Spent 6 hours on a digital painting and it looked like a potato

I was trying to do this cool fantasy landscape with mountains and fog. Followed every tutorial step by step for the lighting and blending. The final result looked like a lumpy potato with some blue smudges on it. I learned that maybe I should stick to simpler scenes instead of jumping into complex stuff. Has anyone else wasted a whole day on something that turned out totally wrong?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_jana1mo ago

Read somewhere that even professional artists call their early attempts "studies" instead of failures, which helped me reframe how I look at my own junk. That potato painting taught you more about blending and lighting than ten successful pieces would have, because you actually worked through the struggle. I spent 8 hours on a digital portrait that looked like a melted candle, and I wanted to throw my tablet out the window. But the next time I tried mountains and fog, they actually looked like mountains and fog instead of a lumpy potato. So really you didn't waste time, you just paid your dues for the next attempt. Keep at it and that potato will turn into a proper landscape eventually.

torres.thea29d ago

I mean @the_jana, you're making it sound like some sacred artist ritual. It's just a bad drawing, not a life lesson. Calling it a "study" doesn't change the fact that it looked like a melted candle. Yeah, you got better at mountains later, but that's just practice, not paying mystical dues. People overthink this stuff way too much.

dakota4151mo agoTop Commenter

Ha, I mean is it really that deep? Feels like people overcomplicate this stuff. You drew a bad picture, big deal. You didn't pay some sort of mystical "dues" that unlocked mountain skills. You just kept trying and got a little better, same as anything. Calling it a "study" or whatever is just a fancy word for practice, not some mind hack.