Goblinoide - Art School journey

[mau.wamp]

As Julia already said, drawing the diagonals gives you the middle point in perspective.
For the roof I'd advise you to construct it out of a box as shown below:

Hope that helps

By the way, I think it's great that you post your stuff on the forums with specific questions! That makes it super easy for everybody else to give feedback! Keep that up!

[goblinoide87]

Thank you very much! Yes, your explanation is perfectly understandable. I know my questions are noob ones, thank you very much for your help I will keep practising!

[goblinoide87]

Oh thank you! I see it super clear thanks to your drawings and Julia's explanation. Thank you for spending your time helping, it's truly appreciated Let's see if I can make this correctly at last!

[Julia_J]

You're more than welcome, we're all here to learn!

[goblinoide87]

ART SCHOOL SCHEDULE FOR TERMS 1 AND 2

Hello everyone!
I've been searching through the forum to see if anyone has answered it already (sorry if someone has... I really didn't find it). So I am asking here:

I am currently finishing Term 1 of the Art School. I have already downloaded Mark schedules as a guide, but I am still quite lost in terms of time management. I will explain this a little bit:

I am almost starting from zero, so I really can't skip any term, and I am watching the videos in order and doing the tasks that Mark gives with the course. BUT:
When I started, my daily practice was that. The video + assignments that come with the course.
Later, I added a daily anatomy practice with quick poses (half an hour to an hour), and drawing some cylinder volumes on pictures.
I am adding now the 5 min observation practice (stare at an object for 5 min, trying to improve my mental library, studying how light interacts with it, its form, its volume...).
Also, I've added some daily practice about finding the perspective lines and vanishing points in pictures.

I know, these are all very little time consuming, but I realized that in the upcoming chapters, there will be more and more daily practices, and all of them will be DAILY practices. Also, when I am practicing anatomy for example, I start to enjoy it a lot when I've been drawing for 15 minutes, when my hand is more trained, and then I just want to continue and continue, instead of watching the video or practicing other exercises. So, I really need a realistic schedule.

The awesome schedules that Mark gives to us, are schedules in which there are some hours dedicated to further content that I have not seen in the course yet (for example, landscapes or light+color), so they are more like a guide for me, but not a schedule that I can already use. I don't know how much time would be appropiate to dedicate to each term, how to practice each term's content (amount of time and quantity of exercises per day) to optimize my practice time and not getting lost... I know that some of you are thinking "dedicate to each term the amount of time you need until you feel comfortable", but I would help to have sort of a "reasonable range" of things that should be practiced in a given number of hours of practice. For example, is it there any moment along the course when we need to stop doing daily anatomy practice and skip to landscape practice instead? Do I need to practice Term 1 repeatedly for one month, for example, before starting Term 2? Would you recommend any kind of timetable for those of us that haven't studied the majority of the course content yet? It's utterly difficult to make a timetable when each new video keeps adding new exercises without stopping to do the previous ones.

Sorry if my explanation isn't very clear, the fact that my main language isn't English doesn't help, hehe... Thank you in advance for any advice. It will be very welcome.

[mau.wamp]

What you are about to read is my personal opinion:
I dont think that Marcs schedule is particularly useful. It makes you focus on a bunch of stuff basically at the same time. Depending on the time you‘ve got at hand, you might practise 2-3 different topics each day. I personally dont have that much time to dedicate to my practise (2-3hours max per day). I would rather focus these hours on one topic and really try to understand it and make progress.

Also doing multiple things a day, makes it hard to manage WHAT you are actually going to practise (just „Anatomy“ wont cut it, what exact thing do you need to practise in order to get better at that particular moment?)
I feel like my approach to practise is very strict and systematic, so all these different topics would make planning even more confusing. (But everyone has different preferences when it comes to that)

If you want to know what I do (also pretty much a beginner)
- I pick one module of the term I am currently working on
- I work through the theoretical input Marc gives in his videos
- I try to figure out what the core skills are that will actually improve my art (e.g. in Anatomy: the basic structure of the head)
- then I try to find an order to practise these 2-4 skills that chronologically make sense
- then I practise each skill for about 15-20 hours
- that leaves me with about 5-6 weeks of practise for each module (not term!)
- yes it takes a lot of time, but I‘ve seen good improvement doing this...

The way I do things is by far not perfect and if anyone would like to give some advice, I‘d be very happy to hear it

Hope that helps you a little bit with your question. Alsways note that everybody is different and prefers different ways of practise, so try out a lot of things and see what fits you the most.

[goblinoide87]

Thank you a lot! It helps as a general timing guide, indeed. Because I set my initial goals as 1 module per week/ 2 weeks... And it wasn't realistic at all. I will try to continue with your method, and see if I can adapt it to me without wasting my time in pointless practice, but practicing the core content instead. Let's see how it turns out! ^^

[HANDRO]

I did something similar before I branched off the terms around term 6, Im still learning the materials but its less focused on the classes and more on what i find interesting. maybe i would see better results if i continued the course however, when I followed a strict schedule i found myself being burnt out multiple times.

For me it was one class each month (not one term) to really digest the material with no breaks in between. So my advice to you is to be flexible with your schedule - don't be so focused on getting through the class as much as absorbing the information. Also remember to take breaks from classwork, especially in the early classes as those as very technical, which doesn't leave much room for creativity.

this is my personal opinion as well but I figured it might help.

[goblinoide87]

Thank you a lot for your experience and advice! In my case, being a newbie, I reached a point where I felt quite lost without a strict schedule, because I don't know enough to know how much time each task should last in a regular classroom (sorry, I don't know how to explain it better). So I an trying with Term 2 all of the advice I can get from more experienced people than me. I feel you about being burnt out, there are some classes that I find harder to learn and practice, and not having a classroom makes very difficult for me to find the perseverance and discipline to practice the ones I feel more stuck with, which leads to frustration and slow improvement. I know the only who can help me about being disciplined is me myself, but having a schedule to don't get lost with my favorite parts and lack practice time for the boring ones, has been helpful in my case ^^