Questions for artists //help

[King-sama]

How do you come up with your picture concepts/idea? I always want to draw new works, but I always find problem with this T_T
For me it usually like:

- "Oh my, I have to draw a proper work!" //yeah, always have to be forced to finish something, otherwise I don't finish anything T3T

- Search the net for inspirational works that I admire

-Do tens of sketches then being lost for which to pick to draw properly

This is my usual process of coming up with a concept to draw, but I have got tired of it v__v' I need to find another way

So, tell me your own way of coming up with your concepts! owo

[kino-san]

Hmm interesting topic.

For me concept and plot will come first. This will be usually from real life or watching way too much anime or reading too much manga.

When I think of a concept I want it to be unique and original or something I would like to see.

Then I would create the characters that would fit into that story. After that I would imagine various story or plot points with the characters in my mind. If I have enough plot thought out I would write a plan out and write it out fully.

But sometimes I can create a story directly from a character design. Sometimes something like a random character generator can help me design a original character.

I wonder if that made sense..

[Rozume]

I just draw whatever I envision in my head and make adjustments when needed.

It really depends on what you want to draw. Say you want to draw a boy. Okay, you would need to think about things like age, his character, his race/ethnicity, what kind of clothes he would be wearing, what his body/facial shape is like, his pose/what he's doing, what he's feeling, etc. If you add a background, think about the character in context to the background. Is the boy running to school because he's late? Is he alone at the playground? Is he baking a cake?

Then if you add color and lineart you have to think about things like where the lightsource is, line thickness and width, color scheme, what kind of mood will the colors evoke (a bright, warm feeling, a cold, desolate feeling, etc) and a bunch of other stuff I'm forgetting.

There's a lot of thinking involved when creating a concept, but when you do it a lot it becomes second nature.

[Sharm]

It sounds like you're putting more work in the conceptualizing side of things than you should and it's using up all the creative energy. When you're just messing around with ideas you don't have to do full sketches, you could do thumbnails or make a base and sketch on top of that so you're not redrawing the body every time or just work in big blocks of color and abandon detail. When you're testing out ideas it's okay to just draw what you're testing.

It also sounds like you need to practice finishing. For this practice give yourself a reasonable time limit to make a finished piece and do the entire thing in one sitting. To pull it off you won't be able to do any of your pre-work or inspiration searching you'll just have to sit down and pull from your head and make something.

The best artists I know all do warmups where they draw something very quickly before they get to the real work. Quite a few of them make amazing finished pieces in that warmup that look a lot better than my finished work. I've been thinking a lot about what the difference is working from the belief that there's no such thing as talent only hard work. I've concluded that if you give yourself a time where it's acceptable to be awful and make mistakes and yet you still finish anyway you'll get rid of a lot of useless time on your big works where you fuss about things that don't matter and you can get on with the making of awesomeness and getting better as an artist. I also think that with enough practice your warmups will have the exact same workflow as your finished works and there will be no real difference between them, just a difference in "this is one I made because of silliness and this one I made on purpose."

[ameliori]

Oh this is a thing with me too. So when I am having problems coming up with a concept, I ask some of my friends tell me the first word that comes up to their head. Then, I make a character out of that It doesnt work all the time though. So sometimes I just wallow in self-pity.

[SundownKid]

Well you can always take requests or commissions from people who have ideas and stuff. I've had the opposite problem, too many ideas not enough drawing skill to put them on paper

I wouldn't be depressed over not having a concept though. Sometimes it's better to team up with people if you have idea block.

[Wissa]

[qoute] "Oh my, I have to draw a proper work!" [/quote]
Directionlessness, I had exactly that problem. Eventually i discovered this was my biggest barrier to being productive. The only proper work you should be thinking about is one that you know you really want to do. You should spend more time practicing drawing from life and studying anatomy and color theory than trying to create a 'work' that doesn't originate from what you love to do and want to see. There is proper craftsmanship, but not proper 'work/art.'

In simple terms it is art block, but in many cases, that means you are too concerned about what you think you *should* be drawing, and ignoring what it is you are actually most comfortable with doing. Not all artist pump out separate paintings. Some are illustrators, some only do backgrounds or characters, or throw pain6 on canvases or squiggly lines. Some even figure out they like writing better and do that. It really doesn't sound like "coming up with just another picture to draw" is your thing.

What got me going, after creating picture after picture yet never feeling like I had a body of work, is admitting that my art needed to be dedicated to a story, and that story forming is what ties it all together. So maybe discovering something like that will help you out.

/psychoanalysis

[heypetdragon]

Something you can add besides practicing your fundamentals (anatomy, color theory, perspective, etc.,), and what everyone has posted, is widening your mental visual library. Read a lot of books (not just art books but novels, fiction, non-fiction. Especially try to imagine the place for example, how it's described, the way a person acts, or imagine how someone looks by the way his attitude/personality/dialogues are said, etc.) Watch a lot of movies too, go out and observe people, how the sunlight touches things, how it bounces, reflects and stuff. And remember to have fun when you draw.

[hiko27]

Sounds like art block, but not quite like it.

Are you referring to character designs, or concept sketches?

For character designs, I say just let it go and draw whatever the hell you want. You can refer to the plot, or something that's related to the character, for their design. I tend to go down that road. Or you just design them from how your mind pictures them. Most of the time for me, I don't really have a clear picture of each character from the beginning. But I just draw whatever I like. But when I find the perfect one, I just immediately know. And then I go from there. Sometimes, I have one thing that I'd like them to have. For example, for my game otoge-Real!, we have a cross dressing guy as one of the love interests. At the beginning, I imagined him having long hair. Well, it's just a wig but still, long hair. You could also get inspired from other character designs. Using the same example as before, the cross dressing guy was inspired by Mi-Yoo from Star Project. He has long hair, silver (white??? not sure) hair, and blue eyes. I'm a sucker for the silver hair/blue eyes combination so I wanted that character to have the same traits.

For concept sketches... Well, you can look up artwork you admire, but it has to relate to what you need, or want to draw. For example, I wanted to draw a landscape so I went to pixiv and just brought up my bookmarks and looked through the most amazing landscape/sky paintings kdsflksdfklsdf (it was amazing damn pixiv artists). You can also play around with perspective, angles, layouts, all that jazz. For me, I really like it when backgrounds are really cluttered, because it gives off a realistic feel.

But tbh, just have fun drawing things. You can do those art challenges on Tumblr, they're really useful. Don't feel obliged to draw something, just draw what you want to draw. For me though, I enjoy drawing things I don't usually draw. The challenges excite me, which urges me to draw and come up with crazy things. You can try it, see how that works for you.

You can also do commissions or requests. That's how it was for me. I didn't offer commissions before because I thought I wouldn't be able to draw everyday (because I might find it boring), but now I found out I can and I'm never bored. Don't let your skills hinder you, even if it does come out crappy. Whenever you draw the same thing over and over again, it gets stale and it's like you don't want to draw. Challenge yourself, draw something different everyday even if it comes out crap.

[meiri]

When I am just working on some concepts, I like to do research. For example, let's say I'm trying to come up with a character, but not the ENTIRE character. I'll imagine the picture of that character and think something like. "Hey, that character seems to be of ____ race/ethnicity." I'll do a little research on that race/ethnicity, and then I'll do some sketches (not many, three or four are good). What's important about when you're searching for inspiration is that you're searching for stuff relative to your needs. If you're trying to do a lineart for a character, looking at horse paintings wont be useful (as an example.) But anyways, these sketches often times aren't very pretty... Sometimes they will make sense and relate to the research, and other times it will be much more crazy, and I often times like the crazy things more because they represent my workflow (the way I work and think as an artist.) If your sketches are messy, go with it. They can help a lot with your creativity. Seeing the mess of lines might help you to see new things, angles, etc.

The difficult part for you seems to be narrowing it down. I would suggest that you do less sketches, only a few.

As for feeling like you need to do a complete artwork, that sounds sort of like a reverse-art block situation... You can't get anything done because you feel like you need to do a finished piece. I would suggest looking at this tutorial: http://adventuresofjimmyneutron.tumblr. ... n-high-res
It's about how to sketch cleanly, it might help you save some time at least

[Laniessa]

Ohhh, I have so many ways that I get concepts.

My most frequent one is to just default to 'simple sketches' - doodles, and I just draw a basic, unoriginal person, usually standing or something. And then I just expand on that, changing things around. Another is to do a little drawing of a gesture / pose, and I naturally just get ideas of what I want to add to it.

Another common one is to start with just mind-numbing scribbles, where I just make circles or a blend of colours, and then I just add to it. Usually a person, somewhere in there. This stuff is usually less refined and more experimental. This one started with the cluster of round-blobs at the top, which is why it looks so out of place. This started with just three colours + the background and an attempt to make something out of it.

Another is just being inspired - hearing a song making me want to draw something with rain in it, fan-art, rea-aaally liking a painting style and trying to mimic another art style, coming up with new components to a story I have and needing to draw it out. Really, really good fashion inspires me as well. Seeing back-light done wonderfully by Rella made me want to perfect it. Shilin's perfect details and painty-style made me want to be painty. Joodlez's perfect expressions and soft painting, Kaze-Hime's sense of fashion, amongst so many others.

In the end, I just have too many pictures I want to draw and not enough time.

(A notable point in time when I drew something, and I didn't want to outline it. So I just put colours under it. Then I painted over the entire thing. After that, I started preferring line-less art a whole heap more. Just experiment a lot! Don't feel the urge to make something ~complete~, but rather, something fun, or different. Or relaxing, as I tend to do.)

[sendo]

So many useful advice. Let me just add mine ^^

I always reference something when I draw. I learned the hard way that I couldn't handle thinking of concepts if I do it all in my mind. So I grab some photos from my inspirations folder or snag some from google and paste it into my canvas. What this does is it gives me a starting point, like I said, if I do it in my mind, I'll get stuck in the white canvas syndrome. From there I sketch a pose (or thumbnail if it's a BG or CG), then just draw away. I usually just hide my references not completely deleting them, because when I get stuck with something I just pop it back in and look for some ideas and use it for my drawing.

Another thing is to treat every piece as a sketch. It doesn't sound reassuring yeah, but in the past I usually set very high expectations of myself, and then become depressed because I couldn't meet my own expectations. So just think of it like a sketch, start loose, don't think that "this should be the next best concept/landscape/portrait/whatever" or "the proportions should be perfect/ the shading must be very realistic" because you'll freeze up that way and your art will end up stiff (especially when you don't have a lot of experience in those areas yet). Set smaller goals, allow yourself to make mistakes and experiment too. The best part is you'll surprise yourself, because you set low expectations, you'll feel rewarded when you actually draw something good. It will boost your morale and you'll probably do another 'sketch'. And even if you don't draw the next Mona Lisa, at least you've got another drawing under your belt.

[Tyrantauranox]

It might be brainstorm time! I'd go someplace away from computers with a pen and paper, and start jotting ideas down. This works best if you can drag one of your creative buddies along to bounce ideas off of. Creative superpowers like Pixar do this very thing.

[King-sama]

I read everyone replay many many times and i got to say THANK YOU ALL so much! Your responce and ideas was really helpful! I appreciate it! OuO //sorry for late reply

[Railgun]

I see everyone likes to just jump in, more or less :O
As for me, I've seen the question "how do you come up with a concept?" asked many times while watching artists on Youtube, and the two answers coming up the most often are "I was inspired by something (artist, book, movie, etc)" or "I try to imagine the story behind the character/place".
So it helps a lot if there's something you want to say, or you can just come up with a story.
As an example, some time ago, Duskylli asked me to draw a woman with a broken umbrella. At first, I searched for reference of people under the rain (like dancing), and I wanted to convey an interesting motion of clothes projecting water (because I also wanted to paint things I've never painted before, to improve). But then, I began to think "why does this woman would have a broken umbrella? Maybe she doesn't need it, because she's not human. Maybe she's a ghost from an urban legend and she would only appear on rainy days, handing a broken umbrella to lost people". With this short story in mind, it helped determine a simple walking pose, and also I didn't want the viewer to be able to see her eyes and everything else beside her would be blurry, etc.