Drawing is more important than painting

[Fedodika]

"80% of getting better at painting is just drawing." maybe richard schmid, hell JFK coulda said it, it's still a quote to live by.

I think i figured it out... And if you already understand this, it'll be nothing new, but there are no threads on this out there and i want to make one just so noobies don't fall into the same trap i did.

We're all here, on crimson daggers, a site founded by Dave Rapoza, or as most would consider, a master of photoshop and rendering. Many of us are fans of Brad Rigney, Craig Mullins, Ruan Jia; all quite masterful at rendering in photoshop. But that's what we see on the outside at first, is the very beautiful rendering. 

So after being exposed to these guys for the first time, you know a lot of people we tend to look up to like algenpfleger, jana schirmer, mike azevedo etc. are really really good at painting. Gorgeous lighting, colors, balances in the values, edges, brushstrokes; just wanna eat em!

But one thing i see people (like myself) neglect is the fact that these people i've listed are really really good at drawing as well. Maybe not night and day compared to their painting abilites, but pretty damn good. But a few of us really want to emulate that rendering style so much that we don't realize (or are never told directly) that

rendering well doesn't necessarily help you get jobs.

And i'll elaborate: Here are some examples of people who don't render as well as rigney, mullins etc.


http://reiq.deviantart.com/gallery/
http://artgerm.deviantart.com/gallery/
http://slugbox.deviantart.com/

And look how popular they are! How well recieved! no one really cares that they can't paint as well as rigney and they still are professional! Even more popular than rigney! I know it's anime, but that's another point i'll get to!

This really hit me this morning when i posted  a piece on imgur that i used a lot of reference for and once i finished it, was confident that it was the most anatomically correct and well rendered thing i'd done. 
http://imgur.com/gallery/2FdZA1G

And i'll note that imgurians are brutally honest and imgur is a fantastic way to get very harsh feedback if the piece is screaming for it. 

But the face of this girl i'd drawn is pretty skewed, but i had not noticed that before posting it. If i had gotten the drawing part right before i posted it, maybe they would have liked it? could they complain about something else? i haven't gotten many likes on this piece and probably won't, but i'll turn your attention to something i did do right, several months ago.

http://fedodika.deviantart.com/art/Djalj...-521579330

This piece is my most faved, commented, shared, whatever piece i've ever done, and i did it in like april 2015. The difference between that and the girl is that this piece is i suppose drawn well to the point that it's than passable. Even though i'd say this piece isn't rendered as well, that part doesn't really matter. Because the drawing is good. It's not even fan art either, it's not anime, 

The anime part doesn't matter, if it's drawn well, they will come. The style part can matter, but what matters more, is the overall structure and solidity and volume of the piece. 

All of that comes from the drawing, and overall shape language. That does 90% even 100% of the work in selling your idea. And if your idea isn't great as rigney once said, "you know, green skin, big tits, red glowing eyes, uhhh, gun,"

Rendering can help you. But it can't save a lack of understanding in key fundamental areas.

"The rendering can look like crap and clients don't care, as long as the drawing is good." Feng Zhu.

(bout to get philisophical)

In illustration that may be different because if you are getting hired to paint something well, obviously that's a different story. But! you aren't likely to get hired for companies a lot of us want to work for drawing blobs of pretty texture, you have to make something tangible like a character or a creature. And you know, the character can't be a stick man, it can't be a stiff figure whose anatomy isn't great, it can't be ugly (unintentionally) or even worse, trying to be pretty but is slightly skewed. 

Something being cool, or being beautiful, or being whatever you want it to be is in the very contours of your piece, in the line art. The shape language, the composition, should all read clearly in the line art, with precision!

If i could go back in time, i'd spend 90% of my time drawing and learning shape language over what i did, which was spending 90% of the time painting. I know plenty of tricks about edges, color, tight values, lasso tools, layer modes, color correction, and even how to just make a blob of pretty colors, but i'm not getting hired by anyone to do that :3

Wouldn't it be cool if you could draw a perfect hand from your imagination, like an old michealangelo sketch? or if you could do line art from your mind of a bunch of characters with cool shapes like kim jung gi? Or would you rather paint some half ass drawn orc with flawed anatomy with pretty skin textures and material textures.

Chances are, people are gonna care alooooot more if you can just put down lines like marko or kim jung gi, or paul richards, than if you can paint skin realistically or you know paint metal armor. It's just icing on the cake really, but the cake has to be good or else you get this "mleh" kinda feeling.

And remember! you can get a job making low poly 3d models if the visual information (drawing) is good! and zbrush and keyshot can render a lot of it for you :)