Thank you for watching! Remember, a lot of these are just my opinions so don't be pressured to change your art because I said something negative. Different things work for different people! Also, no, I'm not becoming a tiktok react channel. I'm just experimenting with video topics!

I mean its important for digital artists to understand color theory even if they use blending modes. Understanding why unexpected colors work in certain circumstances is great and helps you be more expressive with color. It works best if you can thoughtfully pick a funky color and roll with it rather than just relying on blending modes. You can add more nuance & appreciate traditional art more for the work *they* have to do to get certain colors

the "tracing to study not bad" take is sooooo crazy overdone lmao. when I'm starting a new drawing I will trace over a reference to get a feel for the pose I'm using and then I will draw it myself using what I observed from tracing. it absolutely has its merits and to most artists its common sense that its fine as long as you dont claim its yours

5:28 I actually didn't know that most digital artist relied on layer effects. I tend to just desaturate, darken and shift the hue of colors to get the shadow effect I want. It's more satisfying that way imo. But, maybe that's just from my time using traditional painting mediums, hah.

5:38 i dont think I've ever heard someone so passionately mad before like this

Also something for the symmetry tool, I use it actually for sketch purposes, if I am drawing a pose or face that is symmertrical to a degree. Because I am using iot for a sketch I can get Arm/leg positions, or general fave shape symmetrical while not making it look unnatural to my own style

7:48 you could always use custom brushes as a base/guide and then edit em out to make the hairstrands actually fit with the drawing

I feel like being told not to use overly saturated colors, shade with black, shade with blue etc. really ruined my painting process because while yeah it might apply to the more mainstream social media art style with lineart and stuff it DEFINITELY won't apply to a proper painting because real lighting is so much more malleable than that

5:12 I'm very happy that someone is so passionately mad about this too LOL. I've always hated when people make these kinds of videos talking about color theory, making it seem so complicated and making beginners confused and afraid of it. I find them funny bc they also don't teach anything that could be useful, they're just making a fuss out of it and being like "omg i cant believe that this red color is not actually red!!" like bro be for real.

Tiktok artists giving tips: "Things i wish i knew when i was a beginner artist! - to get better at drawing i have to draw"

I'm actually glad you covered black hair styles, im black myself, and i do agree with your take on those custom brushes. I have a few characters that have black hair styles like that and i don't think i would personally use them either because of your reason. Thank you for covering this!

9:58 I know it’s a bad example for this but its like that one family guy skit when Lois says “9/11 was bad” and everyone claps

About the color theory- 5:24 GOD FREAKING THANK YOU!!!! IVE BEEN SAYIN’ THIS FOR SO LONG YET PEOPLE ARE STILL BAFFLED BY THIS!!

I'm the freak that likes to draw lots of complicated stupid details by hand because I find a weird zen in it - but I don't find issue with the custom brushes. HOWEVER - a big tip that my friend and I have discovered is that it's actually better to use the custom brushes on a separate layer to get the general shapes/direction/etc then lower the opacity and on a new layer draw over it. You're gonna get a more natural line variance while you're tracing and you can make small edits as you go to make it actually work more with your natural drawing style.

8:20 the symmetry tool can also make your characters cross eyed sometimes and in general i wouldnt use the symmetry tool for anything but logos and items

I think with the colour theory craze, it's more meant for beginner artists who don't know you're actually layering on another colour and bend over backwards tryna figure out how and why the "blue" looks the way it does and then when they eyedrop it it's actually some desaturated shade.

Symmetry tool is useful for character sheets, especially if you're going to make a 3D model of it for something like a game or animation. But even so, you're not going to use it 100% of the time, since a lot of characters have asymmetric traits. But as a standalone art piece, yes, like you said, it doesn't look that great. (might work as a profile pic tho)

4:38 THIS IS SO TRUE! When it comes to my art, I’m good at drawing girls but not guys but that doesn’t make me a bad artist! You don’t have to learn how to draw everything to be considered a good artist. Creating art is supposed to be fun and it’s okay if you just draw the same thing as long as you are comfortable and enjoying it :)

on art tracing as a form of study - you'll learn more if you trace photo references or even 3D models rather than other's illustration.

my art hot take: line quality doesnt matter on the sketch layer. put all your energy getting the weight and smoothness on the inking, the lines people will actually see not the guidelines they wont. sketch layer is all about composition posing and form

Yeaaah idk about that color theory take. If I'm putting a blue object in a warm space I'm picking out that pinkish purple on the color wheel. Personally I find it a lot more fun and rewarding knowing I'm not at mercy to my program. I don't think it's pretentious to know what you're doing. Blending modes are a great tool for beginners/casual artists tho

You're still supposed to understand color theory even if you're a digital artist only imo. Over relying on blending modes and not understanding how light affects objects can seriously stunt your artistic endeavors.

I don't know if you're an older artist or a younger artist. I'm an older artist. I think a lot of the reason the color theory stuff is trending is because younger artists are not doing digital art the same way as we did when we grew up. Traditionally digital artists learned with a lot of layers, inking, etc. A lot of younger digital artists now work on just one or a few layers. Inking/lining is not even that popular anymore compared to the past. A lot of them are actually working more like a traditional physical painter if anything. In that regard, they aren't really doing the whole 'shading on another layer and messing with opacity/layer style'. With this in mind they will run into those issues with picking the right shading colors when attempting different hues of light etc, so those kind of videos are useful for them.

3:50 i can kind of agree with your take here. If you just copy the 3d model without much change, its def going to look pretty stiff. Its why i now use the 3d model more of a guide line now instead of straight up tracing it. I think there is def a bad way and a good way of using 3d models for your art

I guess it's just me but I agree with the color one. Yes you could rely on blending modes nothing wrong with that but it helps you a lot what colors to choose if you understand how they interact with each other and with different lighting scenarios. Sycra has a great video about this and I didn't understand it at first either but the more you draw and the more you look and study at art the less confusing it becomes.

Seeing you mald over the "colour theory" one left me in stitches omg

I've still got lots to learn when it comes to making art Which is why I avoid TikTok tutorials, I feel like there's too many false or bad advice for me to use that would slow me down

You can use 3D models without it being super stiff or lacking exaggeration. I use 3D models all the time, simply because I find it easier to keep track of general proportion (I can draw without them. If I don't find them helpful for that piece I simply will not use them) but you cannot rely on them for all of your anatomy and need to understand how the body works and how to exaggerate to really utilize them well. Lots of professional artists with very fluid art use them all the time. Same thing for custom brushes: if you understand how they are used and which applications are best for it, you can use them to enhance the piece and save time. What makes a difference between an intermediate or beginner artist and a high level artist is understanding how to best use them and incorporate them into the picture so it all fits together seamlessly. Also not all digital artists rely on layer blend modes. I try to use them sparingly because I find it way too easy to get muddy colors from it where as before I tried to do like, all multiply or something. If I'm completely at a loss I'll just slap a multiply or overlay layer on but I try to do it intentionally. Understanding color theory and hand picking colors does do a lot to improve your drawings with your ability to understand light and shadow and how to make cohesive pictures.

You said you don’t normally make content like this, but I actually find your commentary to be really interesting and entertaining since our art styles are so different and the tutorials don’t help me specifically! :D

6:53 "The human eye is very good at capturing patterns..." | || || |_

I too hate TikTok.

Picking good colours to begin with will always look better than slapping a blending mode layer over the top imho. You get way more control and fhen you can use blending modes for enhancements or the curves tool to help unify stuff. ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯ getting mad at people showing what good colour theory looks like is kinda wild lol

7:26 for costume hair brushes like these, I find that people often go in and fix the highlights and shading and add to the finer details later. :)

For me, one of the biggest bad art advice I've been fed is every line has to be a lone one and you're not allowed to layer or use multiple because that's chicken scratching and bad. For a long time I was using line art so clean it was dead and empty of personality. It made art worse for me and as a person with Tourette's Syndrome, made art very frustrating and difficult. Since then I've let my line art be looser and I began to realise something. My work resembled a manga style much more closely because *gasp* most of the greats don't even abide by this! Hatching on the edges of thicker lines, allowing for flexes and forms of muscles to be scratchy to resemble skin stretching, hair having several rough lines to break it up, etc, all gave my work more personality. Of course it's important to learn line confidence to come degree but if you're an illustrator and not an animator and focus heavily on line art, please please please experiment with looser lines and see if it fits. I've never liked inking more than I do now and my stabilisation on my brush now constantly fluctuates to accommodate different aspects.

Bro got really upset over colors lmao

this is the realest art critique video

All of his Pain in one video

I'm glad you pointed out some of the stupid stuff that tiktoks do all the time LMFAOO

During the whole video it felt like bro was done with life lmao

My two cents (hope ya don't mind, its not necessarily negative): Lineart: I literally rely on the lineart in my work. It often make or breaks my piece. Its part of why I love doing it so much. I know if my lineart is good, then my finished piece will likely look EVEN BETTER. "Stamps"/F2U Bases: Okay, this is iffy. I SOMETIMES use bases... but not the base itself. First, I ask the artist if its okay to change some things to make it more unique (say it has a theme), and then if they agree, I tailor it to my style and then build around it. It helps me learn more about that kind of style so to say (I mostly use it for adoptables - if allowed - or experimentation). Other than that, I agree with pretty much everything else you said! (Especially custom brushes, I only end up using half cause like... its not MY thing? They are cool, but they never go with my style at allll. Eh, if you wanna sell your brushes, go for it, just personally seems a waste for me, I love the learning process). Lovely video btw! 💕💕

No I'm w/ you on that color theory one! It's so damn stupid and annoying! Especially from digital artists. It's like the least impressive thing ever. Like sure I just do nail art, but figuring how the colors are actually gonna look on top/next to each other before application is so very different. Can't "cheat" w/ layers modes and hue shifts on physical media. If they showed that "color theory is crazy" shit w/ physical canvas paintings, maybe I'll be impressed.

"just because you can't draw everything, doesn't men you're a bad artist!" As someone who cannot draw humans but hides that fact with really good drawings of lions, and somehow gets an A+ in art class, I can confirm this works. ("can you draw me" is my greatest fear, also I don't think my art teacher knows I can't draw humans because I avoid it like the plague when I'm around her.)

Can relate to the agression with the colour theory trend since so many times you try looking for tips about something you're struggling with and they're either skimmed, badly explained or presented in an infuriating way that makes you reject the advice

7:07 I remember in my illustration survey class, I accidentally called out someone who was using a custom flower brush, I think for their pattern. I asked if they might’ve cus it looked a little too neat and didn’t really look like anything of their style. Which let to a sort of ban of custom brushes for final pieces. Which fair. Cus this is a college class and it’s using someone else’s work, and at least for that brush, it sort of looked like a png of someone else’s line work or stamp of a flower.

We need more videos like this bro 😂😂😂 keep calling them out brother 🤝

i think the reason why people are making the “tracing is ok as long as you do it for yourself” take is bc i remember like a decade ago people had the whole “tracing is bad you’re garbage if you trace” mindset

Still important to understand the color theory behind it tho. Like yeah i get that digital art programs make it super simple thanks to layer styles but yknow,,,,,

9:10 "nobody's ever looking at the camera of their phone... just staring straight right at it" Anyone I've ever sent pictures to would disagree

I mean while it doesn't make sense in digital ary due to filters and colour tools it makes sense for a tutorial because someone watching might do traditional art. I dont see how its valueless knowledge for anyone to hsve whether they do digital art or not.

Tracing is still talked about a lot cuz a lot of folks still take commissions where they trace over everything….

5:24 I did use filters in the past but I moved away from using them during the drawing process because that was hindering my coloring ability and making my pieces feel desaturated and ashy. Nowadays I simply do an overlay filter on the finished product to give it a little glow or otherworldly feel. And I feel like most digital artists do the same. It feels to me like it’s very much a beginner kind of thing to be relying on filters to color. It’s something you grow out of in my opinion and I don’t think professional digital artists use it. At least personally I’ve never witnessed it 🤔

personally, despite the fact that I think I've watched at this point a hundred tiktok or instagram posts about tracing and when it's bad and good etc, I still don't mind it because even now, it spreads awareness to every new artist out there. digital art is still vastly different from other types of art and there are probably thousands of people who just started it last month, so I think it's good to see some basics get always trending :)

for the symmetry tool: completely agree with always giving an angle, but sometimes you just gotta, so this is how i use it I symmetry the base sketch, and then sketch over without symmetry. this helps to keep everything aligned and proportional (as when you draw a front facing face youre more likely to find a lopsided eye or something), but keeping it a perfect mirror can be boring. so once the structure is set, the sketch can get nice 'imperfections', or maybe uneven the expression. for the tracing part: this is more for the extremely newbie artists or even non-artists. i've seen people call out tracing artists as tracers and non-artists defending them, or newbies being like 'well yeah i traced it but i changed a couple of things so its fine'. i've seen people asking if tracing is actually bad or not. so yeah, some people just dont equate it to stealing unfortunately, or think they can get away with it until they get called out.

I still don't understand fancy layer tricks in digital art programs, so I manually pick all my colors. If it looks wrong, I just change it until it looks more accurate.

lol you had me until color theory and blending modes. Honestly, if you use blending modes and it makes sense for you that's great! I actually find it cool that adding a multiply layer with the color you want it to blend with makes the same effect (I never knew about it previously). But for me personally, I like hand picking my colors, which requires color theory knowledge. If you've ever done color studies, color relativity is really important to understand what is actually going on in an image. A beginner might view a color as blue and attempt to use it, only to find it looks wrong without understanding why. But then again, sometime I will just pick the actual color and use opacity/pen pressure to get the blend I'm looking for, which will still show up as that desaturated color when color picked.

I mostly see in ibis x global arts where people have bad lineart but good coloring which is totally opposite to my art my artline is good but coloring very bad i dont use any effect because i dont know anything about it 😆

6:00 finally someone fuckign says it LMFAOOO this shit is only impressive and interesting in traditional painting. In digital? wow you used the multiply filter???? hollyyy shit genius!!

I feel that problem with custom brushes. Every time I use one I wind up having to go back and edit the shading anyway because the result looks weird and displaced from my art style. 😅 It does save me time getting the base colors down, but it's not a one and done.

Tbh i feel like every artist should at least try to learn color theory and not just rely on blending modes, you can use them but learning actual color theory will help you understand WHY those blending modes work and how the colors interact with eachother No blending mode can save you from bad color choosing, color theory can.

"Tracing over people's art and claiming it as your own is bad." NO SH*T SHERLOCK!

I definitely HATE when people go so crazy over color theory. The people who make the videos pretend as if color theory is some big skill that they’ve mastered as an artist when in reality they literally just draw something and put a multiply layer over it. I totally agree, its stupid.

I actually started drawing anime quite recently and have to say your tutorial was the best. I've actually made pieces I'm happy with thanks to your guide. (also good brush pack).

This entire video says things I never knew I needed to hear and GOD it felt cathartic in a sense. Because someone actually debunks this stuff and gives the honest truth.

Ooohhh! I love the use of Meteor Herd in the intro. Really I love the usage of Sonic Adventure 2 music in this video!

9:05 one thing I’ve noticed is how lots of people say that symmetry=Beauty, when that’s not quite true- I find “easy on the eyes,” in a literal sense to be more accurate. Your eyes and brain don’t need to work. (The reason composition is important- you want the eye/attention of the viewer to move purposely through your art, not drift aimlessly, unless that is a deliberate choice) So in my experience, symmetry is best used in contrast to asymmetry- asymmetry draws attention, and therefore energy (no asymmetry, no energy, looks ’dead’), while symmetry is ‘peaceful’ or even boring, and are good for areas that will “funnel” attention to the asymmetry in your image.

It makes me mad that I used some 3-d models for part of my comic I'm glad I stopped

Welcome back to the land of the living comrade. We missed you.

I was expecting: "If I say anything you disagree with, pretend im right" Also the stuff you showed made me realize how good I am off not using tiktock

3:18 I'm glad that I'm finally found someone that talked about EVERY artist have their own art style. This is also the reason i barely used(tracing) those free to use hand drawing because it never fit my art style but i still download the pic because i still need it as a reference lol

for the niche practice of making vtuber models, the symmetry tool became my best friend. it’s almost never off in that specific case.

You have to be SA2 fan, with your song choices and that shadow picture, you can't hide from me!! Anyways, great video I'd love to see more of this!

It was so funny listening to the "color relativity ramble". HSAHs, he said its "pretentious" and "why do they make it look so complicated" and stuff and I'm like... It is heking fundamental color theory... yeah, "the mighty multiply layer" exists, but knowing the actual logical reasoning behind why it works as it does is 10 times more powerful. like, its hekin mind blowing he genuenly believes what he was saying in that part.

the blending mode rage is so real lmaooo, the reason I like digital art is because I don't need to go insane about color theory to shade a tiny lil doodle

The advice on sketching was quite helpful! I always wondered why sometimes the sketch never translate well to lineart, and how when I did more attempts, it tend to look better overall then the ones where i draw it once and try to lineart it right away, now thats in my head and i'll try to actively make more clearer sketches!

“Nobody’s ever looking at the camera of their phone staring straight at it.” Me who literally does: 💀

The thing about art is... There is no "bad" art. One man's trash is another man's treasure. Every artist has their own style but no style is better than the other. You might look at a piece of art that consists of literal random color splatters and id could be worth millions.

When I was in elementary my family told me that using references is horrible and that true art is drawn from imagination. I felt so bad about my art after that and stopped using any references to bridge gaps (e.g to figure out a pose) for a few years. Took all the fun out of art because every single project ended in frustration. Use references guys, expanding your visual library is essential in being able to draw anything well from imagination.

Just something I do, when drawing a character sheet, to get both sides I use the symmetry tool so I don't have to draw the thing again at a different angle.

I TOTALLY AGREE with the ‘color theory’ thingy. Like it being use to trick non-artist or beginner-artist. Finally someone talk about this The power of BLEND MODE not Color theory

Something else with direct head on drawings, I find that crossing the eyes just slight if you want to do a flat head on makes the character look more lively. Because alot of times when your eyes are focus to the front. They're not straight focused. Binocular vision works on an overlap, so most times a focus point will cause a little bit of physical eye crossing, especially the closer it gets to you. Kind of how doctors test for ocular muscle weakness by getting you to track a pen towards your nose and away again.

6:08 never really thought about it before when seeing people talk about color theory (but that might be because i havent seen many people talk about it like this) but honestly you are so fuckin real for that LOL

this video is fire, not only because you were spitting facts but also because of the sonic music ^ ^

ive gotten to a point where i could care less if someone is tracing art (* so long as its being used personally and for education yada yada,*) that id much rater find out someone is tracing my art because its good enough to be traced, than it be used in shit like A.I.

Bro is finally back 😭 YALL OUR FAVORITE ARTIST IS BACK 😭

I am still considering myself to be really bad at art, but yknow what I did when I was younger? I have redrawn some fanarts of characters I liked on paper, just by looking at them. And my friend also did the same thing. I think it kinda developed in me a little bit of an understanding of perspective and proportions. And, I have never put what I drew online, cuz obviously, plus I was too bad for that. Though my skills of drawing on paper prob won't help that much on digital art. Whatever. Don't be afraid of tracing someone else, just don't use your traced art as "original don't steal" stuff, might be better for you to try recreate the art, or possibly even the sketch. You may learn how to draw a different pose from tracing someone else.

7:06 Custom brushes don't work with every style. That brush, with a semi realistic style, it could possibly work with a few tweaks. But with a heavily stylized character, it can't Symmetry brushes could be used for references, but it can also lead to mistakes in the eye spacing when not done properly. It's a tricky tool Also be careful when tracing over real photos. People always forget to mention this. They could be licensed, photographers are artists too.

this is the first time ive heard someone get so mad they turn into zuko

for the color theory one it's perfectly normal for people transitioning from physical painting, which has been around for longer.

I use 3D models to help me with poses, but what I do isn't trace it. My style is very styllized bodies. So, what I do with the models, is draw my basic pose shape things (the block and stick and orb things) over it, delete the model, then use the shapes like I normally would when drawing.

A tip for custom brushes! Make them solid colors with no "built in" highlights or shading, and then manually shade and highlight. I used this technique (though I am a beginner-mediocre artist) and it looked much more lively and real.

bro is fighting against his inner demons

10:39 LMAOOOOO also the tiktok says "mimicking shapes is a good practice!!!" and they LITERALLY used that procreate tool to perfect the circle, where tf is the practice then? These ppl just wants to be called based, voice of reason, or feel like a moral jury cuz they never seem to put in practice their own self proclamated "good way" to do something.

TikTok: focus more on coloring Artist: *laughs in mangaka*

I often feel stupid for not understanding colour theory entirely, so it's good to know that these people who preach about it also just use overlays lmfao- I honestly try out colours for my traditional drawings on my tablet sometimes for this very reason. Nailing a colour in a very hued piece on the first try is almost impossible unless you're an expert, so instead of trying to be pretentious and ruining my piece in the process i much prefer to use that hack and have the drawing turn out better. It also does help me grasp colour theory, since I do think it's an interesting topic. But yeah, kind of overhyped in the community at the moment imo. When I look at drawings from 10 years ago nobody was doing this, even in environmental pieces. While I'm not saying it's useless or not pretty I do think it's become a trend that everybody feels they need to understand when really the reason this has even become such a huge this is overlays that do it for you. It's a good skill for sure, but not a must have.

the sonic adventure 2 music playing in the background is absolute gas. i played that game so many times ughhhhhhh

The thing with the custom brush is that it makes your draw look like if you copypasted something. You don't copy paste the eyes even if the perspective is the same, it will look exactly the same and it looks bad. Same thing applies to hair, you don't copypaste the lines because it looks repetitive.

Gripe 1: I think It's good to know the traditional approach to color in case a solar flare happens. I do also think it's pretty funny how with digital art it's heavily simplified due to blending and so people, totally hypothetical people, overthink things like color because they saw an overcomplicated explanation of color relativity that was more interested in physics than actually applying in a piece, which is hypothetical and definitely never happened to me!!! Gripe 2: Symmetry tool making a character look dead is a good thing if you're making turnarounds, which require neutral expressions, especially if it's gonna be used in a 3D modelling context. Definitely a bad idea for comics and normal illustrations. A personal bad tip: This may not be relatable to many here as it relates to 3D, but I was doing a sculpt not too long ago and decided to take a youtuber's advice and rely solely on remesh (quickly rebuilding a model at a specified resolution) for sculpting because it's "best for performance". It was not "best for performance". In fact, it basically forced me to stop working on the sculpt because by the time I got to the body, remeshing started to freeze my entire computer. It also fused the characters fingers together, and lost details the video claimed would be preserved. I scrapped the sculpt.

i love the energy in this video so much omg 😂

@ 10:30 it's mostly for spread since some people don't know or don't listen to some artists and since there are a lot of teens it's a learning thing since a lot of teens who post and trace get hate and don't understand. My brother for instance is young and posts his speedpaints and he traces and dosent know why he gets hate so seeing those videos from an artist he likes just helps him understand it.. and announcing it just spreads the word IMO but it does get repetetive sometimes 😊

The thing about line Art is, it’s never in my final published pieces unless I’m drawing in a cartoony style. My style is semi realistic, so there usually is no lineart in my final piece. I drop my sketch opacity waaaaaaaayy down to about 30%. I’m colorblind, so I get help with specialized tools, but my work in no way relies on the lineart.