I was actually thinking about this topic today, mostly from my personal perspective because people ask me all the time how I make my book covers, to the point that I've gotten requests for a detailed step by step tutorial.
There are a few reasons I've declined but one of the main reasons is that I feel there are certain types of art that are created by means that are very personal to the artist, to their aesthetics and their goals with their art. I think that there is a big difference between using tutorials and how to books to give you ideas or to help you solve a technical problem and using them to just recreate the art in the books. We get used to doing it as children and it's fine to do as children because we are still developing our technical skills and learning how to plan out a complicated project but at some point we start developing our own preferred methods for getting certain results.
So if I were to make a tutorial, all it would teach people to do is make a knock-off of my work that would have very little of their own aesthetics and their own skills as an artist involved. It wouldn't give people working knowledge of the materials I use, knowledge that I didn't get from a book or tutorial but from trying different things and learning what worked and what didn't. People assume I just do the same thing again and again with clay but I actually often reinvent what I am doing each time I do it. I am constantly looking to improve my craft and make it more cost effective and less of a hassle and also look more like it does in my head.
Mimicking other artists may make for a pleasant hobby but it ultimately isn't going to take an artist further in becoming a better artist, the same way that tracing Disney characters again and again is not going to make an illustrator better. What is the point of being an artist and having nothing of yourself in your art?
There are a few reasons I've declined but one of the main reasons is that I feel there are certain types of art that are created by means that are very personal to the artist, to their aesthetics and their goals with their art. I think that there is a big difference between using tutorials and how to books to give you ideas or to help you solve a technical problem and using them to just recreate the art in the books. We get used to doing it as children and it's fine to do as children because we are still developing our technical skills and learning how to plan out a complicated project but at some point we start developing our own preferred methods for getting certain results.
So if I were to make a tutorial, all it would teach people to do is make a knock-off of my work that would have very little of their own aesthetics and their own skills as an artist involved. It wouldn't give people working knowledge of the materials I use, knowledge that I didn't get from a book or tutorial but from trying different things and learning what worked and what didn't. People assume I just do the same thing again and again with clay but I actually often reinvent what I am doing each time I do it. I am constantly looking to improve my craft and make it more cost effective and less of a hassle and also look more like it does in my head.
Mimicking other artists may make for a pleasant hobby but it ultimately isn't going to take an artist further in becoming a better artist, the same way that tracing Disney characters again and again is not going to make an illustrator better. What is the point of being an artist and having nothing of yourself in your art?
Reply
Leave a comment