If you did a sweet job on the face for example or drew a cool weapon or something. You can always just keep your drawing for that little bit you did good on, then you can look back on it later to use on another pic. If ya want.

The more I erase the harder it is to draw what im trying to draw because the paper gets all messed up.

To make it worse I have a bad habit of darkening in lines if I don't like what I see (thinking it will fix a problem), it still looks bad and is really hard to erase!

No striving to improve isn't bad, but always finish what you start, its practice, you havent been at this long enough to worry yourself over one little flaw! let em go and work on improving them next drawing.

First of,

I wouldn't listen too much if people say you are good, because most people will rate you on there own skill level.
And this normaly ends in not improving much 'couse for your direct surounding you allready good enough.
So you start getting lazy.

Believe me doing a drawing for someone and he/she didn't like it can realy start you working harder (hey we all want to get admired its natural).

Also it sounds a bit like you get caught up in details too easily/soon.
The eyes, while the most important part is just a small part and just a detail.

I would suggest to draw the person you want to draw as a whole.
Add details afterwards.
Instead of drawing one eye completely with shading and all details, after this the second and so on.. is not a good way of doing things.

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Wer nicht vom Meister lernt, lernt nie etwas.

intergalactic: i think your problem is that you go for the details too early. when i draw (ive been getting better with this technique) i start from basic and go to complex.

so for example, my spawn pic: first i did the stick figure, then i sorta fleshed it out. made the head good etc (just basic shapes) then went on to the outline of the cape. simple shapes again. and i kept going until i had a pretty good idea of what was going on, and then i started shading, defining lines, etc. and i like how it turned out.

if you get too caught up on one detail, your image is done for once you cant get other details to look good. basic to complex, making sure you get every part. thats the way to go.

but then, even if I say so myself, (and don't even have any proof...! :( ) I'm getting better. I may do a million rubbish peices of trash that I wanna chuck away, but I'm learning from them. I honestly believe that that is the single most important thing about drawing - PRACTICE! (okay, obvious - but not just practice the things you like, practice EVERYTHING! especially human anatomy).

I used to start with the eyes, too... sometimes I do these days. Not often. Mostly I add the head last cause it's sometimes hard to position. I don't do any details until it's well on it's way, and then I tend to go around the picture adding a bit here, a bit there, until I start to get frustrated - then I'll do something else. I draw head more like skulls these days. Eyes are so many different shapes (depending on expression, angle of the head, etc etc) that I find them difficult to get right otherwise - I always sketch in the eye sockets near the beginning, and do the eyes right near the end (it helps for pose too -I don't get people looking the wrong way so much anymore!)

"Even the best artsists throw away their work if they don't like it.. even when the public would be willing to play big bucks for such quality!" - Bomu's right you know. Though I don't claim to be any good myself, it does make me wonder if I'll EVER be satisfied with my own skills... :(

And he's right on the next bit too. if you're not enjoying it, you should probably give it a rest. It should be fun. Even when you produce nothing but cack. You should see the amount of scrappy paper sitting on my bedroom floor. It resembles hell itself. I half expect the paper people to attack me at night, having grown their entire civilization from scratch under a three year old screwed up doodle of a fairy...

I found it helps to know exactly what you want from your pic before you start. DOn't just go "I'll draw a guy", cause chances are halfway through you'll go "hmm, now where shall I put that arm??" and it won't work out so well. Pre-planned pics tend to go more smoothly, cause you know exactly what you want.

grr, arg. I've been yakking. I'll shuddup now... ;)

love to all!

Some people use the term perfectionist as an excuse for not doing anything.

If you just draw a litle bit and then throw it away then you are wasting paper and time.

Then calling yourself a perfectionist is gloss on stupid behaviour.

quote:

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Originally posted by plastic_corpse:
Some people I've met say they're "perfectionists" when what they really mean is "I'm not very good".

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my secret shame!!! its a very interesting point because thats what i'm like at time, but then again i think everyone is...i'm confused now...am i a perfectionist or just really poor? *confused*

People who "Can't" tend to be insecure.

It is better to stay in the centre, take a balanced view.

Don't fly too high when you think you're brilliant and don't go too low when you think you're useless.

Oh, and don't worry about it... except throwing away paper is a waste and shows a bad attitude - worry about that instead.

Btw. When can we see some of your recent art so we see some of your improvement .

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Wer nicht vom Meister lernt, lernt nie etwas.

Hell if you do ever get completely satisfied with your stuff to the extent you can't improve you should prob retire.

I've seen amazing artists moan about how there Godlike peice of work is so poor and how many mistakes there were in it. I guess the only way you can be compltely happy is if you can burn an image direct onto comp or paper from your mind.

If you work out how - drop me a line

G.i.A.m.... how soon? Well, I stopped saying to people "oh, in couple of weeks!" because it never happened... :( I lost my rubbish free web space (and DO NO want to reclaim it!) and then Tom "Fluffy" Poole said "oh, yeah, no problem, I can have a gallery up in a few days".... I still haven't gotten those diskettes back, and that was about 3 months ago.... :( and then lovely Shig of www.shitfink.co.uk (lovely guy he is, and very camp also... hee hee, he'd HATE me for that one... lol) offered to build me one. It may be there in a while. He has broadband. He has a couple of my pics. But he wants banners/icons (by me) and I'm spending all my time on an incomplete summer art project which has to be in on MONDAY!

ahh, my life sucks. Yeah, so, anyway, the only stuff I can get to anyone is via email, and that's not much use inna forum (AND I HAVE NO EMAIL ADDRESS AT THE MOMENT!)
yes, my life has gone tits up. *sighs*

AKATT - thanks, man... I've missed you guys! But the regular computer I use for the 'net is actually slowed down by the fact that it's shit and old... slowed down from it's marvellous 56k modem... grrrrr. So that's my fairly pitiful excuse...

anyhow, yeah. Sorry to hijack this thread to say hi and make some explanations..... :)

oh, and last thing on the perfectionist debate - if you don't set out to be perfect at what you do, you should maybe grow some more determination... imo. ;)

love you!
(tiny)~Pixie
xxxxx

You just need to send me the stuff by e-mail. And I give you the url where you can find the pics afterwards via PM.

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Wer nicht vom Meister lernt, lernt nie etwas.

I tried replacing the floppy drive. Guess what happened? The new one broke, as well. *cries*

neo - yes, I'm female, though I'm not too sure why it matters at all...?

sorry to awaken old threads. I don't respond very frequently, as you've problee noticed...

anyway, that be it for now,

serious that sucks.
But good to know you got webspace again.

Ever considered to get some sort of freemail adress.
'couse the cool thing about them is that they are normaly webbased.
So you can check your mail from every computer that has a browser.

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Wer nicht vom Meister lernt, lernt nie etwas.

quote:

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neo - yes, I'm female, though I'm not too sure why it matters at all...?

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Well it means we have to careful when it comes to our secret weekly stripper/table top dancing night- We don't wanna give the impression that we're all desperate for a bit of boo-tay