I'm not really an artist, though I have done a lot of art back in elementary and high school and other people have told me that I have the potential for it, so take what I say with a grain of salt. Kinda dumb that I can't quote the OP so I will work with what I got I guess.
1. Are you having fun?
When I was starting out and didn't understand what makes good art and what makes bad art, I was frustrated when I drew something bad, but was pleasantly pleased/surprised when I accidentally drew something good. My one and only true skill in art is realizing when something looks decent or good, but when I was deep into art, I never learned how to get there. Needless to say, if you are like me and just shooting in the dark hoping to make something that looks good, you will be frustrated more than you will have fun.
2. Do you ever want to quit?
The truth of the matter is I always quit because I am never as good as I think I am and never as good as what I want to be, but when I see other people's art, it almost always makes me want to get back into it.
3. Is it a side hobby or a full time job?
Honestly, it was always a side hobby for me because I always heard that artists make shit money and there's never enough work for the amount of artists. If I knew there was a community like this for lewd artists to make a decent living, I probably would have been more serious about art.
4. Do you have any tips for a new upcoming artist?
Okay, these are some really important tips that took me a long time to figure out, but first there's a very important concept that'll help you with anything in life that you must understand first. The concept is that there is a difference between knowing something and understanding it. For example, you might know not to touch fire because everyone else tells you not to, but you will never understand, on a subconscious level, why you shouldn't touch fire until you see someone do it or you do it yourself. This concept is important because the tips that I will list here are tips that I know I should follow, but even now, I still don't quite "understand" them on a subconscious level, so they're something I still work on myself.
The tips:
- Learn the fundamentals.
- This means learning how to hold your drawing utensils properly, how to make different types of strokes on the canvas, and how to control the amount of pressure you are pressing down with. This is extremely important because good line quality is what makes your artwork look professional.
- Learn to draw proper realistic human anatomy, not anime-styled anatomy even if you are going for an anime style. This will help you understand why people exaggerate or remove certain features of the human body when they create their style.
- Learn color theory so you understand how colors evoke emotion. This is so that you don't, for example, use deep reds (the color of blood) in your art when you try to make people feel sad for a character. Makes it look like a horror scene instead.
- Learn to understand shapes and scene composition. Certain shapes evoke certain feelings from people. Once you get better at creating art, you will be able to distill all your scene elements such as characters and background landscapes into basic shapes which you can then use to improve your scene composition, which is a huge factor in what makes good art interesting to look at.
- Don't get too attached to each of your artworks.
- I'd recommend when you first start to not use your eraser at all. Just draw lightly and if you mess up, try to correct it without erasing it if you can and keep drawing.
- The point is not to be afraid of failure, failure is your most important ally on your journey of learning art. As someone famous once said, each failure teaches you one way not to do something. So you should want to fail as much as possible, as fast as possible so you can understand why what you're doing is bad.
- Getting attached to artwork makes you afraid to finish it because you don't want to potentially ruin it. This will stagnate your progress as an artist and it was one of the main culprits that made me quit art.
- Ask other artists to give you feedback on your work.
- There will be many times when you don't know if something looks good or not, and sometimes it's because you got attached to your artwork. That's where someone else's point of view will help you continue to grow.
- Get feedback from someone who you know will be critical of your artwork, not from someone you know will blow smoke up your ass. If people keep telling you your artwork is great because they're afraid of hurting your feelings, you won't get any better.
- Give other artists feedback on their work. It'll help you think critically about why their artwork works or doesn't work. This will help you when you're doing your own stuff.
- Lastly, learn to love the journey.
- You will never stop improving as an artist. There's never a point when you can stop and say "Okay, I'm a master artist now, there's nothing left for me to learn".
- It means you should compare yourself to the artist you were yesterday and not the great artists of today. Even the people you see with amazing art are constantly learning and refining their skills everyday.
5. Any do's and don'ts?
See above.
6. What programs do you use?
I never got too deep into digital art as I mostly did traditional pen/pencil stuff. When I did delve into it, I briefly used Krita before switching to Photoshop.
