Here's something my art teacher said (very roughly paraphrased):
A real human being has such an incredible amount of visual information that you will never ever get it all right. So since you're already going to be messing up a thousand different ways, don't worry about it! Just figure out what lets you have fun making and continue learning new things, because that's what'll keep you practicing. If you're not enjoying it, try something new. Get a bunch of charcoal and shoot it out of a crossbow at the paper. Crumple the paper up and sit on it in patterns after painting your butt. Whatever!
Your art teacher is a fucking fool. You get to be a gifted artist with thousands of hours of practice and hard work, and what he's saying is, 'Man, that sounds too hard, why bother, anything can be art'. When he's wrong. That's a whiny bullshit excuse made by people too goddamned lazy to do any real fucking work. Not anything can be art. You're not going to learn a goddamned thing about technique, form, or anything by 'shooting charcoal out of a crossbow'
Jesus, think if this tool was around 500 years ago and told Michelangelo, 'Hey, buddy, don't work so hard trying to make those figures look human, and don't worry about proportion. It's too hard so don't worry about doing it right, let's just have fun and paint something with our butts'
Sorry, it just chaps my ass when someone is looking for genuine advice, and what they get is, 'work less hard'.
Well.... let's see. I could listen to an architecture grad (hint: requires lots of hard work) who has been teaching art for 30+ years (requires lots of hard work), is widely acclaimed by most of the artists in the community as both a teacher and an artist, and has helped my work improve by approximately an order of magnitude in 6 months. Or I could listen to some random dude on the net.
Notice as well that what I wrote is not saying "work less hard". It's saying "work more, and do
anything it takes to keep you interested enough to work". Attitudes like yours are what lead to artists that are incredibly technically skilled, but hate art. If you think you can put your heart and soul into something you hate (and it's gonna require that. All the technique in the world doesn't make you an artist, it makes you a good drawer/painter/etc...), you need to think again. Also, if you think that lots and lots of practice from observation isn't a good way to build up *technique* as well as observational skills, style, and emotional investment... you're wrong.
Michaelangelo's figures are not proportional, btw. If you ever get a chance, check out the hands on
David in person.
In conclusion: fuck off and go create some artwork that means something, rather than just wanking about how photographic* your work does (or more likely does not) look.
*the role of photography in art is an interesting one. Pre-photography, art also had the requirement of recording events and people as accurately as possible. As photography has developed, art has become increasingly nonrepresentational and abstract (see Jackson Pollock for the classic example); attempting to convey meaning or emotion rather than literal copying of reality.
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Thought of something else I wanted to add: Seeing is an absolutely essential part of making a drawing. The human brain is *fantastic* at reducing an object to word-symbols; "oh there's an elbow, I know what an elbow looks like" <draw>. Practicing seeing what's really there, regardless of what ends up on the paper, is highly productive.
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