What DTIYS Challenges Can Teach Us About Planning Our Artwork

DTIYS piece. Original character and design belongs to @sunnyartsketches.

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m terrible at planning for my art pieces.

This is weird for me, because I’m generally a very logical, careful person who does everything with a purpose. But when it comes to my artwork? I just want to jump right in.

To be sure, there’s something to be said for spontaneity. It can be beneficial for an artist, and some of the best parts of a painting can be attributed to the moments of inspiration (or signature Bob Ross “happy accidents”) that come from letting your mind take a backseat, trusting your intuition, and allowing the art process inform your decisions as you go.

But sometimes, a little bit of planning can go a long way. One of the most obvious places I see it in my artwork is when I do DTIYS (Draw This In Your Style) pieces versus original artwork. Let’s take a closer look at the difference in those two processes, and how it can teach us how to plan.

Case Study: DTIYS Challenges

The truth is, artists deal with a lot when creating a piece. There are so many choices! But since some of the decisions are so unconscious, we often don’t realize everything that goes into making a piece until a few of those decisions are taken off our plate.

For me, this is most apparent in the case of DTIYS challenge on Instagram. For those who don’t know, in a DTIYS challenge the host artist posts an original painting and invites other artists to recreate the subject in their own unique art style. It’s a great way to collaborate and learn within the art community.

I was surprised, though, when I took a step back and realized that the paintings I’ve done for a DTIYS challenge have been some of my best works. The below two paintings are some of my favorites to date, and both are from DTIYS challenges (be sure to check out the awesome original artists who hosted the challenges, listed in the captions!):

DTIYS piece, original design by @sunnyartsketches.

DTIYS piece, original design by @_malinya_.

And I’ve seen this to be the case with other creators, too. When I’m looking at another artist’s Instagram feed, so many times I discover that the pieces I’m drawn to most are actually from DTIYS challenges.

Why is this? And how does this relate to planning? Well, the host artist’s original artwork for a DTIYS already provides answers for so many of the design questions that would need to be established in the early phases of planning a piece. These include:

• Overall concept. At the very highest level, the DTIYS piece gives you an idea of what to paint;

• Character (subject) design. Whether this is a person, animal, or even a landscape, the design for that subject is already fleshed out. I tend to do a lot of fantasy female character - in terms of DTIYS, this means that the character’s hair color and style, eye color, clothing, jewelry, defining features, and general personality are already decided;

• Message/Feel. Some DTIYS hosts encourage you to experiment with this a bit, but I think on the whole we try to emulate the message or feel that the original artist imbued in the piece. Is the subject fierce? Sad? Peaceful? Do you get a sense of danger, or does it evoke an air of mystery? A lot of the tone has already been set, and this usually sets the stage for the new artwork (because it’s probably what made us drawn to the piece in the first place!);

• Color palette. This could be a formal color palette the artist chose, or it could simply harken back to the subject’s design. Skin color, hair color, clothing color, and possibly even background element colors have already been decided and composed in a harmonious way;

• Composition (to an extent). While I have noticed that it’s respectful to vary the original composition/pose when you participate in a DTIYS challenge, there is still a lot of inspiration and a good jumping off point in the original layout of the artwork.
  

When you have all the above points taken care of for you, it frees up a lot of brain space. You now have the freedom to focus mostly on technique and execution when you sit down to do the actual painting. In short, DTIYS challenge pieces have already done much of the planning for you!

Learning How to Plan

It’s for this very reason that DTIYS challenges can be so fun and relaxing to participate in. They have a lot of benefits (and I discuss some of them in my post about unexpected results of posting art on Instagram). But, eventually, I think most of us want to be able to create our own original artworks too.

So what can we take away from DTIYS challenges? Quite simply, at the start of our painting process we should try to establish many of the design elements that a DTIYS piece would provide. We should consider color schemes, clothing designs, moods, and the other points listed above to make sure that we have a clear vision of what we want to create - and to ensure that we don’t have to make any stressful decisions mid-painting.

A little bit of spontaneity is good, but when we are trying to balance color choices with designing hair and clothes all while trying to make our actual linework and blending look good, it becomes a juggling act that rarely turns out well (and makes painting less fun!). 

I fall victim to this especially in digital artwork, since this medium is more forgiving with last-minute changes (I discuss this in detail in my post about how digital painting helped me paint more). With assets like the liquify tool, undo, layers, and color adjustments, there is a lot more wiggle room for changes. 

But I find that the more I end up relying on those tools, the less polished my piece becomes. I can usually tell when I sketched out the anatomy well from the beginning versus when I needed liquify to make adjustments, or when I relied on a lot of color filters to change my palette midway through. I find it’s best to use those tools for small changes only. If I don’t plan well I end up leaning on them way too heavily, and it shows.

So even if you don’t plan every little thing from the list above, getting a rough idea and doing some quick, low-pressure thumbnail studies can be a huge help. Give your art brain a break by thinking the jewelry through ahead of time, or planning the lighting source really well, or sketching out various compositions before settling on one. One way I’ve found that I’ve benefited from this is using color palettes, which I discuss in detail in this post. You’ll really thank yourself in the end!

Of course, sometimes inspiration strikes and you’re ready to dive right in. I’ve had that too, and they’ve also been some of my favorite pieces. But I think they are the exceptions, not the rules. The more legwork you do in the beginning, the more you can focus on the actual technique of painting when that step comes. Honestly, having that freedom makes the actual painting process more fun. 

As I said, I’m still not great at this now, but it’s something I’m going to try harder at! 

What are your thoughts on planning vs. spontaneity in artwork?