How to Get Better at Artwork: Easy Tips That Work

So you want to be an artist. It’s a popular career choice nowadays. I mean there’s just so much you can do with the ability to draw, or really any creative outlet that you are competent at.

So many jobs out there in this age actually some sort of skill that has to do with art. From designing web pages for Intertops casino bonus or needing to make nicer Excel spreadsheets for your boss. To even just working in a career that is much closer to creativeness than others.

There are almost endless possibilities in the career world when it comes to art. Every company needs a logo, or a design, or something of that sort. Movies and Hollywood always need more creative, artistic people when working on projects or movies.

You don’t even need to work for a company to make a living doing art things. With platforms like Youtube, Patreon, and many others being as extremely popular as they are nowadays there's no surprise that many people can make a living by just doing artwork and either selling it simply showing pictures of it.

It's kind of crazy in a weird way. If you just look at a site like Patreon and what their top earners are you will realize a lot of them are artists making artwork. Of course, the artwork that is making hundreds of thousands of dollars a month is of a... uh… special sort. To put it lightly.

But there are still lots of artists making large amounts of money from doing more normal artwork. You don't even need to just make just plain artwork. If you start a webcomic or something of that sort you can easily start making yourself a large following online and some money too.

If you already draw as a hobby you might want to start putting your pieces online or doing commissions of some sort to generate some cash on the side. You might not unless you're very lucky, start making enough money to completely replace your job at first but nobody ever said no to more money.

Just Start

The biggest hurdle for most people who want to be artists or to improve their artwork is to just start. They spend a lot of time thinking about how they want to be able to draw, or model, or some other artistic thing, and they never actually get around to doing it.

Remember that your artwork doesn’t need to be amazing. It can be as good as a kindergartener with a box of crayons. But the important thing is that you actually made that thing on par with a kindergartener with a box of crayons.

Because once you make the first one the second one might be a little better. And then the one after that might be a little bit better. And the cycle continues.

And that’s what practice is.

You just need to take that first step and actually start. You don’t even need fancy tools or programs or anything to start working on Artwork.

If you want to draw you can start with just a pencil, paper and maybe a pen if you are feeling really fancy. It’s not much because you don’t need much to get some lines on a piece of paper.

If you’re wondering about digital drawing then you're still in luck. You don't need fancy expensive subscription-based drawing programs (looking at your PhotoShop). All you need for computer drawing is a drawing tablet, which sounds expensive but you can actually pick one up for less than forty US dollars!

You don't even need a drawing tablet right away too. You can easily draw on your phone or regular tablet if you get a stylus. There are loads of free apps on the app store that are simple, easy to use, and intuitive drawing programs.

If you’re on PC there are loads of free alternative drawings programs that you don’t need to spend a single dollar on (unless, of course, you just want to help support the developers or something like that)

There are programs like Krita, which are some of the best straight drawing programs you can get for free on PC. Its interface and design are quite similar to PhotoShop so if you've used that program at some point but don't want to pay for the full, (mildly overpriced) subscription to use it you can get used to this new program quite quickly.

It is a very easy-to-use program that even if you haven't used PhotoShop before you can quickly learn and master. It isn't just for drawing either. It has built-in animating tools too.

Practically everything you would need for animating in quite a variety of different styles and methods all within one program. There really isn’t anything bad to say about Krita so if you want a free drawing or animating program you should really look into it.

Krita isn’t the only free drawing program for PC that you can get either. There’s probably an almost endless supply of them, although varying greatly in quality.

• Mischief is a semi-free drawing program. It's semi-free because while there is a free version, if you want all the features and access to more layers, presets, brush and more then you need to pay the single-time payment of twenty-five dollars. Whether or not it's worth it, or if you're just going to stick to more free programs like Krita, is up to you really. You can mess around with it for free and with its full version also for free if you try out their fifteen-day free trial of the full version.
• Artweaver Free is a stranger drawing program. It's not exactly meant for the high-level artwork that you can make with other drawing programs, it's more in line with a type of more advanced Microsoft Paint. It lets you draw in both 2d and 3d, which is a little strange just by itself, but it also has a form of ultra-realistic brushes that make your stick figures pop in a high-resolution kind of way. All in all, you should try it out just to mess around with, or even for a thing for smaller children to play with.
• MyPaint was created originally as a Linux program. If you know anything about Linux then you know that that means heavy levels of customization, open-source, and an indie developer. Also, the user interface can be very confusing to Windows users when they first look at it. The program is easily as powerful as Krita, or PhotoShops drawing features, but I didn't mention it sooner because none of that power is apparent to the user if they were to launch the program. Its UI is, to put it bluntly, bad. It can very be confusing at times and the order to it (which can start to make sense after using it for a while) seems strange and nonexistent at first. If you use Linux, or you don't mind having to learn how the UI works, and if you want something open source or easily customization then I highly recommend MyPaint.

Practice. Practice. Practice.

So if you have gotten the first step of actually starting down then the next one should make quite a lot of sense. Your first artwork is going to be trash and there's nothing you could've done about that.

If you want your art to look good you need to put in the time. You need to stop worrying about whether or not your art is good and just keep drawing. Overall your art is probably going to look like hot garbage but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t focus on improving parts of that hot garbage.

You don't need to start with improving the entire piece at once. You could start with getting semi-good faces and then move on to something else.

Maybe you could just focus on drawing nicer hair and then worry about whether or not your legs look like overcooked pasta.

No one is forcing you to even draw an entire figure. You can draw just arms, or heads, legs or hands even. That doesn't mean you should still try and draw entire figures every so often. There's an invaluable practice from it that you can't get from anything other than doing figure drawing.

Practice will sometimes feel like a chore and you’ll hate your artwork because your eyes never look right or the proportions are never correct.

You don’t need your piece to look like a professional artist immediately. The biggest thing you could do is finish the piece, regardless of how bad you think it looks. Because that means that next time you attempt it you’ll have that finished piece and the practice you got from it to work on the next one.