FIXING my followers' ART 9 😵

Added: 2026-05-08

[00:00:00]Hi, hello flu drawers. How's it going?

[00:00:01]It's been a while since the last installment, but today I'm finally getting my hands onto your art submissions. I'll see which ones I can help fix, which ones I can maybe give advice on, and which ones I can just appreciate and say, "Hey, that's cool."

[00:00:16]But as always, remember that everything I say is my subjective opinion, and whether to take my advice or not is completely up to you. I've received over a hundred emails this time, and I've read every single one of them. Thank you all so much for submitting and for every single nice kind message. Unfortunately, I can't take all submissions into a video. I wish I could, but then the video would probably be 5 hours long and take me 3 months to edit, but I appreciate every single one of you.

[00:00:44]Please don't stop submitting. I love receiving your emails and I will continue to make these videos because I like it and I like you and your art. So, make some tea, draw along, eat along, and let's get started.

[00:00:57]Hey, I've been following you for quite a bit and I really love your style. I was wondering if you could help me with some of my drawings. I feel like I'm not that great with colors and I probably have other issues, too. I sent you a few of my drawings. Hope you can help. Thanks.

[00:01:08]Okay, so here we got a bunch of portraits. Front view, side view. Really nice. As a general advice for all of these, I think the hair needs some more flavor. The shape of the hair and the negative space really matters and it really helps giving the hair a more dynamic shape and adding more strands and more curves and breaking it down into sections and making it a bit more chaotic and fun. Especially with long hair that takes up so much space on the canvas and draws so much of viewers attention to itself because a hair is not one solid piece. It's not a blanket.

[00:01:40]The shape of the hair can really make or break your composition and the overall look and feel of your drawing. So, in my opinion, it's always worth the effort to put some more time and detail into the hair and make it help your composition.

[00:01:55]And then on this profile portrait right here, I would definitely move the jaw way down to get rid of this super sharp angle because if we look at an actual skull, the tilt of the jaw is not quite as dramatic as it is here. And this angle point should never end up above the mouth level because then the mouth would struggle to function properly. And then I would slightly move this forehead forward and reshape the nostril just a bit. And the tilt of this eye is also really dramatic. Our eyeballs, they don't really tilt. It's just a ball in there that rotates in place. So I would put it back in place without this tilt.

[00:02:32]And here is a before and after.

[00:02:38]So I'm almost 20. and I've been drawing on and off since I was about 12 years old. I want to draw anime like the Tedto looking drawing and the girl with orange and purple hair. I'm still not that good at digital art, but tips and such would be greatly appreciated. Wow, this is so interesting. These almost look like they were drawn by two different people because the art styles are so different.

[00:02:57]Like this one and this one especially stand out. These are really well done. I can make a very brave assumption that you fancy the symmetry tool quite a bit because only one drawing out of eight that you submitted you drew without using the symmetry tool. And I mean it looks great. Everything looks proportional. The hair, the clothes, the body. Why do you feel the need to use it so much? You're clearly capable of drawing without it. I just feel like it really sets back your art from what it could be. The symmetry tool is great when you're doing a concept art of a character that you're later going to turn into a 3D model because it's convenient to have a perfectly symmetrical tosing character reference to model over. And I don't know, maybe you are turning these into 3D in which case symmetry is fine. But if not, then I would definitely say get rid of the symmetry tool. You don't need it, especially on the hair and the clothes.

[00:03:48]I mean, in general.

[00:03:52]Oh man, here we go.

[00:03:55]Great. My name is Nori. I'm a young artist. I wouldn't say I'm a beginner or a master artist, but I say I'm somewhere in between, especially for my age, as people say. In fact, I'm turning 14 soon. Wish me a happy birthday, Pooky.

[00:04:06]JK, you don't have to do that. What do you mean I don't have to? Of course I have to. Now, happy I If you get this and I get to see my art in the next video, that would be so cool. The reason I'm coming to you is I have a small problem with colors in certain lighting. And low key, my sketch can look chef's kiss. But when I color it, it looks like a painters's dirty paint water spilled. So yeah, but other than that, I love my style. And if you have anything to say about my art, feel free. I love constructive criticism. Oh, thank you. People like you make the world keep spinning. Or maybe it's my head spinning. That was a mouthful. Uh, I like your style. I love this one. It's so creepy. It looks like a book cover for a horror novel or something. Now, I don't think your colors look imbalanced.

[00:04:52]They are desaturated. Yeah, but they work pretty well. If you want more saturated, clean looking colors, then you can try moving over from the left half of the color circle to the right half and using those colors instead.

[00:05:06]I'll take this drawing. And here I would definitely make the red more saturated to make it really pop because red is such a pick me color. When it's in the picture, it really wants to be the center of attention. And to be honest, it's really good at it being the center of attention. So I added a red overlay onto the red elements and lightly on her cheeks and on her legs because the red color bounces back from the inside of the skirt. And I also made the skin itself a bit more saturated. And now a little bit about the pose itself. She looks like she's about to fall over.

[00:05:40]Because if I draw a vertical line from where her foot touches the ground, we will see that the weight distribution is very uneven. A lot of weight on the left and not a lot on the right. Especially with her head being so big and chibi, she will fall over before you know it.

[00:05:57]So I would move her body to make the weight distribution a little more equal.

[00:06:01]So now if we draw this line from her foot, we see rather even amounts of body mass on both sides. But the biggest thing that bothers me here are her arms.

[00:06:13]Dude, why did you do her like that? Just put yourself in her shoes. Imagine having a head this big and arms this small. And now try putting your arms fully behind your giant head. I can't even do it with my normal head. In order to do this, I have to really tilt my head forward. And it's really uncomfortable. So there is no way this big head chibi could put her arms behind her head like that in like a natural swing of motion. No way. This is a natural way to hold something above your head. This is not. We promote empathy on this channel. Before putting your character in some weirdass pose, hey, you do it. Come on. No. Let me see you do it. See how it feels and then draw this one. Holy, dude. That's insane.

[00:07:02]That's incredible. Oh my god, you're a crazy person. How did you draw all that?

[00:07:08]So much details, so much stuff. I'm speechless. Hello. I'm not a beginner, but I feel like my art is kind of stuck in quality for a while now. Mostly, I have problems with perspectives and placing any kind of light on my characters. Recently, I started to put more effort into what I do, but something still feels off, and I just can't put my finger on it. Any kind of tip would be nice. I don't know, dude.

[00:07:31]Well, obviously I think your art looks great. One small thing I would definitely add is some saturation on her face with like some overlay yellow light and like a reddish blush on her cheeks and on the nose, which would correspond nicely with these red strawberries and would make her face a focus point as it should be. Whereas right now her face looks kind of plain and I'm way more inclined to pay attention to these strawberries than to the center of this piece which is her face. Yeah. But honestly, I just wanted to appreciate this person's work and I wish I had their username or something. But but as with with many of these, some of you just send gorgeous art and leave it completely anonymous, which is absolutely fine if you want to be anonymous. But dang, I I just I just wish I could tell people like, "Hey, look, go follow them. go support their art, but oh well.

[00:08:27]Hello, my name is Aki. I've been watching your videos a lot since last year, and I really love your art style.

[00:08:32]I've been drawing for 6 years, and I got into digital art in late 2024. Lately, I've grown to really hate my art because they look so plain and boring. I don't really know how to do rendering, and I find the concept so difficult to understand, especially when I compare myself to my best friend who has been drawing around the same time as me.

[00:08:49]We're childhood friends. She has very vibrant and fun colors. Her rendering is amazing. And when I see my art being side by side with her, mine feels so lackluster. It's the same for how everyone sees our art in comparison, too. I will really appreciate all the critiques you have for my art and what I need to do to make my art a lot more pop and more dynamic. I want to be an artist with very colorful, saturated, vibrant, and eye straining type of art. My art inspirations are in the name of a bunch of artists that I'm not going to attempt to pronounce because I'm afraid I'm going to mispronounce all of them.

[00:09:22]Here's my art. Many have told me that my art still looks fine, but my art isn't how I want it to look like. Uh, I love your style a lot. I say this every time.

[00:09:31]I'm obsessed with these kind of angular styles. I think they look so cool. And I love this line art brush that you're using. It has so much size variation.

[00:09:41]It's so bold and so cool. But I understand there is a difference between your style looking objectively good and looking the way you want it to look. So regarding colors, I mean here you are using pretty bright colors. This looks very vibrant, very pop. Are you not happy with that? On the other three drawings, you're using very dark and very desaturated colors, which to me feels intentional. But if you don't like that, I would suggest to not make your initial base colors so dark because then they're kind of hard to manage. Maybe start with lighter colors and try drawing on a white canvas instead of this dark gray canvas because a dark gray canvas will make you more inclined to use dark gray colors. You can try and make your canvas the color that you want your final drawing to be. So if you want your end result to look all bright and pop and pink for example, then make your canvas bright pink and then you will be more likely to choose base colors that will uh match that bright pink tone. Or how I do it is I never think of the colors I'm putting down at first. I just throw in some colors that are kind of similar to the colors I want. And then I just go into the adjustments section and I start playing around and adjusting every section of my character until I get the most balanced nicel looking colors that I want. And that's why I separate my base colors into different sections on different layers. This makes it easier for me to just select a desired section and adjust the color without having to manually lasso select a section every time. So yeah, you don't have to use perfect colors right away.

[00:11:22]That's the beauty of digital art is because we have so many different tools that allow us to experiment and adjust like the hue, the saturation, the tone of your colors to make it look good without having to repaint everything.

[00:11:35]But I think your art style is absolutely delicious. Please don't let those stupid colors uh discourage you from drawing.

[00:11:46]I've been drawing for just over six years after health problems led me to being unemployed. Weirdly, I'm very grateful that that happened because I'm so passionate about art now, and I don't think I ever would have reached that point without those circumstances.

[00:11:59]Currently, I feel like I've hit a wall with my art where I don't know how to get better at what I'm doing. I know there's lots of room for improvement, but I think I need some guidance on areas I should focus on. Generally, I'm always trying to get better at anatomy, and I think my colors could use some work, mostly with lighting, but if you can find any points for me to improve on, I would greatly appreciate it. Wow, that's a great backstory. I mean, you clearly are very skilled and have a very distinct style that works. However, yes, no matter which skill level you're at, you will inevitably at some point hit a wall because you settle into a routine and you draw the stuff that's within your comfort zone and you have a process that works for you, but it becomes repetitive and you plateau and stop improving. So to avoid that, we need to constantly challenge ourselves and try something new. For example, a lot of your characters are wearing very skin-tight clothes that are almost like drawn on the skin, which is fine, but maybe try drawing different outfits for them. Try drawing more loose, baggy clothing. Try drawing more full body poses. The wackier the better. Try pushing your facial expressions and making them more extreme. See how you manage to draw that. Just give yourself a challenge that will be interesting to draw and won't feel like a chore, but your style is very, very lovely. And it's great that you've suddenly found such passion in art. And this is a crazy level to get to in 6 years. That's really impressive.

[00:13:28]So, I've been drawing for like 2 and 1/2 years or so, but I've also liked it my whole life and just started taking it seriously a little back in the day. So, I think my main problem might be the lighting. Like, I feel like the lighting is just off. Let me explain further. So, the one with the ginger in the outdoor world touching grass, I just feel like the lighting could be better. It doesn't look bright enough. Then there is this one of the two guys in the city. And I think the lighting there is also off, but I'm not too sure what it is. The highlights are probably wrong there, too. And finally, there is my Lord of the Flies OC standing in the gray void.

[00:14:02]And you know that's kind of your thing.

[00:14:03]So, I figured I could get some help on that, too. Thank you for your guidance, assistance, help, time, tutoring, critique, advice, aid, lessons, Jumbo Hatchimals, coloring and activity book.

[00:14:12]You're always welcome. I love that you're doing these full color illustrations with backgrounds and scenery. That's really awesome. The colors you're using are really clean and vibrant, and I love that, especially on this one. Now, I'll just point out a couple of things that stand out to me and that I would maybe try doing differently. But you know, I don't know what you were inspired by or what look you're going for with your style. So, you don't have to change it just because I said it. I'm just saying stuff. So, firstly, uh the faces look very small to me in comparison to the bodies of the characters and the size of the hair mass. If I imagine the size of their skull, it's so small and the hair is so big, it doesn't make sense. The hair mass is too big for this tiny skull. So, I would suggest making their faces bigger. Secondly, very quick, I'm really worried about their knees. They look like they got these huge cysts or tumors on their knees. They are so big and bulging, you know? That bothers me.

[00:15:16]Knees don't really bulge like that. Just very slightly, very smoothly, you know.

[00:15:21]Next, a really big thing, and I know it's a hard thing, and it's definitely not something I expect you to instantly fix right away because clothing is hard, hard to draw, and hard to understand.

[00:15:33]But I really suggest you make it your top priority to study some clothing references and try understanding how different movement and tension affects the fabric, where the fabric should be straight and tense, and where it should be loose and bunched up. Because with all of these, it looks like you're just kind of winging it because their clothes are not bunching in places where they should be bunching and they are bunching in places where they should not be bunching. Right here, here goes the knee. But what is this? Why does the fabric do this here? Over here. What are those? Does he have rocks in his pants?

[00:16:12]This should be completely straight and all the bunching will be happening on top. Also in places like here and here, we should not be seeing the back inner side of the fabric. From these angles, it just looks like their clothing is for some reason longer on the back than it is on the front. So, it's very important to understand that fabric has weight.

[00:16:33]and think about fabric in a 3D space and make sure it makes sense. Because when your character is moving in one way, but the clothes on their body are moving in a completely opposite way, it makes the drawing really hard to read, hard to read the movement, hard to read the pose. It just looks off because the movement of the fabric is disconnected from the movement of the character. And I know in your message you were concerned about colors, but I don't think that colors should be on your list of priorities right now because your coloring skills and hair and face and line art skills are noticeably 10 steps higher than the clothing drawing skills.

[00:17:16]So I definitely would recommend focusing on that first because I think that is what would really bring your art to the next level.

[00:17:32]Now, some um honorable mention. First one. Oh my god, you're so cool. Wow, this is amazing. Uh the way you paint, teach me your ways. This is genuinely so beautiful. I have zero notes. This one um fascinated me. your drawings look so deformed, but like in a really good way, in an intentionally creepy way, not in a bad way at all. And I love these eye bleaching colors. Uh, next, I got a submission from one of my fellow Russian viewers. Hello. And that is genuinely the most beautiful line work I've ever seen. This is so incredibly awesome. Uh, then this one. I love the way you sketch in all the different poses and portraits. It reminds me of how I used to draw in my sketchbooks. This is very, very nice. You have a very pretty, consistent style, and I think you're doing fantastic. Next, um, best art I've received thus far in this series. Zero notes. I wish to reach your skill and wisdom one day. You also attached this drawing which is definitely one of your weakest creations. It looks kind of embarrassing in comparison. I don't think you should have sent that.

[00:18:57]I've been doing art for the past 5 6 years and are still hoping to improve and receive tips from a professional artist who uh you've come to the wrong person. I feel like the face proportions don't really match and I didn't render the upper chest properly because it's not really the main focus. I love when I get these where it's just one drawing and one reference because then I don't have to use a lot of this. I just have to make one drawing look like the reference task clear. The biggest difference here is that you drew her face at a completely different angle.

[00:19:27]The reference face is in 3/4 and yours is in 2/3. You can especially easily tell this by looking at the neck. The more you turn the head, the more distance you will see between the neck and the chin. Here, there is a pretty big distance because she's almost looking sideways. And here, she's almost looking straight at us. When you're drawing a portrait, you should be making up imaginary measurements for yourself to make the proportions guessing game easier. First, imagine the middle line.

[00:19:59]see the distance between the middle line and the side of the face and the distance from the middle line to each of the brows. Also, this temple distance is very important at defining the angle of the face and the arch of the brow is very telling. So, just learning to estimate all these small distances can really help you in matching the reference and drawing the right facial structure. Always divide the face into smaller planes and chunks in your head.

[00:20:26]look at it like a puzzle and see how and where all these pieces connect. Also, I redrew her nose because you drew kind of a pointy ski slope nose like she got it rhinoplasted. And this gorgeous woman has a gorgeous big nose with a bump. And as a bumpy nose girl myself, I really appreciate that.

[00:20:51]Hi there. My name is Katu and I'm an 18-year-old artist from Finland. I absolutely love your videos and I would love some suggestions on my art. I feel like I always struggle with rendering and my drawings always feel so unfinished. I would love to hear your thoughts and what you would change. Oh, you're from Finland? Oh, to live in Finland? Don't you guys have like the cleanest, freshest air? That's all I wish for honestly though. I just want to breathe clean air. Is that too much to ask? I might get mowled by one of these things inhabiting the Finnish forests, but my last breath will be made with a full chest. I love how you sent these two drawings side by side. Yeah, I feel you. These two drawings look like they're in the same style, and I will assume that this is your main style, and you're concerned with your drawings looking unfinished, which might have to do with line art. You're doing a lot of line work and cross-hatching, which is great, but in many, many places, your lines do not connect. They cut off like loose ends of the string, and that does make your work look undercooked a little. So, I highly suggest you make sure to connect all these lines, all these corners. And when you are connecting them, you can even go over this connection place a couple of times to make it really darker and thicker.

[00:22:11]And that will give your line art more volume. And if you like this type of ink look, you can add some more inking and black work to add some dark shadows and contrast and go for something like this.

[00:22:25]But mainly just make sure your lines connect. Otherwise, lovely art style.

[00:22:33]I'm a self-taught artist in need of some feedback cuz I'm usually just doing stuff without a specific plan, hoping to get a good result. So, some advice would be much appreciated. I usually struggle with three things the most at the moment. The first one is making the hair nice and flowy. Making the illusion of detailed hair, but without drawing every strand. Second, the clothes. Just the whole thing from sketching to rendering, especially loose clothes with lots of folds. I feel like it ends up looking really flat and thin. Also, have no idea how to add different textures or material to the clothes. So, I usually end up just putting a material on top as overlay and call it a day. And third, rendering in general. I feel like I tend to stick with one way of rendering, putting shadows to the same places all the time because I'm too scared to change it to not make it look bad. Okay, so we have this drawing and two references for it. Uh, I'm actually not sure if this one is a reference or just your rough pose sketch. If this is your reference, I would recommend you find better references because this is just a rough outline of the pose. You need a reference that shows the structure and volume of the body so it is easy to follow. This is not a very good reference. So I assume because you used this reference, the body turned out a little bit misaligned. Like this booby is twice as small as this one. And her rib cage looks kind of flat like it doesn't have any dimension. And also her hands are really really tiny. Those are some baby hands that should not be managing a deadly weapon. So, I would promptly adjust the body shape using liquify. So, now her boobs are on the same level and look the same size, and her waist and hip area looks more confident. And I erased these very sharp lines on her stomach. You can show abs and other muscles with softer shadows that don't look so jarring. And next is the colors. Now, here on this red top, you've got a red color of the top, then a bit darker red for a shadow, and a bit lighter red for highlights, which is just not tasty. It looks very plain. Now if we look at this reference, we can see that instead of colors switching from dark red to red to light red, they go from this magenta purple color to this saturated red and then to this saturated orange and yellow in the highlight, which makes the color look alive and juicy. So instead of just moving the tone of the color from dark to light, move the hue of the color as well from cold to warm. Then I added a bit of saturation and soft shading on her skin and also added more contrast to her hair. Added a cold shadow and a warm highlight. And that's basically it.

[00:25:23]And that's pretty much it for today.

[00:25:25]There are so many more submissions, but obviously I can only take so many into one video. I'm sorry if your submission didn't make it in today. If you have sent your submission a long time ago and it hasn't been in the video, feel free to send your new drawings. You can send as many drawings as you want. I love looking through them. Thank you so much to everyone who submitted and thank you for your kind words. If you want to submit a drawing for the next installment, you can mail it to me to this email. Please don't send submissions to my business email or to my DMs because I won't be gathering submissions from there, only from this email. Thank you so much for watching.

[00:25:59]If you enjoyed this video, then please press like and subscribe. I would really appreciate that. And good night. Good day. Goodbye.