Ivo S. - Art Journey

Hi everyone! My name is Ivo and I've been studying art for the past few months after being burned out from programming and software development in general.

I started by studying art from some sub reddits, which eventually led me to ctrlPaint videos which then led to me finding about Marcs art videos on youtube. I recently started Art School, finishing Term 1 last week (at least the videos).

I'm using procreate on the ipad and for the most part I have been able to follow the classes. I did however have some trouble with the photoshop editing exercises (as you'll see) and with the proportions exercise.

Starting with the photoshop photo editing exercises:

For the next set of exercises I tried to count the number of tries until I got it right or quit.
I spent a few hours trying to get the colors right in that last image before I eventually quit and moved on to another subject. Using Procreates tools to adjust the levels, brightness, etc. was not easy. Maybe it was just me but I felt like I was spending a lot of time messing with the values and not getting closer to what it was supposed to be.

The next exercise was combining images. I combined some buildings to create some sort of village on the left, and I combined two castle to create one on the right. To better blend those images with the background, I tried to make use of fog, snow, some grass and parts of the sky. I also had to correct the colors and the brightness levels of both images.

After that we have the distortion exercises. I think these came out pretty good with the exception of the alien. Much like the color/levels correct exercise from before I tried for a few hours before moving on.

And that is all for photo editing exercises. I think so far it's the subject where I can see photoshop being an actual necessity. Regarding photo editing itself, I see its uses and how it can help us artists to add an extra touch to our art to make it more interesting

Ill be posting the rest of term 1 exercises, I just need to edit some of them before posting.

Im excited to get your feedback on what to improve and I wanted to end this post with a few questions:

• How do you know when to move to term 2?
• For those using procreate did you have the same or similar difficulties?
• As you start moving forward to other terms, what exercises do you keep doing? For example the gesture drawing exercises are labeled as daily practice but those are the only ones I found so far with that label.

Thanks again everyone, and see ya soon!

I really appreciate your feedback Kosmonaut!
Regarding your first point, I thought about that as well, how I should move on when I feel like I'm ready, I just wasn't sure how to tell when that is. But since there are different subjects per term, I think I might start moving forward in some where I feel like I have a good understanding as you said.

Gesture and proportions are for sure a week point for me (as you'll see in the post below). So those are exercises I'll keep doing for sure.
The difficulty I have with gesture I think really comes down to the time you have to complete them.
With proportion I can't seem to get the hang of it. Do you have any tips for that? I'm drawing on a tablet with the reference in the same canvas where I'm drawing. I tried measuring the lengths with the tip of the pencil and thumb like Marc showed in the video, but marking those distances in the drawing is very tough.

Here are the Nude Drawing exercises:

I cant show the exercise of finding the action line, joints and cylinders because most of my references are NSFW.

But here is the male/female body drawn in a grid. For the 1st and 2nd attempts I had to rewatch the video and pausing it to make sure I was doing it right. For the 3rd and 4th attempt I did most of it without having to compare it to previous attempts. I had a bit of difficulty placing the female waist but in the end it came out alright.

With gesture drawing, I think I can see some improvement from the first day to the fourth day. There is a bit more detail in those last ones.
1st Day:

4th Day:

Proportion exercise:

And lastly, the proportion exercise. This is where I have the most difficulty. I'm drawing with the reference in the same canvas. I measured the lengths with the tip of the pencil and thumb like Marc showed in the video, but marking those distances in the drawing is very tough. I start by marking the head length through the whole figure, then I look for points of interest in the figure and try to measure the length with the tip of the pencil+thumb technique and make a point/mark in the drawing. The last part is where I have a hard time. The points I make are always off.

Any tips for when drawing with proportions?

So I went through your Art Journey and it's really cool to see your evolution on gesture drawing! You definitely put in the work haha.

This is something I'm only now noticing, thanks! When doing gesture, both the ribcage and the pelvis are afterthoughts to me. That is why in some of the poses you'll see them and in others you wont. I'll try to be more considerate of them when doing gesture from now on!

I thought it was wider in the 4th attempt, but I can see that maybe you mean the part of the waist coming from the ribcage?

It's all good! Your advice has been very helpful so far!

The following are the perspective 1 exercises:

First the 1 point perspective simple cubes:

2 point perspective simple cubes:

And finally the complex shapes with 2 point perspective:

I did a very simple drawing of my room in perspective because it really doesn't have much going on at the moment. I'm thinking I could go back and add some more detail to it or just try and create a new one that looks either a bit more futuristic or primal.

The street with three buildings. I added some figures to the image to see if the proportion and sizes were alright and for the most part I think they are.

Also because I liked this drawing I decided to actually paint it. I was going for a late afternoon/sunset type of feel:

This was not my first time doing perspective exercises. In fact since I start to study art more seriously, I have noticed that I was having a lot of trouble with drawing in perspective and so I decided to focus more of my studies on it. The next step in perspective for me before tacking on perspective 2 is going to be to add more complex shapes and details in 2 point and 1 point perspective.