‘Create your own story’

Just to be clear, here's just my opinion!

Do you want to learn how to draw and paint realistically?

When people ask me my opinion about their artwork and progress or ask my opinion about the process of drawing in general. There is one important thing that cannot be overlooked enough and that is practice, practice and practice... Because indeed practice makes perfect.

Trust me, there are no shortcuts if you want to create a genuine, real piece of art.

Absorb your subject, study it, and try to tell a story with your artwork.

Think deeply about what you would like to say.

Forget about tracing or projecting on canvas because you'll get a few lines in the 'right' place, sort of, but it doesn't take you to the next level. This way you won't learn to draw and you don't gain insight into the deeper creation of composition, the sense of sketching in a shape, anatomy, techniques, feeling for the subject and so on.

Sometimes you even hear people talking about cheating. (A corrective microphone or autotune doesn't turn someone who can't sing into a singer, and you don't win The Voice with it )

Or if you hire someone to write something for you (ghostwriter), you are not a writer either.

Just to say, look what I can do?! That's ego, and that's not what the creative process, or in art, is about, in my opinion.

A lot of people that project on canvas don't tell you that their work (that generated so many likes on Instagram) was actually a copy-paste job. I wonder why they wouldn't tell you that.

I've been hearing this dilemma for more than 20 years now. What is the point of pretending to be a great sketchartist or oilpainter?

This is one of the reasons why I show my entire process from start to finish. From the first searching sketch to the end result of a painting. Not only on camera, but also for a live audience.

In my opinion there is too much fake stuff in this world.

Of course if you enjoy copying other artist or project on canvas because it is relaxing and fun, than by all means do that. But at least be honest and transparent about it.

So I don't like tracing, or printing, a shopped photo and putting a signature under it... which also happens. Or have it painted in another continent and put a signature on it after it has been delivered.

I usually recognize a projected work immediately.

Making art, painting, sculpting... it is a profession.

Which, if you want to do it right, needs effort and energy to make it work.

It is not for a good reason that there are a lot of good and challenging courses for this.

The same goes for copying a photo exactly, if you always rely only on a photo, you lose that spontaneous feeling and it doesn't help you grow as an artist.

You will not have the real 3D experience of drawing or painting.

Using photos as a refenrence to study your subject and it's shape can be very helpful, but not as a 1 on 1 copy.

Again, there is no such thing as a shortcut in creating art and it doesn't tell a great story.

Try creating a story and not duplicating someone else's.

Often it is the inspiration of someone else who actually took the photo.

I could write an entire article about showing off other people's feathers.

(Of course, this does not entirely apply to people who make assignments for, for example, pets and who are sometimes no longer there. And also as a technique / learning process it can be another story)

Final conclusion:

-Do what you like most.

-If you want to learn to draw and paint (better) take lessons and don't project, because you simply don't learn anything from it.

-Practice, practice, practice.

-And be unique in your own creative story.