Erik- Art School Journey

My name is Erik (M, he/him) and I have recently turned 29 years old! (Six days ago in fact). As a birthday present to myself I sold my car, filed my taxes, and after paying off some debt I bought this course in the hopes I can get out of the artistic rut I've been in of late.

I took two years of school and got more in debt to the government than I think is reasonable. Once the pandemic hit I moved back in with the parents and have been working since to keep us above water. Now that finances have loosened up a bit I've decided (lord willing) to get a part-time job close to home, quit my warehouse job that sucks my soul out every day and finally give this art thing my full attention! I'm not sure how far I will get in this two-year course over the course of this next year but I'm hoping I can get far enough along to pad my portfolio with some good drawings and earn myself some gigs!

I'm pretty nervous about it but excited to finally scratch this itch in a controlled and productive environment. I'm not sure how many of my pieces I'll be able to share since my brain is full of: "do NUDE studies! Now!" But I'll do my best to share the stuff that's not at all spicy for my fellow students. (I need to work on fabric really badly tbh and besides, figure drawing is mostly body-boxing anyhow. Don't worry! I won't go rogue! Not even for my favorite thing, casual nudity.)

I look forward to meeting you and hopefully helping out where I can. I consider myself pretty intermediate. But I'm sure I'll have some good things to share in the coming weeks/months.

Nice to meet you! I hope we can all get along and learn lots together!

P.S. This is the best example I've got of my current work. It's definitely not finished but I think it looks okay. Hope y'all are fans of Guilty Gear because I got a lot of that on the brain haha.

Not sure if I should be including practice from outside course parameters but I was inspired while reading a manga I picked up last week to try something different with my dip pen. This is a way of improving "line confidence" and also a bit of strength training.

In Animeta! by Yaso Hanamura, the main character Miyuki is beginning her job as an in-between animator and is struggling to get her lines right. Suddenly she is given a mysterious note: "Draw lines until the page turns black!" And then later (not pictured) "use your whole arm to draw long lines!"

What I found inspiring was not so much the art advice (these tips have been given to me before) but in seeing someone else clearly do it in her spare time. It made me think: "Hey! I can do that!" and maybe that's enough.

I took 45 minutes and tried to draw as many long and full lines as possible. And while it got a bit hairy towards the end with all the ink drying on the page I think I got more than a few good lines out of it which is the important thing.

I'll probably do this a few times a week just to keep it up. But I probably won't ever post something like this again.

Towards the end of Volume 1, Miyuki is given a third note that reads: "Don't give up!" and that's a good a message at any point in your artistic journey. Maybe I can leave that note for you. Maybe you can leave that note for me. Thanks for reading.

Tomorrow night I'm going to attempt to catch up on my term 1 assignment posting as I've been slacking on that in the last three months. Oh boy!