This is an important topic. It's something I have struggled with understanding in the past, and am managing to get over now. Also, hello everybody ^_^.
In essence, theory won't make you better at drawing. And knowing what the fundamentals are won't help you much either. To make a comparison, knowing grammar rules won't make you speak a language well. The speed at which an experienced and skilled artist draws exceeds conscious thought of rules and patterns, similar to that of a native speaker of a verbal language.
Throughout western society, we deconstruct skills and try to make sense of them. It's, truly, in a sense,
academic. Teachers cheerily push concepts like "push the darks" because it is easy to objectively evaluate art in such a manner. However, it is completely ignorant of art that is beautiful with low-contrast values.
The usefulness of fundamentals is, in my opinion, quite limited to its ability to give names to parts of images. Such is the same with learning language, the parts of speech; being able to recognize what is a noun, verb, adjective, or particle is good. Such ability to comprehend the parts of language helps speed up the assimilation of natural grammar.
With images, you have the elements: shape, edges, line, depth, value, texture, color, saturation, hue. They just exist; they
are. They existed even before you know what their names were. The patterning of the elements leads to principles: rhythm, variety, chaos, etc.
And the usefulness stops there, similar to the ability to recognize the parts of speech in a language. Knowing what the parts of speech are is hardly the key to making you a great speaker of language. So we make up silly grammar rules with a gazillion exceptions and weird cases, that in the end no real speaker of a language know. But we think the
learner would benefit from knowing the rules ; (pro tip: it just leads them astray and make speaking more difficult and frustrating). Theory encourages invention of the wrong sort, the idea that if you stick to the theories you would end up with something good. However, it encourages near-nearsightedness and the foolhardy conclusion that if you stick to the theories you are conscious of, you will have perfect and beautiful speech. You end up, really, speaking in a language that nobody actually speaks...using words that don't go together.
In drawing there are a million invisible obstacles that no theory could ever articulate well, which can never be captured. They seem obvious to the highly skilled artists that "those two things just don't go together." However, if you asked them why they would have trouble to tell you (in most cases). Just as a skilled speaker of a language
doesn't know why two words are not used to express a certain concept, which could be traced back to a grammar rule that the grammarians are conscious of.
What to do about this? Lay the theory aside. Let the fundamentals do what they can do, in its own charming and limited way. Accept things the way they are. Copy art you love. Draw the art you love. If you don't know what you love, follow your ambitions and copy your ambitions, no matter how cheesy or stupid they are. Drawing is a collectively held language. Style is collectively held. Someone out there is using the same stylistic conventions, the same compositional patterns that you are. Someone out there speaks a language in just the way you do. Your original touch is a small component. It will peer through.
Dare to be derivative. Separate from your frustration and allow yourself to do things that are just the right amount of interesting and engaging
to you. Let your output follow your input. Your input, what you look at, what you copy, what you enjoy observing, whether it's real life or others' drawings, should have considerable impact on your artistic output. Input the same kind of information, over the period of months, okay. This isn't some hardcore repetition I'm talking about. I'm talking about over a very lengthy period of time, you come back to the same input, the same kinds of input (and do consider expanding what you input and output
). It's okay. Dare to do things that are comfortable, as long as you aren't bored. If you want to trace,
trace. Just do whatever the hell you want as long as you're putting your eyes in front of art and images and you're not living within a wonderland of theory.
Borrow others' voices. Stand on the shoulder of giants. Everything you could ever ask for is already out there. All of the artwork, the visuals of our worldly existence, hold all of the secret sauce. All you need to do is to look, to continually draw, and allow your being to slowly be invaded by something greater than yourself. Because, in my understanding, there is no such thing as a
rational reason as for why improvement in art occurs. I don't believe it can be explained with a phrase such as "I improved at art because I did a, b, and c." But, I do believe improvement cannot occur without the inputting and outputting of art. A truth that was inspired upon by the input-learning method for learning languages. That input of language is the absolute driver of assimilation of language and being able to speak well. And, I think, what we want to do as visual artists, as illustrators, mangaka, or comic artists, is to be able to speak in a beautifully authentic, true-to-our-genre fashion, yet minutely original and true-to-ourselves, in the way that we can't stop ourselves from being. Discovering our unique place within a genre, and having it come effortlessly. During all that copying, inputting and outputting, you
will be discovering yourself. Because
you make the choice of what you input, of who you copy, or whatever way you want to interpret this wall of mess. Eventually, you
will find a way to fit it all together in a way that only you can. Our memories, they are merely flimsy reconstructions of our past. Because it is
you that will be reconstructing your output, it is yours and belongs to you no matter how many stylistic conventions you use that can be traced back to a collectively used style, or individual artists.
This is no way to improve fast. But there is no way to improve fast. Fast improvement is artificial, limited. However, this philosophy I have elaborated on depth here also isn't difficult either. Reject boredom, and reject chronic frustration. Embrace fun, enjoyment, and stress-free, low-risk drawing. Fun easily trickles down to boredom because of fear of failure. You have to expand ever so slowly, whatever that means to you. Staying still can be dangerous. Looking at art consistently is a great way to insure you are sparked by the desire to expand your artistic reach whenever boredom starts to develop.
NOTE: This post is not directed to anybody in particular, but perhaps to individuals that are similar to how I used to be. To those who internally place too much emphasis on theory and having things spelled out for them in terms of 'why' this and 'why' that, as I once did. And to those with tendencies to spend too much time trying to invent their art. To those who wallow in a great deep sea of confusion, not knowing how to compose their drawings...or even what they want to draw, or how to make engaging drawings. It's better to have wholesome generic drawings, than empty unique drawings. This is all about language, it's communication. No one is going to get down on you for saying what somebody, and what everybody, is saying. Just go for it and be free.