Paying it forward (advice & techniques)

Heck yes, great advice there as well! And I totally forgot to add in: you don't need to buy a wide set of premixed colours. They're incredibly helpful, but limiting yourself to just the primaries & mixing colours from there will teach a lot about colour theory & how colours relate to each other on the canvas ^_^

Seconding Marco Bucci as an incredible artist & teacher, the 10 mins to better painting series was amazing for me.

I'll also recommend Jeremy Vickery (Lighting Mentor on youtube) whose videos taught me all about colour relativity & how to harmonize colours.

On top of what's already been suggested, I'd definitely recommend looking into Proko's free & paid content! They've got lessons on so, so much & their courses on Figure Drawing and Human Anatomy are very thorough ^_^

Prepare for a VERY LONG info dump!
I am a digital artist and I recently began using a program that I'd literally never heard of until my older bf mentioned it- which feels crazy when he's not surrounded by art at all, a programmer, and I'm literally going to an art uni- anyway, it's called Corel Painter!

and my god. I am in love with it! I've been raving about it to all my peers but they're all too stuck with what they already know, it's hard to watch when this has sped up my art creation and workflow SO SO SO SO MUCH!!!!!

Here's my some screenshots of my new sped up workflow, I'll try to explain it




I started by creating a canvas with a high resolution! Since I started digital art I've always set it to like 72 dpi, because well, I wasn't going to be printing my art was I? so what was the point? But oh my god does it make a difference! The level of detail you can include when you make the resolution higher- especially with Corel Painters brushes already coming with an enormous ton of small customisable detail on each brush- such as adding paper grain (from a lot to choose from and a slider to customise how much of the paper grain is added on each stroke, and this can be set to any brush)- makes it sooooo good because it just casually adds so much more depth and detail and interest to your artwork! I set mine to at least 150dpi if not 300dpi (please note that I don't know anything about actual printing/settings for printing)

No longer will I be drawing small thumbnails and then sizing up my artworks and then continuing. From now on I will be drawing with a "bigger brush size" at the start. See how I said "bigger brush size"? It's because one of the most incredible things about this change to my workflow is how amazingly sensitive corel painter is to pen tilt! With a slight change of tilt of my pen it can massive change the brush size for me! What an incredible time save!!

Along with breaking up the components/menus of corel painter and putting them all much closer! I didn't grow up drawing using my whole arm- I've heard it's much better for you but I'm weak and young me couldn't be arsed lol- which means I'm worried about my wrist but my new workflow means I'm not moving my wrist nearly as much! I'm moving the canvas, zooming in and out and I've put the things I need to reach so close that I basically just change the angle that my elbow is tilted at (I cushion my elbow with my squishy mouse pad bits) to reach the things I need!

Speaking of things I need at awesomely close reach- the bar of recently used tools works so well! Unlike photoshop's dump af one where it updates every time you change the brush size, this work actually works really well and it so handy!! I switch between my main brush and Distorto constantly!

Another incredible thing about this problem is it's Distorto tool. It is so god damn powerful and has brought my art up another whole new level. It's so easy to compress and move elements around. I can hardly believe none of my peers reacted when I informed them about it, they even said "oh yeah my program has that" THEN WHY HAVE I NEVER SEEN YOU USE THE POWER OF IT?

Perhaps it's because I paint and that's how the power of it is unlocked. Dear fellow lineart step haters, hold my hands and say goodbye to lineart forever! You don't need it! You can paint it right on, trust yourself, have confidence, go for it!! If that's too scary, try just cleaning up the sketch into lineart- no, don't make a new layer, duplicate your sketch later, hide the previous and clean up that sketch! No the lineart doesn't need to be precise and perfect.

Think about it this way, you could either spend hundreds of hours making a really nice cake that's an exact circle or you could make 20 cakes of messy circles. 20 cakes feeds a lot more people. 20 drawings is a lot more practice and progress than 1 perfect drawing.

Lastly, Remember to use references. Make your life easy. You want to draw something? Google every little part of it for real life pictures and copy paste every tiny little pic into PUREREF. oh my god pureref is so good. Infinite zoom in and out on images. It's a little funky to get used to but it's worth it I promise. Real life references are your best friend. The more solid your foundation, the easier it is to cartoonify it. I know aiming for cartoon styles first seems like the obvious easy entry but it's really not. Stop using your brain, start staring at real life stuff and copying it! You need to soak in information to learn subconsciously. Look at art, look at what you enjoy. Look at it deeply, think "what about this artwork appeals to me"? is it the way they draw the eyes? The colours? Try to replicate that (ofc don't post if you directly copy someone else art yk, or if you must make sure to credit it properly with consent)

Art, at least art in my opinion, isn't purely practice. It is OBSERVATION skills and practice.
Look at things that make you happy and draw them c: It'll improve your art
Sorry this is so long, hope this helps someone. Feel free to ask questions :D