Artist pet peeves master thread

ok but genuinely i get so sad seeing people charge only like $5 when they're selling more elaborate pieces; sure it can give way to more commissions but at the same time you'd likely be overworking yourself for like. the price of a starbucks drink. my brothers in christ yall gotta raise your prices more than that 😭

Using references is good and all and can really help you improve at drawing a certain thing, but relying too heavily on references still exists. For example, I know this person at school who always uses references and straight up can’t draw without them, and most of the time their art is copy-paste of someone’s existing drawing online. Just today we were having free time after a test, could draw but not use devices, and since they didn’t have any reference to use they just started redrawing one of their existing drawings exactly the same djwkwkkdd. I suppose it’s fine if you’re just drawing for fun or maybe starting out, but if you want to take art seriously, it’s important to take that next step and learn to draw from your imagination/memory as well. It’s practically an essential skill to develop. 

But anyway they still get paid 10$ by people to draw stuff sooo… maybe I’m in the wrong lol. 

"help i literally did two studies and I'm not an expert on this, i'll never be able to draw"

mf it takes time. like, a lot of time. many, many hours, many references, many drawings.

Right so I have something that’s really really specific to me and if anyone else feels the same way please let us chat :))

So, I want to get into making dumb comics about like.. politics and history but not in the PolandBall way if that makes sense? I love PolandBall but I want to differentiate between different people and groups and parties without the flag issue, and not actually being people. Think of more… drawn Horrible Histories style, but with more terrible medieval-looking stuff. 

speaking of medieval bible artwork.. I want to change my style to that so badly! They look so amazing and so funny but also really really cool?? But I’m so scared no one will like it if i do that because of how “badly drawn” and “inaccurate” the anatomy is, and just the general vibe of the artwork looks “bad” (see: medieval egg horse). I so want to draw my stupid funny dragon-people in this style - I’d love to draw Harold in a Bayeux Tapestry way, without the “tapestry” part - but I don’t want to be seen as a bad artist or someone who won’t improve because they draw in a typically “bad” way. it is bad art, but that’s what I like about it, it’s bad in the cool and history way!

It really bothers me when people want to hold artists accountable for the actions of their clients. There are many artists who are ignorant of the political climate in the United States or countries outside of their own, who are doing their best to earn a buck with their skills and who very likely have lives outside of the internet to care about. Guilt by association is absolute bullshit in the art community, so unless it can be proved otherwise, an artist shouldn't be considered an enabler for whatever a client does, especially if the art the client has gotten from them is unrelated to anything nasty or political. What I want to say with this is that if an artist sells an adoptable and it ends in the hands of an awful person, the artist is in no moral obligation to take any accountability for it. They may disassociate from the client, blacklist them, or take whatever measures, but the artist has the right to remain innocent in the situation.

Now, if the artist is asked to do some clearly despicable things such as portray pedophilia, zoophilia, or so, that's where they can be held accountable, but depending on the case, I would always give them the benefit of doubt, unless it is a repeated behavior.

TL; DR: People should stop cancelling artists only based off their client's behavior when they have no control over it. Also they're just getting art, not a damn gun, there shouldn't be need for an artist to do background check or be considered irresponsible for not doing it.

maybe its just me growing up only really knowing how to use medibang but like... when art programs count flipping the canvas/hiding/unhiding a layer as an undo/redoable move. i like to use undo/redo to make comparisons based on what i like better and when the undo/redoing includes stuff like flipping the canvas, it makes it pretty annoying

I'm not sure if other people have dealt with this, but for some reason, my mom likes to say stuff like, "An artist should __" /"Real artists need to__" to me often despite her not being an artist. Or non artists in general telling me what I, as an artist, should be doing. 

Btw I'm not referring to critiques, I mean habits. For example, my mom out of nowhere lectured me on keeping my art supplies clean because I put my paint brushes and paints in the shed since I wasn't going to use them for a while. It just feels very, condescending in a way.

Oh, I haaaaaaaaaaate that. ^

Or artists of one media telling artists of another medium what to do. Big one for me is whenever I do colored pencil or crayon art and people go and point out the white spotting on my art...which is literally just because I don't have access to good colored pencil paper. You're going to get spotting if your paper's not good quality. And it's always artists that only do digital doing that. 

Also, like...gatekeeping shading. So what if I like to do greyscale...so do a lot of the art youtubers I watch.....and their art turns out awesome. It's not that it's even bad...you just have to know what you're doing. Like every other technique!

people following you for your 6 years old ass art. I have this issue on any site I still have my old art on. they like every old shit post and not a single recent one. I´m not going to force you to like my recent art. But why follow when you don´t care about my new content at all. pointless.

If your response to a fanartist whitewashing a character/drawing them too skinny/etc. is to “fix” the art by drawing over their work and reposting it, you are the shittier person regardless of whatever the artist originally drew.

Ngl I dislike it when I post art I put a lot of work into that happens to include an animal on two legs and all people have to say about it is "haha furry" and that's it. I almost preferred when people just replied "nice!" to my art lol. I think in general it kinda bothers me when people refer to my anthro characters as furries, especially since to me they're just characters. Mac, Doctor Marvello, Johnny, etc... they're all characters and not furries in my eyes. I know most people wouldn't know that and I don't blame them, but it's still a little frustrating when instead of saying something nice they just feel some weird need to point out the anthro animal in the piece. I don't get it.

Hard to swallow pill for some people. If their """"critique""" is:

• Vauge and doesn't directly point out what's wrong or how to fix it
  
• About style instead of technical
  
• Exclusively about negatives & how the piece "fails"
  

^ Unfortunately, thats how a lot of my class critiques go. People are just too afraid to give good critiques because some quacks might react badly or they just don't know what to say. 

Re: Pseudo harsh critiques. Yeah, especially when they're mainly nitpicks or a matter of personal taste.

Similar to that: People telling others how to spend their money and which artists to commission, it's okay to have recommendations, but saying that you should buy from X instead of Y is just wrong when it comes to commissions. Same when people promote their adoptables and others reply with "I could do a better design" or any variation of "I don't know why people buy these". The art community is supposed to elevate itself, not tear itself apart! Comments like these are so vile.