Should you study art from the basics?

[blackcrowcrowd]

Exactly the title... What do you think?

 

[ThaddeusDeVilliers]

 

[gaylolis]

how2basic is one of the most popular channels in youtube for a reason, so yea :D

 

[Jerynboe]

Is it possible to make good artwork without rigorous technical skills and a basic understanding of things like perspective? Yes. People were doing it for millennia before the renaissance masters started codifying things.
However, technical skills help you with the process of taking the picture in your head and getting it onto paper or screen. Refusing to learn how to make basic shapes is a bit like refusing to learn proper grammar before writing a book. You can certainly do it and it’s theoretically possible you will make something awesome, but you have decided to play on hard mode for very little expected benefit.

One major caveat. Never fall into the over-preparation trap in art, where you feel like you can’t try to make anything until you have met some arbitrary standard of quality first. This can work if you have a benevolent mentor figure there to help you avoid bad habits and give you a thumbs up when you’ve gotten good, but it’s very unlikely that you have an objective view of your own skill level so you might as well just start now.

 

[tiaf]

I do them as warming up exercise before I start a drawing session. You never not need them even if you have solid art basics down. To draw complex things you break them down to simpler shapes. That doesn’t only apply to the object itself you want to draw, you also break down the negative space into this simple shapes so that you can map out your target object.

 

[Vitriol]

Anything is a box and a circle if you try hard enough, but if I get real I pretty much use em all the time when I sketch a pose bc it’s just… easier to get the angle/proportions.

To be fair, I never started out with the basics, and still don’t know them lmaoo, but they certainly help.

 

[Worthy39]

Man, I played Gartic phone last night and asked myself this very question when I was trying to draw Peppa Pig.

 

[Shiriru_B]

If you want to put exactly the image your mind is thinking of onto a paper then yes, you'll need to know the basics.

 

[Shorgoth]

Yes, it helps getting to more skillfullness faster, if you don't have to reinvent the wheel but keep making throughout, and don't overglamourise the structure. Ultimately the goal is to understand the mechanics and how they interface with the human brain so you can learn to have people feel what you want them to.

"Breaking the rules" is not the same as having none. The rules are there for a reason, only someone who understand at least intuitively how to play the emotional range of humans with art can know how to insert dissonance at the right moment and consistently. This is what personal style is, an emotional imprint through skilled use of repeated motifs, not bad tendencies from unskilled labour.