Subeta and its users make such awesome art and the more I look at some, they turn fractal...details inside details. I'd like to learn more myself and make myself some cute pet overlays someday but I don't even know where to start to fill in the gaps in my knowledge So I figured it wouldn't hurt to ask the Subeta community.... How'd you learn those skills of yours? Lessons, schooling, video tutorials, books, tell me more, I'd like to know more. Is there a book or lesson that struck a chord with you? What's your go-to art program?

I'll start. Here's some of my art that were meant as pet overlays but never ended up going used.

SPOILER (click to toggle)

(The Sora watermark is for my old username haha)

They were made in Paint Tool SAI, and I don't have any formal art training, so it's just been grabbing references and winging it with soft shading because cel shading is intimidating. XD I'm trying to work my way through that famous book "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain", but it's slow-going as my artist's block gets in the way. I've also had fun and some success in drawing when it comes to the Walter Foster-published How To Draw books. My favorite art inspiration book is Cartoon Animation by Preston Blair, who was a Disney animator back in the day.

How about you now? Anything you'd like to share?

I was self-trained up until undergrad. I initially had an animation major( minored it as an art minor later) and ended up with history as my primary major during undergrad instead.

But life drawing, painting classes, etc.. those were all taken during undergrad mostly though I'm pretty rusty now... I just don't art as much as I used to. It's mostly just become a hobby instead now. As for how I learned when I was a kid, both my brother and I liked drawing. My older brother worked as a concept illustrator for a while and went to art school, after he had already gotten an electrical engineering degree at a regular UC school. ( parents wouldn't pay for art school unless he got what they considered a paying degree first). I went to a state university in LA/OC area in California and majored in art initially with a focus in animation, didn't stay with it as my main major though.

As for how I learned:

undergrad, the holy grail of animation books: The Animators' Survival kit, Cartoon Animation by Preston Blair A lot of life drawing books: Burne Hogarth's dynamic figure drawing, Andrew Loomis, Bridgeman life drawing. And actual life drawing and painting classes during undergrad. When I was a kid before all the life drawing books: copying my brother's DC/Marvel, Fathom, etc.. comic books, copying manga art( mostly Sailor Moon).

I mostly draw human art, since I'm just not as great at animal drawing and for the most part, I learned how to draw human art first before anything else. but this was done back in December of last year( I mostly just draw art for my social media user images and my previous one had been used for years so I draw a new one in Photoshop in December of last year. social media image

My high school was also a trade school, and I took commercial art and graphic design. I learned a lot then about digital art and coding. But besides that (which was a looong time ago back in 2007), I was entirely self taught. It's a lot of practice, time, trial and error. I preferred Photoshop, but I just can't afford high end art programs anymore and I've been doing some pretty good work with Procreate, but tbh I'm moving away from digital art and back to traditional using ink and watercolors. AI can't replicate real, physical art.

My advice? IDK, just find something that inspires you and run with it. The more you practice, the better you get. The most important thing, I think, is to draw what makes you happy. Personally, I stagnated for a long time while really only doing commissions and hating every moment of it, because art was my passion and the business aspect of it sucked all the joy out of it. It was just a job. Now that I only really do it for myself, I'm trying new things again and improving.

A piece of advice that stuck with me was something like, "It's better to do 100 bad drawings than 1 good drawing." In other words, let go of perfectionism and just draw a lot. It doesn't matter if it's ugly; you don't have to show anyone. Look at random photos of the subject you're trying to learn and try to copy them in 30 seconds-1 minute.

I started drawing as soon as I could hold a crayon. I'm lucky I was encouraged by (some of the) adults in my life so I kept at it. I eventually got to take art classes in high school, which were moderately informative but mostly we just had free time to make whatever, not a lot of instruction on technique. I finally got to take Life Drawing 1 and 2 in college (first was still life only, second we had live models,) and that helped me a ton with perspective and anatomy stuff. I'm still teaching myself more, of course. There's never a time to stop learning. I keep challenging myself to draw more things I'm not familiar with, and using references. I think it's important to use references even for less realistic art styles, it helps you understand the fundamental shapes needed to make the thing recognizable.