#188 - What Artists Can Learn From Dating Apps
When it comes to beauty! Not dating!
Art Flashcards, images ready to be drawn.
should preface this by saying I have never used dating apps. I've been in a relationship since before these apps came into existence. (Hi honey!) This article is based on an analysis someone else did. I have no first-hand experience with this. Long ago, I read an article where someone wrote about interesting research they had done. They studied the popularity statistics of women on dating sites. I can’t find the article anymore. Such is the internet.
They saw in the statistics that there were two types of distributions.
One, you had traditionally beautiful women who got relatively good scores from almost everyone.
And secondly, some women were ‘unconventionally’ beautiful. They would have groups of people give them relatively lower scores, but also people who gave extremely high scores on their beauty.
The researcher looked at women with approximately the same average score; for some women, everyone gave them a ‘nice’ score. Still, for other women, there would be people who said, “Nah,” and people who were utterly mesmerized by their beauty, utterly in love with their looks.
Above are two schematic graphs to illustrate the idea. The average of the blue and red graphs is the same, but the blue graph has one peak centered around that average, while the red graph has two peaks, one to the left and one to the right of the average.
The blue graph represents conventional beauty: women everyone would consider beautiful. The red graph represents unconventional beauty: some people don’t like their looks much, but the ones that do are completely in love with it.
If you want true raving fans, you want your art to have an unconventional beauty.
You don’t want your art to be conventionally beautiful and for everyone to say, “Nice.” You want your art to be unconventionally beautiful. You want that red peak at the extreme right where people are huge fans of your work.
An example is Manga; you either love it or hate it.
What can you take away from this as an artist?
This holds for your art, too!
Everyone can see the beauty of realistic art, which can be stunning and pleasing.
And as soon as you deviate from realism, it becomes a matter of taste. And some people will not like it as much, and some will utterly adore and be in love with it.
When I look at the art that I fell in love with, it tends to be in a drawing style with something quirky about it but beautiful in an unconventional way.
Drawing from observation is a vital skill for artists to develop. But it doesn’t have to form finished pieces.
I’m not advocating ‘finding your style.’ You already have a style, and it’s how you naturally draw if you don’t try to copy a reference image slavishly. And it’s that style that people can fall in love with and become life-long fans.
This Week
I created two new podcast episodes, one of which is a remastering of an earlier recording that was on YouTube. They are designed to be listened to while drawing.
These are on YouTube, but you can also listen to the audio-only versions here.
As you can see in the thumbs for the podcast links above, I am experimenting with the idea of a mascot for Practice Drawing This. The design may be too cartoonish and doesn’t convey what Practice Drawing This is about. If I keep the idea, the design will evolve into something more realistic-looking. Mickey Mouse’s design also developed over time. This echoes the advice in one of the podcasts mentioned above to erase your work (and start anew). I’m having the avatar erase the Mona Lisa, but maybe I should erase him.
Examples
Practice Drawing This is full of cool, and even unique, drawing practice resources, but I’ve historically been bad at promoting it. I keep adding things to the site and then forgetting to mention it. That’s what the This Week section of these articles is about; to mention new things on the site that might interest you.
It just dawned on me that I approach it wrong, though.
In writing, the mantra is “show, don’t tell.” The idea is that instead of, for example, telling an audience they need to feel sad, you need to show them something that makes them feel sad.
Show, don’t tell.
Let the audience decide for themselves.
Instead of constantly telling online how cool Practice Drawing This is, I should show, and so I will try that for a while. I do my drawing exercises, and I’ll share my drawings with the reference I used from Practice Drawing This. Something like this:
This used the bent cylinder model.
The horizontal version above looks nice in articles like this one. The elements inside the image can be moved around to arrive at different aspect ratios, as you can see below.
Pinterest requires a 2:3 aspect ratio, and I added the website name because people tend to borrow images there. Instagram stories have a 9:16 aspect ratio. I left room for a link to the website there. The right one is a potential YouTube slide.
I’m still trying to figure this out, so if you have tips for me, I’d love to hear!
This one was done directly with a red BIC ballpoint pen:
Woman in long coat from the back, from this flashcard.
Regarding “erase your art to improve your art,” as the podcast mentioned above says, you won't believe how many false starts I had with this one.
Ink bottle, from this flashcard.
I started to get restless and was in a period again where I wasn’t happy with my art; you know how that feels. Switching up tools helps. In this case, I decided to switch to BIC ballpoint pens. They are great! Surprisingly versatile. They are cheap, portable, have vivid colors, and you can sketch lightly before committing to lines. A disadvantage is that the ink is dye-based and fades over time. Still, they are great for practice, and I’m scanning and photographing these digitally for posteriority anyway.