https://imgur.com/gallery/nT02z
Not these drawings in particular, people say I can draw professionally, but I don’t know. What do you all think? I have some digital drawings too but it’s hard to get them while on my phone.
Set yourself up at Fiverr.com and see if someone is willing to pay you for a drawing made to their specifications.
I would advise you to take some lessons.
You think they are bad looking?
Not bad, by any means! Definitely better than most of us can do.
The dragon was especially nice. However, fantasy art has the advantage that no one can say, “No, a dragon doesn’t really look like that.” The faces are good, but not absolutely accurate. (The caricature doesn’t count.) In the second image, the woman with glasses, the eyes are a little uneven.
(In that picture, the glasses are very nicely depicted. The upper edge of the lenses isn’t actually drawn, but sort of hinted at, so it doesn’t block the eyes. That’s actually a very clever and advanced technique. The viewer’s mind fills in the detail that isn’t actually drawn.)
I would say that you do not need lessons, but just practice, practice, practice. Keep on drawing. You’ll get better and better all the time.
(Look at, say, Boris Vallejo, whose earlier work is definitely more clunky than his later work. This is true of most artists!)
Based on the dragon alone, I’d think you could probably make an occasional sale at a science fiction convention art show. You’d need to ink and color it, but you could pick up pin money, at least.
I guess this all sounds like faint praise, but you are definitely way ahead of 90% of us with pencils in our hands.
I can’t really see anyone paying for them at the stage you’re at now. Keep drawing if you love drawing and you’ll get better, but don’t give up the day job.
I think your close friends and your family probably think they’re great. But they appear amateurish, and no, I don’t think anyone would pay you for them. They are slightly better than this.
Artist here. If this is your first attempt, you definitely have potential, and should proceed by taking a drawing class. But if you’ve been drawing for years and this is the best you can do . . . I specifically suggest you take some life drawing classes. And when you’re drawing someone’s face in particular, learn to draw what you actually see, not what you think you should be seeing. I strongly suggest a book called “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain.” And go to some museums and study what you see, especially anything from more “realistic” periods.
You have a better than average native hand drawing ability but (assuming you have never taken classes) from an objective perspective these are relatively crude and certainly nothing someone would normally be interested in buying unless it’s a relative trying to be nice.
I am curious, however, don’t YOU see these as rough and somewhat crude compared to the work professional artists are doing?
Here’s your online competition. For the sake of comparison.
Yeah, maybe I do need to take some classes or avoid pencil drawing. Here is one of my digital paintings. I have been drawing on and off since I was a little kid.
VERY nice puppy’s eye! You’ve definitely got the technique down pat!
I won’t go so far as to commission you to do this…but…if you were to ink the dragon picture, I’d be very interested to see how it comes out. That one really grabbed me.
(I’m just barely able to draw a horsie so that people don’t say, “Um, is that supposed to be a bear or something?”)
The one of the guy who looks a bit like Gerard Depardieu has some interesting touches around the nose. If you had backgrounds and were more even with the level of detail, you might get a better response. I suspect that the lack of completion is a component of the feeling that they are amateur, rather than (solely) the quality of the work. But, no, you wouldn’t get money for them even finished. I don’t know that anyone can make money from pencil sketches anymore, unless you’re famous for your paintings or sculptures or something else, and the pencil sketches is all that allows the average buyer to get close to your work without spending a few million.
The puppy’s eye looks good. But I’d venture to guess that you may have been using reference for that and not for the pencil drawings?
Pencil work is fine for learning how to draw well even when not using a reference. I didn’t learn from the book Drawing from the Right Side of the Brain, but I know of it and how it teaches you. I taught myself to draw using the same techniques as she endorses (I’m very analytical, so I developed an analytical approach to improving my technique and it appears to be the same as the one she developed), so I’d certainly recommend it.*
After that, though, if you want to make money, you’ll want to do digital work, paint, sculpture, glass, or otherwise something in color. Photos and pencil are only good for your own amusement.
- I recommended it to a friend, so I looked through a copy and found that the first 2 or 3 chapters were largely accumulated blather from 30 years of updated printings and her expanding the “introduction” bit by bit each time without actually adding anything substantive in the process (or at least, that’s how it read). There’s a few good tidbits about how the brain works, but largely you’ll be fine to skip through to the first tutorial of drawing someone upside down or something of that sort (if I remember right).
Artist here as well. As others have said, you’ve definitely got potential but you’ve also got a lot of room to grow. Art lessons are great, lots of practice, daily if at all possible. And above all else, try not to compare yourself to other artists. There is ALWAYS going to be someone ‘better’ than you. It’s a given. Just draw for your own pleasure and you’ll get much further than drawing to try and be the ‘best’.
As for selling your art? I honestly doubt it. People online are notorious for being overly cheap in regards to art commissions. People who are much better than you often struggle to get $15+ per piece and that’s after you’ve gotten your name out there. Sure, there are people who make a lot more than that but they’re either mind boggling amazing and/or super popular for whatever reason.
That one I like much better and I could see myself buying something of that quality if the subject caught my interest. Its not to say that the pencil stuff is bad but I see oodles of that type of art too often to actually get my wallet out for it. It strikes me more as those “any oil painting for $29.95 starving artist” things. Yeah - folks make money at it sometimes but I’m not sure its your sort of game.
The art world is extremely competitive. I know many professional artists who continue to take art classes because you can never be too good.
If you want to make money without being well known, I would say work on portraits and try to get commissions on paintings. People will pay good money for doing stuff like an oil painting of their dog from a photo.
I think you’re getting good advice here. My mom is now working on her Third Act of her life-- being a writer. She takes classes/she does workshopping. Listen and learn from criticism–that’s what she’s learning.
Having taught art, I can tell you that your work shows promise, but very much looks amateur.
- You seem to not be using a variety of pencils. A lot of students tended to only use a couple and “force” shading from those pencils. Which leads to…
- Overly blending. One of the biggest indicators of a beginner (from what I saw) was that they over blended as a compensation for not shading properly. Shading should be developed and have a gradual toning. There is a place for using a stomp to blend, but most beginners use their finger and over blend as a shortcut and it ends up looking like a blob.
- Vary your line weights.
- Its hard to discuss an unfinished piece. The best in the bunch is of your ex. It also is the only completed one.
- Learn anatomy. The Ringo one is the most interesting one but the anatomy is terrible.
As for making money, even the best out there have a hard time making money from art. You will have a better time selling your digital art on things such as cards, etc. Merely posting online is not going to sell your work. Most artists I know sell at art festivals, galleries or shows. It’s a job that involves a lot of hustle.
Hey T-Minus! I sent you a PM a few days back which you do not seem to have taken notice of…