Chardon - Art School Journey

[Chardon]

Hello everyone, I am starting this new art journey and I hope I ll keep working and improving with time. I am someone who has always love to draw and I dream to be able to create and share the colorful world of my imagination.
My current work is not art related (computer scientist) but I hope to make it shift toward art in the future.
I am always open to critic ! While I am terrorized to give some because of my level, I will try to become part of the community.

[Chardon]

Week 1 Assignments:

I think I did ok on the pen control, I ll keep on going to improve

I had a lot of difficulties with the color on the curve tool. Otherwise it was quite fun.

I wanted to make it as believable as possible. The outcome it still a bit blurry overall and the sky is a bit too bright too. I ll keep that in my head in the futur

[Nosnibor]

Welcome to the forums : )

[DarkAstari]

Bienvenido, nice job on your pen control and photoshops assignments! I know it's okay to nervous especially when starting out of our art journey, so the more you keep showing your progress, the easier it gets, that's how it feels when I first started this, so no pressure, I know you'll do great!

[Chardon]

Thank you for the welcome and your kind words.
Today I started the figure drawing. I am having quite a good time for now. I hope I am doing it right.
I had to make some 3D boxes for the more dynamic poses.

[Chardon]

An other day of practice. I didn't had much to work on new exercises today

[Chardon]

An other day, an other daily assignment. Let's keep going

[Chardon]

New exercise today with the apple basket ! I am happy with the golden one on top

Plus daily gesture drawing

[Chardon]

Today I have finished the Digital Prod 1 Video Assignments !
The lips gaves me a hard time, they are really blurry

Instead of making him older, I tried to make the old one look younger.

I also started to do the figure drawing by reference and not tracing. Some proportions, especially for the limbs are really hard to reproduce.

[Chardon]

I have managed to find a bit of time to start the proportions exercise. That will be added to the daily exercises from now on

The figure drawings goes on

[Chardon]

Today I started the next level of pen control

I did the manequin from memory too and I am quite happy with the result for a 1st day

But I spent most of my day trying to get my head around what is gesture drawing. What is the point and the meaning of it. I asked a lot of questions on the discord and did a couple of first try of gesture drawing. I hope my small understanding will still be there tomorrow for the full exercise !

[Chardon]

First figure drawing ! (2min) I highlighted the line of action afterward

Personal note:
I have been struggling with gesture drawing for years, every time I tried it I felt unease and I felt like failing, like it was not the way to to it. I could not understand the meaning of this and it created a lot of frustration. I have abandoned this exercise many many times before and is one of the reason I couldn't not progress like I wanted in art.
Today I think I finally gasp the meaning behind the exercise. But because of my last bad experiences with it, my brain hardwired the exercise with "bad experience". So I had a lot of difficulty to just start. To make this work I just put a simple aim for the exercise: draw the line of action, then everything else is 'bonus'. It helped my brain to not feel distress and I was able to do the hole session without this bad feeling. And I am satisfied with the result because my objective was: make the line of action. I have transformed an exercise that I will fail (because I have never trained before) into a success for my brain. And I hope it will help me do this exercise daily.

What is the concept of figure drawing ? (for me)
I have unlocked something in my head that now needs to grow. I understand the motion everyone talks about. Now, when I look at a drawing I see the "flow". I try to imagine myself making a character from a drawing I look at, I imagine building it with structure and block, and I realized that I can never archive that flow with my blocks. I need movement, I need flow to get that result.
Then I started noticing that flow in my own body, the weight distribution, how I stand, how the body curve to balance. All of theses things are to be appropriate through gesture drawing. Gesture drawing will help understand that balance, that flow but also learn how to represent it.
Right now I just follow one way of doing gesture drawing but I can already feel this is not exactly the way I would like to show it. And I hope with time and lots of training this will develop into my way of representing the "flow"

[Chardon]

New day, new gesture drawing

[Chardon]

I feel a bit more confident so I did a 1min gesture drawing today

[Chardon]

Today, I was in public transport and took the opportunity to do gesture drawings of people in the station. Having just a few seconds to grasp the figure and then draw it on paper was a really fun exercise (so much so that I actually missed my stop). Later, I did some 30-second gesture drawings on my computer. Strangely, there was a big difference between the real-life situation and the timed exercise. The live drawing felt easier for me, even though I had less than 10 seconds to capture the pose. Meanwhile, during the 30-second figures, I felt like I was fighting against the clock. I couldn’t focus quickly enough on the posture to give myself time to feel the pose.
My hypothesis is that there might be two factors behind this. First, in real life, I could “print” the posture into my memory and then take as much time as I needed to draw it (even though it usually took less than 30 seconds). That mental “print” allowed me to focus only on the important elements. Second, the poses themselves are different. There’s a big difference between someone simply standing with their phone versus someone in a dynamic, staged pose. The latter are often more complex to understand in a glance, harder to analyze then “print” in the mind before drawing.
Overall, it was a really interesting experience. I think I’ll do more 1-minute gesture drawings rather than 30-second ones. The 30-second poses don’t give me enough time to feel what I’m drawing—there’s just a sense of rush.

[Chardon]

Daily gesture drawing 60s feel better than 30s

[Chardon]

Some pen practice as usual

Added some gesture drawing, I am still not sure why it is so important, but I ll keep going at it. (1min)

I started my first lineart study today, I will finish it tomorrow !

[Chardon]

Daily gesture drawing

First study lineart from Kazuya Takahashi, I am quite happy with the process and the result ! It took me 2 days of work, I might go on something more simple on my next try

[Chardon]

Today's study, Tobi-Kadachi from Monster Hunter Stories 2 by Capcom

[Chardon]

Gesture drawing broke me once more. After around a week, I still feel nothing when doing gesture drawing. I kinda know what I have to look for, but I can't even find a thread of that. I want to "feel the flow". I want to understand the gesture first through my eye, then through my hand (or body). And today, I am stuck between the head and the hand. People will say it takes practice, and I agree. But for now, I still don't feel it in my hand, nor my arm. And this emptiness is hard to fight.
I am looking for a method that could help me gasp a fraction of that movement. One way of making gesture drawing that would click with me. Then it would only be a question of time, practice and experiences. Sadly today, I feel like I have been gesture drawing "for nothing". I don't feel that, up until that point in time, I have made, or felt, no progress. That stillness scares me. I hope it will go away.
After a challenging mental day, I think I ll do 2min gesture drawing from now on. In 2min I think I can get close to the feeling I am looking for. I have time to feel the reference instead of just jumping into action. I will also allow myself to extend my 2min if I feel like it was not enough. I hope it will build a healthier relation with this exercise.