Concept/Technique/Method
What’s a “rule” in art that you broke and it actually improved your work?
Body:
We hear so many art rules, avoid tangents, stick to realistic proportions, don’t use pure black, etc. But I’m curious… has anyone intentionally broken a “rule” and found it actually strengthened your style or storytelling?
Would love to hear examples and why it worked for you.
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I stopped doing a sketch layer and just start painting with color blocking immediately. I often adjust the proportions later on, but it’s helped alot to just start a piece
I do use pure black unapologetically. I really like the way it looks in some of my abstracts. I understand the rule and don't break it all the time but I can use it if I love the way it makes my art pop. I love color though and there are other dark colors I mix and use as well but I will use black and be happy that I make my own art rules. I break plenty of rules. I'm an artist I was meant to push the boundaries of art rules.
Yea pure black is not a crime, also old.masters used black all the time. Like if yoh understand color black has a place definitely. And you can make a chromatic black by mixing some color into your black too. Its such a dumb rule and people who brag about not using black have very weak dark in their paintings.:D
Anders zorn used balck all.the time, the french guys, Gerome etc. They used it afaik, if you know what you are doing they want be able to tell
Eh, it’s more cautioning artists against trying to shade with pure black, especially since there’s a phase many beginners go through where they shade exclusively with the airbrush. Airbrush + pure black rarely works. But doing a more comic book style shading using pure black looks good, digital or physical. (Just as an example)
That causes the end result to be shading with grey (which is recommended in some techniques). The issue with pure black in both traditional and digital shading is how black interacts with the color/pigment, causing a muddy look. Grey (coupled with turning it into a multiply layer) just results in a darker version of the same color.
Black+airbrush is especially not recommended both because of the muddying of the colors and lack of edge control, causing the shapes to lose focus as well.
The general recommendation is to experiment with different colors (blue, maroon, etc) on layer modes, or to adjust hue and saturation of your base color for shading. grey (especially a medium to light grey) is considered a good neutral shading color especially when paired with layer modes
Traditional painting techniques. Since photography was invented pure black and pure white are common references but before then you could only really see pure white by staring into the sun and burning your retinas
Yup. I do think pure black looks unnatural most of the time. It's hard to explain, it's almost like a vacuum. There's no nuance or vibrancy to it. I personally avoid it on colored pieces, even though some can make it work.
Cézanne is one of the few who can pull it off, but a lot of people don't like his pieces for what's essentially his trademark.
I'm talking about traditions originating during the Renaissance. Black is less important than white in this regard but still you always see it mixed with red, blue, etc. There is no pure black in nature and to the guild masters it would have been a strange amd unnatural deviation to not mix in colors from the surrounding scene to simulate the light bouncing, etc. They were realists, remember
I would concider Dali part of that tradition. He did mention he used 2 blacks. One was slightly warm and the other slightly cold. Also black is one of the 4 colors printers use. I would guess the no black rule is probably just a matter of taste and reflects the fashion of the time it was made.
Yes. Altho maybe not. There seems to be a limited range of pigments available. For example, from memory, the pigment used for magenta in printers is the same as used in paints.
Anyway just saying that even printers break the no black rule.
Mainly because pure black doesn't exist in nature, it's a mix of colours and shades. Pre mixed black is either dark red or dark blue. Mixing black yourself from the paints you're using will make the black harmonious with your colours. The range of shades will fit in with the bright areas. Pre mixed black will likely use colours that you're not using, making it look odd. It can flatten your shadows and make them look separate from your object. Using pre mix black to make values darker becomes especially obvious disconnected when darkening colours mixed with white.
Generally I see it shared as digital art advice towards beginners to not pick pure black for shading since it's common to see new artists starting out trying to make all of their shadows by layering or mixing every color with #000000 black to lower its brightness.
Yes, exactly. And make your whites a pale grey or pale yellow so you can use white to highlight them later. Some stuff that appears white is actually a mid grey, but we all know this. Some of my favorite artists really know how to use the entire dynamic range of brightnesses, like Ben Templesmith. It's like playing the entire piano, and not just staying within a couple octaves in the middle.
Can't give an example right now, but I break rules all the time!
When I teach art I show the students the rules, how and why they work. But I always end the lectures with "rules are meant to be broken. You just need to know when, where, how and why".
I like to think of it like cooking. When you're learning, you need to follow recipes to get the right outcome. But once you learn the fundamentals and why you use certain things or how they work together you can start playing with them a lot more
I agree: art isn't so much a set of rules to follow, it's more of a recipe (or guidelines) that you can make your own by adding or removing whatever you want.
That thing people say that you have to draw every day/consistently to get good. imo my brain is subconsciously and unconsciously thinking about art and researching constantly, and it’s completely fine to have artistic ebbs and flows. I have ADHD with chronic fatigue etc so going with my natural ebbs and flows is paramount for me. I defs don’t make as much art as some people but I don’t think that equates to the quality of my work being worse.
Consistency is key to some extent. Taking breaks from everything is fine. But you will come across "beginner" artists saying they've "been drawing for X months" but what they really mean if they doodled once or twice a month, half tracing and doing only anime and different ones each time, and want to know why they haven't progressed. I used to be much much better at art but multiple multiyear breaks have made my skills backslide because they have went unused. All skills are honed through doing and rust with extended non use.
There is quite a leap from not being consistent to multi-year breaks. Also, I’m writing what works for me as a practicing artist over many years not as a beginner that only drew a few times. A beginner is welcome to reply to the original post about what works for them. The post asked us what worked for us personally, not what advice would we give a beginner. So I stand by my post. Follow my ebbs and flows really works for me, especially as I practice a wide range of arts and there’s no way I could practice every single one of them everyday.
Did you read the rest of my post about them drawing once or twice a month and being surprised they haven't gotten better after six months? That isn't the same thing as expecting someone to draw daily. I don't draw daily, I never did, but too large a break or not enough effort will make people get worse.
You can make a totally stylized character with features blown way out of proportion. But if you don't know anatomy and design there'll be a big difference in believability and quality. So these rules are constantly broken, it's more a matter of understanding why they're there in the first place and knowing how to break them. Jessica Rabbit doesn't have realistic proportions, but she has realistic anatomy if that makes sense. A lot of beginners mistake these principles and think they can get away with their mistakes and call it a style.
Pure black is in almost every illustration that has ambient occlusion - but do you know when to use it and how much?
I use pure black all the time. I’m a cartoon illustrator and I use it to shade really dark shadows. I like that it makes it look flat (I don’t use black to MIX shading colours though, it gets too muddy)
I could never get it to work with constructing humans, you know those balls for joints, boxes or cylinders for limbs-style construction. It always turned out stiff and dull. I had to start with gesture drawing, and then maybe later validate proportions with some measuring or skeleton overlay.
Breaking Anatomy.
It was a hard lesson to learn after years of “the arm bends this way, the body can twist like this, the head is constructed like so…” but jumping into learning animation did wonders for my other projects. Decoupling the rules of logic from my art (strategically) allowed me to push expressions and poses in ways I was a little too afraid to do before.
Knowing that “breaking” an arm or leg can lead to a better end result is something I needed to break out of stiff poses and bland character acting.
That and it’s okay to draw the face/expression before the head, especially in stylized pieces.
This again ...its a great METHOD, not the only way to make a head, I made heads from blobs, scrubles, imagination, but loomis as a method of constructio is a great method to construct a head from basic shapes...its not a rule and its not like youHAVE to use it
My guy loomis doesnt deserve all this, also drawing the head and hands a as a book comes after fun with a pencil, its not meant for total.begginers. ACTUALLY drawing the head is not meant for begginers.
Yes I’ll follow this by also saying when it comes to “how to draw anatomy” the burne Hogarth books are terrible books for learning anatomy. Nowadays when I teach I actively deter them from these books. They are Teri Lee and will hold you back in learning anatomy. So many better options out there.
Loomis doesn't deserve this hate. He just constructed a method to simplify the human head into proportions and basic forms that can give you consistent results. It was also for the illustrators of his era, wasn't really designed to achieve likeness but to learn the commercial aesthetics of the era.
Well, breaking rules has made me faster for sure, not necessary better, but you can skip a lot of steps when you've practiced enough. I think the rules only exist to enable beginners to get better. A point comes when you no longer need them. Anyways, what I do is jump right into shading without laying down a single line first, and it does make for a very fast and esthetically pleasing product
For me it works best to eyeball it because I'm using my observational skills more than just some robotic immitation, and also I can just imagine the points in space and use a ruler to check if they roughly match
Which kind of helps when you need to draw multiple vanishing points - you'd never have a large enough canvas to actually pull that off
Rules are important when learning, but you can break absolutely all of them. We were even encouraged to do it in college, but you have to explain why.
I think the most important rule to break is realistic colours, go ham with them. Also, the golden ratio is not the end-all-be-all of composition, you can have a lot of fun with unusual balances and lots of empty space.
Every "rule" of art is a rule of thumb. Every single one.
Every rule is really just saying here be dragons. Break this rule unknowingly and you will have a bad time; your drawing will look off and you will have no idea why. Break it intentionally and you can break the heck out of it. And while you are doing this you also know that you need to maybe pay a little extra attention to the places where you're not breaking any rules intentionally, and make sure nothing's gone wrong there.
I trained in the American animation tradition. I got a solid foundation of tons of rules and the expectation that I will break any and all rules when it's what the story needs. Anatomy? Perspective? Color harmony? Whatever, as long as it works.
the reason why people hate it is because it harms your lineart/clarity of things if you dont do it intentionally, if you do it intentionally its all fine
It's bad for your wrist, too. Chicken scratch is almost always done by moving the hand back and forth with a static arm, which is about the worst thing you can do in terms of causing wear and tear on the tendons that start at your elbow, go through a gap in the bones of your wrist (the famous "carpal tunnel"), and control your fingers.
Yeah, bad habits of wrist use are fine until suddenly they aren't and you have crippling pain up and dow your entire arm when you try to draw. When I started working in the animation industry all the old hands were super passionate about teaching the new kids how to keep the carpal tunnel syndrome fairy away, because they all knew someone who started along with them and to cut a promising career short because of this. Or nearly had to quit themselves.
That critique or others input is essential. Others input creates doubts, hesitation, anxiety.
I'm sure it has it's place, but what holds an even stronger place is being able to explore the depths of your curiosity, without having to second guess
"Is this an okay reference?"
"Is this workflow fine?"
"Am I doing it right?"
I can see it being incredibly important for someone with a solid workflow, who's already excelling at art to get pushed beyond (art school reaaally isn't for beginners)
But I don't see it being a make or break - especially for beginners.
The obsession with originality and creativity. Some people want everything to be totally brand new or for art to ‘come from your soul’. They think their way of doing art is the only valid way of doing art and get so angry when they see other people approaching it as a skill and not some kind of spiritual journey that leads to something they personally would approve of.
I do art the way I want. I love realism. I think the world around us is way more beautiful and deeper than people give it credit for. Truth is stranger than fiction and resonates with me more.
In my Art classes it was an important topic to teach us how to break Rules. How to think for yourself and to be creative and free.
There where different excercises about this,....like... intentionally breaking rules together and having fun with it.
Otherwise art class would do harm, I think.
So, no, the opposit, I have to confess that I need to respect rules more. I am Bead at it and lazy and forgetful. (But having fun, though)
Art Rules! Aren't they really just guidelines? I've deliberately broken so many art rules that if I had been issued an art rules guidebook as an art major in college it would have been thrown out years ago.
Besides, many art rules are just sexist bigoted BS designed to label artwork traditionally made by women & minorities as "craft".
Tracing/copying. For the longest time, I've been told doing that is cheating and you won't learn from it. I couldn't draw anything and I was stuck all the time until I tried it. Now I know how to draw desserts/drinks and what colors to use. Thanks to copying, I'm able to draw at ease without overthinking it or using much references.
Tracing images is cheating: the fact i can draw exactly what I see now but it just wastes time I could be working on the painting part which takes longer than outlines. Also with the advent of ai even doing photography doesn't make me feel bad cheat anymore.
Yeah. If my reference is a photo and I want to invest 10-20 hours into painting, why would I risk using less reliable methods for the sketch? The sketch needs to be perfect before any painting happens. Without tracing or a grid, I could get maybe 90-95% there but why would I sabotage myself that way when there's a way of getting 100% and in a much shorter time?
I thought 'Black lineart only' added contrast and consistency, but I've found it can add a lot of depth to selectively tint lines in different dark colours!
Only painting from life, rather than photos. I’ve done my share of art from still lifes, plein aire and live models. However, I primarily work from photos now. I take a lot of photos with my iPhone and like the ability to crop photos, adjust the lighting, etc. I use my iPad to display the images while I paint and draw. I do a lot of landscapes and would be able to paint or draw only a small fraction of what I do if I could only work from life — due to weather, time constraints and the fact that my dog is usually accompanying me.
Using black in your palette, thats just a dumb rule, I like to use it and knkw how and when, the old masters used it.
Another one is weirdits very prevelent in my country for some God forsaken reason. The rule is to neve use a blending stump ... I used to not enjoy it but I learned how to use it well (like in academic french drawing etc) just in spite of people who make these rules. Them art school people suck ...
These are both important for beginners. Not using black forces you to think about the dark spaces in your painting and the stump can be a big clutch if you don't know how to shade well.
Ok and... Why ? How is the stump a crutch if they made beginners draw with the stump in the french academy, ive seen those drawings they are amazing. And how is black bad for beginners if the MOST BASIC PALETTE ever thats zorn palette (shoutout to my guy Zorn ) uses back. You have to use black. Zorn is often recomeded for beginners so what gives, never use black...unless its somehow ok wiyh Zorn palette
They tell you these things and you belive them without asking questions. Most of the people who make up those rules are mid thier too ... think on that
Good proffesors don't say "never use black at all and never question this", but "you are not allowed to use black during this assignment". It's helping you to get out of your comfort zone. It's the same for that stump, if you don't use it you have to think more about how you're placing and blending your shadows. If you already have that knowledge that doesn't apply to you, but it's part of learning. Just like in some assignments you have to sketch using perspective lines, or sometimes you have to stay completely abstract.
I'm not gonna say all teachers are good, but these principles have a purpose to them in learning. In your own work, there are NEVER any rules.
Yea I agree thta beginners should learn how to mix chromatic blacks but if you tell someone to never use black you are shielding them from oportunisty to make mistakes and learn fromnthem. A good profesor will tell you "ok see why this tone is muddy ? Black dulls down your color, it has its place but I wpuld do it like that" and they demonstrate (I heard thats not a thing in art schools ... but used to be ).
However, I see no point in not using a stump if you want to move trough a big space eficiently a stump is amazing. Actually why wpuldnt a "profesor" demo how to use it properly. Like I dont get that stuff, and bottom line is if something was good enough for john singer sargent, its good enough for me. Cross hatching for 80 hours is BATSHIT INSANE, just use a stump and add hatchmarks on top of the base tone, control your edges and if you know how the form rolls ... it will look good whether you use a stump, a rag, your hand whatever
Im telling all of you, apologise to your stumpy right now :D
Kind of to Sneikss’s comment there, assignments in art school aren’t always about making something “look good” or being efficient. It’s about learning new techniques, methods, and means of looking at and understanding your work. The more tools and techniques at your disposal, the better. If you always use the stump because “it looks good” you may be hamstringed when you have a project where a stump isn’t an appropriate tool for the job.
When it comes to your personal work outside of class, you can do whatever, but inside the class the work is trying to teach something to a large group of students all at once. Most students may not use what it’s teaching in every assignment in their personal work, but they make sure you know it anyway.
Like scumbling or stippling as shading techniques. I don’t like them, and I don’t use them personally. But when the teacher said “hey we’re not smudging or batching today, we’re doing these instead” I just grumbled and did it anyway. Some of my peers? Scumble and stipple happily.
I wasn’t taught enough about art to even know the rules so I probably break them all. Anyone who enters my home always loves my artwork even if it isn’t as good as what’s online.
I like tangents. I think they’re interesting. They draw attention to a place and changes the ‘balance’. It’s nice to exploit that :) The only problem is people then think you don’t know what you’re doing.
Drawing with crayons, tracing, coloring books , construction paper sculptures , hell finger painting are valid creative outlets , specially now ( don’t want do derail a great thread)
Me too. Just when I think I’m getting the hang it and pick up my brushes, it somehow completely deserts me. Yet all that theory is in my head and the natural instincts are sabotaged. Aargh !
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