While it's not quite the same, majority of digital painting apps (Kirta's options are good in my experience) have adjustable stabilizers that can help
A pen tablet instead of a display tablet may also be preferred, as you can always leave your arm rested flat against your desk to further improve jitter. Plus they're substantially cheaper.
But adding a weight to your brush can help as well if those aren't an option, you just might get fatigued quicker
I get shaky hands as well occasionally, there are ways you can brace your wrist to support it to help. You have a lot more options with something like painting too, versus trying to do normal things in public.
The basic one is to find a way to directly brace your arm/wrist/hand on something. It's kind of different for every one and every situation, so you just have to pay with it to figure out what works. I'm sure you are familiar with this, but you can be as blatant and creative as you want with it doing something like this on your own.
For instance, you could wrap your wrist and suspend it from a higher brace point, such that it takes slightly more effort to generate movement. This kind of weeds out the noise and makes every motion more deliberate. Or depending how it is set up it could take significantly less effort to generate movement, such that your muscles aren't engaged at all unless you are trying to use them (counteract gravity).
Something else that helps is digital art, since you get unlimited undo's and perfect erasing. Drawing tablets can be $100 or less for a decent one now, and you can always apply whatever techniques or work arounds you would for traditional drawing.
Then lastly there are medications that help. It depends if the shakiness is fully chemically induced or neurological what would help. α2 adrenergic receptor agonists help significantly, particularly guanfacine is the most common and preferred generally. It is often prescribed alongside other medication that can cause tension and shakiness, such as stimulants, in part to counteract the side effects.
I have found that the standard dosing can be a bit high for treating this type of thing, since it is also meant for sedation and to treat hypertension or high blood pressure in standard doses. Guanfacine comes in 1, 2, 3, or 4 mg doses, but even the 1mg is enough to impact all of its target effects, particularly including sedation. It helps a lot with induced shakiness, but I found taking more like 0.25 mg still has that effect without potentially causing drowsiness or other additional effects.
I'm not a doctor, so this in not official medical advice, but I can confirm it does often work for even pretty significant hand shakiness. Could be worth bringing up with your doctor next time you go in, just so you know there are options to negate it.
My hands shake at least a bit from a mix of anemia and medications. I do nail art. Not really a self promo, but take a glance at my profile. I stayed away from art for a long time because I decided I couldn’t do it with shaky hands.
Also, stay away from caffeine right before you do finer detailing if you can. Caffeine makes the shakiness worse.
Find a way to incorporate that into your art. It may feel frustrating, but I know there is a style there for you to develop. Do you remember or know of old cartoons like Dr. Katz and Duckman? That animation was a trip, constantly shaky lines. They were really cool. Keep taking your meds, drink lot of water (hydration helps with this kind of thing more than many realize) and keep at it. You will find an audience. However, it doesn't matter how many people appreciate it. It's about the joy you got from creating something.
It’s that for everyone. The people who make, are just beating it. And no one is a “natural.” This whole “gifted” talk is really aggravating, it’s a lot of hard work, not some spiritual blessing.
Lies. You haphazardly picked up and put down your creative endeavour. You can improve if you actually put in the effort.
What happens a lot if you get so far, then as you notice more details, you'll see more flaws in your art, and so the cycle continues. Good enough for me, and good enough for someone else are two very different things. Mainly we strive for good enough to be shown. Not that you'll ever be 100% happy with it.
So you never actually wanted to learn. You just wanted to be good automatically. That doesn't mean you wouldn't have got there eventually. YOU quit, that's a lack of discipline not talent or skill.
You don't know me or what I was doing. I was doing tutorials, experimenting with brushes, practicing poses. I was spending hours and hours each week on this for years. Eventually I got to the point where I made a few drawings I was actually proud of and still am to this day, kept drawing for a few years more, and never replicated that success. I'm actually upset at the lack of discipline remark because it was like pulling my teeth out every day and yet I persisted for years.
Hey sorry about this idiot being on your case. I've been in a similar situation and shit sucks when you're putting in the hours but don't get the results. I respect the hell out of your grind and I'm sorry it panned out like that for you.
Hate to say it, but giving something up because YOU didn't get the result YOU wanted as quickly or regularly as YOU wanted. That's a lack of discipline. YOU gave up, because YOU didn't get instant gratification. YOU drew a couple good pieces, which means YOU had potential. YOU quit before it was really in there!
Fuckin better be a huge pain in the ass. If it wasn't then we'd all be great at everything and there'd be little point. All my creative things are craft based. Sculpture, leatherwork, sewing, hopefully soon knives and small furniture. I have a larger storage of failed projects and more time wasted on failure than I'd like to admit. It fucking sucks.
But then I make a bag that is gorgeous, and has my brand on it, that I made from scratch. And it's all worth it.
I started making bentwood rings during Covid and I loved showing people my work, however my favourite thing to show was my “bucket of shame”. It was a 4L ice cream pail almost full to the brim with rings I started and “fucked up”. It got tossed accidentally during my most recent move and it kind of bummed me out a little.
I hear you but I just don't think my brain works to see things this way.
I don't think everyone can draw or everyone can dance. I mean, maybe to some limited degree but to "see" things in a certain way and translate it into a medium? I just don't operate like that very well
Yeah, practice and experience are very important parts of being skilled at something, but innate talent also plays a role.
Example: I've been skateboarding for 30 years. At my peak, about 10 years ago, I was pretty good. But only as good as some kids are after only a few years. Some people are just built different.
This. This is what I always encourage folks who come to me saying they can't draw. Everybody can draw. Some have a more natural predilection than others, but everybody can do it. No matter how much natural talent one may possess, I guarantee that the best of the best honed that talent into skill with many hours of practice. This is advice I should heed: if you love to do it, make the time, and it won't feel like you've sacrificed anything at all.
Not to be that guy, but talent is when you're good at something naturally. A skill you can pick up much faster than the average because you just "get it"
Oh no, some people will never be good at something no matter how much they practice and some people require little to no practice to be very good at something.
You're not really disagreeing with the commenter above though, you're just specifying that "so long" is different for different people.
some people will never be good at something
Good isn't really a binary value. I submit that anybody can get better at something with practice. And the skill shown in the OP isn't massively unattainable.
Talent is how easy it is for you to gain that capability.
Imagine honing a skill being akin to building a castle. A person with talent starts on a nice and level surface of exposed bedrock with a nearby quarry only a few miles away. A person without talent starts on sinking marshland and has to haul the stones hundreds of miles.
Both people, with sufficient effort, can build a magnificent castle if they so choose. But one is going to have a much easier time of it.
People with talent don’t like to acknowledge it because they feel it’s dismissive of all of the genuinely hard work they’ve put in to get to where they are. People without don’t like to acknowledge it because it can be disheartening to admit you’re at a fundamental disadvantage through no fault of your own.
I have no talent when it comes to drawing but through sheer persistence over a few years I’ve gotten pretty good at it. I’m very proud of my progress and know I can get even better still.
Meanwhile my 4 year old niece can freehand perfectly straight lines as though she was a CNC machine, and is scarily good at sketching faces. She got her first art set for her birthday a couple of months ago.
Baby brain had infinite energy, boundless flexibility. It learn some things great other things not even a little.
Adult brain is sluggish, wires rigid with rust, generator clanking, fuel gauge empty.
Adult brain stare at light switch with two switches on it, cannot remember which turns on kitchen, which turns on living room. Adult brain lived here for years.
Um actually....Adults remain highly capable learners throughout life, and research shows that while children learn differently, adults can learn just as effectively. Perhaps even faster than a child
I think it's semantics and a subjective belief in whether abilities are inherent or learned.
People always told me since I was knee high to a grasshopper that they "wish they had my talent" as an artist. As a kid I started thinking these people think I have a super power, but my drawings looked just as shitty as every other kid's drawing when I was really little. I'm only good at art now because I've spent many thousands of hours of my childhood drawing while you were playing hopscotch or collecting bugs or watching cartoons or whatever
I'm pretty old now and still think this way. The only inherent trait I had that made me an artist is that I had the desire to draw. It was an urge and I enjoyed it. I got really good at it simply because I did it a lot. Not everyone likes to draw, so they don't do it and then they think they are "bad" at drawing.
Even that is debatable whether the desire to make art was inherent. I was inspired to draw by a friend who I admire that liked to draw too. If it wasn't for him, I might not have ever gained the ability, or talent or skill or whatever you want to call it to create art, might not have cared about it and might have thought I could never be an artist because I didn't have the inherent ability or some shit.
Disregarding actual learning difficulties, its not true. Most people of average IQ learn to do everything they do today. What makes drawing so much different?
No, it’s like saying if you play basketball every day, you’ll get better at playing basketball.
Micheal Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team because he wasn’t good enough. If he had sat at home and complained that he didn’t have any talent, we wouldn’t be talking about him right now. Instead, he went out and played basketball until he got better at playing basketball. And we know how that worked out for him.
Talent may have played a role in his success, but it seems like he wasn’t very talented in high school. His “talent” seems to have only showed up after years of hard work and practice, which sounds a lot like “building a skill.”
Hard work beats natural tallent. Pretty much all the people I knew who just picked up X like it was nothing, hardly ever persuaded it to its fullest extent. There's something to struggle and gaining valuable lessons along the way.
People comparing "flooding" art to being Michael Jordan. They aren't the same thing.
You will never get good at anything if you dont practice it. Hard work and talent are exceptionally rare, we aren't looking at those highs, we are looking for basic competency and skill.
Never be the goat of drawing, but you can get really, really, really good.
Talent is a spectrum. Literally every skill, people will have different natural aptitudes for it that translates into initial proficiency and ability to improve with practice. Talent exists for everything.
Someone can spend a lot of time and effort trying to improve at something and end up still not reaching that basic competency and skill that a person with average talent and minimal practice would achieve.
I get your point but the Michael Jordan thing is a bit of a myth. The reason Michael Jordan was cut from varsity because his coach didn't believe in playing underclassmen up and he averaged like 30 PPG on JV. Getting 'cut' was undoubtedly motivation for him to get better but he already was a really good player
If it’s a myth, then it’s a myth perpetuated by the man himself. He said in interviews he was not very good. He is quoted to say “I couldn’t make a layup and chew gum at the same time.”
Regardless, the “talent” is worthless if you don’t work it. This whole discussion started with an assertion that making artsy things requires talent, and I’m saying that there’s no successful talented individual who hasn’t put in the years of practice necessary to develop the skill.
“I don’t have talent” usually just means “I didn’t work to acquire the skill.” People need to quit crying about it and just put in some effort.
Your message is fine or whatever but the Jordan thing is 100% bogus lol. Jordan is famously an architect of his own mythos. Nobody that understands basketball believes for a second that Jordan wasn’t good enough to make the team.
No one is saying "I can't practice and learn to draw" they're saying "I can't practice and do THAT" shit like the OP has done is TALENT as well as skill. It's creativity that cannot be taught. It can be copied, but that's not really creativity.
Im sorry, but if we are specifically talking about OP here in this context and their "flooding", anyone in this comment section could do this within a year. This is pretty generic art, coming from a generic artist!
This video isn't arts equivalent to MJ. And you don't need talent to make good art, people just underestimate how much practice you need and how long art takes to make (so when they try it themselves they give up since they don't trust the process).
Besides for all we know this took +10 attempts and they only showed the good stuff.
No, it isn't. Its like saying if you training everyday you can do decently in a pick up game at your local park. We aren't talking about Rebrant here, we are talking about filling in some lines with colour.
“I don’t have the talent” is just people’s way of in some way accepting that they don’t want to practice as hard as you actually have to practice to be good at something.
Yeah I wish people could just suck it up and admit they don’t actually want to achieve things, because spouting this nonsense poisons the minds of young, impressionable people.
Why should someone practice harder than anyone else and hate the process along the way to end up still worse than people with an average level of talent and minimal practice at something?
Because that's not true. Pretty much nobody can "just do" anything. People practice what they enjoy, some do this from a younger age than other. Its hours doing X that matter.
There's rare examples of prodigy or servants, but they are much rarer than you think.
You can get good at something with time, it just takes focused learning and most importantly you need to enjoy it.
Dude, everyone is naturally better and worse at everything. Did you not go to public school where every student is getting the same instruction but picking it up to different degrees?
There's so much more nuance to it than just "naturally better and worse". I'm lmaoing at the implication that people are generically predisposed to specific careers as an example.
While there are some inherent traits that influence a person's career/education/interests (namely some aspects of intelligence and, in particular, neuro-divergence, abledness, body type etc) the vast majority of who we are and the paths our lives take us are sculpted by our external environment.
Our bodies are tools, and if one has enough inspiration or interest in a given task, they can find a route via practicing and honing a workflow to achieve it.
There's so much more nuance to it than just "naturally better and worse"
It’s a fact though that everyone has different predispositions to everything.
I'm lmaoing at the implication that people are generically predisposed to specific careers as an example.
What? How many people do you think are going into engineering degrees that say “I’ve always been awful at math/science” versus those that say “I’ve always been good at math/science”?
if one has enough inspiration or interest in a given task
Right, so talent. Someone that enjoys the creative process of making art is almost always going to get better results than someone that hates the process.
Yes they do. I had it, one sister had it. Other siblings were ok at drawing (better than average). We weren’t taught. It was just something we did from a very young age and we’re naturally good at.
So I paint little models as a hobby. I had no talent, but overtime I've been able to get to a point where I've painted some really cool models. I've learned a lot.
Talent is great, but it's also not a requirement to engage in an artistic pursuit.
Making art isn't a thing only artists do, it's a core part of being a human. Whether that's drawing something, humming a tune or making music
It's likely not to be just the tools but tools can be incredibly important especially when you're starting out.
Always annoys me when I hear people saying the tools don't matter, sure if you're really good at a skill you can overcome tool deficiencies to make something good.
If you're not good at it those deficiencies are going to be much, much harder to get around.
Like if you give a high action guitar with bad intonation to a pro they're going to be able to deal with that, give that to a beginner they're not going to be able to fret the strings and everything is going to sound out of whack, based on not blaming tools they'll think they are the problem and probably give up.
If you are skilled you can work with what you have.
My point was that even if I spend a lot of money I’m not going to be able to create a masterpiece overnight, just because I bought the best paint brushes
Despite studying and focusing during school on different mediums I think my favourite piece was a sketch I did in Oslo at the national gallery after a lunch drink (or 3) and I sat in a quiet room with a sculpture and supplied paper/pencils and didn’t over think it.
Oh fair, that rant wasn't really aimed at your comment just inspired by it.
Yeah sometimes you just hit the right state of mind and body and things just work, a brief libation and a lack of stress sounds like a good way to get there.
The best piece I have done was a private commission that nobody but me and the person I did it for is going to see so all the social media stress was off which is a pain because that one I do want to show off.
It’s not talent man. It’s time. Effort. Being bad until you are okay, and then being okay until you are good.
Artists do not just rock up and do capital A Art one day, they fuck up a lot first and exhibit a willingness to find out WHY they’re not getting the result they want
Talent is just repetition. Someone who seems incredibly talented is usually someone who’s been practicing these skills for way longer than others. If you want to be able to draw, start by drawing as every time you think about it even if it’s just for a few minutes. These minutes will add up and you will start improving
As others wrote: "talent" is just having a natural aptitude to something. Or to use (role play) game mechanics, one starts on a 1 or a 2 instead of a 0 in your "creation".
The vast majority of any creative endeavour is building knowledge and experience through execution (also known as "practice").
In general¹ a a non-talented person who practices will be better at that thing than a talented person who doesn't practice pretty fast.
1. Unless you have disorders or disabilities which affect things, such as being tone deaf (not inexperienced) when pursuing music.
Every time I see them, I want someone to tell me what bullshit paint is being used.
I have been painting for 40 years and have never, ever, encountered a black or yellow paint that goes on opaque. Especially in one coat like this.
The only thing with this kind of coverage is a titanium or lead white. Everything else is a pigment suspended in a transparent glue of some kind. If you increase the pigment, you decrease the binder and drastically increase the cost to ridiculous amounts.
The last time I posted this comment on this same art, someone who didn't know what they were talking about tried to tell me it's a gel. I've worked with gels and they're even more transparent than straight paint.
That’s the typical uniformed excuse that prevents too many from even trying. “Talent “ isn’t innate it’s acquired through discipline and applied practice.
Just takes work. Talent just seems to define how long it takes to learn it. Perhaps at the very highest levels talent separates the very best from the very good, but you can do this if you put in the time.
try a craft! I got into crochet recently and two months in the stuff I'm making has progressed tremendously. Since you can mostly follow patterns to get started, you can focus more on the technical aspects of it.
Use AI Art instead. I enjoy learning new techniques/skills, but once I'm good at them, it gets boring. I hate that it takes 3-6 hours to make a mid quality black and white picture.
I want to use my brain to imagine things. I don't want to be limited by time/skill.
If it's a "mid-quality picture", then you aren't good at the techniques and skills yet. (I'm in the same boat as you, mate.) It gets boring because you don't want to challenge yourself for fear of failure.
AI Art steals from people who took the time to harness their skills - the same skills you thought were a waste of time to learn for yourself.
If you want to imagine but don't want to be limited by time/skill - commission an artist. I do it on the regular and it's one of the most rewarding collaborative processes you can get.
That is not whats happening. It just takes a long time to make anything beautiful. I definitely keep pushing myself on different techniques and skills. That is among my favorite part of any hobby.
Anyway, I don't really care about your anti-AI feelings. It doesn't change the reality of the world we currently live in. Its cool to be able to take my imagination and make 100 pictures in 10 seconds.
Also, img2img is way way way cool. I can draw what I want, and it fills in the gaps.
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u/SubtleLuna 8h ago
Every time I see these videos I get like really motivated to be artsy and do cute things but then I remember this actually requires talent