Common mistakes made by artists and how to avoid them

Take Risks!

The most common problem seen is artists who don’t take risks. Working out of your comfort zone is the best way to grow your style and flourish as artists. Prior to The Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo was known mainly for sculptures, such as David, and not his painting. He was given the task, in hopes from his rivals, that he would fall from a scaffold or leave Rome. He stepped up to the plate and worked diligently, with colleagues mocking him the entire time! At the time of working on the Chapel he wrote a poem which depicted his loathing for the job: 

I've already grown a goiter from this torture,

hunched up here like a cat in Lombardy

(or anywhere else where the stagnant water's poison).

My stomach's squashed under my chin, my beard's

pointing at heaven, my brain's crushed in a casket,

my breast twists like a harpy's. My brush,

above me, all the time dribbles paint

so my face makes a fine floor for droppings!

My haunches are grinding into my guts,

my poor ass strains to work as a counterweight,

every gesture I make is blind and aimless.

My skin hangs loose below me, my spine's

all knotted from folding over itself.

I'm bent taut as a Syrian bow.

Because I'm stuck like this, my thoughts

are crazy, perfidious tripe:

anyone shoots badly through a crooked blowpipe.

My painting is dead.

Defend it for me, Giovanni, protect my honor.

I am not in the right place—I am not a painter.

 

But he was determined! After 4 long years, he completed one of the most famous masterpieces ever created, and all because he was forced, more or less, out of his comfort zone! This can be applied to everything from doodling to working on a potential masterpiece. Do what you're not used to, you will surprise yourself eventually!

 

Different practice methods 

Sitting down and dissecting your practice pieces is extremely important and not often done! Most of us tend to reserve our harshest criticisms on our actual pieces, and not our practice work. What is practice for if not to get better! Exploring out of your comfort zone is important when doing so. Especially in mediums, you are inexperienced in. instead of drawing the same character in colored pencil, try filling it in with watercolor, pastels, or heck, even try your hand at stippling or crosshatching! Using something you already know how to draw, but using a new medium to fill it in is great practice. You know what your character looks like. Thus you know, more or less, what you want the end result to be.

 

Likewise, Filling in something that isn't from your own hand can help in surprisingly different ways. By not being attached to a "pre-drawn out" piece, you won't be afraid to make mistakes, or as the late Bob Ross would put it, "happy accidents." You will find yourself taking risks with your work not normally taken. This can be done many different ways.  Try editing pages out of a coloring book and adding your own backdrop, detail lines, etc. You can also try Paint by Numbers, the simplistic layout can teach you about blending paints, using different methods to highlight/darken aspects of a piece, and how a piece can come to life before your very eyes in vastly different ways. All of which will carry over to helping develop your own style and make it more unique!

 

"Take the Time "

 

Having the right tools

No matter your medium, having the right tools for the job is essential! Or at least the basic tools.  I'm not saying to go out and spend your entire paycheck at Michael's right now, the tools you acquire grow like a living organism. But like a flower, you need the initial seed. A solid set of B-H pencils is first and foremost. When drawing with one single pencil you'll notice the darker areas developing a shine from graphite buildup. This is commonly seen as a rookie mistake. HB pencils allow you to draw varying tones without having to add several layers of graphite while doing so. They typically range from 10B (the darkest) to 10H (the lightest) and appear so:

 

A Kneaded eraser, (which you can shape to erase any area without fear of accidentally erasing something you didn't mean to) Graphite sticks (these allow you to fill in larger areas without wasting an entire pencil doing so) and some black Micron Pens of varying tip style are a great start for any aspiring artist. We recommend checking out this 33-piece Professional Art Kit which comes with everything you need to start growing your collection of art supplies.

 

 

 

 

Developing your own style

All of which leads me to my next point. It's a bit of a harsh one, STOP IMITATING OTHERS! While imitating those you look up to is a great form of practice and teach you skills that can carry over to your style. It prevents you from truly growing as artists and developing your own unique style when done too often. Your aim should be for people to look at your work and say "OH! I know who created this piece!" Because that's the ultimate goal as artists. For people to be able to pick your piece out of a lineup and attribute it to you. Developing a unique style is what you should always be working towards. A style should change with time. Most modern artists that are successful never stick to one style, and really focus on changing aspects of it here and there, so they don’t appear stagnant and "one note." this goes back to "Getting out of your comfort zone." A good example of a wonderful artist that started to theoretically be dead in the water is Rimfrost. Once popular across the entire internet, Rimfrost's work could be found just about everywhere and on every social media platform in the early and late 2000's.

 

While her style is very well known, even to this day, with her Deviantart page at more than 6 million views, people have come to know what to expect from Rimfrost and love her for it. She has faded quickly with the days of Myspace and Napster and recently has started altering and playing with her style to remain afloat as an artist.

 

 

Viewing your piece as a whole

While creating there are multiple viewing techniques you are going to have to take to deconstruct your own work and see it for what it is. As artists, we have a tendency to favor certain aspects of a piece we're working on while completely ignoring what could potentially, make your piece pop and flourish. You've more than likely created a piece and thought to yourself,  I really love how I did the face but I wish I could just touch up this one spot. Or how you can never seem to get the left hand to match the right hand the way you want it to. Some techniques to help this are:

1. View your work in a mirror. Doing so will give you a completely different perspective on your work and you will be able to see the piece as a whole as opposed to focusing on that one part you don’t like.
2. View and work on your work upside down. It's essentially the same method as above but could help you notice line work or paint strokes that aren't quite the way you want it.
3. Cover it up and ignore it for an extended period of time. Don’t even think of looking at it! This works for every project, may it be art related, a paper, blog, or ANYTHING you are working on! By moving it to the back of your mind and not worrying about the piece, you can approach it at a later date with fresh eyes, ideas, and techniques learned while not thinking about it.
4. The final, and potentially most obvious tip, is to have someone else critique your work! Ironically enough, strangers make for the best critiques. They have no formal attachments to you, so are less likely to give you the standard "looks great!" comment. While these comments are nice and make you feel good, nothing could stunt the growth of an artist more! Make sure you are engaging with the feedback in a positive way also. "why don’t you like the hands? What's wrong with the shading?" etc. be as open, receptive, and transparent as possible. The best critics will tell you what you need to hear and not what you want to hear, so be ready to be torn down. In doing so you will be building yourself up as a better and stronger artist than you were just the day before. Progress is the name of the game and you're winning with each good critique.

 

Sidenote: You will always be your own worst critique. They say an artist is never done with a particular piece, and that each one is always left unfinished in the artist's eyes. Please keep this in mind while creating. Make sure you are getting the proper feedback you need from another source, not just your own mind.

 

 

Don’t close off your art

When you keep your work hidden away, it only hurts your growth. Getting your work out into the public's eyes is the only way to know what direction you should grow and adapt to. You'd be surprised at the number of artists who are afraid to show off a piece they spent 60+ hours on! Never be ashamed of your progress. The journey of 1000 miles beings with a single step.

 

Don't take any advice as fact

Ultimately art is what you make of it, and what you can get away with. Not that long ago colored pencils were in the same class as crayons. Now it's a very popular medium! Don’t let anyone tell you what is and isn't art. Use all advice given to you, including that found here on Untitled Artisan, as a guideline and not hard fact. The art industry has been famous for unexpected and fast changes in what's popular and considered "the correct way" to execute a piece so ultimately, art is defined by YOU!