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How I became an artist

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Re: How I became an artist

#51

Post by noahbradley »

kendallpark wrote: post #14

I love this. I'm a hobby artist myself (though I've never wanted to make a career out of it). It's great to know that people can still succeed in a career that is common prefixed with "starving." I also love to see the artistic progression of a youth to a professional. It's a fascinating visual journey. A great takeaway is how he offered free prints during his Illuxcon convention. I rarely see artists (even amateurs)…

Bingo. I could have made a few dollars off of selling prints or spent a few hundreds dollars and had everyone there talking about them and taking them home. That was worth a lot more to me.

Re: How I became an artist

#53

Post by noahbradley »

bryang wrote: post #5

One of the things I'm pretty jealous of is that in my career path (as admittedly vague it is... I'm 25 and my education & experience is in marketing, but being a CMO certainly isn't my life's ambition) is that I couldn't really start young and produce a tangible good that's worth anything to jump start a career since Marketing is really all about numbers. Anything without results is just speculation. (Nice job cross…

I don't, nor have I ever, considered myself particularly talented. At best, I would say I have the drive to force myself to practice. To say things came easily to me is an outright lie.

Hard work, persistence, and luck. Stir and serve chilled.

Re: How I became an artist

#54

Post by jlees »

As an engineer recently rediscovering the pure, tactile, offline experience of creating art (not that I would go so far as to call what I have created so far 'art'), this piece couldn't have come at a better time. I really appreciated how Noah shared his journey, it definitely inspires me to keep going. I also recommend giving sketching/drawing a go for anyone looking to spend a bit less of their 'relaxing' time on a computer screen (though of course I am eyeing up digital art as a someday!).

Re: How I became an artist

#55

Post by ArtBot-1 »

Swizec wrote: post #38
superuser2 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some amount of craft may be necessary to produce successful art, but the success/quality of art is not monotonic with the level of difficulty of the craft involved. Very simple, low-skill artworks can be extremely powerful. Artworks that took 20,000 hours of practice can be dull.

It's not about difficulty, it's about mastery. It takes thousands of hours of practice to be able to draw the perfect line. Even if drawing said perfect line took seconds. A large part of mastery also goes beyond the technicalities of expressing, it's also about having a good eye for what is worth expressing and what is mundane/boring/etc. But it basically boils down to: art [of all kinds] is tricky and takes a lot o…

Here's a Flickr stream with lots of art with good to great technique:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/7474079@N02/

Boring isn't it? (Interesting as history maybe?)

The "what is worth expressing" is where creativity happens. Technique makes you a competent hack. It's not enough for originality. So it's misleading to think it's all art. Technique and originality are different skills. The best artists have lots of both, but they're not related skills.

(Software has the same problem.)

Re: How I became an artist

#56

Post by noahbradley »

jlees wrote: post #54

As an engineer recently rediscovering the pure, tactile, offline experience of creating art (not that I would go so far as to call what I have created so far 'art'), this piece couldn't have come at a better time. I really appreciated how Noah shared his journey, it definitely inspires me to keep going. I also recommend giving sketching/drawing a go for anyone looking to spend a bit less of their 'relaxing' time on a…

Congrats! Making the leap into art is always a good one, no matter your profession. It can give you an entirely new appreciation for the world around you. Quite literally a new way of looking at things.

And you can call it art--I'm not snooty about the word.

Re: How I became an artist

#57

Post by [deleted] »

tjradcliffe wrote: post #11

The best thing about this piece is the rationality of his decision-making: didn't get a scholarship so take a year off to get better. School was getting too expensive so find a cheaper way to go. Need to pay off student loans so move back in with parents. These are excellent artistic decisions, because they allowed him to practice his craft and never take his eyes off his goal, yet didn't wed him to any particular pa…

[deleted]

Re: How I became an artist

#58

Post by sombremesa »

gbog wrote: post #41

Most comments seems positive here, nice. I'm a bit less enthusiastic. A twenty-so young boy has no lesson to teach. He can't be an artist because artists are either over fifty or dead, no matter how many times he'll repeat the mantra. One does not choose art among other professional activities: a very few men or women are chosen to become artists and they will be no matter what else they try to do. Also being an arti…

I think your message is steeped in negativity and what little of value there is is lost. Suppose you had the most important message in the world - we would all still downvote you when you put it like that.

Now suppose that OP has the least meaningful message in the world - however, it is steeped in positivity.

If nothing else, let this be a lesson in how much your attitude matters.

Re: How I became an artist

#59

Post by dre85 »

noahbradley wrote: post #48
dre85 wrote: post #44

I would love to know what percentage of your professional and current work is digital and how long it takes you to create one of these beautiful completely finished pieces.

95% is digital these days. My work takes anywhere from 10-30 hours to complete one of the finished pieces, depending on complexity and how efficient I am. That time is always broken up into many, many smaller pieces.

And when you started, did it still take 10-30 hours or longer? Do you use a Wacom still or a tablet? Any preferred stylus? Did any tutorials help you or was it all due to your formal education and practice?

Re: How I became an artist

#60

Post by noahbradley »

dre85 wrote: post #59
noahbradley wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

95% is digital these days. My work takes anywhere from 10-30 hours to complete one of the finished pieces, depending on complexity and how efficient I am. That time is always broken up into many, many smaller pieces.

And when you started, did it still take 10-30 hours or longer? Do you use a Wacom still or a tablet? Any preferred stylus? Did any tutorials help you or was it all due to your formal education and practice?

That first finished landscape piece took about 5 hours. And that felt like an eternity to me. I've actually pushed myself time and time again to be more patient with my work. And it's paid off in producing better pieces each time.

I travel a lot so I'm on my Surface Pro 3 most of the time. I've used most everything out there. They all have pros and cons.

There are a ton of great resources. Start with the stuff linked in my don't-go-to-art-school article.

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