Move fast, fail fast, learn fast.

If I can give anybody wanting to learn art an important piece of advice, it's 'focus more on iterating fast and less on detailing'. In other words, sketch more and render less.

Most of the important fundamentals need to be learned from the bottom. Good rendering does not fix bad fundamentals. I say this knowing well how I'd like to be fundamentally better...

But currently I'm a bit more stuck with doing renders because that's my 'work'.

If I am free to do whatever I want though, I'd sketch a whole lot more. Of course rendering also takes practice, but aside from technical skills like brushwork or blending, rendering is more about problem solving anyway so even there, mileage matters less than say, knowledge.

IMO the correct mindset to have to progress as an artist is: Finishing an artwork should come as a natural progression of fundamental learning paths coming together when you've progressed enough. It shouldn't be the immediate goal.

It's tempting to look at the reception the best of artists get regarding their work and wanting to skip ahead to get similar glamour but it isn't at all practical. Rendering an artwork takes a lot of time, and while doing it, you don't work on the smaller building blocks that makes an artwork great.

I'm not gonna say it doesn't 'work', in a way. I feel like most people care more about details and finishings than they do about good foundations so naturally there's a clear appeal to pursue it. Otherwise plenty of AI art with bad gestures but insane levels of detailing just wouldn't fly.

I used to be the same, focused too much on details and not enough in the essence. The time I spent on a month-long 'bad art' could have been used to study better. Alas I didn't have the wisdom to come to that conclusion back then. Not complaining about it, what's past is past.

But if I could advice my old self, yes, I'd advice him that!
Now whether the me from then would accept it or not, that's an entirely different matter ahaha~