Hello! I hope this diary will motivate me and others as well.
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Feb 14, '24
3 mins
Two weeks of everyday studying in one image:
More finished experimentation (steps):
Final result:
Your rendering is top notch
Bet your ass. Because its gonna.
21 days later
More study images:
More finished experimentation (steps):
Not finished, but I moved on to another image:
14 days later
Trying the red/green color scheme:
Final result:
11 months later
Huh, what a year it was 
...
Anyways, a recent new image - depiction of Lady Philosophy from Boethius’ The Consolation of Philosophy. Painted in Krita with some final post-processing in GIMP. Unintentionally, she ended up having a ContraPoints-ish vibe, which I don’t think is a bad thing! 
(YouTube - full painting process video) 
Wah, your rendering is top-notch! Who are your main art parents/the people you ref the most?
Thanks! I look up to old-school academic painters as the standard of quality yet to be achieved someday (Bouguereau, Zorn, Lawrence Alma-Tadema, etc). Sites like "The Art Renewal Center" (their museum) are my goto place for inspiration.
Thank you! I've heard of 'Zorn primarily from his 'Zorn palette' and I really want to try it. (I've just noticed his 'blues' seem to be a little muted' ) How long did it take you to hone down this style? 
Never read the name 'Lawrence', but his work looks very familiar.
I would love to attend an atelier, but unfortunately they're only in the capital and way out of my budget. (Sad TARC got swindled so easily. 
)
"It’s a feature, not a bug!" ) It's his "trademark" realistic harmonious palette with a very limited gamut.
It took me a while, couple of years. But, my main training and education were in applied math and computer science. I studied drawing and painting alongside partial differential equations and C++ 
+1, same for me
12 days later
Haha figured. I still hope there's a way for an audience to recognise a blue. I've seen a tutorial of the Zorn palette with coloured pencils, so it's nice to see it transferable to dry media. Ahh, it's good that you were able to learn art in your own time, whilst perusing something else professionally. I've been trying to draw for so long and part of me feels like it's 'Sunken Cost Fallacy' at this point, which is why despite doing it in my spare time, I'm glad I didn't chose it as a degree. Did linguistics, instead. Which swings and round about on that one. I still would love to learn how to code, tho!
Yeah, another reason I didn't study art at uni or enrol in an art school, is the teachers' are not people I want to be taught by. The ones that are are either in ateliers, really expensive American schools or online classes. So, I guess it's still the autodidact route for me
Not sure how do do that quote thing, to split up the response. Still a newbie.
Me too. I love and respect Academia, but visual art departments no longer teach painting the way they did a hundred years ago 
. I suppose it’s a good degree for those wanting to work in a gallery, and it might serve as a ticket into the contemporary art world (which is quite closed to outsiders).
On PC, select the text you want to quote and click the blue 'QUOTE REPLY' button that will appear.
New image (painting process video):
9 days later
Thank you! It worked straight away. I completely agree. Most art teachers are like that now, because they simply don't have the knowledge of teaching, anatomy, value, perspective, colour theory, etc, because it was never taught to them. The places for that solid tuition are ateliers. They are few and far between and the vast majority you have to pay out of pocket and can't get government funding. Even with an illustration degree that trains students with meeting commercial briefs in mind, so they can eke out a living as a freelancer, are still more into the 'house-style' of flat images in a vector style. Colour theory, composition and advertising your skills to should skill be there. However, still no focus on anatomy, value and form, if that's more important to you.
I've seen quite a few 'I regret/hate art school' videos on Youtube and majority are from those that studied 'Fine Art'. It could be because they didn't know the difference between 'Fine Art' and illustration or Concept/Comic Art or that was the only art subject available at the best/closest university to them.
Not surprising really. Most lectures look down on 'figurative' art, where the latter falls. But, random things that need to be contextualised in a gallery space to make sense are praised. An example from a video paraphrasing her of a girl struggling to think of an idea and finish her painting, whilst her peer just got a pallet and trash, stuck it in the middle of critique, waffled to think of something and got kudos for 'think outside the box' with his original thinking. I'm sure you can imagine how demoralised it made her feel. It's one of the reasons she dropped out. They want students to be more 'loose' and 'expressive' and don't like tightly controlling academia art. I get that it can be stifling, but the other side is frustrating for students that want experienced teachers to be able to quickly spot and correct their mistakes and teach them the fundamentals. In 'Fine Art' context>>> skill.
This is why I never pursued a 'Fine Art' degree. A Level was bad enough. 😠 Pity decent Concept or Comicbook art degrees are few and far between. 
Thanks! From the idea to the final image, it took a week, couple of hours per day in the evenings.
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