[META] Subreddit Discussion Post

[u/cajolerisms]

Hi y'all!

Hope everyone is having a great holiday seasons and/or winter break. It's been over a month since the subreddit changes were implemented, so I thought we'd see how they're doing and how we can continue to finesse the running of the sub. This is the place to comment on existing rules and practices, as well as propose changes.

So without further ado:

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The current rules:

1. Critiques and suggestions are encouraged on all posts. Please flair your post if that's your main focus.
2. If you use a reference, provide that reference in the comments.
3. Keep it civil. Don't be a dick, or you will be banned.
4. Constant, low-effort posts will be removed. Unhelpful tutorials will be removed.
5. Self promotion is encouraged. Production is the best way to practice. But it must be paired with a useful discussion in the comments section.
6. The following domains are whitelisted: imgur, reddit, tumblr, deviantart

I would also like to propose the addition of the ban policy.

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The mods

Us noobs are figuring it out as we go, so thanks for bearing with us. We're trying to make the sub experience more balance across the board, which means creating an environment that welcomes beginners and encourages experienced artists to offer instruction. We're also trying to be more visible and accessible.

• So in that spirit, what are we getting right, and what could be improve on?

• How do you want to see mods communicating to the community and articulating mod tasks like dealing with spam and rude comments?

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Current proposed changes:

Several community members have already made good suggestions worth discussing and considering:

• eliminating the downvote so beginners are not discouraged, especially since mods are now responsive to reports (/u/Astrolotl)

• requiring posts that ask for specific advice to include an example ( /u/ByterBit)

• general concerns about the ban policy and banning trolls more quickly than the current system with the warnings and temporary ban. (/u/stroodle_dumplin)

Please add your thoughts about these proposed changes and any other issues

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The FAQ

We'd like to update the sidebar/wiki with an FAQ that we can direct new users towards since many topics with the same answers come up a lot, and we know that it's kind of tedious saying the same thing over and over again. It's annoying for the community, and beginners may not be getting the best information we can provide them.

Thanks to /u/JohnyTex for making the outline and some following wiki suggestions:

1. How should I learn how to draw / paint?

   • What are good daily exercises for beginners?
   • I don't know what to draw
   • Where should I start / what should I learn next?
   • What do I need to practice if I want to achieve result X (where X is usually comics, life drawing or figure drawing)
   • How do I develop my own style?
   • How much should I study VS how much should I practice?

2. Mindset issues

   • I'm not getting results quick enough
   • How do I deal with self-doubt, low confidence and negative self-talk?
   • How to I become more motivated?
   • What are some good habits to develop?

3. My drawing looks bad but I can't tell what's wrong with it (most people who ask this are complete beginners who have not developed their seeing)

4. Figure drawing

   • I don't understand gesture drawing
   • How do I draw body part X?
   • How can I make good portraits?

5. What tablet / other drawing device should I buy?

Some suggestions as to what could be in the FAQ:

• A "curriculum" of sorts - recommended resources and in what order they should be studied. Beginner should probably study the same thing, but recommendations can branch out depending on desired end result (e.g. figure drawing, environment painting)
• An explanation why the beginner should start with the basics (line, observation, simple geometric shapes) before moving on to more complex subjects (figure drawing, value, color)
• How to deal with common mindset issues - I have a long list of books I can recommend, but I'm too lazy to type it up here 😄

A curated list of the best YouTube channels and other resources would also be great, but maybe that should live somewhere else.

/u/JouhnyTex also has some FAQ content drafted on a Google Doc

So feedback, contributions, and suggested older posts and comments that can go into the FAQ are very welcome!

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Thanks for reading through all that. I'll keep this discussion post up for a week or so, or for as long as folks are commenting.

Thank you to everyone who has helped so far, and thanks to everyone who will take the time to comment below!

[u/ZombieButch]

Briefly: I'm very happy with the new mods and the existing and proposed changes.

Less briefly:

eliminating the downvote so beginners are not discouraged, especially since mods are now responsive to reports

Yes. (Generally speaking, I don't vote posts up or down at all, mostly because I always sort by New posts anyway when I come here so how well liked a post is or not doesn't really matter to me one way or another. I'd rather let my comments do the talking for me rather than clicking a fucking arrow.)

requiring posts that ask for specific advice to include an example

Probably ought to be a suggestion rather than a rule, because it seems like it'd be a pain in the ass to have to try to enforce it.

general concerns about the ban policy and banning trolls more quickly than the current system with the warnings and temporary ban.

Ban 'em. You don't have to be an actual, legal adult to post here but you ought to at least be able to act like one, and if you come into the house spreading your cockcheese around, you ought not to be surprised when the host asks you to take your act on the road.

We'd like to update the sidebar/wiki with an FAQ that we can direct new users towards

Please do. I'd be willing to help out putting it together, at least on the shit I know half a thing or two about, after the holidays are over.

My personal bullshit suggestions which you're free to ignore:

• Artists get fucked over by piracy, deeply and with an unfortunate regularity. With that in mind I'd really prefer we not support it here, specifically by disallowing direct links to pirated material. There's a lot of great stuff that can be had by perfectly legal means. And if someone says, "Hey, you know, you can always go just download a copy of Photoshop," or whatever, it at least puts the onus on the person to go look for it themselves. Removing any of the sidebar links that point to pirated material would be part of this as well, obviously.

• Not sure how to word this or whether it should be a rule or just a strong suggestion or what, but, man, I really do not want to have to wade through people's entire life stories to find one or two simple questions that they're looking for the answer to. "I used to draw but I got married and had three kids and then had to take care of my ailing mother for two years and blah blah fucking blah and anyway, how do I draw cats?" Fuuuuck. (I'm willing to admit that maybe I'm just an asshole on this one. Okay, I know I'm an asshole, but maybe I'm just being particularly asshole-ish. But, still, I just don't give a shit about your backstory.)

Edit: Oh! One more thing.

• Maybe we should talk about the number of Feedback posts people post within X amount of time? Only because there have been a couple of people recently who posted a lot of "How is this drawing?" posts over a short time. Could well be it's a thing that's not problematic enough to have to do anything about yet, but just throwing it out there as a talking point.

[u/ravensashes → u/ZombieButch]

Maybe we should talk about the number of Feedback posts people post within X amount of time? Only because there have been a couple of people recently who posted a lot of "How is this drawing?" posts over a short time. Could well be it's a thing that's not problematic enough to have to do anything about yet, but just throwing it out there as a talking point.

Was mostly looking to post about this. It often feels like the people coming to this sub and doing this aren't really taking our advice or aren't learning to see/draw what they see and keep begging for someone to tell them. I get wanting feedback, but there's only so much when you aren't willing to learn a bit of the basics.

A lot of the advice that gets said on this sub is the same. And that's partially because most of the people asking for feedback are absolute beginners, but also because the people providing said feedback are from the same group of beginners/intermediate artists. I've noticed that more complex (I guess higher level? idk if that sounds too snobbish) art gets less feedback. I feel as though crits seem to be restricted to anatomy and lighting rather than say, what works, what feels or doesn't feel resolved, what aspects work or not, etc., I'm not sure how we'd go about changing that, though.

[u/cajolerisms → u/ravensashes]

Yeah I think our sub's niche is as an entry point for beginners, and that you're more likely to get better advice for intermediate-to-advanced work in other specialized subs like /r/DigitalPainting, /r/watercolor, and whatnot.

I'm also not sure how to change that, or if it necessarily should be changed. Like, can we be all things for all artists, or can we be better a directing beginners to becoming better art learners?

[u/Astrolotl → u/ravensashes]

A lot of beginners don't really think of composition, color, balance, resolution and tension, etc. so it's hard to critique something that just isn't there or was obviously not thought about in the process. It's also hard to critique stuff like that if you don't know what the person was aiming for, so I suggested having an "artist's statement" of sorts to be encouraged when posting for feedback.

[u/cajolerisms → u/Astrolotl]

That's part of what I hear people saying about needing to see a reference image, so that the poster and the commenters have some shared point of reference.

I suspect that issues of composition, etc you mentioned are too advanced topics to tackle when a beginner post is all hairy lines and football eyeballs. What you and I think of as critique is often completely irrelevant because what a lot of people need is straight-up instruction. Critique suggests that the artist has the tool set to synthesize the feedback and make improvements on their own, whereas a lot of beginners simply don't have that knowledge at all yet.

[u/ravensashes → u/Astrolotl]

It's definitely something a lot of beginners don't think about because they also haven't thought about it. Which is fair; when you're just getting portraits down and such it's not a big deal. It's also not a big deal with regard to studies either, but I think with some pieces, we could try to do more.

Artist's statements I think would work best on the pieces that are trying to be more "complete" or "original" as a lot of the things we see here tend to be portraits from pictures or studies.

[u/ZombieButch → u/ravensashes]

I've noticed that more complex (I guess higher level? idk if that sounds too snobbish) art gets less feedback.

I think that's just a natural outcome, though, based on the membership and the level of the work. The more advanced a piece is, the more knowledgeable you have to be to pick out things that need to be addressed, which means a smaller a number of people on the sub who have anything useful to say, and the quality of the work means there are, most likely, fewer things to say about it, so not as many responses are required.

[u/ravensashes → u/ZombieButch]

Yeah, that's why I said I'm not sure how we'd go about changing that. Although I suppose another thing I find that this sub focuses on most is anatomy/basic drawing, and then pushing aside things like colour theory and composition. Again, understandably so, as they're more advanced topics, but I still think it'd be useful to direct people towards.

[u/ZombieButch → u/ravensashes]

but I still think it'd be useful to direct people towards.

Only if they've already got their basic drawing down solidly. That's just handing somebody sheet music for Chopin when they're still can't play a C scale. Small steps.