Inspiration and how to MAKE it! - GOUACHE & COLOURED PENCILS
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- Опубліковано 29 вер 2024
- Hey! Thanks for checking out this weeks video ❤️
Full voice over this week with an important topic - Inspiration! In the title I mention making inspiration, it may seem like an odd word to use because... you're sposed to find inspiration, right? I don't like the idea of finding it, or waiting for it to and in the past I've found this attitude really hindered my art.
I like to think I make my own inspiration by following a few methods that, for me personally, will always end in me feeling inspired to create something. I'm sharing all these tips that I've learnt through trial and error in hopes that maybe someone else can find it useful - these tips may or may not work for you, but they should at least create a starting point for you to find a way that works for you.
What helps you with your inspiration? I'd love to hear your thoughts and experiences in the comments!
Thanks for reading/watching! ❤️ ❤️
I've been a digital artist for a long time and promised myself to learn traditional mediums, so I figured I'd share my journey and welcome anyone else who may be in a similar situation, or anyone who is interested in this sort of stuff :)
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Always open to suggestions for future content - what paints/mediums to try next, topics to discuss etc, just leave a comment below!
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MATERIALS USED IN THIS VIDEO:
Mechanical Pencil - Staedtler Mars Micro 0.9mm amzn.to/2vWsYIR
Eraser Pencil - Staedtler Mars Rasor amzn.to/2vprINI
Putty Eraser - WHSmith... it's maybe 7 years old and still going strong :D
Gouache - Winsor and Newton - Starter Set amzn.to/2fxWJtb and individual colours (Flesh Tint amzn.to/2wOnmxr) (Cobalt Turquoise Light amzn.to/2fy7P1x)
Large Brush (silver-ish handle) Daler Rowney Size 18 Round Wash amzn.to/2vpocCP
Small-Medium Brushes (black handle) size 4 and 8 Seawhite (I got these in a Scawler box and can't find a supplier, they're nice too!)
Medium Brushes (black handle with red tip) (DO NOT RECOMMEND) amzn.to/2uMSPyA They do not come back to a pointed shape after use :( They malt a fair bit too! I'm starting to find them good for scrubbing though!
Fixative - Winsor & Newton amzn.to/2vUOsGV (I use this when the graphite layer is finish to prevent smudging during the painting stage!)
Coloured Pencils - Faber-Castell Polychromos amzn.to/2vVedqs
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FIND ME ON SOCIAL MEDIA HERE:
Instagram: / littlesqueesh
Facebook: / littlesqueesh
Prints: www.etsy.com/s... (currently revamping)
Thanks for watching!
Little Squeesh
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Music: ❰Chillstep❱ Sappheiros - Aurora
Music License: creativecommon....
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I noticed in another comment you asked about brushing up on plagiarism, and got to the video where you mentioned even using the eye design from someone else is plagiarism and people should never look at other people's art and immediately be drawing at the same time. I looked to the other comments just incase you had this resolved already, but it seems fairly recent. You are very wrong and have an incredibly wrong impression of plagiarism and here's the knowledge you need to understand why. I hope I'm able to put this in an understandable way.
Taking elements from other people's designs is not plagiarism, it's influence. You're being influenced by them. You cannot copyright a style of eye, nose etc because they're always a mishmash of other people's designs in to their own as they were influenced by others. You learn by copying, you don't steal.
Taking somebody's entire piece, however, is plagiarism. You finish this drawing and bam, it's yours. Now if I was to take the entire drawing, redraw it entirely and call it my own, that's plagiarism. When nothing is different from the original design and it's just me copying the entire thing, that's plagiarism.
It is quite irresponsible to be telling people to not copy from others and I'm sure you didn't mean anything bad by it and I'm sure you're wiser now, but as the famous quote goes: "imitation is not the sincerest form of flattery - it's the sincerest form of learning". You learn by imitating others, just as you've learned to copy from stock photos or your own photos and reproduce art that way.
Please do not tell others they cannot learn from other artist's styles and that it's a last resort to. It should be the number one priority to learn from other artists, just as others are learning how to make a gouache painting from you. I hope this helps to understand the importance of learning from others, this is essentially why the art youtube community is so large. Only a tiny number of people are here to go "wow that's nice" or to listen to you speak, the majority are here to learn. They're learning from your words, how you're sketching, how you're drawing.
It is true to not sell art that you've entirely copied 100%, but young artists should try tracing and copying every once in a while, just they should keep it to their own collection. They should try having their influences on one side and their paper on the other as they practice their hero's styles. It is very important when trying to learn art.
This is nothing malicious, just one teacher to another. I hope this helps in understanding plagiarism and copying.
Hi, thanks for such an awesome indepth response!
I completely agree with what you're saying, I think a lot of what I said was misunderstood because perhaps I didn't go fully indepth and explain properly, my apologies.
This video was never intended to explain plagiarism or copyright issues, but more so finding inspiration to help others create art. I do infact do master studies myself (i.e. copying other artists) to learn and progress and I do think it's one of the most important practices for an artist to partake in.
What I meant by this video was to share my process of finding inspiration when I'm stuck and to minimise that outside influence - which is not necessarily a bad thing, but something I do when I'm trying to push myself without wanting my work to look like someone elses, whether accidental or intentional.
A lot of the plagiarism I spoke of was in relation to how I've seen it happen with other artists online, and was aimed more at digital artists (digital art being my background) again, this is something I should have covered more indepth or perhaps left to a different video entirely, but I felt it was relevant at the time of recording, I guess!
To clear things up - the plagiarism I've witnessed online was digital artists taking literal pieces of other people's work (such as an eye) and pasting it into their work with barely any change (a quick google of "Cris Ortega plagiarism" will bring up threads and even google images of some of the worst I've ever seen, an artist who copy/pasted entire artworks and Frankenstein'd them into their "own art")
Perhaps I'll do a follow up to this video with clearer explanations and research into the laws of plagiarism/copyright to help artists, especially new ones, stay on the right track :)
Until then, I'm going to pin your comment so others can make good use of the information shared - thanks again! 💖
Thank you for getting back to me so quickly!
I understand now where you're coming from, absolutely! I gave Cris Ortega a look and there is definite frankensteining going on, but what separates that and drawing influence from other artists is they appear to had never gave sources, admitted to it and have been selling it on to the point where they're labelled as most critically acclaimed Spanish CGI artist. What's she's doing is transformative frankensteining, something that meant she should had listed the sources of her work. I feel if she said she did this transformative frankensteining there would be less outrage, but she also would never be called "most critically acclaimed" as I'm sure there's 100% original digital artists out there who do the same thing who would deserve such a title more. She's got photoshop skills for sure, but it's not the same type of plagiarism as taking an eye design. Is that understandable? All she had to do was credit these people and their work, kind of like how you see clip videos listing where the clips came from in the description. What she's doing is dishonest, but
I did hear you recently picked up traditional art from another video of yours, so I can understand why it might be a bit of a difficult area to understand fully. I find an issue with the digital art community is they're very quick to jump on people for tracing and stealing when it's just a pose that's copied or a style (eg, I've seen plenty of kids rip someone apart from copying their "style" when their style is essentially the standard Disney style or the style of a show that the art is from). While I'm sure they don't mean anything malicious, it appears they're just misinformed and carrying on the word they've learned from others. It's slowly being filtered out, that misinformation, but it'll take a long time due to the sheer volume of youngsters picking up digital art and going straight to Deviantart where this idea is pretty common. I'm not calling them toxic or anything negative for this, it's just something that happens in communities.
If it helps, you'll find that traditional art is a lot more accepting about people drawing influence from other people's styles, probably because it's a lot harder to copy someone's art piece by piece 100%. I'll absolutely support you or others who want to draw in a certain style, it would be a great learning experience too! Art is something to be shared, I'd be super flattered and proud if someone copied my style and said "I was influenced by them". I hope you'll hear this from others one day, unless you have already then keep hearing about it! Once your channel grows, I hope you hear it loads more. Gouache and colouring pencils are really picking up speed on youtube.
Absolutely! I'm glad I was able to help! That sounds like a plan! Also sorry for the extending elaboration in this comment, just kind of extending thoughts as to what happened and where this might had come from.
No problem! I always try to reply to messages ASAP, you happened to catch me at the computer 🙂
I think the biggest issue with Ortega is that she was selling her art to be used as book covers and other various commercial means, and if she had listed all the sources (which were possibly already copyrighted or used by companies to promote their original product/IP) whoever commissioned Ortega would have been open to law suits. I know it all turned into a huge witch hunt years back with some big industry names bringing it to light, but I don't actually know what happened in the end (other than she pulled all the questionable work off DeviantArt)
Infact I do have some of the artists involved as Facebook friends, could be worth finding out if any legal action was taken and if so, how far it went to use as an example should I discuss the topic in future videos!
Yes I completely agree! And it's one of the things I disliked about digital art - there's a huge stigma surrounding taking 'short-cuts', anything from being influenced "too heavily" by others or tracing (which is a great tool for progression) to colour picking etc - basically any digital tool that is available has an argument as to why it shouldn't be used.
I think digital art is often discredited as not being "real art" (I don't truly know where this originates from, but I hear a lot of art teachers can have this belief, some galleries etc) and I wonder if it's because of this that digital artists themselves try to hold themselves to a higher standard to get away from being called a "cheater" and thus making it harder, more of a challenge, and disallowing tools and methods that could help as a way to prove themselves, almost? EDIT: Something that doesn't help is that it's possible to run various photoshop filters and create something that looks like a painting or sketch from a photograph. That's a lot to compete with!
And while I do believe an artist shouldn't overly rely on these tools/methods as an excuse not to learn how to do it without, using them is what will help artists do *exactly* that - maybe that's not even the artists goal at all, and ultimately the only person who should be caring about this is the artist themselves.
It does seem to be a mindset that lends itself more-so to digital artists, I think every digital art group I'm a part of, I see it all the time, and it's sad because it puts off new artists and makes them feel less about themselves and their work and that's not how a community should be.
Having said that, I do also see this negativity from time to time in traditional groups, usually surrounding tracing but it doesn't seem as intense.
Hopefully the more artists talk about these issues and how they're really non issues, the better we all will be for it :)
But on a final note - I wouldn't want to encourage tracing/heavy influence from other artists work for something that is intended to be sold (whether as merchandise or to publishing companies as book covers etc). For self progression, exploration and all that jazz? Yes, most definitely!
No need to apologise at all! I'm glad this video opened discussion to a very important topic and I would encourage any viewer to question any information or opinions I may share should they strongly believe otherwise (or that I'm quite clearly wrong 😂)
I’m trying this method for the first time and I’m wondering if your spraying with fixative after you finish with the graphite?
Yes I am! I use the winsor and newton fixative spray (link in description) to prevent it from smudging when I start painting. I always do at least 2 coats of fixative with around a 15 min dry time between.
If your graphite is heavier I'd do 3 layers :)
Recommend experimenting on a scrap bit of paper first to make sure all your products are happy working together and nothing nasty happens! Good luck :)
Thanks so much for the quick response! Are you still making videos?
For thumbnails .... try doing a rough silly and messy thumbnail first (or a few) just to see if you can get your idea down - and then do new ones based on refs after.
I find that I keep my idea more original and pure this way. And over time improve more and more :)
Maybe try a draw this in your style challenge to get inspired find an artist u like and draw it in ur style
You are so right about inspiration. I treat it as a bonus, but never the reason to create (or not create). I used to always wait for inspiration and sometimes I would be waiting for months!
Yes exactly! I think it's one of the biggest mistakes every new artist makes at some point and even some artists that should know better 😂 It certainly is a lovely bonus if you feel that inspiration without any effort, but your work is never worse off without it :) Thanks for sharing!
Haven't been on my UA-cam in a while but I was excited to see one of your vids at the top of my subscriptions and I definitely understand what you mean when you say write stuff down that inspires you etc. I have a lonnnnnng list of stuff in my notes tab on my phone that I want to draw or paint and don't want to forget or lose the idea...anywhere from color schemes I like or random images like 'bed in rainforest' or 'Navajo' just bc I've been wanting to do some kind of Native American piece.....anyways love the painting ❤️
Oh that's super sweet, thank you so much! ❤️ Taking notes on your phone is probably the best! That way whenever something strikes you can make a note instantly! And I love the idea of a bed in the rainforest, that would be so beautiful 😍 Thanks for sharing!
Are you using a soft brush with powdered graphite over your pencil sketch? Do you seal it with a spray before painting? If not doesn't it muddy your paint? Just a beginner learning about guoache.
Hello! I'm just using a soft brush, no extra graphite or charcoal powder, I'm smudging the graphite that's already on the paper that I laid down with a pencil (mechanical pencil in this case!).
Yes, I do seal it! I'm currently using Winsor & Newton's - check out the description box, I list all the supplies I use, you can find a link to the exact product there although any fixative made for pastels/charcoal would be fine :)
And yep! It would definitely muddy my paint if I didn't, I think once I had forgotten and just wetting the paper alone made it smudge (so I stopped, let it dry, then sealed it).
Never fully gone on to paint without fixing first so couldn't tell you exactly what happens but I can't imagine it being fun! If you don't have fixative and you just want a very feint outline to guide your painting, you could get away with that without fixing it first, it's just because mine's so heavily shaded.
Hope that was helpful! Thanks for the comment :)
honestly just watching this inspired me, your art is so gorgeous and watching the way you paint and use tools makes me want to go and paint!!
I've really enjoyed watching your videos. If you have any experience with masking fluid I'd love for you to explore it in the future.
Thank you for the kind words! 💗 Funnily enough I do have masking fluid but I mostly use it when making art with my young son (sort of a uhh.. once he's gone crazy with the paint, I remove the masking fluid and we've magically got a lovely painting type of thing 😂) but I don't really use it in my work. Perhaps I'll have to revisit it, thanks for the idea!
Great advice and beautiful work thank you x
Thank you so much! 💖
Watching movies or series really keep me from working. Music on the other hand calms me down so much that I can go for hours without realizing it and I have to have a timer set, so that I go eat, drink and sleep 😂
Yea movies/tv shows can be tricky! If it's something I've seen before, especially multiple times, I'm usually ok, but then sometimes I just want to watch it 😂😂 Music can't be too upbeat for me though otherwise I end up singing along and wanting to dance lol! What's your go to music for painting? I'd love to know :)
I am fascinated by the way you use gouache :) Thank you for sharing your thoughts on inspiration, I definitely see where you are coming from. I guess I see inspiration not as a way to find an idea but more a way to fill up my imagination well. As artists it is very easy to become isolated from life as a lot of time is spent arting. I do not look for inspiration it finds me :) I am simply proactive and place myself in situations to make it easier for inspiration to find me. I do believe kinda like you if we try to force inspiration it will run away and hide lol ;)
Lovely painting and definitely some good tips. I feel you on the exhaustion thing. Being too tired at the end of the day is the main reason I haven't been producing much art lately. 🙈
Brilliant perspective on artists block and inspiration. It is exactly what I needed to hear!
Do you vanish/fix your paintings?
I've only tried it once on a gouache painting, I used a cold wax medium and it seems to be holding up well! The video is called 'Attempting to Varnish Gouache/Watercolour?' if you fancy taking a look :)
@@LittleSqueesh Thank you!!
I remember taking a break from drawing when I quit art school, and waiting for "inspiration" to start making anything again. Hmmm, that break lasted a few years, till I realized that I just needed to sit down and start doing something. Since then I've made an effort to draw/sketch/crochet/sculpt something every day. For my daily drawings it helps to set some kind of theme for a week or a month, and then just stick to that, also cool to see my weekly progress on the same subject! For inspiration seeking I find going out helps a lot (as long as there's someone else to mind the baby, of course :P), and also listening to art/animation related podcasts (which is why I prefer your talkover videos, so that I can comfortably draw along :D)
I very much had an experience like this! I told myself I couldn't draw until I got inspired and so I didn't draw for a long time, so silly looking back now!
That's a super impressive commitment - drawing/doing something creative every day, I don't manage this although I should really push myself to, I have seen so much improvement in your work in the time I've known you, I bet it's down to this daily creation of yours, well done :) (also sorry for super late reply!)
This is beautiful love the colors
Very sweet painting ! 😊