Professional Artists AREN'T All Experts (Why I Don't Make Tutorials) || SPEEDPAINT + COMMENTARY

I have seen "professionals" have some terrible advice where half their advice was basically making your artstyle not unique at all

Another point is that, even if someone is an expert at a skill, that doesnt mean theyd be a good teacher at all. Some people are really bad at explaining things, so to expect them to be able to just automatically have that skill just because theyre good at the thing is silly

6:12 Honestly, I think that people can learn a lot from your channel by just looking at your speed-paints. Studying speedpaints seems to be something people don’t consider a lot. The only things you can’t really learn from speedpaints are what types of layers, brushes, and other off-screen techniques and artist uses. Which could be a really great thing for you to make if you ever felt like it. (A good example would be a tutorial on how you color the hair of a character slightly so it matches the skin tone, or how you decide lineart colors, stuff like that)

another thing to note for why not every artist would want to (or should) make tutorials, is that they're not necessarily good teachers. while experts in a field are absolutely the best person to go to for tips and tutorials, they won't always explain it well. whatever tutorial they make might feel like watching spongebob draw a perfect circle to the person who asked for it. making a good tutorial isn't just about knowing enough about the subject, it also requires some teaching skills.

I wouldn’t get too hung up on it personally. You don’t have to be a perfect artist to make tutorials. It’s always good to share your tips and input with other artists to show the tricks that helped you. There’s so many tutorials out there I’ve tried that are awful and done by well respected professionals, but there is some advice I’ve gotten from artists less experienced than I am that really helped. Everyone learns differently, so you never know what you’ll do or say to greatly help someone else. I’d give it a chance, personally, but that’s just my two cents 😅

Finally! I've recently started watching tutorials from professionals and they are so different from what I see from artists on YouTube... and so much better

When I hear "professional artist", what I expect is an artist who is professional about their work. You know, responds in a timely manner to business inquiries, writes their emails with proper grammar and in a neutral tone, honors deadlines, listens to client feedback, that sort of thing.

It's amazing how few people realise 'professional' just means they're being paid for it, similar to how amatuer just means NOT paid (actually it means 'for the love of', but is generally used as the opposite of professional for that reason), skill level is a separate thing. To take your Doctor example a bit further, the older one might retire and so no longer be a professional, but are they any less an expert?

I tried to do some video/animation tutorials in my discord and it uhhhh went off track very quickly lmao Doesn't matter how skilled you are, you need a certain level of social skill & charisma to teach effectively i think

5% talent. 95% hard work.

To be completely honest, I don’t seek out “professionals” for tutorials. Though there are values in learning the fundamentals and understanding the rules well enough to break them, there’s also extreme joy in simply having fun with art. Art, for me, isn’t always methodical. It’s about expressing one’s heart and soul and connecting with others without uttering a single word. Studying endlessly can sometimes lead to self-doubt and frustration, especially when you struggle to grasp certain concepts or compare your work to others’. I’ve experienced this to the point where I stopped creating art for over two years, a decision I’ve since regretted. This is my point-of-view, shaped by my own experiences and learning disability, which hinders my understanding of things. I often need to hear explanations multiple times to grasp even a small part of a concept, and I find that I learn best by doing. There’s a certain freedom in learning from someone who doesn’t label themselves a “professional.” Their joy is palpable in their art and their tutorials. People might seek for you to do tutorials because they resonate with your art style and want to learn how to embrace it, improve upon it, or simply gain inspiration to better their own work. Even though I struggle with explaining things and my own self-doubt about my art, I still try my hardest to teach others my style. If they end up surpassing me, I take pride in knowing I played a part in their artistic journey, regardless of whether it’s deemed “professional.” :)

As an illustrative, non-art-related, example I can provide from my studies, here in Australia we have a nationally recognised certification/recognition program for expert engineers that distinguishes them from professional engineers. This certification requires the engineer to have a minimum amount of experience and demonstrate their competency in every element relevant to their area of expertise. This certification explicitly states that one of the hallmarks of expert engineers is that they are capable of teaching other engineers at a professional standard. This is not to say that professional engineers cannot teach junior engineers at a similar standard; many do. This is simply recognising that expert engineers can teach all of the relevant, objectively correct skills and practices because they have been entrusted with this authority. I am not suggesting that we should strictly codify a set of standards that we can use to benchmark people against. Engineering has these standards because there's usually a right and wrong answer but, as we know, art is far more flexible. Instead, I want to highlight the fact that the engineering community in Australia sought to empower the status of expert engineers and imbued them with the trust of the community. I think we can benefit from doing the same by promoting those who we can collectively agree as experts so that they can serve as trusted sources of art education.

Great video! And I completely relate. People have been asking me to post coloring art tutorials for a while but I wouldn't be comfortable doing that since I really have no idea what I'm doing (I just pick colors I think are pretty).

Oh my finally someone talking about this topic

Not even the college I went to knows what it takes to be an art teacher. A lot of the classes I had were highschool redunancies and none of them where about how to teach. You think something like "plan a curriculum" would be a part of it. They told me that teachers just learn a lil bit of everything then get put into openings (This was in southern Oregon). RL stuff forced me to end that career before I could even really start. I did come away from the experience with some teaching advice. Came from a pottery teacher. That you should write down your process and why you do it. Then use that for the basis of creating a plan. Forcing yourself to think of the whys helps explain the hows. Which ended up being why I stopped trying for my degree after RL settled down. I dont like to think when I draw. I just wanna vibe That being said, you are a teacher. It may not be in techniques or tutorials, but you are doing research and presenting what you learned in that pursuit to any who sit down in your "lecture hall." We all come away a little bit smarter; if not, at least entertained.

It’s also important to note that just being an expert in a field doesn’t mean you will be good at teaching it. When I was getting my math degree, I consistently observed that the professors who seemed the smartest/most advanced in their fields were the WORST at actually teaching anything. The practice of teaching is a skill to be developed in itself and not necessarily related to one’s skill level in a particular field. I admire your self-awareness in everything you discussed. Great video as always 👏👏

I've long maintained (in fact I said the same in a comment on a really useful video by 'LinesSensei' yesterday), that there is a substantial difference between knowing how to do something, and knowing how to teach it to the uninitiated. Even exceptional-grade artists can fall into this trap, time-lapsing an absolute masterpiece and yet be unable to effectively explain how they accomplish any particular portion of the work since the actual process became so automatic that no real thought need be devoted to how its done. Even though I absolutely do not use my own artwork to make ends meet (and I'm nowhere near DC's skill level), a quick look back at my own gallery reveals that the last purely recreational pic I posted was a year ago, and more than half of what I posted between then and now were commissions o_O (the rest were scans of 20+ year old drawings I put up as historical pieces). Under some very loose definitions, that makes me a "professional" (scary thought). That said, while I wouldn't attempt to do a tutorial for the same reasons DC puts forth, I have played loosey-goosey with that standard when I felt I could explain a generalized technique to someone well enough to make their next effort come out just a little better than their last one.

I WAS SO EXCITED WHEN I GOT THE NOTIF IM SO GLAD SHE POSTED

I honestly wouldn't mind an educational vid over how you do marketing. Im a very introverted artist and I STRUGGLE with putting myself out there and hope my sheer skill can carry the load but I know for a fact it isnt enough. So i would love a vid from you with that

Some of the worst art advice I’ve ever been given was by “professionals” with degrees