Finding a path in Digital painting (Part 2):the tricky stages and developing an artistic eye

Hey everyone! I last left of briefly talking about Ctrl+paint and the awesome content offered on the site, and i began to briefly highlight why i would recommend it for beginners just starting to use the digital medium. I want continue on the topic by next addressing about difficulties of where to begin and why it can be especially hard when there's so much out there online such as Schoolism and Sycra's YouTube channel, pencil kings etc - I shall talk more about these other awesome educational resources in future posts.

I have excessively researched and tried most of these sites and their courses, and i rank Ctrl+paint to be among the top for tutorials for beginner level artist because of its organized learning structure as mentioned in the previous blog and the premium content are really great in not only help building foundational skills but also generating ideas for portfolio pieces in areas of both illustration and concept art.

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His premium series World Building is a particular favorite of mine at a affordable price and definitely worth the buck to kick start and generate interesting worlds and project rather than just stand alone illustration that don't really mean anything.

Now moving on to the main struggles when i first started out was the fact I was honestly very impatient and wanted to jump right into the fun stuff before building on my fundamental skills first,.. Huge mistake.. In fact really learning the fundamentals is a crucial part of artistic development not only for realistic or representational artist's but even when creating abstract art, which rely on good composition/design and color which are all vital in communicating emotion and story in your work.

The other benefits of always sharpening your fundamental skills is the fact that it can pick out major errors in your piece and in enhance the message you want to communicate through the manipulation of values color etc. Whenever i get stuck on a particular piece or near finishing the illustration i would go back and check on these and see if i can somehow fix the problem, often at times it can be tricky because maybe your  eye still hasn't developed to a certain level yet, therefore certain tutorial i would only recommend suited for certain level of artist's, it can be tricky to avoid when starting out because you can find yourself lost in complex subjects without prior knowledge of some basic concepts and can be a struggle as a beginner starting out, I know i did.

Which brings me to talk about developing an artistic eye, which is best explained by none other than  Sycra Yasin, in his video.

"How to break Through Art Block"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qb0g_gWrNf8

The basic idea is that our critical  eye's sometime develop's faster and surpass's our own artist skill level, which often makes us feel that our ability to execute artwork is worse then we actually may think.

When i learned to accept this theory and that I'm on my own artistic journey/growth and never to compare myself to other's growth, it gave me a huge confidence boost and i learned to appreciate what i can do myself and not worry too much about the outcome and learn to enjoy the process.

Which dear reader i hope you can too, remember there is no one in the world that can create something that only you can, sure they can be close copy but it'll be evident somewhere in there will be something different in every artist's work no matter how much we try to replicate someone else's work.

I want to end this post by saying,
Go for it!!, create the stuff you truly love and that intrigues you, take small increments and gradually gain new knowledge as you develop an artist to enhance what you want to say and not be afraid to leave a your very own unique artist fingerprint in the world.

You might just inspire or touch the hearts of someone out there who appreciates what you do and someone who consider your work a huge part of their life.

Thanks for reading, fill free to comment  and feedback, , I have a whole list of discussions/topics that i would like to share, if you have ideas any for future topics i would love to hear about them.

Happy Painting :D