100 Tips From 100 Artists

• Use the Bucket Tool to color your lineup faster.
• Don't be afraid to get messy with your sketches.
• Learn perspective to understand 3D space.
• Always remember that art is never as fast as it seems on social media.
• Take breaks while drawing to gain a fresh perspective.
• Don't stress over likes; enjoy the creative process.

Use the Bucket tool to color your lineup faster. A big mistake I often see beginner artists making is coloring in their lineup by hand, which takes forever when they could just be using the Bucket Tool to do it a lot faster. Every drawing program I know of has some kind of bucket tool, so make sure you use it.

Okay, here's one. Don't be afraid to get messy with your sketches. Stop worrying about clean lines right off the bat. Let your hand go wild and embrace the scribbles. It's all about capturing the energy and flow of your idea first. You can clean it up later, but trust me, your art will have way more life if you just let loose in your sketching phase. So get messy.

Break some rules. Does it really matter? I don't know man. There's still a hundred more tips to go.

Do you struggle with taking too much time to shade or render your colors without going over your line art? A tip you can use is to alpha lock your flat color layer. That way, when you color, the layer locks into place, making it so nothing you color goes outside of the designated layer. Here's a difference: Without Alpha Lock and with Alpha Lock.

If you want to separate your colors on different layers, though, an alternative route is to create a clipping layer. This has the same effect as Alpha Lock but gives you the ability to do whatever you'd like without directly affecting your flat color layer.

Learn perspective. I used to try studying things like anatomy, but with no knowledge of 3D space, I didn't actually end up learning anything I could use. Following one of these grids without understanding what you're doing probably won't help that much. This is how perspective is usually taught, but you'll only be able to draw freely once you understand the idea of this enough that you don't actually need to draw it.

Once you understand how to properly draw basic shapes in 3D space, it dramatically changes your understanding of art and it makes everything considerably easier. Flip your canvas horizontally to see all of your mistakes.

Always save some time to create just for yourself, because if you're only creating art for other people, eventually you're probably gonna start hating making art. You are the only one who can create art you create, so go create it.

Ever find yourself zooming into your drawings? Almost 200%? When you zoom out, you start to notice all the little things you didn't see before. Well, this is my big piece of advice for you: Almost every art program I could think of has the ability to do this where you can open the canvas inside of a new view. This can help avoid the issue of finding pieces or parts of your art feeling a little off or out of place compared to the full drawing.

Social media makes making art look really fast. When you look at photos, they're finished. When you look at short-form content, the video makes it look like it was done in seconds. The tip is art is never usually that fast. That's social media stuff. It's all fixed in post. You can think of the real speed of a drawing as a combination between how familiar an artist is with their subject and how many things are on screen at once. The more you take your time, the more you can get a better layer piece and add. And if you're drawing for fun, there's no reason to rush.

Are you trying to use figure drawings to improve your art, but it's just not working out for you? Don't worry, baby girl, I feel you. What you're gonna do instead is something I call the silhouette method. Instead of just drawing the figure as you see it, take a big thick marker or brush, and draw just a complete shadow of that figure. This will help you get a fresher look at the shape and form of your model. Good luck out there.

If you're struggling with composition, try sketching out different thumbnails first. By just doing rough small sketches, you can plan out posing, placement of objects, value, composition, or even color. You might be surprised. Often, your first few ideas aren't the best ones you can come up with.

Your art style is unique because it's yours. You may feel like other artist styles are cooler or more beautiful, but only you can become the best at your art style. So keep at it. Whether you're drawing, coloring, rendering, or doing line art, do not autopilot. Always take a second to question what you're doing or what you're trying to do, and if it's working in your art piece. Creative decisions are something you should be actively thinking about all the time because this is where all your choices as an artist shine through as your style and trademark.

Kind communities do exist. Please look for them. It's important. Don't just look at TikTok or Instagram and expect that to be the experience. Sometimes days are hard, and what we really could use is a little bit of encouragement. Please trust that there is a community out there. There is a group of people out there who will help you out and keep you going strong.

Do you ever find yourself just constantly redrawing the exact same line over and over? When I'm in that situation, I remind myself that done is better than perfect. Obviously, you still want to give the drawing a solid effort, but just don’t get stuck redrawing the same thing over and over and just having the same end result essentially. And on top of this, just have fun. Let loose, do your thing, and enjoy it, and you'll get a much better end result as well.

Hello, my name is Nick. Also known as Happy Gaming Nick on YouTube. I have drawn a lot of Paradox Pokémon in my time. I've gone from pretty bad to pretty decent art. The main reason for this is definitely practice. But I also got a bunch of feedback through comments on YouTube. In my opinion, this is the best way to grow as an artist. Ask for feedback. Do it right now.

The fastest and easiest way to get a character to look in the same direction is to draw dots and base the rest of the eye around that. You can then fill in the regular-sized iris, and boom! Now the drawing of your character isn't looking in two different directions at once. You can thank me now.

If you want to go back to traditional art, I suggest getting a light table to slowly transition. You'd have to sketch digitally, print them out, and then transfer them to finish the whole drawing traditionally. If you're doing a painting, I suggest getting tracing paper or graphite paper. Both of these work wonders.

Remember to take breaks while you're drawing. While you may want to finish a whole drawing in one sitting, there are multiple benefits to both you and your art if you just take a step back every once in a while. An obvious reason is that you'll be able to unwind and rest your arm, leading to less ache and possible damage. But it also allows you to stop tunnel-visioning your art. When you come back from your break, you can look at your art with brand new eyes.

Now you can see why your art didn't look quite right, or maybe you can see that you were overthinking it before. You'll never know until you take a break before starting to draw. Stretch. After finishing drawing, stretch again. You got to add hand, wrist, and arm exercises to your drawing routine to avoid injuries. Stretching prevents the risk of injuries and developing carpal tunnel syndrome. I personally had to stop drawing for days to recover from wrist pain because I didn't do my daily stretching. So don't be like past me and stretch.

If you want to get paid to make art, your portfolio, showcase, and website should show the things you enjoy making and want to get hired for. It doesn't matter if it's personal work; it's still valid. Taking pictures or videos of the process can help promote your work online and hopefully get it in front of the right people who can't hire you if they don't know you exist.

Art development isn't always linear. It ebbs and flows as you progress. Sometimes you'll have great bouts of improvement, and sometimes you won't even be able to grow a face. Take it slow and remember that everyone's art journey looks different. As long as you enjoy what you're making, you'll get to a point where you love your art.

If you're struggling to draw smooth lines with your lineart, try changing the stabilizer settings. Most art programs have them, and some can even be set to individual brushes. The higher the stabilizer setting, the smoother your lines will be, but there’ll also be more lag between your mouse cursor and the line you've drawn. So be sure to try out different settings to find that sweet spot that works best for you. You'll be making smooth, clean line art in no time.

Welcome folks, it's me, Aaron the artist. When drawing from references, it's easy to limit yourself by what's in the reference. But it's important to look at your reference to see if there are any ways that you can improve it.

For example, this reference has gorgeously clear shadow shapes, but the highlights in the hair draw too much attention. When I painted from that reference, you can see that I fixed both of those things. This means that my painting isn't perfectly accurate; the point of the painting is to be appealing, not accurate.

Hey, Manu here. Let’s talk about four chords that every accordion player should know. No, that's not the topic. Let's talk about why you should study the work of the masters. Trying to remake pieces by renowned artists can give you insight into the fundamentals you need to work on. I learned from Jayc Lendecker that if your values are working upfront, you can use any color you want, and the piece will work.

Also, by studying an anime background by Studio Dogakobo, I gained new knowledge that allowed me to paint the backgrounds for my first short film. So go ahead and study the pieces that inspire you.

You are making anatomy much harder than it really should be. Humans come in all different shapes and sizes; we’re flexible, so your proportions should really be based on what design you want to give your character instead of following a default rulebook.

What really matters is that your character's anatomy looks believable and intentional. To make your characters look believable, portray the overall shape of each body part correctly, and ensure their proportions make sense with the traits you're trying to give the character. As I always say, as long as it looks human, it’s probably fine.

If you have beautiful sketches but absolutely hate the thought of doing line art, try lightening your sketch and focusing on just the bits that need refinement. Not only will this preserve the energy of your initial idea, but I've found it also helps improve your ability to make cleaner sketches in general because you start looking at the sketches as part of the final piece rather than just a temporary step.

For that nice polish, just merge everything and start rendering on top. It's essentially a more painterly approach to art, skipping the lineup stage altogether.

Listen up! If you want to make your artwork pop, a great suggestion is to use colored lines. I remember when I was starting out at art; I would painstakingly go over my already finished line art with the color I wanted. Please don’t do this! It makes your colored line art messy and inconsistent. Simply use the clipping masking tool. The clipping mask tool allows you to draw within your line art for a much more consistent result. Just place a clipping mask on top of the layer that your line art is on, and just like that, you have some fire colored line art ready.

Good morning, my name is Drry, and today I wanted to show you some easy ways to create dynamic perspective without worrying about a grid or anything.

The first tip is to imagine each element of a drawing as a cube. Then if it's in the background, have it be flat. The closer it gets to the camera, the more you're going to see the top face of it.

Are you choosing color directly from a reference? Bright colors of my game! You want to focus on pumping that saturation out of your base tones. See this Miku here? Bam! She’s been brightened. By concentrating on this area of the color wheel and keeping color harmonies in mind, you'll have super fun and vibrant colors. Ramp up that saturation, baby!

If you have trouble making your characters blend into your environment, try a multiply layer with the color of the sky or whatever light source you have. You can also use an overlay layer for added immersion and rim lights if you’re near the light source. For extra depth, use bounce lights or subtle reflections to capture the surroundings.

If you're like me, odds are you're a creative type living in a late-stage capitalist hellscape where bloated corporate overlords want nothing more than for you to mindlessly consume meaningless content. It's more important than ever to stay cognizant of how much we create versus consume.

It’s vital to take in media and culture as a whole to find inspiration, but you shouldn't be half-watching something while doom-scrolling on your phone. Your time and attention are valuable, and you should be creating more than you consume. Commit to a consistent practice schedule that works best for you.

When I was looking to improve my digital art, drawing something every day really helped me reach a level of skill I was happier with. That said, if daily doesn't work for you, you can try every other day or maybe a more polished piece every week. Just do whatever the creative force tells you to draw. The main thing here is consistency, locking yourself into a schedule that's most comfortable for you.

Always save your art. Always data archive them. Save your pieces. Stop spending time detailing subjects that are far away from the main focus. The further something is away, the more you can focus on mainly volume and key features, suggesting the details are there rather than painstakingly creating all of them.

This will help so much with saving time and keeping your overall piece clean and readable. Subscribe to skynixart on YouTube.

If you're having trouble rendering an original character, try sketching that character in a turnaround. This will give you a chance to view your character from multiple angles and draw details that will be hidden in the final render. This also gives you a better understanding of your character's anatomy, which should make it easier to draw and view them from multiple viewpoints.

A big breakthrough I had is when I finally realized that art is frequently about contrast. The disparity between two different things that are close to each other conveys a message. So a lot of times when you’re making art, you’ll want to employ contrast in order to signal something about your subject—whether that means using different values between light and dark, changing between thick and thin line widths throughout your piece, using contrasting colors, knowing where to add patterns vs. knowing when to leave a space empty, the background versus the foreground, and even the balance of proportions of a character can tell the audience a lot about the kind of character you’re making.

So, if you want something to pop out, put two opposites next to each other. If you want to give your line art more depth, you can use bigger lines around the silhouettes of elements where shadows are, as well as for lines in the foreground and closer to the viewer, while thinner lines work nicely for inner lines and details.

Every digital art program worth its salt has hotkeys—use them. You probably know the basics like Ctrl+Z, C, G, etc. But take the time to learn which ones feel helpful for you. For me, Command+E is awesome for merging down layers, or if you crave something more specific, you can even create hotkeys.

In some programs, I often expand my selection space when blocking in colors, so I assigned Command+Shift+E to do just that instead of going into the menu every single time I want to do so.

When you first start posting your art online, there's bound to be haters. So when posting your art on the Internet or in real life, always remember to ignore any critique from someone you wouldn't take advice from. As you move from being a beginner to the later stages of being an artist, a skill that you won't pick up from many tutorials is knowing the difference between not finished and not working out.

Every drawing has an ugly stage where you have to train your eye to trust yourself to complete the task you set out to do or to know when to try again. The biggest pitfall of not knowing the difference will get you caught in the "I'll just try again" loop, and you'll waste a lot of time. You can only develop this skill by trusting yourself above all else.

And the reward you’ll gain will be how to make quicker and more pinpointed decisions, especially on a deadline. Don't just memorize symbols for everything that you want to draw. If you want to draw this eye, for example—this applies to everything—you have to take this eyelid and wrap it around the form of this ball to give it the correct shape.

So don't worry about your stylization and your shapes. Learn the simplified form of everything and all the rest will result naturally from your knowledge.

If you're ever wanting to make something look more uniform, try using the symmetry tool. It can be very useful when working on things like props, perspective, backgrounds. I even draw myself with this tool sometimes. It's been a massive help to me on many occasions, especially time-wise.

Don’t pour all of your eggs in one basket. What does that actually mean? Well, when you're an artist and you find an art style you like, it’s common to tend to double down on that style and literally make every artwork in that one style. For me, it was a doodle art style, which don’t get me wrong, is awesome. But then almost every one of my artworks was done in the same style, and I started to lose the passion for the style I once loved.

How do you fix this? I suggest finding some inspiration and trying some things you’ve never done before. For me, it was painting, and once I tried it out, I created two of my best and most meaningful pieces I’ve ever made.

Hey, welcome in! I'm Blue. A good way to elevate your art is through the show-don't-tell method. Simply put, don't just draw a face or a character. Show some emotion or tell a story through your character. Instead of relying on text or a caption, push the expression to where you want it to be. No one wants to pick up a comic book or manga and see a giant wall of text.

Don't be afraid to get a bit messy or even make your character look somewhat ugly. But most of all, remember to have fun creating the things you love. Poorly planned speech bubbles can result in sacrificing dialogue and art. Trust me, I learned this the hard way in my earlier comic pages.

You could always see really awkwardly placed speech bubbles or just me covering up art. I spent way too long on all for the sake of getting my point across. So a simple hierarchy that I recommend you to follow is panel, text, speech bubble, background character, and foreground if you have it.

It's very important that you are critical of your own work. I am very critical of stuff like my videos. But it goes the same for art. You gotta be brutally honest with yourself because if you don't like the way something looks, you need to find out why and how you can improve it. It's very important.

For instance, this is a drawing I made for a friend of mine. I didn't really like this shading and stuff. And then I made this. It’s better. Not very good, but it’s better.

The advice I would give to young artists would probably be: don't stress about finding your style right now. A style is not about the look; it's about the process and the technique underneath. Have fun and draw as much as you can. Your style will develop naturally over time.

Bonus tip: Learn to use the lasso tool. It will change your life.

If you feel like the colors in your art are looking a bit boring or dull, but the idea of studying color theory is overwhelming and daunting, a quick way to improve your colors is simply to shift the hues when shading. Rather than taking a darker version of your flat color, if you shift the hue and value, you can create more variety in your color and make the piece look more dynamic and full of life.

Instead of leaving your line art black, why not add more color to it? I like to leave the outer line art black, but on the inside make it a dark color of the original color of the painted area. When I started doing this, it made my artwork pop way more.

Hey you! Do you hate drawing hands? Don't hide them! Here’s a very simple hand pose to draw when you’re struggling. We can break this easy pose down into three simple shapes: a trapezoid, a line, and a U shape for the thumb. From here, we can sketch the form on top of these basic shapes. Simply add a little bit of an extra bulge next to the thumb. Round off the section where the thumb meets the palm. Connect the other side of the finger and draw the little bumps, and then add details as you please.

Always remember that hands may be daunting, but they're just like any other part of the body and can also be broken down into simple shapes.

Hey, this is CPHHer code. Do you ever just not want to pick a new color palette? Because same. Perfect! Time to recycle your old art. Pull up one of your old art pieces in your drawing software. Then go to Tone Curve and just play around.

You can stop here, but if you want, you can also apply a gradient map. With this, you're basically recycling your old color palette to your new one. Now take this and create your new art. That's it. Bye!

One thing that many of us do after posting our art is constantly checking how much engagement we get from it. It feels amazing when we receive tons of likes and support on our posts. But it’s important to remember this: your artistic value is not measured by those likes.

You shouldn’t look down on yourself just because you got 15 likes today and the next artist got 100. You created something and that in itself is powerful. Just keep doing your own thing and having fun. Your audience will grow eventually, but your drive and passion mean so much more than the number of likes you get on a social media post.

Go to a zoo and sketch some animals! They are constantly moving, which makes it a fun challenge. If there's no zoo nearby, then I guess you can go to a cafe or something. Humans are animals too!

If you want to increase the saturation slightly, add a gray or paper texture, set it to overlay, and reduce the opacity. Then copy the base layer, put it on top, and set it to glow. Then also reduce the opacity. Finally, add a little vignette. Here’s a difference.

Going on to the next beautiful artist, try sketching and drawing with a pen that you cannot erase, like a fountain pen or fine liners. This way you will improve your observation skills as you'll only have one try for each.

The biggest advantage, in my opinion, is you will learn to live with your mistakes and how to integrate them into your drawings. Imperfect drawings have much more character anyway.

Do you ever feel like your shading is just kind of boring? I have a tip for you. One thing you can do for your cell shading is add a transition tone to the edge of your shadow. Just like this! I like to make the line a more saturated color, but there's lots of different things that you can do with it.

It's a way you can add interest to your cell shading without too much added work. Another thing I like to do with this technique is to add a transition tone to my lighting spots as well, and I think it adds a really cool effect.

Hey there, Biers. I'm Chevri Stab Wound. Allow yourself to have other hobbies. You’re not betraying art by liking other things, I promise you! In fact, it's better for you to branch out. You can gain so much inspiration in new ways just by having other hobbies.

For example, if you make clothes while also being into art, you'll be constantly observing folds and you'll understand the fundamentals of how they're made, which can contribute to looking more realistic when you draw them. You're not betraying art by embracing other things as artists will yearn to create. So why only restrict yourself to one thing when there's so much more you can do? Get into dance, singing, or any other art.

Hi there! It’s wonderful to meet you. I'm going to show you my favorite trick that will instantly boost the vibrancy of your colors. It’s super easy to do in any drawing program with layers and blending modes.

This works especially well if you use multiply layers to shade your artwork. Without this trick, this is what my colors look like: pretty dull, right? Well, all you have to do is grab your multiply layer and duplicate it. Simply grab that multiply layer you copied and change the layer to an overlay layer. After this, I’ll play with the opacity and multiply layers until I'm happy with the intensity.

But yeah, that’s all there is to it! If you’d like to challenge and hone your creature design skills, try to avoid using humanoid anatomy. I’m not saying none of your creatures can have human anatomy; rather, it’s both beneficial to your mental library and helps inspire you to create more believable creatures.

Foreshortening is pretty difficult to draw, but there's an easy way to think about it. Foreshortening is what happens when an object appears to get shorter as it faces the viewer. Limbs always move in an arc. More specifically, they follow the path of a circle.

So the body will follow the path of an ellipse. To accurately draw foreshortening, you first have to place the shoulder joint and draw the arm inside view. The length of the arm becomes the radius of that circle. So using that radius, we can draw an ellipse. Then all we have to do is place the arm wherever we want on the ellipse.

When establishing colors on your character, does it seem off? If so, try this trick: make another layer color, drop gray, black, or white, and set the blend mode of that layer to color. You make it so everything below that layer is grayscale. When doing this, you can see the contrast between your values.

You could have too many dark values or too many light values in one spot. By mixing where your light and dark values sit, you can achieve a character with a nice color flow.

I like to describe artists like plants. They're all different and unique from each other, but we all share one thing in common—water. We artists spend hours on our pieces, and you cannot be spending that time shriveling up like a withering sunflower.

You are not a withering sunflower. You are a thriving one! Just follow my helpful abbreviation: Drink—D really wants you to drink water.

Let’s face it—almost everyone is overstimulated and goldfish-brained nowadays. Most illustrations that grab your attention are highly detailed. But look at your art.

Here are some tips to easily add more detail: first, let’s add variation to the silhouette and shapes. More dimension to the line of termination. Tasty subsurface scattering. More color adjustments. And look! We have a happy little anime girl.

When it comes to the multiply layer, I never like having the multiply layer opacity up to 100 or anything below 20. I think that just makes it look really bad. I like having it around 30 to 50. I think that’s a good amount. You can get away with 60, 70, or 80 if you want, but in reality, I just like keeping it in between.

When it comes to colors, I never like using gray for shadows just because it looks dull. I prefer using brighter colors for the shadows, so they look much nicer and pop.

Hi! Hello, it’s Akari. Do you feel your art is boring? That’s a mood right there! But worry not; trying custom brushes can help. They can spice up your line art with texture or give you different results in your shading.

They can also work as stamps, so you don’t have to draw that lace pattern over ten different times in ten different places. Trust me, I felt that pain. And even better, you can find them for the low price of free.

Now that’s economics! You can achieve various effects with them and save tons of time. Just Google custom brushes for your program, and there should be plenty of sites like Gumroad that give them for free.

Listen up, artists! When you finish a drawing, make sure you double-check it before making it public. Look at it in a mirror. Post it to yourself privately. Have friends double-check it for you.

Because trust me, once you post that drawing, you’re gonna end up seeing something you missed that you wish you could fix. This is my drawing, and this is the same drawing. The only difference is the textures I used.

If you think your drawing is really bland, it might not be due to your drawing skills, but how you present and give off an impression to your audience. Using textures can enhance and enrich your colors, so they appear more layered and rich.

I actually use a lot of brushes for that. Besides textures, using tone colors with a multiply layer can set the mood. And don’t forget to use filters if you want. You can also use contrasting colors as highlights. It’s mostly trial and error, so don’t be afraid to try.

When you want to create nice and iconic-looking character designs, the main thing to keep in mind is ratios. Why ratios? Because they cover every single design fundamental.

This means a little bit of something, and a lot of another thing. For example, mostly one color, a little bit of another color, mostly organic, somewhat inorganic, mostly simple, somewhat complex, and mostly gentle but a bit creepy.

What’s one thing you can draw to practice textures, colors, and shape language at the same time? Food items are great because they have tons of variety in all these subjects. Plus, they’re very forgiving to draw and easily accessible in your daily life, making them the perfect subject matter for casual sketching, especially if you’re sick of drawing three-quarter heads.

Know your worth! Artists are notorious for undervaluing their talents. So many creatives feel hesitant and guilty about wanting to be paid for their hard work. You think plumbers feel guilty about getting a paycheck?

Never feel pressured or obliged to take on work that you don't think values your worth. Remember, people hire you to draw things because they can’t do it themselves. That inherently means your time and skills are valuable.

This drawing is good, but it can be better with a few adjustments. Look up how to turn on grayscale on your device or drawing software. You'll see that your drawing lacks a focal point. Identify what you want the viewer to focus on first. I want the viewer to focus on the hair, so I'll make sure it’s the brightest part.

Focal points should be the more detailed parts of the drawing.

If you're having trouble finding a good reference for your drawing, I highly recommend using Design Doll. You can easily pose and edit the doll to your liking, making drawing easier—a quote cited from my role model: “If fighting will not result in victory, then you must not fight, even at the ruler's bidding.” —Sun Tzu, Art of War.

I think one piece of advice I would give to artists today is: don't value your hobby or art based on how much other strangers or friends think of it. If art is your hobby, then value it based on how much you're enjoying it. Make drawings you think are awesome. Make drawings you think are dumb. Just have fun with it! There is no winning when you base it on how other people think.

Okay, smooth transition! Are you feeling burnt out? Try a medium you don't normally use. Sketchbooks are your friends. Use them, even if you're a digital artist. The primary purpose of a sketchbook is to practice things you aren't good at.

Aiming for perfection on every page more than likely is the reason you have a hard time using one. So embrace your failures in your sketchbook first so that you can succeed in your digital art programs later.

Hello! Don’t be afraid to take inspiration from other artists' styles, and take ideas from what they do to expand your own style. It's a great way to play around and have fun with your work and can help with improvement.

Hey, what's up? My name is Shacking Toones. This is a digital art trick for shading. I use it all the time. It revolves around utilizing the Magic Wand tool.

Doesn’t matter if it's Photoshop or Clip Studio; here are the settings for both. All you need to do is select the color that you wish to shade, and not only is that color now selected, but every instance of it is also selected. You can now apply shading, screen tones, literally whatever you want to it.

And the best part is you can’t draw outside the lines! Super helpful!

Use the grid function on digital programs to help measure proportions and placements. Your eyes will trick you into thinking that things are even, so checking in using the grid makes sure you're right. I often use this to measure where eyes should be placed and to line up characters evenly.

You can also use it to ensure even distance between certain elements. For traditional art, you can place grid paper under your drawing using a lightbox.

Use your tools to your advantage. This is a tip for my traditional artists out there. I'm talking no sketchbook. The beauty and excitement up until the first page. I'm sure we’ve all been there. Often, there's this pressure to make something incredible, especially if it's a fancy sketchbook we’ve treated ourselves to.

But a tip that I've learned that helps me is to draw an intro page. There’s less pressure for perfection, and it’s a neat way to get us warmed up and excited for the pages ahead.

Howdy! Sometimes you might want to go for a vintage, almost magazine printed look in your art. One simple way to do this is by duplicating the line art layer, setting it to multiply, then moving it slightly. You can also use this trick if you want to manually add chromatic aberration to your art.

I hope this helps!

Learn the basics of 3D modeling. I'm not joking! Looking for a really specific prop you just can't find? Simply open up Blender and make it yourself. Using Blender, you can pick the camera angle, the material, and the lighting. It’s so adjustable and easy to use. Once you get the basics down, you’ll not only speed up your art process, but you’ll also learn a great skill while doing so.

When designing characters, it can really help to have an idea of who the character is before you actually start designing. This can help with deciding the shape, language, outfitting colors, and more. This extra bit of direction might help your character design be easier to read, and you might end up with a nicer product, just like this little guy. Awww!

Hello! Blue here. Thumbnails are a great way to explore visual ideas quickly. Use small, rough sketches to allow different explorations of composition, light, and colors without the pressure of details.

I do this in two phases. A rough sketch to figure out how I want to pose the character and handle the composition. Once I'm happy with that, I will copy-paste the line art or the sketch, depending on what I'm using, a bunch of times to try out different values, lighting, and colors. And once I'm happy with that thumbnail, I’ll use it for reference on the colors and sketches for the final piece. I hope that helps!

It would be a massive understatement to say that blending modes and tonal correction layers are like godly. If you ever need to adjust colors and/or values, never feel ashamed to add a new layer and change its blending mode. Never feel ashamed to pull up a tonal correction layer for the fun of it.

No, you aren’t cheating, and no, it does not make you any less of an artist.

Let me guess: what do you do when you download an art program for the first time? Brushes! Stop. You do not need a hundred million brushes to be good. Many beginners think that a big brush kit will make their art better or will mask a lack of skill in one area or another.

That’s false because it’s never about the brush; it’s about your hands. When you have too many tools, it can become tough to focus properly. Choose just a few brushes you are most comfortable with to create help!

I used to think spending 10,000 hours was all I needed to become an artist, but that's only one piece of the puzzle. I learned that there’s more to art than simply drawing. Back then, I only focused on improving my core skills and overlooked the importance of soft skills.

Because of this, I could never get anything done. Soft skills are mandatory for our artistic growth, such as observing skills, project management, work ethics, combating our inner demons, taking care of ourselves, and many more. Each of us has our puzzle pieces, making our journey uniquely ours.

So let's take your time to not only learn how to do ARTCraft but also learn to enjoy the process as well.

Has this ever happened to you? Where did I put my line art? Don’t worry, it happens to just about everyone. But there’s a quick fix to this problem: naming or labeling your layers. These names can be as simple as line art, sketch, or coloring.

Or if you’re feeling unhinged, you can name it something like Rigatoni—just as long as you remember which layer is which! Of course, this also applies to your layer folders.

If you use them, don't be afraid to use different textured brushes. Sticking to your round brush or airbrush can be easy, but using new tools to replace those brushes is so much fun and you can create cool pieces like this or even this.

Anyways, always step out of your comfort zone and try something new.

If you have a creative project that you've been really wanting to make, but you feel like you're not skilled enough yet, I dare you to try creating it anyway. Being passionate about a project can be a great motivator to take on a challenge and try something outside of your comfort zone.

You'll learn a lot throughout the process, and you’ll get to work on this project that you've been excited about already. You feel best when it's not your soul focus—conveying a message. Focus on the emotion conveyed rather than just the picture quality.

Whenever digital art feels monotonous, learning a different art form can help break up the monotony. Staring at a canvas for eight hours straight because you're blocked? Your butt feels like a Minecraft super flat world? It helps to go outside and take a walk. It quite literally gets the creative blood flowing—career-wise!

Not doing art solely doesn't make you any less of an artist. If anything, it broadens your canvas of life. It's somewhat frowned upon, but forms of tracing, tracing dynamic poses, hands, and body parts can help you understand anatomy and strengthen your memory.

The best way you could do this is by tracing people or yourself to understand the body. So my tip is: don’t trace art, trace humans and use yourself as the reference.

If I had to give one piece of advice to someone who wanted to get better at art, it would be to learn the importance of shapes in art. I don't just mean shape language and conveying feelings through shapes. No, I mean breaking things down into their simplest forms.

If you can do this, life gets a lot easier when it comes to drawing. Rather than having to know how to draw a wide range of things, you only need to know how to draw the shapes that make up whatever it is you're trying to create. It also helps when it comes to stylizing your art—as you add more shapes, your style will be more complex!

Struggling to draw hair? Say no more! When you notice that hair movement is the same as a flowing river, it becomes easier. Hair flowing in different directions is just that—like a rock that appears, changing its course. Some rivers have a lot of rocks; some don’t have any at all.

And sometimes it’s just hair in a water slide going around itself. I'm sure you’re going to use this technique for greater good!

Oh yeah, boy! Okay, so my art advice is to remember your purpose and the reason why you create. Sometimes you feel as if you want to give up. In those circumstances, remembering your reason and purpose can really help you push a little bit more and keep on doing what you always like doing.

Just remember to pour in a bit of extra love. Self-motivation goes a long way. Also, clean your desk. Mine's very unorganized right now.

My number one tip for artists is that perfectionism is your worst enemy. Try not to be so in your head about the whole thing. This isn’t Squid Game, so no one’s going to take you out back and shoot you if your line art doesn't come out perfect.

Do you have a fear of committing to even the smallest decisions because of a family heirloom called anxiety? This affects your ability to commit to color palettes for your character designs because you feel obligated to be perfect the first time.

Well, I do. I used to spend hours looking for color palettes until I learned about the HSV Color adjustment menu. HSV stands for hue, saturation, and value.

Your first slider changes the color, the second slider changes the intensity level, and the last slider changes the darkness or brightness of your layer. This means I can pick any color for my character's outfit. Go to the HSV adjustment menu and use the three sliders to adjust the colors until you find something that sparks joy.

Now you never have to be anxious about commitment again!

My art tip got me from this to this in two years. And that is that you have to understand what you're doing and why you're doing it. When you make a specific line or paint stroke, make sure you know why you're doing it.

Why does the light do this? Why does the skin fold there? Why do the clothes overlap like this? Why does the perspective make that happen? I know it’s common sense, but you must look deeper into everything that makes up something in real life or another person's art style.

Go look at Kim Jung Gi. That man knew how to draw anything because he understood how everything and anything worked.

Hi everyone, my name is Mario or Octawings, and today I will be talking about environment design. I constantly hear artists beat themselves up about not being able to draw backgrounds. Get out of this mindset! You can improve on something you never do.

One way to make the process of learning easier and less scary is through photo bashing. If you don't know what photo bashing is, it's essentially Frankenstein-ing a ton of pictures together. Honestly, I think tracing photographs when it comes to painting is fair game. Just make sure you add your own personal touch.

Tracing can make creating backgrounds so much less terrifying. And photo bashing helps develop those compositional muscles. Go out there and create some backgrounds!

With that said, let's get on to the next tip. Proportion isn’t as important as you think! You can get pretty far by drawing anything as long as the shape relationships work. For instance, if you look at caricature artists, you can see they achieve a solid likeness just by focusing on shape relationships and fundamental drawing.

This concept carries over to any form of art. In this concept art for Overwatch, for example, the artist made Widowmaker's legs longer than normal to emphasize the story they're trying to tell. Learning proportion is still important, but more as a way to learn to break it rather than an absolute rule of drawing.

Are you using symbols to communicate in your cartoony art? What I started doing was dramatically changing the characters' irises to tell the viewer about their personality and mood, and what they're doing. Like here, where Planchette is reading the newspaper, so her eyes turn to A, B, C, D.

I also changed the shape of the characters' highlights in their hair. In cartoony art styles, there's no limit to the creative ways you can hide information in the art since realism isn't really the goal. So don't forget to be creative and utilize the medium to its fullest potential.

Before the video ends, I just wanted to quickly say thank you to every artist that participated in this collab. This could not have been possible without all of their hard work, and some of these tips are just incredible. Everyone put so much effort into them.

Thank you to everyone who participated. Oh my God, you guys are all absolutely incredible. And hey to you watching the video right now—if there’s anyone in particular you really liked, I think about every artist in this video has a YouTube channel linked in the description down below. So, check out your favorite one!

If someone's tip particularly stood out to you, make sure to go check out their channel.

I honestly never thought I'd be able to make a video like this. This might be one of the biggest art collabs on YouTube! Probably a hundred tips from a hundred artists. I don't think anyone’s done anything like that before, so it’s genuinely awesome that I’m in the position to be able to do this now.

So yeah, thank you to all the artists who participated, and thank you to all the viewers watching. I could not have made this video without you guys supporting me.

So yeah, thank you! Who knows? Maybe I’ll make a part two—a hundred tips from a hundred animators or something like that. I think it would be cool if I want to go through the pain of organizing it again. But yeah, that’s the end of the video.

Thank you for watching, and goodbye!