Variety in art is something I never really thought about in the past, I just drew what I was always drawing and never really looked at it from different angles.. And now variety is so important and fun to me. It would even be important to me if I wouldn't share my work online. It's just important to me, as an artist. But wait what do I mean with "Variety"?

Alright to give an example, I want you to look at two different art collages I did.

Who I drew there and the styles are unimportant. What I mean and want you to look at is what the character's on each image are doing. Which collage do you personally think has more variety, the first, or the second one?

As you may have noticed second one only features portraits. The first one however features different poses and different level details. Fullbodies, poses, even story telling. Well, not everyone likes to draw the same stuff obviously. Someone might love portraits the most and another person likes drawing stick figures. But either way I definetely see lag of variety A LOT when I browse art. I seem to notice a pattern of people being too repetitive, and people who ask for advise on their work often get this tip from me as well. Because trying different things and building a more interesting portfolio is just so much more fun than constantly drawing the character's head facing left or right.

Especially headshots seem to be what a lot of people do and love. (which is fine) but after some time it becomes quite boring in my opinion. I don't enjoy looking at someones gallery nearly as much when every single artwork seems like a reused sketch. You can make a character so much more interesting with more variety as well. Even if you are bad at poses. It doesn't have to be perfect, just try it!

If I start a new piece, my first thought is: "I want it to be interesting". And when I do that, I don't pressure myself at all with it. It´s more fun than anything else. With something challenging and creative, I know I will like the result and the background behind the artwork A LOT more after, rather than drawing the same face again for the 394759393th time because I don't step out of my comfort zone. If you haven't considered this before, try it out. Perhaps you will be way happier with your work and gallery.

• Go out of your comfort zone
• Give your art emotions
• Draw different poses and work with different angles
• Push yourself a little and try complex perspective
• avoid sticking too much to a repetitive pattern all the time. (poses, expressions, angles, views, sizes)

Shading can be a tricky thing. And often, it can even ruin the piece instead of improving it. What you use and how you use specific techniques is what makes bad and good shading. I often see hate on airbrush shading. But in almost all my work is airbrush shading. Did you know that? Airbrush shading can be used wrong, I have seen in thousands of times. Practice makes perfect. The most important thing is knowing how to place it. The most common issue I see when airbrush shading was used is placing the shading too intense and along the outlines of the whole character figure instead of paying attention to the light source. This often gives a dark,dirty look rather than nicely done shadows. The same goes for not making it smooth enough / being too messy with it.

Celshading on the other hand is often the more simple, less bad solution for many. I myself use it occationally, but never without any mixes. Mixed shading techniques is something that really makes my art pop. If I wouldn't do it the way I do it or leave out a few steps, I can say for sure it would look a little meh, haha. If you are curious how I go about my work > flat color > airbrush shading > celshading/often more painterly > lighting > highlights/detail > textures > coloring outlines(if any) > filters such as noise/ very gentle gradient on top for perfect mood > done. My steps vary of course but that's the most common things I do.

Generally shading is something that makes art so much nicer, if you got a solid style for it. You can set moods, athmosthere and so much more rather than sticking to flats only, unless you wanna work with flats only for specific projects.

• experiment & try different techiques
• try to analyse other peoples styles
• don't be too gentle with shadows
• set a clear lightsource before you shade and highlight
• avoid very high and low detail in one piece which is meant to be detailed, it will appear strange

Huh? not caring? Yea! Most small oppsies aren't important. The stuff you only see when you zoom in to max. (Altought I tend to fix even the tiniest detail for a smooth result). However things like white spots because the bucket tool hasn`t filled everything, are kinda a thorn in my eye. It takes two seconds to fill that 3 white spots in and it would look so much better too.

Not connecting lines, unless it`s nice and loose on purpose, wobbly lines or overlapping lines which should be ereased. No line variation, no smooth ends. Pretty much any app has a few line settings. You can get a much cooler pen for your lines if you mess around a bit. Things like messy lines, loose styles can all work, if done right and if you have built a decent skilllevel. Loose doesn't mean good quality and the same goes for pretty much any style and detail level.

I wanted to give paintings it`s own section to talk about. Paintings are one of my favorite things to do (for years now) and whenever new peps are trying to paint. I often see the same repeating issues, which I used to do as well.

I´ll use furries here to explain, especially fur is something I see poorly drawn and all over the place very often, humans not so much. (or well, at least lineless furry art seems to be more popular). So, I want you to look at this old icon from 2016, as well as this little umbreon. These were mainly my beginings with making lineness artwork.

It´s save to say, these are ugly, or well, at least pretty flat. However at that time, they looked great to me. But the fur just looks wrong and has no detail at all. The eyes have no depth and stare at nothing, the shading isn`t right and close to none existing. The shape of the eyes and tongue are wonky.

Now I want you to look at these which are more recent. The texture is there, the shading and depth as well. What I have done different? Well It's just practice really and finding out how paintings and dynamic rendering works, which is a lot of fun to practice for me.

This kind of improvement does not happen within days. Paintings are a very complicated thing to learn, and especially if done messy can end up pretty awful. But if you got the hang on it, it`s very fun to do. My number one tip for painting fur ( or painting in general) is finding the right brush(es) for it. I personally don't use custom fur brushes. I paint each individual stroke by hand. I simply like it more and can control the fur and flow a lot more. I love using my hard watercolor brush with fade in-out ends and pressure sensitivity which mixes slighly to paint the fur strokes. NO other brush I messed around with ever gave me a better result.

I use pretty much the same technique in human art, or hair and clothing. Working with watercolors. Putting in some depth, contrast and texture. For things like grass. clouds, leaves, I even use custom brushes sometimes and try to let them fit in with the rest. I tend to not use custom brushes too much tho, because it often gives off a copy paste look, which I personally feel like looks very unbalanced.

Look up photos, reference from there, look at the shadows and how much contrast they can have. Often we are way too gentle with that and the piece ends up flat. Especially in lineless paintings it is very important to have contrast and defined shapes.

Paintings 1.1

The thing with lined character + lineless background

One thing I see commonly done, and which I love to do as well sometimes, is lining only the character in a scene and the background being lineless. It's a style choice I really like, however I often see it done poorly, which is pretty normal if you aren't strong at lineless rendering. One very specific example: character in a forest. Trees are often flat, have no texture, airbrush shading. It just doesn't look realistic. Here is a tutorial I quite like. It also shows textures really well. But textures can be done in many ways.