Art Discussion

[tamaerchen]

Don't worry, Asterales, I've been only drawing for a couple of weeks and I also don't really know what I'm doing. So, I hope we both fit in here anyways.

I'm also really new to digital drawing and I'd like to do some stuff on shading and yes, textures (and patterns) are a great idea as well. And maybe someone who uses Krita can help me a bit with how to use textures especially...

[Asterales]

I don't know if it has been mentioned before, but hair would also be something I'd like to practice!
*pointedly looks in Curry's direction*

[Curry]

_{s....small finger guns.......... hair is my jam and i'd always be willing to help out if anybody's got questions now!}

That's another question, actually, how are we going to learn it? Will everybody be contributing resources and advice and then working as equals or will there be certain people who take teacher roles? I'd be fine with either but choosing teachers could be difficult.

[Asterales]

If we did have a teacher, but use this thread rather than a chat or something, it would be even more complicated.
I suppose it could work if someone wants to do a tutorial on something they are good in and posts it prior to the practice, but that sounds like a lot of pressure and annoyance for the 'teacher'. I mean, of course it would be awesome, but...
(I'd also feel like a total leech, seeing as I'm unable to teach anything )

And we are all going to try and critique each other's work anyway, won't we? I think everything will fall into place naturally, once we have sorted out the what and when and how. Having critique form several people is probably the best thing about this. There are so many ways to handle a problem and the solutions depend on the medium just as much as on the style and artist... Then again it's basics.
... Oh, I don't know!

[Jureeya]

Hello everyone new!!

_{s....small finger guns.......... hair is my jam and i'd always be willing to help out if anybody's got questions now!}

That's another question, actually, how are we going to learn it? Will everybody be contributing resources and advice and then working as equals or will there be certain people who take teacher roles? I'd be fine with either but choosing teachers could be difficult.

Just because everyone learns in different ways I was going to suggest that each person does a bit of research and finds a walkthrough/channel/tutorial/etc that works for them, and then if they want specific advice to ask when they put their drawings up for critique. That way the artist will know exactly what they struggled with and will be able to ask productive questions instead of just "I have no idea how to do this at all, ayúdame con todo." This isn't meant to be a "class," so much as a framework that encourages people to keep up with their own practice. I already have a list of a number art teachers on YouTube that I've used (Proko is bae) that I'm going to put up closer to when we get started, along with some ground rules.

I also think it would be super helpful if people credited the video or tutorial they learned from (if they used one) when sharing each piece so that everyone can share resources.

If people want to have one of the artists here open up a stream and give a short tutorial that wouldn't be too hard to arrange either, provided you're willing to work with time-zone difficulties.

Also re: platforms, I wouldn't mind having it in a thread but I do think that having the ability to chat and IM is much better for something like this. It's just easier to have a conversation about a piece when you're communicating in short messages every minute than in long posts every hour, and with almost 20 people posting, commenting and quoting each other at the same time a thread is going to get really messy.

Given that there are a solid amount of people into this (!!) would anyone be willing to do a short (~10 day) trial version of this so that we could figure out which platform works best before trying to wrangle 20 people into a chat that may or may not work? We'd still be doing the art, but it would be more focused on the organizational aspect of everything. It shouldn't be a big group, ideally like five people, with topics that that are already on the main list so that no one misses out on anything. Anyone down?

[tamaerchen]

I do have quite a lot of things going on, but I think I should be able to spare one or two hours in a day to try the whole thing out -  if you think that would be enough time for that.

[Rabbit]

*peeks in shyly*

I'd love to join... my summer schedule is still wide open though.

About the format, how about we have a thread here to keep the prompts, artworks and tutorial etc. links in order and easy to find afterwards, as well as a chat for more immediate feedback, chatting and general commiserating? (I don't know about you, but if twenty people in a forum thread commenting back and forth would be messy, the same twenty people in a skype group would be chaos and I don't think my little introvert self would even dare to approach that.)

[Jureeya]

*peeks in shyly*

I'd love to join... my summer schedule is still wide open though.

About the format, how about we have a thread here to keep the prompts, artworks and tutorial etc. links in order and easy to find afterwards, as well as a chat for more immediate feedback, chatting and general commiserating? (I don't know about you, but if twenty people in a forum thread commenting back and forth would be messy, the same twenty people in a skype group would be chaos and I don't think my little introvert self would even dare to approach that.)

Doooooo you wanna join the trial group also, or just the main one?

That's fair. Prompts and tutorials are already definitely going to be here, and I think that the location of the artwork is going to be the only issue with that. My one big worry about having the art and comments in different places would be that people would get too confused about who was commenting on what, but I don't think we're going to avoid that no matter what we do. It would definitely be nice to be able to view it as a "gallery" instead of having it get buried in chat.

I think something that might bother people is having their potentially not-awesome practice art up on the forum where people who aren't part of the group can see. One benefit of a closed group is that you can only see other artists' bad art if you're willing to show them yours, and that makes it much easier to break the ice and open yourself up for good constructive criticism. Does anyone feel particularly strongly about this?

And chat shouldn't be too chaotic, since only a few people would be there at a given moment. I've done a couple large groups like this before with fraternity stuff and it's never been terrible. I seriously doubt we're going to have everyone on at the same time, and most likely it'll never be more than six or seven people online at a time with an even smaller number actively talking.

[Kiraly]

Also re: platforms, I wouldn't mind having it in a thread but I do think that having the ability to chat and IM is much better for something like this. It's just easier to have a conversation about a piece when you're communicating in short messages every minute than in long posts every hour, and with almost 20 people posting, commenting and quoting each other at the same time a thread is going to get really messy.

Given that there are a solid amount of people into this (!!) would anyone be willing to do a short (~10 day) trial version of this so that we could figure out which platform works best before trying to wrangle 20 people into a chat that may or may not work? We'd still be doing the art, but it would be more focused on the organizational aspect of everything. It shouldn't be a big group, ideally like five people, with topics that that are already on the main list so that no one misses out on anything. Anyone down?

I think it's not a bad idea to do both, like Rabbit suggested. A thread would allow people in wildly different time zones (or who just aren't free at the same time) to see each others' work, and those who are free to chat at the same time could critique that way (which would also help keep the thread from getting too terribly cluttered).

I wouldn't mind helping to test it out, but it depends on how soon you want to try it. I'm going on vacation starting tomorrow so that's not exactly an ideal time to be trying to coordinate things (since I'll also be three hours earlier than my usual time zone). But I'll be back home on April 11th, so if you don't get a test group together before then I'd be up for it.

[Curry]

i'd love to be a test run person! it would be a lot of fun and i'd love to help work out any kinks. my skype is prooobably in my signature but if not it's curryspice. with the period and my current display name is double gun (memery as usual)

[Athena]

I would love to help test but I can't use Skype at all... I really don't want to get in the way here, if it works for everyone else though, so I'd be fine with just being on the thread.

[Aierdome]

And chat shouldn't be too chaotic, since only a few people would be there at a given moment. I've done a couple large groups like this before with fraternity stuff and it's never been terrible. I seriously doubt we're going to have everyone on at the same time, and most likely it'll never be more than six or seven people online at a time with an even smaller number actively talking.

Now that you put it this way, chat seems far more reasonable than it did to me the first time I've heard of the idea (I was reminded how this worked for me one time I've been having a conference with a few people over the chat. Not well). So just as a question, do we intend to use Skype, or are we looking into some other options?

Re: putting our works in public, I admit I'm not very concerned about that. We're not the kind of community to point fingers and laugh at others' less-than-quality arts; quite the opposite, really, post tend to be encouraging. As for test run, though, I'm afraid I'll have to decline, as I'm in too much of a mess, organization-wise, to attempt this right now.

[Helia]

I second that the main place for this should be this thread. We can move it to the Personal board; that way non-forumites won't be able to see it.

Please consider that not everybody likes to chat/chat while they're concentrating on their drawing. And if you're doing traditional art, it's a bit complicated to post pictures of your work in progress every now and then.

[Rabbit]

Just the main event for me, I shouldn't be allowed to approach anything time-consuming before I wrap up some rl responsibilities! >.<

My problem with group chats is that I get easily overwhelmed by fast-paced conversation, especially if there is more than one topic going on at once, so having a forum thread as a sort of base where you could catch up on everyone's work at your own pace would be a "safer" setting if that makes sense, and then everyone could venture into the chat as much as their schedule and social energy reserves allow.

As for chat platform, the main alternatives I can see would be Skype and IRC - feel free to educate me on any other chat programs that the Hip Young Folks are using these days. The main upside of IRC would be the lack of special accounts or programs needed, as long as someone makes a channel all that everyone else needs is a browser window. Conversely, the main advantage of Skype I can see is that it keeps conversation logs when a user is offline, so it's less instant than IRC and catching up on conversations later is possible. (That being said, personally I think catching up on group conversations on skype is a bleeding PITA especially if you happen to live on a timezone that leaves you with hundreds of unread messages every morning.) So, again, I'd vote for having a base thread with all the artwork and relevant links. I agree with Aierdome that this is not the kind of community to point and laugh at developing artists, but if that is a threshold issue for anyone, me and my opinion will stand aside.

[Jureeya]

Alright so as it stands now there will be a gallery thread for the artwork and a chat group on some platform TBD (most likely Skype but suggestions would be great) to discuss advice and critique pieces.

Also I think we should keep posts to final drawings only and avoid having a ton of WIPs flying about, just because that would get super crowded and it's reeeally not necessary for this kind of thing. This doesn't have to involve huge pieces of art, just subject sketches and drawings so that you can study one topic at a time. They shouldn't take more than one or two hours per day. Plus, when you have a bunch of different artists all telling you how to change your drawing at the same time you end up getting more of a walkthrough of their styles than time to practice what works for you individually, and that's the most important part.

So currently for testers it's Tamaerchen, Curry, and Kiraly and hopefully one or two more and it'll probably happen at the end of April or beginning of May because of research papers and finals and all that jazz on my end. @Luth, can you not even use the chat feature? If you want to pm me with a link to whatever program works for you that would be super helpful, we might end up using it.