DuelisticNature - Art School Journey (Current - Term 1)

[duelisticnature]

Another one coming through! Hello fellow aspiring artists!

Introduction I feel is in order: I'm a 30 year old Dutchy working currently as an Optometrist in an eye healthcare clinic. Armed with a love for learning new things, getting good at them and a super power in observation (how fitting for an optometrist) I intend to dig into this school program tooth nail and claw!

Recently I dug through my old stuff finding doodles of my 16 year old self and realizing it was something I used to enjoy doing. This rekindled my love for making fan art and reconnecting to the franchise that sparked it all even going so far as to want to set a long term goal for myself. Being able to write and draw my own comic books in 5 years time.

Having no education of the sort in the art of drawing or anything creative I started 2 to 3 months ago on Skillshare going through a 7 week course of Artist Brent Evistan to get the fundamentals of traditional drawings down and the progress was invigorating to see. However digital art is a beast all on its own which has led me to Marc Brunet's Art School program.

That's about enough of an introduction I feel, time to get busy! Unfortunately, as probably anyone working in a medical field knows, spare time is super rare to come by and energy/ motivation to do fun things after work even less so. We'll see how my progress goes.

Feedback is always welcome! We're all here to learn on our creative journeys!

[duelisticnature]

Ok starting out I have ZERO experience in the use of digital software and the use of a display tablet, luckily I get handy with tools quickly the moment I use them a couple times.

Dug my teeth into the first two assignments of the Photoshop for digital production 1 assignments and sort of face a challenge in using CSP (Clips Studio Paint) instead of Photoshop. Given my daily job in the medical field and later goal, the monthly subscription basis of Photoshop didn't appeal to me.
That does come with translation issues given CSP has quite similar tools to Photoshop, but stuck in a different spot having to sort those out as well.

Couple of funny things to note:
- Tracing the circles I got into the habit of pantomiming my circle before drawing as I learned in my skillshare courses, but the feel is unnatural to me for now on Pen Display tablet so some are fluid round circles and others are actively traced.
- I had to create 2 custom brushes right out the gate to get the last assignment down because CSP doesn't have quick menu buttons to turn off opacity/ brush size linked to pen pressure. Those are stuck INSIDE the individual brush setting themselves.
- Does anyone know how to adjust CSP brushes to start off with an even finer taper? I used 70px round brush for it, but no matter how light i press it always starts off that thick.

This one was fun to do, especially matching the colors, however I got stuck on the grey scale image for 3 hours straight before throwing in the towel...
bit of a perfectionist I am...

The last one... well... magic what Marc has done I swear... and unfortunately even with extra tutorials on how to work with Tone/ levels/ color balance I can't seem to get the reddish hue specifically on Mei's arms and white contrast on ONLY the umbrella.

[snakker]

Hey there snakker here, I totally understand where you're coming from, currently in a very similar situation, finally getting into it seriously after establishing myself within my career. These are looking good and yeah that last one is hell XD

Welcome aboard, and looking forward to seeing your work

cheers

[emiwoobpe]

I wish you luck on your art journey mate 👍

[duelisticnature]

And we're back. With some good and some bad I'd like to have your guys' opinion on.

I'm doing this to improve my skills as a hobby, I have no ambition to become a professional photo editor and assignment 3 and 4 delve even deeper into photo manipulation.

In CSP I've noticed it is quite limited and to be frank, Now if you used CSP, what did you do? tackle the challenge as best you could or skip it?

For now I've decided to skip it and figured to do something more motivating and took on Marc's 30 day improvement challenge he posted on Youtube. Below are the results.

I've had fun doing these, good dexterity practices if you're absolutely new to using a digital tablet as well. And in general I don't settle for the minimum of practice, I have a tendency to do more just so my muscle memory builds faster.

Feedback is always welcome!

[snakker]

These are looking good, keep at it !

[duelisticnature]

Nude figure drawing assignments. I feel like I'm spending way too much time on these... 3 hours a piece... averages to about 40 to 45 minute on each cylinder puppet.

Maybe I'm too picky on how they look? I'm concerned I might not have the time to do these during my work weeks if the intended goal is to do this daily.

Do I need to time myself? just keep on the grind?

[snakker]

Hey there, sorry to say I have no definite answer there. At least from my point of view, given this is a course you can complete on your own terms, at least you have the benefit of using your time as best as you can with no hard set rules. Personally I couldn’t do all the assignments daily, not all of them anyways. I am just tackling them little by little, doodling a lot for fun and slowly getting the hang of things. I don’t think it is ideal, but I tackle what I can when I can

For example, at one point I was doing the one month thing, trying to binge it, next thing I am doing just gestures (which honestly I underestimated a lot). I think if there is any one exercise that should be a daily it’s gestures. I feel I learn a lot doing them

If you have the will for it though, I’m sure you will get there, even if the road is messy 😅

Also, I think your cylinder mannequins are very nice and I can feel some dynamism in them. Keep it up! Ya

Cheers

[duelisticnature]

First off thank you for the kinds words @snakker. I suppose I'm expecting too much progress in too little time, it's about forming habits and those are notoriously hard to create, especially the 'healthy' ones.
I'm not entirely sure how often I can post progress on here given I rarely get anything done during the week days with my job being what it is... let alone post it on the Forums.

Last week's been an absolute nightmare for me at work and it affecting my health, making me very very prone to headache and migraine attacks which kill all creative flow/ concentration in me. Steps are being taken to remedy that, but it puts this progress to a grind.

However I will try to make a commitment to at least doing 30 minutes each day of a gesture reel. 10 minutes of 30 second poses, 10 minutes of 1 minute poses, 5 minute slow gesture, 5 minute imagination gesture.

[snakker]

Awesome, keep at it. I definitely know how life can get in the way. Definitely focus on using reference for learning, when I feel lazy I tend to doodle from imagination which isn’t a bad thing, but really, if you keep hitting the gestures, trying to feel tue forces of the pose it can be a cathartic experience and you really learn a lot. No need to be too strict on yourself, also, try different brushes and brush settings, it can make it more fun imo

Cheers!

[duelisticnature]

Alright I'm back. I figured the best I can do so far is post every week on a Sunday/ Monday to post my progress and ask for feedback.

Sooooo let's begin.

I've started to get in the habit of daily 30 minute practice of Gestures:
10 minutes, 30 seconds long
10 minutes, 1 minute long
5 minute, 1 gesture
5 minute freestyle.

I had to skip Thursday though for my own health's sake.

Especially towards my latter 2 I started to watch Proko's video's about gesture drawings ft. Tim Gula and the way he goes about 5 minute poses really clicked with me about how to go about constructing them. Head, ear, eyesocket, keep it simple, just an indication. Almost like how Bob Ross goes about making indications of mountains or foothills.
I've also watched one featuring Mike Mattesi using the FORCE method, focusing more on a cause and effect style approach. Where is the balance of the body aimed at? what direction is the tension going?

Now as for today. I broke my head for a good 3 hours on trying to get a room in 1 point perspective to paper, but I've kept messing up with the proportions. I'm no stranger to perspective and got a good idea what 1, 2 and 3 point perspective are most commonly used for, but getting the sizes down right... man oh man.

Here's a quicksketch of a scene I wanted to paint. However I struggled so long with proportion work I sorta gave up (for now!). And instead went for a more heads on approach with a draw along with Marc.

you'll probably notice a lot of medieval influences in my works since it's one that appeals to me the most. I need to clean up quite a bit on this one, but I've got ideas how to spruce up the room with tapestries, heraldry banners, candles, bits and bobs around the fireplace in the back. Maybe even above the slab stones above the door.

Anyone got suggestions for what to hang on the roof? maybe a pinned banner? chandelier?

This was my inspiration for both rooms:

Next week's gonna be a doozy for getting art to progress. Lots and LOTS of art to consume for Darktide's pre-order beta releases the 17th. And I'm an avid fan of Warhammer 40k's universe, dripping with atmosphere and lore... soooo... not sure how much work I'm gonna get done coming Thursday onward. There's heretic's to be purged.

[snakker]

Awesome work! Gesture really helps with drawing figures and looses your arm for nice flow. As for perspective, man I feel the pain. I’m also aware of how single, two and three point work at its basic form, but until this course I haven’t realized just how challenging it can be

Keep at it and good hunting

Cheers

[duelisticnature]

Here I am again, on the first day of a new year.

I feel like I've given myself a bit of a false start in this art program, mainly because the longer I spent working on it, the more I realized something was off in my working environment which has been sapping my spirits ever since spring last year.

Long story short, I've had to spend the last 1.5 month doing some serious soul-searching to come to a couple of tough decisions I had to make for myself.
One of them commiting more time to the pursuit of studying art, I currently have the resources, materials and goal in mind to commit to something I want to do in my life, however I simply lack flexibility of time to really commit to this.

I'm not quitting my job, it's too fun for that and adds a nice bit of variety, but I am in a position where I can spend 1 day less working and instead spend that on commiting to learning art. Spend more time for myself and the pursuit of my own passions.

Here's to things changing for me in 2023. I've got a clear goal in mind, I know what motivates me, what drives me, now to see it through 1 year at a time.

Also here's what I managed to cobble together in the past 5 days. Spent more time really hammering home the proportions of the human figure and dipping my toes into figure drawing. Each human figure took me around 1 hour to make so I'm really fretting much over details which I need to loosen up on.

[snakker]

Yo, great job on the figure studies! You took your time and it shows, these are all pretty good. The upside down figure has a case of weird humerus but apart from that they’re really good. I understand what you say about the big picture and looseness. Gesture is very good to go loose and drawing some boxes and cylinders wothout detail is an excellent way to study figures - they really help you see the figure in 3D and slowly make you faster as you go. So keep at it, no need to rush, you’ll get there 💪🏼

Cheers