Alii's - Art School Journey

[Alii]

heya
I bought the course a few years ago, but kind of forgot about it for a while. Now I want to get back into it and brush up on my fundamentals and keep on improving!

Looking forward to sharing my progress and maybe interact with a few peeps!

[Alii]

I started going through the lessons almost 3 weeks ago and kind of rushed through the first term, since I felt quite comfortable with the knowledge that was shared in them. So I mainly focused on doing the figure drawing/anatomy related practices.

I found that the drawing of the boxes and cylinders over some pictures really helped me to visualise the shapes more, even if it takes a bit mroe time.

I followed that up with the practices Marc did in the video, and I found myself enjoying it quite a bit. I didn't really do these practices much before- at least not intentionally. SO I'll be trying to in cooperate them more in my day to day.
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I then started up with some gesture drawings again, and I really noticed how tough it was to get things down quick and to keep my focus on the line of action.

[Alii]

A bit of an Art Dump of the past gesture drawing sessions with in the last 2 1/2 weeks: oldest to newest

But general takeaways from the experience for far:
- I really like gesture drawings
- on good days I will do two 30x 30sec sessions followed by two 30 x 60sec sessions. When I am less in the mood or less time available, I'll still try to do one 30x30sec session and a 30x60sec session
- I feel like I am getting better at it and capturing the essence of the pose better and gradually finding myself with more time on my hands to add details
- big hurdle so far: keeping the proportions constant. Especially when trying to get the head size right in relation to the rest of the body. Really something I need to figure out more

[mitsuki-youko]

welcome to the forums! these are a lot of nice gestures!

[uggievang]

impressive amount of work welcome

[patrycja.lerch]

Welcome Alii! That's lots of good work!

[Alii]

@mitsuki-youko @uggievang @patrycja.lerch

Thank you all for the warm welcome!

[Alii]

today's Art Dump. Did my usual gesture drawing session and another one later in the day along with a friend!

Also started on my one point perspective room- halfway through I noticed that I made the horizon line a bit too low but just decided to roll with it xD going to make more progress on it tomorrow!

[daceronine]

Welcome! That's a lot of good work! This last perspective excercice reminded me of a horror movie xD, Like, those black shaodws are just there, standing, menacingly.

[Alii]

@daceronine haha, thanks! who kknows maybe the former owners are truly haunting the flat after all XDD

Following this up with todays Art Dump
figure drawings as usual

I also finished up the perspective practice for now. I like how the line art turned out, but I feel like it completely falls apart when I add colour. I fund it quiet the challenging and don't really know how to make it better, really. If anyone has some hints, let me know!

[daceronine]

Yo that looks really good! Lots of little details, line weight, texture and so on.

I think color looks really goood as well, with nice highlights. Very futuristic like. You'll eventually get to learn more about values, saturation, and more, so don't worry, this is already an amazing kick off.

Them creepers are still looking at me though xD

[mitsuki-youko]

yooo love how you colored it!!

[patrycja.lerch]

Great work!

[Alii]

@daceronine thank you so much!! yeah I hope to get a better grasp once I get to the terms that cover the colour and values

The dark creatures will be haunting your dream next whoooooo~

@mitsuki-youko thank youuu!! 🥹

@patrycja.lerch thanks! 🥹

[Alii]

I took a bit of a break from studies, but I am back at it and started to move on to the anatomy term two part!
But first of my last gesture drawings session from a bit ago

And with the anatomy session for the head I started out with the practice of drawing the spheres for the heads + symmetry lines and kind of decided to keep building on them as the lesson progressed

It felt a bit weird actually break down and measure the distances and build the right angles with the boxes after mostly winging it until now XD weird, but in a good way that I finally start to understand thing better. At the end of the lesion my heads looked like this:

And in the end I put it all together with the head demo that Marc also showed. I ended up using his base guides for the head from his demo and put in all the facial features + shading it. Next time I’ll try to shade more of the ones I drew from.

Really happy with how the rendering turned out tbh!

[daceronine]

Yo! these look good! some angesl could use a bit of work with perspective, but that last one looks amazing! really great shadowing!

[mitsuki-youko]

noice! on the last one i think the eye that is further back is a tad but too small and the pupil is more facing us rather than straight ahead for him imo

but great job overall!

[Alii]

it's been a bit more than a month, I got lazy to update here XD
But I've been productive! Almost daily practice of gestures, anatomy and proportions have gotten easier to keep in check! Also in cooperated timed head studies as well! Compilation of the last month:

a bit of a closeup of my last 4 days of practice, reducing the amount of gestures to get some more head studies in, so far it works quite well! Some days are better than others tho xD

Also separated progress of drawing the head. After my last post I took a lot of refs and drew in the facial features according to marcs lesson, beneath that is a giant training session I did shortly after- 2min per head, trying to get as much practice in as possible and get comfortable. First used the heads that the Quickpose site provided, but I didn't like the small amount of variation of faces, so I created my own collection with portraits from interest and used those for times practices. About 2 weeks ago I chose to give myself more time, ending up with 3min per head, and that is the sweet spot for me.

4 days ago I found the YouTube channel Keycem and his VOD's on drawing heads, using a box and envisioning the skeleton underneath in perspective. I draw along for a bit, and it started to click more on why the facial features are where they are and why my studies looked off before. So I started to make my 3 min practice and then draw the skeleton on top of it without a time limit. Afterward checking with a 3D model of a skull and improve the previously sketched on skull to fit the skull ref the lesson was what I needed in cooperation with Marc's lesson on it

3 days in, I already see a lot of results, and it's gotten more intuitive! Highly recommend it as practice!

[Alii]

@daceronine a bit late, but oh well XD
thanks for the feedback!
looking back at it a month later I can see that too-, felt really lost with more extreme perspectives, since it wasn't quite part of the lesson if I remember right. I haven't checked out the other anatomy lessons yet, so I don't know if it will be part of those in more detail- hope it is!

@mitsuki-youko also late, but thank you as well for your feedback! yeah, I see what you mean about the eye, feel like I should redo the head and shading to fix that

[Alii]

3 weeks ago I also continued to work on an illustration which I had started in March. During the rendering process I ended up changing the face so many times because of the new knowledge I gained after Marc's lesson on the face xD The curse of improving while working on older works
It took a bit of time, but I am glad I put the work in to make it look good!

This is the finished piece, in the end I am quite happy with how it turned out!

also closeup of the face!