Adriana - Art School Journey

[zephyr-azure]

Hiya, my name's Adriana. I'm a 26yo graduate student getting my PhD in neuroscience - but in my free time, I'm passionate about art. Between 2013 - 2019, I got into digital art and tried to take it up seriously, but in the latter years I couldn't find the time TT_TT Somehow though, I have more time and drive now despite having a full time job haha

My goals are to:
1. Re-learn how to enjoy making art for myself instead of seeing it as a chore/something that has to be done in a specific way.
2. Improve my illustration technical skills up to a point where I can do professional commissions for splash-art type art for YouTubers/Twitch streamers, or emotes, or icons, or to do freelance fantasy concept art of characters and landscapes.
3. This one's part of #2, but specifically I want to improve my painting speed and brushstroke economy.
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TERM 1

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I skimmed through the Week 1 assignments because I already know my way around the digital medium very well, but I found the lessons and worksheets helpful nonetheless!

Week 2: Nude Figure Drawing

I'm doing these on pen and paper because I gave my drawing tablet away But I like being forced to be mindful of my pen strokes, it helps make them more intentional.

30s, 1min, 5min, and 10min gesture drawings:

[jairobinson]

Hello Adriana and Welcome to the forums. looks like a good start to me I really like how your last one turned out in particular.

[mitsuki-youko]

Welcome to the forums!

[leeireo]

Welcome to the forums Adriana! Going off of your gesture drawings and your art background, I can see you already have some experience under your belt! Let's improve a lot together here!

[daceronine]

Welcome to the forums Adriana! PhD in neuroscience! wow that's impressive!! Bests of luck in this art journey!

[patrycja.lerch]

Welcome to the forums Adriana!

[uggievang]

Welcome those gestures already show a lot of skill cant wait to see more

[zephyr-azure]

Hi everyone, thanks for the warm welcome!!

This week it's just been a couple more gesture drawing sessions. I feel I'm starting to get an idea on how to capture the energy/overall gesture, but I still have a lot to learn and practice (especially in terms of drawing speed because I'm slow af)

Here I switched to Clip Studio Paint on my phone (lol) so the resolution might be whack (I have to blow it up to like 5k x 5k so I can zoom in and draw big). I'm also going to backtrack on what I said about skipping the week 1 pen exercises because I felt weird drawing on the slippery smooth screen and was using my wrist a lot.

My friend and I did a gesture/figure study of a character we liked, and I did Kratos cuz he has muscles on his muscles and it's fun to draw. It's hilarious though how I got less done in the 10min compared to the 5min

I tried to focus more on proportions and the weight of the pose instead of details. Although based on the overlay I still need to work on that lol pretty sure I also got the direction of the line of action wrong! This made me realize how helpful these overlays are, so I'll be doing more of those for my figure drawings.

Advice, suggestions, tips, observations, and critiques all welcome!!

I also realized I didn't include any goals on my first post, so I edited it to include some!

[mitsuki-youko]

eyy these look great!

[daceronine]

Yo good work! I think speed comes naturally with practice and time, though as you learn more, you end up correspondingly adding more technical stuff to your work, so time increases, but then also decreases as you grow comfortable with the pipeline. I guess my point is it will go up and down in time during your art journey, try to focus more on the result than on time (well except when time is a factor of course), and time will eventually naturally go down as well.

I'd say those are very achievable goals, bests of luck!

[zephyr-azure]

@mitsuki-youko Thank you!
@daceronine Thanks! And that's a point of view I never considered, that actually makes sense and it's pretty reassuring haha

This week is Week 4: Perspective and I had some fun. I've always hated drawing interiors and technical details, but the lesson actually made it super manageable!!

This week's drop

I did some shading on the cube to the right to clarify the perspective, I hope it looks correct-ish

This is a sketch of my room assignment, by no means the final product, but something I had a little fun with ^_^ The couch took me 2:30 hrs lol also I just realized the cat on the couch looks like it's about to fall off, I placed him incorrectly lmaoo

I'd appreciate suggestions on how to improve the room! And I will do the technical perspective details and cleanup next week. Till next time

[daceronine]

Yo good work on the cubes, I'd say they look proper even with the little twists and cuts thrown at them.

The room looks good perspective wise. You can tell the angel, the height, the overall position of the viewer and elements, and those are probably the most important when talking about perspective.

What comes to mind immediately is line sketching though. Many objects are just sketched in, some are hard to recognize. However other aspects are really well done, like the cat in the middle rolling, or the sofa, so you can make some detailed work.

When working on environment pieces, I'd recommend to try to do them in different sessions, mostly so you can come back, and see what needs a bit of refinement, work on it, then come back later to do the same. It comes down to investing just a bit more time to give the whole thing a bit more polish. You don't need that much detail in studies, but it eventually becomes a habit for more elaborate pieces.

[mitsuki-youko]

nice work on the room!

yay kitties!

and ooh is that a nanoleaf i see in the back (Hexagons)?

I'd say overall the perspective and depth looks good though it'd be easier to tell if the lines were less sketchy so personally i'd receommend going over it on a new layer and making the lines smoother to better be able to tell the perspectives exactly.

[uggievang]

I think the foundations of the room look very nice. It seems however that some lines don't seem to converge to the same vanishing point . technically you can get away with approximations but for the assignment you want to make sure the lines converge to the same points in order to understand how it work but you approximation seems to bee pretty good.