Top 7 Digital Painting Mistakes

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CREDITS:

Script - Court Jones

Music Used with Permission
Intro - The Freak Fandango Orchestra
Additional music by Epidemic Sound

About Proko:
Instructional How to Draw videos for artists. My drawing lessons are approachable enough for beginners and detailed enough for advanced artists. My philosophy is to teach timeless concepts in an entertaining way. I believe that when you are having fun, you learn better. I take pride in producing high quality videos that you will enjoy watching and re-watching.

[ProkoTV]

Are you a sinner? Which of these mistakes do you make? What mistakes did we miss?

[firos_kofi]

Oh man... This video can lead to some missinterpretation.
1- You don't need to get into oil watercolor or acrilics to start and develop a strong style in digital.
2- You can do an entire semi finished artwork with 2 or 3 brushes. Usually you start playing around with them at the final steps when 95% of the piece is done to add texture and variations.

[graphosxp]

One artist will follow these tips and have great success. Another artist will follow these tips and ruin his art.

[Burntshmallow]

I fundamentally disagree with the notion that you have to be a good painter to be a good digital painter. That's like saying "Okay, but they haven't really experienced true ink unless they've made a wood print”. People absolutely, 100% can become an excellent digital painter without any prior experience with painting, and saying otherwise is demonstrably incorrect, and harmful for artists who want to get into digital painting.

[WojtekTrybus]

I have to admit that this is probably the first Proko video that I actually didn't like. As I admire undeniable skill and experience of the artist, the tips themselves feel very subjective and focused on minor flaws. It feels like you need to use wacom, photoshop and lots of different brushes and stuff to create, which don't feel right. As traditional media can have great impact on skills and teach a lot, it's still quite ok for me to do them separately. Lots of beginners get distracted with a ton of brushes thinking it can make a change, while you can get everything with any single brush if you know the fundamentals. Instead of avoiding monotony in something as minor as brush choice maybe one should try other things and topics to draw, different approaches. Adding light and shadow with pure black and white, or trying to color without understanding values feels quite more important than doing most of these sins. This video just seems to force one way of drawing, slightly depreciating others. It's probably just my personal feeling about it, but I still think Proko can be better than that...

Agree with the airbrush thing though.

[deadeaded]

Using small brushes for everything is another big one I see a lot.

[SuperStarexai]

Sin -> Zooming in and working on details before the piece is fleshed out!

[mevarty]

The point about traditional media is just wrong. You say that when people paint on canvas they develop taste and style but the same happens when you paint digitally. Digital, traditional... these are just media. A good artist can make a good drawing with a stick on sand beacause they mastered fundamendals that are aplicable to any medium. Sure, you have to learn how to use your tools, things will be different when you use watercolours, or pencils, or an ipad but the same fundamentals of colour, light, value, anatomy etc. apply. Please, don't join this ridiculous discussion on which medium is more superior. You can develop your style and sensibility drawing digitally and your digital art is not good because it looks like traditional art.

I liked the points about carelessness, soft brushes or backgrounds. These were simple and practical tips on really common problems. Experimenting with brushes is also good but it can be overwhelming to beginners who often think that a good brush will make their art look good. This is why it is often recommended to use those default basic brushes before jumping to the more fancy ones. Th colour picker tool is just a tool, the trick is to learn how to use it properly.

[WolfGirlRider]

There are way too many exceptions to these rules, and I fear new artists will take them as gospel.

For instance, colour picking can be really helpful in figuring out what is happening with light.

[TheYoghurt]

I would add three other pieces of advice for relatively new digital artists:
1. Don't zoom in too close to your painting until the whole canvas is covered in colour. Even towards the end as you start to zoom in more, keep zooming out to check the whole image is still cohesive. Far too often beginner artsts create too much contrast in small details and spoil the effect of the whole.
2. Use the biggest brush you can to do the job. This is a tip stolen from traditional painting, but it applies to digital too. Often in the pursuit of precision, artists will use a very small brush to try to cover a large area. This creates a scratchy, rough, and distinctly ameteur look.
3. Don't paint your shadows black and your highlights white, or use the burn/dodge tool for shading. This comes down to learning a bit about colour theory and what is called hue shifting. Essentially, your shadows and highlights should differ not just in value, but in hue too, or else your whole painting will look lifeless. For example, with a warm source of light the highlights may lean more towards yellow, while the shadows are more blue-ish.

[anyanP]

Completely disagree with #5. It's COMPLETELY FINE to start digitally. It's cheaper (free/low cost programms can be as good as "professional" ones and there are decent tablets even under 200$, to paint traditionally you need to spend A LOT of money to buy decent art supplies) and cleaner. There is no difference in developing your style digitally or traditionally. It is easier to go from traditional to digital, but if a person want to draw only digitally there aren't any drawbacks. There even benefits: not wasting time adapting to digital, not feeling frustration from seeing how half of the skills are useless now and you have to learn painting basicly from the square one.
Also, about #6. Depends on the style. Default brushes are VERY useful for the begginers. They might be not as fancy as custom ones, but they get the job done.

[tatatorterra]

This video feels more like someone trying to impose personal tastes on other people than helpful advices for newbies.

[Yamshabass]

For many of these you could find a top artist who does it, and has great success with it. I would take this advice with a pinch of salt.

[rcpainter]

Most of what you say is very subjective but you talk as if it's "Gospel" with an air of "arrogance" I'm sorry to say. Aaron Blaise is an amazing artist and animator and there are plenty of his youtube videos where he uses the brushes that come with Photoshop. He even has some videos where he exclusively uses the airbrush to paint, granted for conceptual stuff. Still maybe an airbrush look and style is what the artist is going for, ever consider that?


Also I, myself coming from a traditional oil, acrylic, gouache, watercolor background, don't agree at all that one should or even "needs" to learn to paint using these mediums before going digital. Oil, acrylics, watercolors are merely "mediums" no different than the "medium" of digital art. So long as the artist understands the principles of value, edges and color harmony that's all they need to understand and apply digitally. I had to learn that the "medium" of oil requires a very different approach than the "medium" of watercolor and even "gouache" and "acrylics". Digital painting requires a different approach as well. Personally I find digital painting a little more complicated since the colors don't naturally blend or mix as easily digitally. You have to futz with the blending or edges (almost a little like acrylics) and even the control one has with values traditionally seem more difficult to achieve digitally. In any case I don't see the relevancy.


You also refer to the use of the color picker as "cheating" but I have to ask, as opposed to what? What's "not" cheating? I realize "why" you "feel" that it's "cheating" when an artist merely and exclusively uses the color picker and not exercising observation and some "skill" in color mixing but I can't go so far as to "criticize" the practice. I think you're just using your personal prejudice and I get it, especially when you're an artist that has worked so hard on learning through practice and effort in achieving a certain mastery in using these skills, seeing someone simply "color picking" can be cause for irritation. Nevertheless calling the use of this tool a "sin" or "wrong" or "cheating" is simply a prejudiced opinion I feel. An oil painter who I consider a master by the name of Richard Schmid can be found many times, after mixing his colors, comparing the color on his palette knife against the still life he's painting. He'll take the knife with color on it and place it right next to a flower to be sure the color or color temperature is "correct", is that "cheating" even if he's till mixing the colors before hand? While that's not technically using the "color picker" it's in essence what he's doing. (If you've ever seen his work you can't tell me he's not a master in his craft). There's nothing inherently wrong with using the color picker to at least help the artist determine the temperature of certain colors or even help the artist determine the general color harmony of the piece they're painting. For instance, determining just how "white" the highlights are on a piece for example. A beginning artist can learn a lot from this technique when they're surprised to learn that the highlight on that nose is actually a magenta violet color and not white or even a light gray. In any case it's the artist's choice and if it helps them achieve what they're trying for then good for them. Norman Rockwell most times used a Balopticon to do his canvas drawings and did amazing work. Some may "argue" he was "cheating" too but that implies that ANYONE can do great works of art simply by "tracing" or "color picking" etc. That's not really true. There still needs to be some skill to make those "conveniences" work for you.


In general I think a video like this needs to have more of an "encouraging" or "suggestive" tone verses a tone that serves more to discourage artists especially beginning artist. Nothing wrong making them "aware" of certain things they may want to "watch" for but using terms like Laziness, Delusional, Cheating etc. may not be the best choice of words if you're trying to "help" one wanting to improve as an artist, is all I'm saying.

[Dragonknight]

Sorry Court, I've missed the ending, so some of the comments should be taken more as opinion pieces rather than minor critiques.
Some comments on the sins:
7. Carelessness: In most cases correct.
6. Settling: There is a video by Sinix that explains how default brushes (round brush?) can be very useful in learning to paint when someone is a beginner. First learn to use default brushes and when you feel comfortable with them switch to a broader pallete. If from the beginning you start using fancy brushes you will just go the route of asking what brush a particular artist is using (Hello, Ahmed!).
5.Impatience: I do not understand how style is particularly translatable from real to digital but not the reverse? Or are you implying in the comment about doing both digital and real at the same time that the reverse (digital to real) is possible? I do not see why it should be onesided. You can do pretty much anything in digital that painting in reality can do, and even more. Arguments like you can not erase in reality, or you can not transition from digital to painting in reality, seem rather silly arguments that people mention a lot of times. Anyhow, I do not have to mention that there are great artists with great styles that only work in digital. Oh, also I just noticed that you mentioned in 2. about style in digital painting so I am now even more puzzled about the end all be all message of this section.
4. Laziness: Some of the flat color backgrounds can be used to great effect depending on the situation but in general an abstract background can add a lot to a painting. For example you mentioned that white is a good choice for a flat background which reminded me how Leyendecker used simple white as an abstract background.
3.Self-delusion Mostly true but you can still archive good results with only an air brush. Ross Draws used it on one of his paintings which, as he mentioned, was harder to use but ended with the same product as usual.
2. Monotony: Do not indulge in this one too much but with time, as Court mentiones, you will get to a style. The reason why you should not mingle with too many brushes at the same time is because you have to find your own limitations. In this manner you inflict a restriction that leads to creativ usages that you could not archive with limitless means. Think of Zorn and his limited pallete that gave a wide breath of expression to his pictures.
1. Sample: Use it to check on your hue, saturation, etc in contrast to your own choices, or use the picked colors to study more deliberately. For example pick the whole specturm of colors that a picture has and study it on the color wheel and sliders. With that you will be able to transition from one situation to another by using similar values, colors, etc...

[stanrastogi]

Completely disagree with calling it impatience to go to digital media quicker or before traditional media. Paint supplies are hella expensive, but digital can work out relatively much cheaper considering most people already own a computer for other purposes.

[Mitiya__ua]

Imo one of biggest mistakes, most newbie artists do- coloring shades and lights with a same color and just different tones, instead picking different colors. It makes picture dirty and unrealistic

[StormEngineer]

#7 - I'm in a bunch of places full of hundreds of beginners and/or self-taught people and I've never seen anyone do that. Seems like an awfully specific and arbitrary mistake for being in a top 7 listing.
#6 - OH GODS NO... Probably the #1 biggest delusion in digital art is that brushes are the key to good art - and you are just reinforcing this horrible, horrible delusion. WHY...
#5 - I partly agree. I think that it is beneficial to learn some traditional stuff first, it gives you a feel that will help you in digital. So I absolutely recommend everyone to try trad. But it is not by any means a prerequisite for getting good and absolutely not a prerequisite of developing a unique style! Sorry, but I feel you gave the good advice here but with the wrong reasoning and in the wrong tone.
#4 - Once again, pretty arbitrary. Yes, that's something beginners tend to do but to be named a number 4 biggest mistake is weird, to say the least. There are several way bigger mistakes, that you don't even mention at all.
#3 - Yes, delusion is a common mistake but... how the hell did you manage to simply it all down to just soft brushes?! I don't see the connection or logic here. As for soft brushes, yes it's a common mistake, maybe I would even say it fits for a #3 on a top list if you just left the entire "delusion" narrative out, but I feel your explanation of why using only soft brush is bad is lacking to say the least, and you should have pointed out that soft brushes are not inherently evil and can used in a right way too.
#2 - That is a personal opinion framed as some universal truth. And it isn't. It is a matter of style and technique, some people can create nice and organic looking rendering using a single brush, others find the multiple brush workflow better for them personally. It's a choice. Just because you are the type of artist for whom varying brushes works better doesn't make it a universal truth.
#1 - ...Seriously? From all the actually serious, big, common mistakes you chose brainless color picking as your #1? Yes it is an issue, but your choice is arbitrary, and your reasoning just sounds all wrong. To be honest for every beginner who does this I see 20 others who are just trying to come up with colors from scratch without ever looking at a reference or having the slightest clue about color theory, and that is way bigger of an issue than brainless color picking IMHO.

And what about not using reference? Trying to sketch with 2D shapes instead of thinking in 3D volumes? Mistaking lack of understanding how something works with style choice? Not checking relative proportions? Stiffness in gesture? Over-detailing? Bad composition? Using same values for everything? Painting highlights and shadows with pure white and black? Pillow shading? Inconsistent light directions? Forgetting perspective? Making up excuses when receiving criticism, or not asking for criticism? Lack of color harmony? I could go on... and on... and on...

There are so many common big mistakes you could and should have picked instead.

I'm sorry Court, I like you and Proko but this is gonna be the first ever Proko video that I'm giving a thumbs down.

[imaajfpstnfo]

Caricatures are the worst sin, by far.

[reym]

this seemed more like an ad with the video as an afterthought. most of the sins were rather subjective in my opinion.