Nuki News #55 - Art Weaknesses!

(Forgive the use of a random screenshot from BoJack Horseman- was a bit too pressed for time this week, but I chose it on purpose! Won't make a habit of that.)

It’s no surprise or newfound discovery that creatives often can be seen disliking their own work. This Nuki News isn’t going to be me talking about that. I want to talk about more objective matters with weaknesses in drawing and making pictures.

If you studied or taken drawing or painting classes, you probably already know common sorts of mistakes! Things like bad anatomy, stiff poses, too much symmetry or asymmetrical facial features, oversaturated colors or muddy shading. When starting out, you want to get rid of or correct these sorts of mistakes so they aren’t a habit anymore. Every artist has some sort of art weakness, too, even the super good artists we all look up to. But the farther up you go, the less apparent they are. Drawing a lot and taking classes helps you shore up and patch out any of the major weaknesses that makes your work look amatuer-ish, but if you go on for 10 years with it, you may find overarching issues at play with your work that could potentially hold your work back. I know I have.

But maybe that’s okay?

I learned to stop trying to patch up every weakness in more recent years- and limit the scope of what it is I’ll be drawing in my life. Humans? Nope. Feral/realistic animals? Heck nah. Interior design? No-siree-Bob!

I could spend hours, days, weeks- studying and learning to draw these things better, but what the heck am I gunna be using that for? Nothing! I’m not drawing that stuff for any project I intend to work on in the foreseeable future, so it makes no sense studying that stuff now. Don’t get me wrong though- it wouldn’t be a total waste if I did study animals and humans, but if I did, it would be very specific aspects of them for me to use. So, I would study photos of actual animals, but only their faces, or maybe wings of a bat or bird or insect. If I were to study human anatomy, it’s only the body structures and poses! It’s a waste of my time learning to draw feral legs or human faces at this point though(However I have drawn hundreds of human faces and it has certainly helped with my expressions and facial structure in furry characters, so again, not a total waste despite my previous sentence...)

My artist mentor I had from 2014-2016(she taught me everything I know about painting) once said “Style is just habit. Habit of how you hold your pen, the tools you use and the way you use them, the shapes you like and most importantly, the mistakes you consistently make.” Your artistic mistakes and errors you repeatedly make actually are a component of your Art style. This could be a good thing, if you recognize your mistakes and are utilizing them to the advantages they give. For example, the show Bojack Horseman has very stiff characters- they don’t have expressive gestures and don’t move fluidly. Even their expressions don’t change their face much. But that’s okay, most people aren’t even bothered by it- because that stiffness is intentional- partly to cut costs of animating, for sure, but I’d say it also makes the characters more approachable and human because they don’t express themselves in overly wacky ways with their face and body language.

I’m not at that level myself- I mean, taking advantage of my weaknesses, I don’t believe I am yet. But it’s what I’m formulating and working towards in my art style. Right now from looking at my work over the years, there are three fold-

1) I use Undramatic and non-captivating lighting

2) I use very plain and safe 2-point perspective and don’t angle the camera.

3) My expressions on characters aren’t clear or strong in a particular way.

This may not be true for each and every picture I draw, but 80% of them suffer from this. In my decade of drawing I haven’t exactly made concentrated efforts to tackling any of these 3 issues. But do I really have to? Does that align with my goals with why I even make art to begin with? I’ll bring up some points as to why I have been pondering this and don’t work to ‘fix’ these issues in my art, in the same number order.

1 I’ve found that scenic lighting can be too distracting for me- when I do lighting and shading, I’m most happy when it’s describing the form of the characters in an image. I don’t care about fancy sunsets or sunrises or any of that. I just want to see the character be realized in terms of how chunky or bulky they are.

2 Similar to my response to point 1, as I like to depict characters fully and show them putting their full bodies to use in interacting with another character. Plus, since a lot of my art is commission work, I feel I might not be giving someone their money’s worth if I angle the perspective camera and crop out hands or feet or some part of them too much.

3 I just plain don’t like extreme or cartoonish expressions- I don’t like how they look or make me feel. I much more enjoy the subtler expressions, the quiet smiles, eyebrow raises, pondering lips, expressions that communicate more than just one thing. I’ve found people get what I’m going for with how a character may be feeling or can come up with their own interpretation, and I like that a lot.

Now maybe to you reading this, these could just be excuses, and they sorta are. A runner-up 4th weakness is backgrounds- but it’s sort’ve the same reason why; I just care about the characters; their setting is usually a tertiary thought after who is being drawn and what they are doing. This doesn’t mean I’ll never draw backgrounds or have fancy sunset lighting or anything either, if it’s asked for by a commissioner or I feel it fits, I definitely include it! My point is though, when you see a weakness, you can choose whether to move forward with it, or work to fix them.

I think of these 3, I may work on the perspective/angles. Because I do have original stories in mind I may one day want to tell visually, and make a graphic novel/comic from. That does require using various angles to make things visually engaging for a reader! And that’s the cool thing too- you can improve quickly based on necessity - I’ve never usually needed to draw various angles or backgrounds, so I don’t. But if I needed to more often I’d no doubt improve at them and implement them better too.

Maybe you’ve heard or seen that meme where a newbie artist draw something badly, and the quote “it’s my art style” is plastered under it. Turns out, it’s kinda true, haha! Because it’s their habit of making that sort of mistakes. Once they realize the mistake though, they can and will hopefully choose to fix and improve upon it, as I do too. But eventually you’ll get to points where you ask yourself “do I really care of my drawings don’t have dynamic perspective on them or if my colors are perfectly harmonious?” and decide to purposely neglect some aspect of art. And that’s perfectly okay. :)

Long one, but hope you enjoyed it or agree! A thing I did leave out is “When should you decide to fix something or not? When is it just a cowardly excuse?” - I’ll have to consider covering that another time, but it’s a bit unique from artist to artist, I’m sure!