r/ArtRanting

No one told me that, as a fine art major, i was going to be buying tools i never knew existed. Our project on metal work this semester has brought me to a metal work workshop, and has me trying to choose between cordless and corded nibblers. And why does nobody warn you about this?

Art school sells you this dream of artistic freedom and self expression and then hits you with this thousand dollar tool list in your third year. Nibblers? I didn’t even know what a nibbler was two weeks ago and now i’m expected to spend two hundred dollars on one of them?

And this is what really gets me. Why is there no standardized equipment fund for art students? Engineering students get lab fees that cover equipment. Science majors have shared resources but arts? You're on your own, just figure it out. Oh, and also buy your own canvas , paint, brushes, clay, wire metal sheets and apparently, nibblers!

And now the conversation sometimes isn’t about the money anymore, it’s about quality and safety and principle. Do you go into debt for proper tools or risk injury with cheaper ones from sites like temu or alibaba? And why isn’t there more transparency about what students will actually need to afford in order to fully participate?

Why do artists that I don't even follow, who don't even follow me, CRAWL INTO MY DMS DEMANING THAT I COMMISSION THEM?!?!?!

"Hey! Commission me pls :3"

"No"

"Why not? Plssssssssss?"

WHAT DO U MEAN WHY NOT????????? GTFOutta here bruh.

I now have a list of these artists (who are all real btw, not ai or stolen art) whom I will never commission because they keep begging in my DM's. Listen, I understand money is tight but it's just reallt fucking annoying

Well, I am German.

In Germany, it is a fact, that the most Artist can not live from their Art. Maybe less than 20 percent of the Students can make it, but the most of them have grants, fundings or other fellowships. I myself know nobody who can live permenantly from his Art, and is succesfull over years. We had a lot of troubles here in Germany. Corona, Inflation, high rents and things like that. People do not have the money for Art.

People like me, who never studiet in their whole live (i even never had red a book over Art, or watched any videos or something like that) who are just members of the working class (I am just a simple heating mechanic) and doing their Art more or less like a hobby, are absoluteley invisible here. If you have not studiet, you are not an artist in Germany. Or you have a great success and earn a lot of money with it. But that are just one or two percent of all.

Well, I think I continue my Artworks, but I am not so naive to think, I will ever be successfull with it. I just draw. Thats all. Maybe I am not an Artist, but who cares about it? And I tried a lot. 🤷‍♂️

My 50 cent for that.

I cannot say the name of my actual diagnosis because it gets automatically deleted but it is one where I cycle through episodes of feeling really fucking awesome and then really fucking bad. I have not found a medication that actually does anything for me.

Some days I'm like, hell yeah let's draw 50 boxes, and then other days I can't even summon the will to get out of bed until I have to go to class and then when I'm home I immediately go back to sleep. It doesn't help that all improvement has halted and I don't know why, because even when I am drilling boxes I still can't think in 3D.

How do I get disciplined when my mind is so goddamn inconsistent

I was thinking on a piece of encouragement often given to beginner comic artists. Obviously, I don't think it's totally untrue as story is incredibly important to a comic, but I think it 's less common than people say.

Something that stuck out to me is that when encouraging people, one of the huge examples I see given is the original "one punch man" webcomic and mob psycho 100, because of their more amateur art styles. It always begged the question to me though: Can people only stomach it because it's "humorous"? And so they feel the art style "matches"? What if these stories were hard boiled crime dramas? Or a serious romance? Would they really have stuck through it for the story alone?

Obviously I don't intend to discourage anyone from making a comic, that's not my goal. I moreso just feel this advice doesn't always ring true to amateur comic artists who can very easily see who of their peers readers gravitate to. I think in an attempt to assuage fears, sometimes people can downplay the effect of "appealing art" as a reason for someone deciding to read a chapter of something.

Hell, I even feel the examples of comics/manga with "not great art" are still pretty decent, and are simply "lower grade" in comparison to their incredibly skilled peers in the industry. (I think of how Rob Liefeld, despite his wacky anatomy, could still construct fairly easy to read figures and scenes, vs someone still hiding feet every panel when comics often require you to show them to set the space in a scene.)

I don't think this is a good or bad thing-- just kinda how things are. I'm interested to hear others thoughts about this.

I want to go back to studying anatomy, from the beginning. Can you recommend videos and study methods? There's so much content and so many paths that I get confused and it paralyzes me. I'm not sure if this has to do with my current mental state, but my focus isn't the best either, so I wanted something more friendly.

There’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot recently: what’s the future of being an artist looking to build a community? For anyone that posts on Instagram regularly, you may have seen new changes were rolled out that are lowering new view and follower accounts. As someone who has actively been working to grow their account for months, this is so discouraging.

I’m a digital artist working in animation. For the duration of my career, your presence online determined the connections you had to other artists and studios. Instagram has been the place for finding and connecting with new artists for a long time. After Twitter became X, I don’t seen artists gathering online in other spaces other than private communities like Discord.

So here’s my dilemma, if IG is dying off and making it harder for artists to connect and stay in touch with each other, what happens next? I saw last year some artists pivoting to newsletters, but that feels like more of an outlet to project to an existing audience rather than seek new connections. I want to meet new artists! I want them to see my art, I want to see theirs!

I understand theirs always an opportunity to meet local artist and creatives, but it feels like it’s hard to meet people in my industry. I know there are still a few cities like Los Angeles where many creatives are, but I still get the sense people stick to who they know from their own workplaces.

I even bought a new graphic tablet last summer, instead of my old tiny one, and wasted an absolutely ridiculous amount of time drawing, practicing and trying to improve to post <10 likes bangers on tumblr.

It's just a complete waste of time and money. I wanted to share my art with people but apparently I'm the only one who wants that to happen. I was happier during my many years long art block, because ending it only gave me a new reason to be upset.

Hello. As per the title of this post suggests, I am struggling with trying to get my foot back into Art and am too overwhelmed by my feeds to really settle into one particular style.

After graduating 4 years ago, and already having been burnt out my last school year, I ended up getting a retail job since all the art jobs I applied never responded/declined. Trying to balance art w my job was often difficult, and with the fluctuating hours and schedule, I found most of my free time spent scrolling social media or playing games instead.

More recently I have only been using social media and nothing else really. I figured I'd try to jump back into Art again but I feel so overwhelmed by what avenue to take. I don't think I'd do a complete 180° with my art style, but I kind of want to experiment with different things, but it just gets too crazy spending hours on Pinterest or Instagram for inspiration and everything looks enticing.

How do you know what style/practice you want to take with your art? How do you know how to control your feeds and that overwhelming feeling for influences?

Sorry if this post seems hard to read, I guess just jumping back into Art seems more complicated in my head than it should be...

From a young age I was what you'd call the art kid, with 2d forms of media like anime and cartoons essentially what really fueled my interest. In a way I would agree that drawing and sketching and painting and crafting and what not is what helped me get through certain things, and if I continued to draw and create despite my father's wishes(because art is a waste of time and it takes away from the time you could spend doing more productive things, and he didn't want me to end up like my aunt), I'm sure it counts for something.

Drawing anime girls and cool powerful dragons and the occasional man stuck with me till middle school, by which it was well established that I was the certified 'skilled artist' of the class, of course there were other kids who drew, but in the eyes of my peers, none compared to me. Most of my awards and medals come from me being creative, interschool art competitions on shitty themes like saving energy through renewable what not, or just the standard poster making for certain events, or statewide art competitions where you'd have kids sitting in a hot room in silence, just painting. And I guess growing up labelled 'the best' at something really does mess up your psyche. Because in the eyes of thirteen year olds who find even the simplest animation cool, and art teachers who'd seen nothing but scribbles before you arrived, what matters as 'good art' anymore?

Anyway, highschool rolled around, and my new identity came with it. Ofcourse I was still known as the 'talented artist', but my relationship with art was really just on and off, a messy, frustrating cycle of failure and failure and failure. Didn't help having a terrible teacher, and didn't help having your mental health decline during that time period.

Sophomore year rolls in, and I've dropped 'drawing' completely. People start to forget I was good at anything, and I start I grow quieter. More defensive and closed on whatever I do. Same person who used to proudly post shitty anime drawings on social media btw, but whatever. Graduated with 43% attendance that year, with all the teachers labeling me as a 'lost cause', and 'good student gone astray' i dotn know why this is relevant what am I doing.

Anyway, I quit drawing completely after that, and it remains so for a few years. Save for the few doodles and little designs here and there. Cut to the present, and I get back into it. It never really did leave, just lingered in the back of the mind. Always thinking and talking even when I didn't want it to. I develop my own style, expand into it, expand into other forms of art and media I like, and for once, even though it's still bad, Im actually proud of it. Wow, I know my techniques, I've found my style, I've started to enjoy drawing again? What could go wrong!

I want to go meditate in the Himalayas far from any human connection. Go and befriend the plants that are present there.

I'm still shy about showing my art, obviously, but since I'm alot more confident, I don't mind it that much. A few of my friends plan on creating a game, I jokingly suggest making the thumbnails and character designs for them, somehow, they actually want me to do it. Now these are people I respect alot, they're good at what they do, and they're good friends on top of that. I sent a few of my older works to one of them, ranging from a year ago, to three months ago, and from the reaction, I could tell something was off. I know they're old, I know they're not very good, but that's really just the mentality of the illustrator, right? He doesn't acknowledge the drawings, just changes the topic about how he can only draw muscular men, because drawing women is weird, I go, okay, whatever, but what about the stuff I sent you, is it okay?

'Its decent.'

Oh god did my heart break. I knew I was washed, but coming from someone that doesn't even draw? Someone that I admire alot? Even when they were some pieces I liked?

I backed out of the thumbnail thing immediately.

Maybe it was just a one time thing, I'm not satisfied. I get a second opinion, from one of the other guys working on the game;

'Not so bad.'

Yeah that's the second stake. Another guy who doesn't draw, but it's the second person who said the same thing!

I go to get the opinion of a fellow artist, someone younger than me, she'd understand. Right?

'um, somethings off. But I don't know what. You've definitely got the technique, and skill, but idk.'

Yes, I will be jumping now please.

I know I'm an idiot, and I'm stupid and I'm just the biggest fool there is to expect to hear good things from drawings not even in the proudest off, and I know that if I hear the same thing thrice, then it's definitely a problem with me. But that's the thing. It's a problem with me. Growing up glazed for the most simple thing ever, to being hardly complimented for something, I don't know. It's just such a terrible feeling. And I know if I ask some other friends, they'd tell me they love it, and how amazing it is, and how I should start my own manga or whatever, infact, alot of my friends might say that. But would it matter? Drawing isn't their thing, even if other forms of art may be.

It just sucks, I just suck. From being number one, to barely on the leaderboard. And i just can't. I don't know why I picked up the pencil in the first place, I was better off spending my days playing games in my room like a fat chud.

Really liked look back and blue period, except I won't have a kyomoto, or a yuka with me.

I don't even know why I'm writing this, but I've gotten off of social media for the time being. Created a little distance from people, and I guess this is better than the notepad or whatever.

i’m a hobby artist. i draw the same thing 95% of the time as a way to show my love for this thing (a lot).

i like posting my art, i got to do some big things outside of social media because of it. but most of the time, it’s just a battle of getting the algorithm to like my work. While “draw not to appease the algorithm” is usually my default state, i tend to use one or two things in my art which artwork that “pop off” usually do, though to mixed (usually negative) results. When I don’t apply one, I still post it despite expecting it to flop.

popped off or flop, i still wanted to draw as I do. though i always see the artists that draw the same thing I do. artists I admire. they draw faster, have bigger numbers, and have better artwork. heck their sketches look better (and do better) than my fully rendered pieces.

everytime i see their work, the two warring states in my brain argue a lot. (everything below is in all caps in my head, but i’ll spare from typing them that way)

“Their artwork is amazing! you can never do that” “I know” “Stop drawing then” “Just take it one step at the time” “You’ll never catch up to them” “I already have some improvements myself” “Some” “Shut up” “Your art still sucks” “Maybe, but I want to keep drawing anyway” “Their sketches already look better than your fully rendered art!” “I know.”

It’s usually that exchange. Though when I have my PMS around, it’s usually the negative side that’s dramatically stronger.

i don’t even know why I’m sharing this. I just wanted to let out steam (yes, PMS.).