improving as an artist.
• 02:00 - 03:00: The Importance of Art's Fundamental Units The chapter titled 'The Importance of Art's Fundamental Units' discusses the concept that understanding the fundamental aspects of art can simplify the creative process significantly, making it ten times easier. It draws an analogy of building a house starting with decoration, implying the necessity of knowing the core structure before embellishment. It argues that the basics of art are neither rigid rules nor strict guidelines, but rather underlying elements that every piece of artwork incorporates in its own unique way.
• 03:00 - 04:00: Practical Steps for Art Improvement The chapter discusses the fundamental units of art improvement, comparing them to essential scientific concepts like distance and time for understanding speed. It emphasizes that in art, understanding how to shade or draw requires comprehension of basic components or 'units.' It clarifies that these units are not specific elements like anatomy or line art, but broader concepts such as balance, contrast, proportion, emphasis, movement, and pattern.
• 04:00 - 05:00: Example of Learning Through Lines This chapter discusses the fundamental elements of art, which include rhythm, unity, space, texture, form, value, color, shape, and line. These elements are described as the basic components that constitute all art, even anatomy, which is broken down into shape, form, and proportion. The chapter emphasizes how studying each of these elements has altered the author's perspective on art. For example, understanding form has revealed that the light source's position is often less important than accurately depicting the object's inherent nature.
• 05:00 - 06:00: Reflection and Application of Learned Concepts The chapter discusses the importance of focusing on the bigger picture in art rather than just the smallest details that might go unnoticed. It shares a personal reflection on how this approach helped with understanding and improving line art. The narrator emphasizes that evolving in art involves creating personal interpretations of fundamental art concepts and understanding how they align with what you want to express in your artwork.
• 06:00 - 07:00: Consistency and Practice in Art The chapter explores the basics of art, highlighting its significance and suggesting methods for learning it. It introduces a simple three-step exercise to help bring out important concepts and improve art skills. The first step emphasizes the need to articulate artistic techniques, addressing the challenge of not being able to verbalize elements of drawing.
• 07:00 - 09:00: Conclusion and Further Learning The chapter emphasizes the importance of understanding and communicating one's art process to improve consistency and identify issues. It suggests researching formal definitions and examples of art units to deepen understanding. For instance, a line in art is defined as a path made by a moving point and has characteristics like weight, texture, direction, and curvature. The chapter encourages further exploration of concepts like contour lines and other uses of lines in art.

Why 99% of Artists NEVER Improve Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 practice consistently learn this one technique to improve compare your art with other artists I'm sure you've heard this same advice over and over again but does any of it even help at all hey it's me your favorite artist you're obviously subscribed to and today I'm going to teach you the truth on why the majority of artists never improve at Art no matter how much they practice and how you can be the 1% who finally realizes what's missing in your artwork no tricks no [ __ ] secret techniques I will literally show you the core mistake so
• 00:30 - 01:00 many artists make if there are supposedly no rules in art why are we so confident in judging whether an artist is good or bad there obviously has to be rules right because without them there really wouldn't be such a thing as good art so which is it then rules or no rules if you believe in either of these then your problem lies way deeper than you even realize I'm going to give you a harsh reality check from a scale of 1 to 10 how well do you
• 01:00 - 01:30 know the basics of art if you don't consider yourself an expert in art and you answered anything more than a three you are just wrong people often overestimate how much they know about art because in their eyes they believe they know everything but that's because it's all they can see a lot of artists just end up ignoring the most fundamental advice given to them because they think they already know it or it sounds so simple that it's practically useless your perspective on how to improve as an artist is too influenced
• 01:30 - 02:00 by what you personally desire which isn't necessarily a bad thing but when you learn what art fundamentally is all of this [ __ ] becomes 10 times easier to do you are building a house by learning how to decorate first what happened to my [ __ ] house so then what are the basics of art despite what people might think they're not a set of rules or even a set of guidelines every piece of artwork follows the basics in some way
• 02:00 - 02:30 try to think of them as like the fundamental units in science just like how you can't understand speed until you first learn what distance and time are you will never be able to understand how to shade or Draw clothing if you can't comprehend the units that go into it you might be thinking now that the units are stuff like Anatomy wrinkles or line art but these are too specific so what are they okay so there are a lot of different interpretations but this is basically mine balance contrast proportion emphasis movement pattern
• 02:30 - 03:00 Rhythm Unity space texture form value color shape in line these are Art's fundamental units this is literally everything art is [ __ ] made of anatomy that's nothing more than shape form and proportion poses that's expressed through shape movement and balance understanding each of these units has taught me something super valuable that has change the way I view art form taught me that the position of the light source rarely matters and that conveying what the the object actually
• 03:00 - 03:30 feels like is so much more important Unity taught me to focus on the overall picture instead of just the smallest details no one can even notice and recently it taught me that my bad line art isn't inherently a problem with my lines themselves but just the way I expressed shape in my art and these are only my own personal interpretations you evolve in art by creating your own interpretation of the fundamental units and by figuring out how they work with what you personally want to draw
• 03:30 - 04:00 now that you've learned what the basics of art are and its importance how should you go about learning it it can be a little daunting at first considering there's like 15 [ __ ] units but I bet that you already have an unconscious idea of what most of them are so I'm going to show you a simple three-step exercise you can do that will bring these important ideas out of your head and help ignite that spark that will make you exponentially improve so for our first step we need to fix the fact that you can't verbalize half the [ __ ] you do while drawing trust me when I say
• 04:00 - 04:30 that being able to properly understand and communicate to someone else what you're doing will help you become more consistent and realize the problems in your art spend a little bit of time looking up on Google what the formal definition of the unit is look up some visual examples and just learn some of its deeper ideas let's look at an example using the unit line line in art is simply defined as a path created by a moving points a line has traits such as its weight texture Direction and curvature there's a lot of using is involving line such as contour lines
• 04:30 - 05:00 which you know as line art there's also something called cross contour lines which are using lines to capture form obviously there is more to line but I want to keep this example to the important parts that will be brought up later for this next step make sure you are listening closely because this is the most important [ __ ] thing in this entire video it's one thing to understand what you've read and it's another to really understand what you've read if you think to yourself something like well yeah that makes sense you
• 05:00 - 05:30 didn't really learn anything for you to truly accomplish this step you have to get that sense of holy [ __ ] this is actually groundbreaking the best way to get this feeling is by connecting what you've recently learned to your existing knowledge of art this means stuff like linking it to other units you've learned reflecting on your past experiences or by analyzing how your favorite artist use the unit so now let's build on that line example from earlier if you know me I really [ __ ] hate line art no matter
• 05:30 - 06:00 what I did for some reason it just always felt off my coloring would cover it up since I'm good at coloring but I never wanted that to be the case I wanted to be good at line art but it just always looked like [ __ ] until I learned what cross contour lines were like we've said before cross contour lines are lines that show the form of an object and that's when it hit me my line art never properly conveyed the form of my drawing so I took the time to study
• 06:00 - 06:30 how my favorite artist used the line to convey form I found out that one major way they showed form is through the lines of their clothing the human body is super soft and smooth so it's kind of hard to show its form kind of like a sphere without cross contour lines you can't really tell the difference between a circle and a sphere so what my favorite artist does is that they use clothing as their cross contour lines to give their character more form notice how these simple ass [ __ ] lines from the clothing make the Chara character feel much more 3D and this idea doesn't
• 06:30 - 07:00 just apply to solely line art they also use lines in their coloring notice through the color lines of the skirt how they warp around the character's legs or how the shirt's Middle Line shows the form of the character's abdomen I especially love how they even change the weight of the line to make it feel like the shadow of the placket which is the middle part of a buttonup shirt you should always be aware about how the lines of your objects warp around each other so that your character can feel much less flat you can also add simple random lines to your character's design
• 07:00 - 07:30 to allow yourself to express that sense of volume more this idea of using lines for form is something that I've unconsciously known as I've been doing it through my character's hair but it's not something I could have ever verbally told you unless I researched it for myself to sum it up I call this step reflect and realize reflect on what you've learned about the unit you're studying and try to realize how it all comes together with your experiences and knowledge of art of course easier said than done but this is why studying the
• 07:30 - 08:00 basic units is so necessary once you become a little bit more aware of what you're looking for you're no longer trying to Traverse a dark cave but now you have a path that you can see for our final step this is going to help us become more consistent so that we're always and always improving the best way to understand the importance of a piece of information is through experiencing it for yourself try incorporating what you've learned in your next drawing or maybe touch up an old one in my drawing of scarlet you can tell some of my lines don't properly w W around my character's
• 08:00 - 08:30 form so she ends up looking a bit weird her collar doesn't wrap correctly around her neck and the straps on her shirt look a little off the only thing that looks good is her hair as these lines do properly show the form of her head so in my next drawing I made sure to remember and practice these points so now in my drawing of vanilla her collar wraps a lot better around her neck and her clothing does wrap around her body better you can feel her form solely through her line art if I didn't focus on how these lines warped around her she would have looked super flat especially
• 08:30 - 09:00 because her body is facing straight forward I also applied this idea of line to her latex gloves so you can see that it doesn't just apply to her line art in the end even with her simple posing her line art combined with her coloring gives her a sense of volume although I never finish this drawing cuz I got [ __ ] lazy but you get the point simply being able to verbalize what you've learned and doing it at least once will make sure that it's solidified in your head forever there's a lot of reasons why 99% of artists never improve such as like lack of patience lack of
• 09:00 - 09:30 dedication or lack of confidence but one of the biggest reasons I always see is that they just don't know what to improve on it's not like everyone has an art teacher telling them what they need to practice for next week that's why taking an hour out of your day to study what art fundamentally is can help restructure your mindset over time so that you can draw better I'm not teaching you a quick fix or gimmicky art hack these are legit the core foundations of art I've been calling them units for the sake of the video but really these things are called the elements of art and principles of design
• 09:30 - 10:00 being able to categorize your problems into these elements and principles will save you so much headache when you're drawing looks bad and you have no idea why this is also why saying there are rules or no rules in art is too binary there are no strict rules in art because art can have a million different purposes however if you want to create art with purpose it's important to at least learn the basic units of art to better express yourself if you want to see the brushes I use to draw check out my patreon if you're also interested in
• 10:00 - 10:30 learning more about the mistakes you might be making in art make sure to check out this video