My art needs help. How to make this not ugly?

r ranson wrote:....

But, I learned a lot watching that video - although probably not the things I was supposed to.

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Practising the lines in that bicycle poster, I can get a feel for how complicated and flat the picture is.  The lines seem to be doing more of the work than the colour - maybe these lines are doing the work of the underpainting?  

Yes, that's my opinion too. Mucha uses lines for shading, more than (darker) colours. In fact that bicycle poster is not a 'painting', it is a complicated drawing that's 'coloured in' using watercolours.

R. maybe you learned something about 'making videos' from it?

ooh. sheep. makes me sheeply! for your project, adjust.font style and color. stretch words' letters to rit spaces/fit within borders. colors were mostly muted then, and white space and contrast minimal. cheers

I like it! The only thing I see is that your lines don't seem to be sure of themselves. They seem hesitant, if that makes sense.  If they were steadier, smoother and perhaps bolder, I think it would look better!

Going back to the first drawing. The lines for the sheep are complex. The other lines in the picture are relatively simple.   Simplify the drawing of the sheep.

From my study of the Mucha poster (which seems to be the direction I'm heading), it looks like I need to complicate most of the elements and simplify the face of the sheep.  

In Mucha's posters, the element he wants as the focus has the most simple and realistic elements - faces.  This is also the place with the most depth to the colour - realistic blush for example, whereas the other elements rely more on the lines for the shading.  Then he uses clutter as the background to pull the attention to somewhere calm.

That was harder than expected.  

On the antiques roadshow,  they say the original colours were extremely bright and posters without faded colours sell for significantly less than the faded ones.

I used too many colours and could get a better effect with cerulean,  cad orange,  and buff.

I've been practicing drawing sheep.   They are difficult to get right.

I'm leaning towards Suffolk as the blue-black face will contrast the pale moon.

This popped up on my youtube feed today. It talks about how the hippie art style was based heavily on art nouveau . It also helps define art nouveau by showing what is similar and not-quite-it. I like how it pointed out something we were noticing earlier: that art nouveau has gentle, pastel, earthy colors...while the hippie art has high-contrast, bright colors that vibrate. Color scheme is important when trying to say "art nouveau."

I kind of gave up on this, but I learned a lot.

It's the Master's study that did it.  There were so many lines.  Such complexity between different types of lines and the deceitful simplicity of the picture as a whole.

I do want to come back to this style and maybe even find a way to make my sheep's dream.  But I want to improve my art more first.  

Thanks everyone for your help.  

This idea is still tugging at me.  I've had time to improve my art skills and I want to test it against this project again.

Maybe make a plan.

1. Practice drawing night blooming flowers.  Pick three or four to practice with the view of choosing two for the final composition

2. Find out what ratio posters are/were so I can get an idea for the desired paper size

3. Figure out how to draw a lamb

Do this and see what's next.

I've also learned since I gave up on this project that lines, especially transforming objects into lines, is my biggest challenge in art.  So, I will try and choose occasional projects that focus on this skill like this one.

r ranson wrote:This idea is still tugging at me.

I can see why! It's intriguing - I've always found the Art Nouveau-style very pleasing to the eye, the natural elements, the dynamics of the composition and the tasteful (to me) colourschemes.

R., I think you're a superstar with your thorough take on art - you don't give enough credit to yourself!

May I give feedback on your plan?

1. Good idea, also look closely to the stems and leaves of those night blooming flowers and incorporate them in the (ornamental) design.

2. The ratio / proportions of image size is an interesting point! When you've worked out the proportions you want to use, perhaps make a series of thumb nail frames on one (big!) sheet of paper and quickly sketch +- 24 variations of your composition idea in those thumbnail frames as a starting point to your actual work.

3. I've realized that many animals consist of geometric shapes; circles, ellipses, triangles etc. Perhaps play with geometric shape sheep to start with?

Good luck! You're doing great! I've seen your other art threads as well :)

night blooming stocks (Matthiola longipetala) are going to be part of this.

I love this picture from the wiki page



So I spent a few moments with some inktense pencils to see how hard they are to draw.
Please ignore the clover, that was just playing

I saw this on facebook today, and couldn't resist posting it to this thread.

You have hit the nail squarely on the head.  Definitely dwarf vs elves.

An excellent guide for designing like Muche