Tips and Tricks

I noticed we don't have a place to discuss art, just places to post it, so I thought I'd change that.

Welcome to the topic!

To start us off, I'll share the very few art resources we have in the Knowledge Base.

Mastering Your Camera (A Brief Guide)
Five Parts to a Successful Piece of Art

This thread is, just like the title suggests, for all the tips and tricks you've learned over the years as you're doing art. Post your favorite tips and tricks, links to websites that can help with art, or just the thing that inspires you the most.

I'll do my best to catch links you share that help with art in a list here.

List of Links

Common Drawing Mistakes
Art Tips
Bright photos
iPhone photography
Blogging Photography

Let's get this party started!

Common Drawing Mistakes

^ When I began first drawing, I was really worried about darkness and how light I should go. Like this website says, don't be afraid to go really dark on some picture (that goes for shading and whatnot)

Art Tips

^ this gives out good advice for drawing and art stuff.

What I have learned is don't be afraid of doing your own work. Like if you want to look off of another picture and do it, then do so. If you are worried it might look a bit off, don't worry; learn to do your own work.
Also colors don't seem to matter (unless you want to make the grass green or the sky blue). And always always sketch lightly before drawing.

A little painting tip: Start back to front. Like with the sky, then the mountains, and then the grass. Cause if you were to make a lake and mixed some blue but suddenly you want to add a flower somewhere (you can wait until it dries like that with oil paint), paint the flower first or something.

I may or may not be back with links, but right now I just wanted to stress shading. I swear you can make stick figures look like works of genius simple by shading. And like Blaspherica said, don't be afraid to go dark.

Ooh, super glad to see this!

I think my biggest tip that I could give people is to really look at color.

The color you're seeing that we learned in kindergarten is just the base color, The table is brown, the ceiling is white, etc. Those are just very basic.

If you really want to get good at art you have to compare the color next to itself and see what OTHER colors are changing that color so you might have a blue-green and a yellow-green area on your wall.

Your desk might be purply-red brown and red-yellow brown. Don't be afraid of that!

The reason this happens is because the light carries color with it and changes the highlights and the low lights. You might have a cool highlight if you're in florescent lighting where your highlights will be shades of cool colors [Blue, green, indigo] and your shadows are shades of warm colors [red orange, yellow, violet] or it might be the other way around! You have to look at it in order to see what you're dealing with and then when you draw/paint/color that, emphasize these color variations.

Saturate it above and beyond life!

When it comes to photography (which I am assuming it is okay to add in here)?

Even if you feel like you don't have the right camera equipment, first, just dive in and start taking pictures. There is a lot you can learn from taking rubbish pictures as well.

Also: Unless you are planning to take night time pictures or purposefully ones in the dark, try to always go with natural light in your photographs. Artificial lighting usually doesn't work out so well, and learning how to manipulate natural light for your photographs can give splendid results.

(I will be back with links later!)

I had a new tip from one of my favorite local artists.

When doing sketches or quick paintings, do at least three.
1) The first one helps figure out proportions.
2) The second helps with composition, and colors.
3) The third is usually the best of the series.

@Deanie, do you have the links?

@MadWriter7, do you have any composition tips?

Oh, I forgot to add to this! Here are the links...

About taking bright photos, and how to do so: http://www.thirteenthoughts.com/15423/h ... -your-blog

If you are taking shots with your iPhone, here are some hacks to make the photos better and some apps you could download to help edit your pictures to be brighter while not ruining the effect as well: http://christinagreve.com/how-to-make-y ... ght-sharp/

This one is pointed at bloggers but I think other people might be able to gather something about it as well? Some general photography hacks! http://www.thirteenthoughts.com/20266/p ... r-bloggers