1. Please DON'T recommend art books to those of us who struggle to learn by art books because of megalophobia, the fear of facing big things (even if they are dissected into bite-sized pieces). Bite-sized is bite-sized.
2. When things like this get FPed for their anatomy and character, please DON'T try to mansplain anatomy and character by saying "you should look at anatomical references."
BECAUSE THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT I HAVE BEEN DOING.
3. Deplatform the Dutch masters if you think tracing is bad. Go and protest at the art museums, trash their work, show it for what it really is: nothing more than a tracing over camera obscura. But I don't see either of you doing anything comparable, in small ways and in great. I see your hypocrisy.
4. Please DON'T try to say that this is a learning place that doesn't act like art college, when you act like art college. I've followed much of your advice and we've driven people away — I've driven people away — from the joy of drawing by the absolute rigidity of how one "should" learn. "You must learn this way," "You must learn that way."
I get that you need to learn the rules in order to break them. I know, as a musician and an intermediate artist, that this is true — and we get a deep sense of empowerment from being able to break the rules of theory in this position of knowledge. That's good. I'm not denying that.
What I am disputing is that everyone has to learn by a fixed way. There are many roads, etc.
5. Only some of our resources are available for free. Not all of us can pirate things due to strict laws, and not all of us can afford them. Please check your privilege.
I couldn't access the internet very well in the country of my birth, and some websites were blocked, AND my school focused on STEM subjects, as did my parents. Learning art was so low on the priority list and I was in an abusive household, in an abusive country. As a child, I got so desperate to learn, I wound up tracing Kingdom Hearts artwork. I don't trace for any of my stuff for NG or elsewhere; I draw from memory or by reference these days, but there was once a time where this was impossible.
I wouldn't recommend tracing, but God help me if I throw the bell, book, and candle at someone in my situation who needed to do this to learn. That would be absolutely privileged and hypocritical of me to do. Not everyone who wants to draw can use the same means. Me getting a hold of Andrew Loomis's books back in the day was exceedingly difficult and I needed to find uploads of it somewhere, being very strictly nonprofit and all back then (asylum seeker and all).
BecomeTheFridge
Apologies for the rambling reply.... Just my odd thoughts in response to your well-thought-out post.
I'm about ten years into my art journey (I didn't start seriously investing time into it until about November 2012), and I'm starting to notice a lot of the things you've pointed out.
On the note of artbooks, while I don't get overwhelmed in the same way, my ASD brain (I was technically diagnosed with Aspergers about 20-ish years ago) has difficulties with focusing on one particular path, especially when two or more extremely good books provide intuitively conflicting approaches.
People's rigidity towards how folk "should" learn (including their gripes about learning the fundamentals, avoiding tracing, etc.) seems to be an inherent problem passed down from the educational system. Even the more well-meaning teachers and artists become blind to the fact that not everyone can learn the same way.
Anatomy, a topic that I am deeply obsessed with mastering, has escaped my full intuitive grasp, and I probably won't have a full hold of it for another decade or more.
It's taken me a decade, but I'm finally starting to accept how I personally learn, regardless of the regiments others might preach. As a perfectionist, that's not an easy battle, and it's a mental war I'll be waging with myself for the foreseeable future.
Troisnyx
My neurodivergence (I'm not sure *which* yet, I'm afraid) has not only made it hard in the ways that you've described, but it's also made it hard for me to find the words to describe why I'm getting the heebie-jeebies from the art forum, and why I have been for years.
So when I finally types this out, it felt truly liberating. My only regret is that it took me years to put words to this abusive behaviour. I'm calling it what it is: abusive. Because these are some of the same people who, when I became friends with them in the hopes of learning from them, constantly made fun of me specifically, gaslit me about our friendship, and said nothing but awful things about my art without giving me any indication of improvement.
Those who continue to be helpful and accepting of various different styles of learning are there, but they're exceptions to the rule, I feel. I'm also inclined to believe that the people who do get FPed are far removed from that community aspect, which does help them as they don't get bogged down — they learn and they simply do as they can. And that's all we can do at the end of the day.
I'm grateful for the art mods, because they're not gatekeepers in that sense. Of course they're gonna maintain a standard of quality and adhere to the rules. But they're not gonna judge us for our journey re: how we got there, how we came to doing nice art while adhering to NG rules. They stand above the community, in more ways than one.
Thank you for your thoughtful reply.