Jim St. - Art School Journey - Term 4

[gregorya]

Nice work on the anatomy.
The color harmonies do look structured.

[JimSt]

Thanks for stopping by: @Cielas @cobalt_kat @SamuraiSingh @gregorya
I hope you all are doing well!

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Art School - Term 4 - Week 2.3
Wow. What a week. I actually did more Art School stuff this week than I meant to. I think it's because a couple of the bigger stress extra-projects got resolved, so I had more time - which I should have used more evenly across my responsibility load. But anyway…

Anatomy
I'm digging the challenge of learning all of this. I got a ton of it wrong and I need to dig deeper into the structures of the forearm. So at least another week, as it looks like this Term is last of the anatomy stuff, so I want to make sure I get that down before moving on - cuz like that's foundational.






Oops! I forgot to label the lateral and long heads of the triceps on the last one (aqua and blue muscles below the deltoid on the left arm).

Wild Harmonies
I'm still struggling to make this something I do. I don't know if it's because I'm a homebody that rarely goes anywhere or if I just don't consume as much entertainment, but things haven't been jumping out at me and I have to go hunt something down. Anybody else struggle with this? Any tips or ???

Shadowcasting
This was fun but I like it when art stuff crosses over into the technical. I've got a couple things I want to do from SRs Render book, such as shadows across compound forms. The wall example from week 1 was the very tip of this.

Stylized Anatomy
This was also pretty fun. Trying to puzzle out those forearms was a really hassle - AKA opportunity for future learning. This image seems pretty accurate in terms of anatomical correctness (I think?), it's my lack of knowledge here that really handicapped me.

Teaching Art
Growing up, I had a handful of jobs I would tell people I wanted to do "when I grow up." Plumber, clown, comic artist, useless, a forest-dwelling hermit-philosopher mage (sup Merlin?), and an art teacher. I'll admit that my reasoning about teaching art has changed, my love of art has not. Making and talking about art all day sounds dope. So I am going to give some thought about how I can do that without having my soul stolen by an educorp.

Anyway, it was a good week for Art School and a good week for non-Art School stuff. I'm going to try to more equally distribute my energies to make sure I keep other stuff moving.
Cheers, good luck, and best wishes,
-jSt.

[cobalt_kat]

Wow, those anatomy studies look pretty complicated (and intimidating). Before I actually picked up an anatomy art book, I'd had no idea there were so many muscles in the human body, so I'm not looking forward to this part of the course In any case, keep up the good work!

[JimSt]

Hey @cobalt_kat!

I'm not looking forward to this part of the course

You know, I had the exact same response as it is intimidating. But doing a little at a time seems to make it a little more manageable. The biggest problem I am having is mentally rotating the reference materials so that I know I'm looking at the right muscles on my images. I might need to start looking at similarly posed 3D models as reference to help. But to be fair, MB's course materials simplifies the forearms significantly, so I'm just making this harder than it needs to be for the sake of completeness.
His video on lower arms anatomy focuses on like three main groups (the brachioradialis connecting the upper arm to the lower arm, flexor muscles on the inside of the arm, and extensor muscles on the outside of the arm), rather than each individual muscle because unless someone is a comic superhero there isn't enough definition of those muscles to draw them separately, so not everyone would need or want to get that detailed.

[cobalt_kat]

unless someone is a comic superhero there isn't enough definition of those muscles to draw them separately, so not everyone would need or want to get that detailed.

Not to mention if someone wears loose clothing, which most of my OCs happen to do...

In any case, thanks for the encouragement! It's a relief to hear that the course doesn't go into every detail on anatomy. I come from a family of doctors, I've heard enough anatomy talk as a kid

[gregorya]

Nice work on the shadow studies and anatomy studies.

[Nosnibor]

Cool studies : ) It is motivating seeing other people progress as artists as they work their way through the course.

As a side note I really like the little Robot you have at the bottom right of all of your work

[JimSt]

@cobalt_kat @Cielas @SamuraiSingh @gregorya @Nosnibor Thanks for stopping by/commenting/interacting! If you all see anything you want to provide feedback on, please do!

Term 4 Week 2
The past two weeks were a bit of a blur, but I managed to finish the assignments for Term 4 Week 2. I will likely need to spend some more time on those pesky forearm muscles, but I'm feeling pretty good about these. And honestly, I starting to see all of these studies as "just the beginning," as there's sooo much to learn and refine. Gotta love that process, because that's all there is...

Anatomy Draw Overs

Stylized Anatomy
I do have to say that studying the comic art was fun, but also very revealing that either my understanding on anatomy isn't quite where I thought it was or there's a chunk of creative license with where some of the muscles are hiding… lol

After School Projects
I'm done with my first pencil pass on the analog pages of the first installment of my "Wait" story. I'm planning on making a tighter pass to noodle in some more details before screwing it all up with some chaotic application of ink, probably via brush. No clue when that will be done.
I'm close to being done with developing some Lua scripts for a Roblox game. After that I'm considering trying to figure out how to do a turn-based RPG in Roblox, but it seems like it might be better suited in Unity.

So I guess tomorrow, I'm going to start in on Week 3.

[JimSt]

Extracurricular Activity
Very brief post on how surreal it is to be inking some pencils I did 24 years ago. Wild!
The paper is also very toothy, which was messing with my plan to ink with a brush pen or a brush. So I am pivoting over to use my Microns for this. I am moving very slowly across this because I totally don't want to f* this up...

[gregorya]

I like your muscle studies. I need a refresher course on that, so I can't give much

I'm close to being done with developing some Lua scripts for a Roblox game. After that I'm considering trying to figure out how to do a turn-based RPG in Roblox, but it seems like it might be better suited in Unity.

I don't know much about
There are some Unity courses on RPG games on www.gamedev.tv and Udemy.com. It might be helpful

The pencils look pretty good. What kind of paper size are you using?

[JimSt]

@gregorya Thanks! The comic page is done on a 11"x17" Blue Line pre-printed comic page. The larger paper size makes it easier for me to draw with my whole arm. I'm finding that my 5"x7" sketchbook is too small, so I got a 8"x11" for my next one. Only 10 more pages to fill up! It is kind of crazy how the size of the paper can impact so much.

[SamuraiSingh]

@JimSt
For inking, it might be worth taking a photo of the page before inking as a backup.
I generally find its a good idea to take photos of physical/hard copies because you can't easily copy and paste a real piece of paper compared to a digital copy.
You can make a copy using a photocopier or printer scanner. I just use my phones camera, if it gets to the point where I need the digital copy I can always just trace over the lines so no need to stress about having a super high quality copy. I hope that helps and isn't just me rambling about something random

[Nosnibor]

Inking your very old drawings is cool, must be fun : )

[JimSt]

@SamuraiSingh Yeah, it probably would have been a good idea to create some kind of back-up. I didn't do that... LOL
Analog inking is fun that way. There's a fear that I'm gonna mess it up. The only cure for that is... going ahead and getting a mistake on the page and then figure out how to fix it.

@Nosnibor It's been a bit of a trip. There's only a couple pages of pencils from "the ancient times" and I found myself trying to add in more details while I was inking. I had to stop myself and really try to match the inking style that was established on the first page. I don't know if I did that well enough. I ended up switching over to a thin liner brush and a pot of Speedball

I've been a bit preoccupied with some mythological studies for the past week, it's been really fun building my own myths to inspire and support me. I just finished most of the inking of page 7 tonight. I'm still not sure how I want to release it just yet, but I am currently planning for the comic to be written in Esperanto. This installment is only 15 pages, but I plan on releasing additional pages over time and eventually collect it together for a physical volume release.
This coming week, I will need to switch gears to get some art done for a music release. I'm hoping to get that project and the rest of "Wait" squared away before the end of the month so I can get back to my Art School studies!

[JimSt]

Hey all! I hope everyone has been doing well and making progress inline with your goals.
As mentioned, I'm doing some extracurricular work before I get back to my studies. As usual, it's taking me longer than I thought it would, but that's ok. I'm not in a huge rush, but I am experiencing a bit of frustration about this slow pace being my normal speed... I guess I need to focus on making things as good as I can and then worry about speeding up once I have levelled up my skills to where I want them.

I'm still working on the artwork for a friend's music release. He's his YT page, if you are curious: https://www.youtube.com/@etherlodge7721

Layout and pencils are done, now I'm working on getting the inks in. It's mostly ink brush at this point, though I've adding in some Micron for the fine lines I just can't do with a brush. I'm going to go back in with a brush to thicken up the shadow edge, so I'm gambling that the fine liner won't be too noticeable. I'm going to do something with a ton of straight-edged lines for the moon to create a geometric hatched tone to it with additional white ink "scratches" in it, so that it appears to be like it is on scratchboard/or appears etched. I don't know, it's an experiment. LOL. After that, it will get scanned in for coloring. I'm thinking mostly flat coloring with this heavy ink style will make the most sense, but I'll probably experiment with that when the time comes - hopefully later this week...

Ok, I'll try to catch up on all'a'y'all's posts soon!
Cheers!
-Jim

[Mimhesis]

Hey,
really nice to see how productive you’ve been while I was inactive — and that you’re still keeping it up!
I feel like a lot of people who were super active last year ended up dropping out of the program (myself included, unfortunately). Hopefully some of them will come back soon too.

Anyway…
I’m really impressed that you’re working both traditionally and digitally. Ever since I switched to drawing only digitally, I can hardly get anything done on real paper anymore. 😅
Your anatomy has also improved a lot — really great progress!
Can’t wait to see more of your comic when you’re ready to share it.

[Nosnibor]

Your inking on the chainlink fence is very cool. Very satisfying to look at : )

[JimSt]

@Cielas @DarkAstari @Verr @Mimhesis @SamuraiSingh @Nosnibor, thanks for stopping by! I hope you all are doing well and I plan on catching up on your threads soon.
It's been a chaotic couple of weeks for my life, but I managed to get the piece to a point that my friend wants to move forward with using a black & white version of the image with a possibility of a full color version and a custom designed logo for a future music release. Which is fine by me, so I can change it up a bit and do some other stuff.

@Mimhesis I think a lot of people flamed/burned out last October trying to participate in too many of the "month of" challenges with the Ink one and the OC one, and regular studies it seemed like a lot. I was busy in my personal life so when I came back in December it was very quiet around here. But I did discover a bunch of people went over to the Discord server. I tried to see what that would be like, but there's just too much going on over there for me to keep up with and I need less distractions, not more. Thanks for the kind words and I hope to see what you've been cooking up lately!

@Nosnibor Thank you! But OMG. The chain link fence nearly killed me. I got about halfway done and saw some fundamental issues with how those would really wrap around each other and turn away from the picture plane. And then how that would change as the fence as a whole would turn toward or away from the plane if it were collapsed. I did not want to go back and fix them, so I decided that they would just have to be one of those mistakes I have to live with. I also see all sorts of other problems, but some of those problems will be less noticeable when this moves to digital color. In end I'm pretty happy with this.

And with this at a stage of completion, I'll be turning back to working on my comic and possibly picking up my studies again. I'm working on developing a different energy management system that isn't quite so strict and so I'm hoping it will be more flexible and I won't feel like I'm fighting against myself to make headway on all these projects - and all the new stuff I'm discovering I want to do. Tuesday is a new Lunation into Libra and Wednesday is a new Solar transit, so those will also see a shift in where I'm focusing - I'm still learning how to apply those things, so I'm not sure what all of that means, but it's been fun!

Cheers everybody and Happy upcoming Samhain!
-jSt.

[Nosnibor]

I can see how drawing every link like that while also consiering perspective could be exhausting lol. It is funny how you mention you "saw some fundamental issues with how those would really wrap around each other and turn away from the picture plane" whereas when I am looking at it from an outside view not having drawn the piece it is not something i notice unless specifically looking for it after reading your comment - I think the chain link fence is qutie satisfying to look at. Guess it shows we are our own biggest critics, great work : )

[JimSt]

@Nosnibor Thank you, I appreciate that! I also think if you stare at anything long enough, you will "make" problems. Kind of like how if you say the same word over and over again, it will stop sounding right. LOL