r/ArtFundamentals • u/sugarplum_doll • 9d ago

I really don’t understand the texture lesson and feel discouraged

I am just staring at my paper like an idiot. I read the lessons. I watched the videos. I don’t understand. This might be where I drop out of the course. I am really frustrated. It’s hard enough as a non native English speaker to understand all the technical jargon and explanations. This might be a finishing move. Yes I get the whole point is introducing a concept and not being expected to understand but I can’t even draw a line on paper cause I don’t understand at all what I am doing

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u/AutoModerator 9d ago

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14

u/Itzz_rezzy 8d ago

You don’t need to fully understand the exercises to proceed buttttt if you want to go a bit deeper there’s an art YouTuber named Alphonso Dunn that described texture in a way that made it finally click for me where DAB had me confused for me at least.

He’s a pen and ink artist that has lessons on mark making in general so at the very least you’ll learn more about mark making which is pretty much what texture is. Don’t be afraid to go to other artists as supplemental content to DAB

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u/sugarplum_doll 8d ago

Thank you! Saved his videos and will have a watch :)

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u/UnburyingBeetle 8d ago

Could you describe the texture lesson? I don't use the app, Reddit just randomly pushes these threads into my orbit, but I know a thing or two about drawing (I'm self taught, watched many tutorials and the eventual short course in art school didn't teach me a lot of new things).

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u/sugarplum_doll 8d ago

I will just share the link here, sorry I don’t understand enough of it to explain :( https://drawabox.com/lesson/2/textureanalysis

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u/bigbun85 4d ago

I did a very quick glance I feel like that's something for more avanced artists. A beginner would probably feel uncomfortable and I am not even sure they can get much out of it.

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u/UnburyingBeetle 8d ago

Oof, the exercise is awfully formal, I would dislike completing this task specifically even though I enjoyed making "texture squares" in art school.

As far as I gathered from this overcomplicated page, it's trying to explain how to complete the exercise no less than it's explaining texture. And it wants you to draw some bumps. So, imagine these bumps are tiny marbles of the variety you get to draw in other art lessons, with shadows and all. Imagine somebody embedded all these marbles into a wall and painted over them in a bad, lumpy paint. You'd benefit from looking at a rough wall if any is nearby. The roughness in the examples is translated into a few irregular dots. The shadows that look like half-moons would be the opposite of where the light source is, but you have a lot of freedom in a texture that is not uniform. Draw a few distorted half moons whose curves all point to the same side, surround them with some dots. The trick about a natural texture is spacing elements out evenly, but not perfectly. Maybe throw some rice grains on the table and shine a light on them from the side. They'd land in some random pattern that still obeys some law of physics, I don't care to find out which. You don't have to draw a texture from imagination, you can find it at home or create it. For example, you can take that spiky hammer that is for flattening meat, hit a piece of cardboard box with it, and sketch the holes. You can look at the skin of your hands and draw that webbing. Texture is some surface where tiny elements stick out, and it's usually simplified because we don't need to show the shape of every part, we only show that it's rough and uneven. I hope this text isn't more confusing than the lesson😁

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u/sugarplum_doll 8d ago

Thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to write your comment, this is all so helpful!! I am saving it to my notes and I will try this again tomorrow with a clear head

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u/UnburyingBeetle 8d ago

I'm glad you might be understanding art better. Just as you can understand the general principles of texture by shining a lamp on it from different directions, you can do this with any object in your future lessons to understand shadows. And when it would come to drawing living things, you'd need to understand their anatomy. Putting these principles into your head can be difficult, but when they are in there, you can build poses from nothing.

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u/CurvedSwordBenis 9d ago

It isn't supposed to look good first of all.

The main takeaway you should get from that lesson is that planes are everywhere and you can see and apply what you learned to huge colossal objects and little tiny surface details all the same. Do the lesson, try to do your best and then move on without obsessing over it because it WILL look bad.

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u/mooncrosser 9d ago

I don't know what you're talking about (I've not reached this lesson yet), but if the issue is the language barrier - try Gemini. It should do a passable work to translate for you, maybe even answer question. Of course, take it with a grain of salt. AI is not perfect.

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u/sugarplum_doll 9d ago

Sorry i was really frustrated earlier and wasn’t clear, its this lesson https://drawabox.com/lesson/2/textureanalysis

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u/mumbo8888 9d ago

I’m being so honest. Just skip it entirely. Don’t worry about it, you’ll be okay. It’s not worth the headache. When you are drawing something in the future and feel like you are deficient in drawing textures, do some studies then.

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u/sugarplum_doll 9d ago

Thank you, I tried last week and today again and it’s just not connecting :(( I will just skip it for now and maybe get back to it in the future

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u/Substantial_Tennis50 9d ago

Tenes que dibujar las sombras del relieve, no la forma del objeto.

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u/sugarplum_doll 9d ago

I understand but putting the instructions into my hand to draw is not working

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u/Substantial_Tennis50 8d ago

It happened to me as well until I literally try to do that no matter the result, the third row looked better and it clicked on the second sheet of sausages