Jim St. - Art School Journey

JimSt 2024-01-15 17:19:49 UTC #1

Hi everyone! I've been drawing and making art since childhood, pursuing an Art major at one point, and doing small freelance projects throughout the years. My career trajectory has been a random set of lucky breaks and has pushed me through Training & Education to Information Management, but I'm ready for a change and I am hopeful (and determined) that Art School will help provide the structure I need to progress my art skills to the next level… and the level after that. I spent a good chunk of last year working through the free year plan Marc released last year, but was not able to complete it. My biggest weaknesses are allowing my emotions to derail me and falling prey to overindulging in the multitude of entertainments available at the touch of a mouse button.
I am starting work on Week Two of Term 2 today, so I'll be watching the Figure Drawing lesson shortly and folding in the new daily practices. I'm finding my hardware to be a point of frustration when it comes to the Pen Control exercises. I have a simple pen tablet (non-display) and drawing a straight line or the circles is maddening. I also have a 10in Android tablet with a pressure sensitive pen (running Krita), which is a bit easier to do those exercises on but it feels quite cramped. I'm thinking that getting a larger pen display might help. I'm looking forward to creating better art and learning as much as I can to prepare for my career change (whenever that can realistically happen).

Here are some of my favorite works:

This last one was after I did a bunch of portrait studies for the free year program mentioned above.

Here's to 2024! May our trajectories be carried further and may we all achieve everything we have ever wanted.

-Jim St.

patrycja.lerch 2024-01-15 18:32:17 UTC #2

Welcome Jim! These look great! Love turtles and JarJar

daceronine 2024-01-15 19:40:39 UTC #3

Welcome aboard Jim!

Yea, if you can afford it, a display tablet can be a life changer, then again, I've seen some amazing artists out there who simply use pencil and paper. Marc's course starts at software basics, but ultimately most lessons apply to art in general, such as forms, shadows, perspective and so on.

Bests of luck with this new year!

mitsuki-youko 2024-01-15 20:33:25 UTC #4

Welcome to the forums!!

Pattu_w 2024-01-16 14:15:34 UTC #5

Welcome to the forums, those look pretty cool! Looking forward to see your progress throughout the year.

snakker 2024-01-17 14:11:53 UTC #6

welcome aboard mate

cheers

JimSt 2024-01-18 23:08:31 UTC #7

Thanks for the welcome! Always an inspiring sign to see other people working on their journey! Also, being able to go to other students' threads and see the progress! You all are amazing!

Here are the Photoshop Assignments done in Krita:

daceronine 2024-01-19 03:06:47 UTC #8

That alien with hair caught me off guard xD

JimSt 2024-01-19 13:54:49 UTC #9

Here are my Term 1 Week 2 Nude Figure Drawing / cylinder breakdown exercises. Please feel free to comment if you have any tips! Thanks!

JimSt 2024-01-28 18:18:06 UTC #10

It's time to check in with my fellow artists! I hope you all had productive / relaxing weeks, as per your intent.

I was working on Term 1 Week 3 and here are some samples of the daily practices.

This week was a bit of a challenge for me. There were plenty of good exercises but I made it halfway through before I realized that I was making things way too complicated on myself. And I inadvertently did an assignment from Week 5, while ignoring the Study of 5 Characters assignment. It was all good practice and exercise, so I didn't really mind. To further explain, In addition to the Art School curriculum, I'm working on some personal projects (mainly so I can track my improvement), trying to finish working through Marc's free annual program that I started last year, and maintaining a full-time non-art related job.

The Art School exercises were the priority and those other pieces fell behind. But I want to honor those other efforts because they were actually part of my annual plan before I managed to get the Art School course for Xmas. Plus, anything that I learn from either set of practices/goals are going to benefit the others.
So for the next week, I'm shifting gears a little bit and will be working on a comic style illustration, completing a head sculpture, working on lower body anatomy, and the 5 Character Studies. So basically playing catch-up, but I plan on maintaining a set of daily warm-up exercises and probably some figure drawing. But most importantly, I am aiming to take it easy to avoid getting burnt out.

I also want to mention that I spent way too much time looking at pen displays. I think I have determined that the XP Pen Artist Pro 16 Gen2 will fit my available space and has the desired features. That said, I won't be able to get one for a couple months or until I sell off some of my board games and my Xbox. But before I commit to that I am planning on doing as many things as I can with traditional media. I actually did some today and they felt great.

I'll see you in week!
-Jim

daceronine 2024-01-29 04:05:02 UTC #11

Yo, good work man, you've really been grinding it out!

I'm looking forward to the comic style illustration, I'm into that stuff xD.

Good luck with all the plans, they sound like good plans!

JimSt 2024-01-29 19:30:48 UTC #12

Thanks @daceronine !
You know, you gotta use the grindstone to hone the blade...

Comic style is my fall back. I have problems with that process over the course of an entire book, if I'm the sole creator. By the time I get to lettering it, I hate everything about the story, my lineart, my inking choices, and the color choice.

Yet when I go to make a painting, I'm thinking in comic layouts and use the pencil/inks/color step process. I'm trying to make the leap to a painterly style, but those lines are soooo cooozy... lol

Here's a page from the last comic I did back in 2018:

daceronine 2024-01-29 20:28:08 UTC #13

If you ask me, that looks pretty good, would be nice to see more of it!

I think it's normal to kind of doubt yourself, happens to me all the time as a solo creator as well, but I try to remind myself we are our harshest critics, and that's it all part of the learning process. I know for a fact it happens to the pros as well, except they usually have a deadline to meet and barely have time to look back.

That's all fine and good, trying different styles is a great learning experience, and even if it doesn't stick you still get stuff to incorporate back into your pipeline. I love inking lines myself, but looking around at other artists I also tried to eliminate lineart in different exercices to see how it works. Still not my preference, but I think I understood better line weight and terminators thanks to it.

JimSt 2024-02-05 01:43:43 UTC #14

Hey ya'll!
Weekly Check-in Time!
Term 1 Week 3.5
Overall, it was a very busy week and I was not able to complete everything I had hoped. The goal was to finish up the material from Marc's free year-long drawing recommendations for April and May, finish the 5 character art studies, paint on a personal project, and maintain daily pen control and gestures. I was able to keep the daily stuff in place for the most part, complete one character study and do rough layouts of the others, get the general layout down for the personal project, finish my head sculpture, do some color studies, study the foot & lower body, and do a decent set of 2min gestures. For the most part, I used pencil and paper to do most of the work, only using my graphics tablet on occasion - mostly to make sure I wasn't going to suffering from neglecting it.

And now, the photo dump. And man, now that I see it all like this… It was a lot. LOL.

Five Character Lineart Studies - Only completed one, but sketched in some of the others.

And lastly, one of the blocked in designs I was trying out for my personal project.

So yes, it was a full week and fairly productive, so I deserved to take a bit of a break on Saturday and Sunday. However, even with taking a week to catch-up, it was just way too much trying to juggle the two learning programs at the same time as I attempted to make some personal artwork. So I am going to put the free program on the back burner and focus on the Art School curriculum, and perhaps get some work in on the personal projects as time permits. Bottom line is that I've got to let go of the 2024 plans I made before receiving Art School for Christmas. Besides, I doubt that the free program covers the same stuff and probably not at the same depth. So I'll pick up with Week 4 now.

Another factor that got thrown into the mix on Friday was the arrival of my new Huion Kamvas Pro 16 (FHD) and the acquisition of Corel Painter 2023 through Humble Bundle. I decided against the XP-Pen Artist Pro 16 Gen 2 due to hobby budget issues, as I also need to upgrade my GPU sometime soon. I think if I ever start making money from my art I will probably need to re-evaluate the display anyway. I like the Kamvas well enough, but there were some challenges that I've already noticed. Most are technical blockers that are too boring to mention here and honestly almost feel like distractions and excuses - which I find annoying. So I may not try to resolve those issues as long as I can still use everything reliably. However, Krita does not like my current setup and becomes unresponsive with brush strokes so I'm working on re-learning Painter (which I haven't really used since Painter 11) and trying to find the tools to match what I have been using in Krita. So that complication has been a little frustrating, as I'd like to keep using Krita because it is on my Android tablet so there would be a sense of platform stability. So there's some adjustment there…

Also, I want to mention that I find analog drawing to be way more satisfying and significantly less frustrating than drawing with either graphics tablet, android tablet, or pen display. It may just be because that's how I learned to draw in the first place or it could be that it has higher resolution, more intuitive interface, and amazing haptic/auditory feedback. So while I am definitely going to use my new device, I have a feeling that I'm still going to have a preference to pencil and ink using traditional media.

Man, what a week...
-Jim

snakker 2024-02-05 04:38:07 UTC #15

Congrats on the new tablet, hope it works out for you. It's a very subjective thing for sure, but I feel you on tactile and auditory feedback - from my tests, at least in digital, wacom wins in that regard for sure - but they carry a heftier price tag too. Painter is pretty solid, and yeah, it can definitely be hard to juggle more than one course. What I'd do personally is follow Marc's school and read books/watch youtube videos during each term in a way that the videos and books complement what I learn. Also, I don't follow the weekly guide, I started before it existed so that's also part of the reason, but mainly because I just don't think I'd be able to in this moment in my life.

Rather what I did was structure it similar to a university course, where each term is about 6 months, so 1year in and I finished terms 1 and 2, these 6 months term 3 and so forth. I feel it gives me more time to do the assignments, repeat them if necessary, apply concepts, read up theory and add a trick or two even if it is a bit more advanced (I started rendering and using color from term 1 cause my goal was always to get to painting)

I guess that's the beauty of online courses where you don't pay a membership but rather a single purchase, you get to determine your own pace and really take your time if you want to. I feel there really is no need to rush, and sometimes a slower pace can beat the faster one.

cheers!

mitsuki-youko 2024-02-05 05:25:08 UTC #16

that sculpt looks SO good!

It's amazing you can sculpt so well with clay!!

JimSt 2024-02-05 11:17:19 UTC #18

@mitsuki-youko Thanks! It was also extremely satisfying. It's been a long time since I sculpted more than simple shapes. I learned a ton and look forward to doing more.
I used SuperSculpey Living Doll, which was too soft. I wish I had used the Firm because I kept losing details as I work on different sides of the head.

JimSt 2024-02-05 11:48:37 UTC #19

Thanks for the reply!
I'm pretty sure the pen display will work out, it's not really my first. I had a Surface Pro 4 but it's battery swelled up and threatened to explode. I "replaced" it with a Kindle Fire Max 11 and one of the 4k pressure pens available for it. It works okay for sketching while on the couch. I recently put a "paper-like" screen protector on it and WOW, it really feels and sounds like drawing on paper.

This is a great idea. But on an instinctual level, I'm afraid that if I don't stick close to the weekly schedule that I'll completely rabbit hole onto something else entirely. "Fighting against distractions" is my heroic theme. LOL
But I do watch tons of supplemental videos and tutorials on pretty much everything. I don't see that changing.

Very true. I need to keep that in mind without introducing negative self-talk. I put a tremendous amount of pressure on myself once I decide I want to do something. And that winds up making me rush through things just to get them done. Which means I'm less likely to make necessary adjustments and miss opportunities to learn more. It's kind of hard to pause though because I have the "Done is better than perfect" mental script on infinite loop. Plus, that harsh inner critic has some pretty mean things to say when I slack...
I could benefit from a more relaxed approach. I appreciate that you shared your experience, because it made me reconsider some basic assumptions I'm hold about some of this.

Thanks and have a great week!

daceronine 2024-02-05 19:18:53 UTC #20

Jebus that's a lot of work man! You've been busy! That's good to hear.

Yo high five! That's exactly what I use! Though I use clip studio, because, you know, manga and stuff.

I love it, You can tell it's pretty used up because of the faded stamps.

Having preference for pencil and ink is all good too. So many people have different preferences, whatever makes you comfortable is the right choice.

Same with how to follow the course, as @snakker said, each of us tailors the course and tools to our circumstances and preferences. I personaly follow the companion guide, not weekly, but more as a checklist to go through, so even though the guide says to do something "daily for a week", I'll generally do it once, though I usually adjust the excercice to expand on it and practice something else at the same time, for example, inking and shadowing when doing the hands excercice, since inking and shading is really important for me.

It's normal to put pressure on ourselves too I guess, I originally aimed to do a manga chapter once per 15 days, and for a short time I did, then 1 per month, and now it's "whenever I get a chance". I'm still grinding it out, but learned to be more leanient with myself, since I'm also working on different proyects at the same time. Not necessarily art proyects (most of it is work related), but still, it's the pace I can allow myself, that is, on top of frequent breaks to keep that spark and love for art alive.

Point is, be reasonable with yourself and situation, if at some point you feel frustrated and unhappy, then maybe it's time to adjust something. As long as you enjoy what you do and constantly feel that desire to keep going, then you're doing something well!

JimSt 2024-02-05 19:44:28 UTC #21

The Kamvas is a great tool and I'm happy to have it! I'm out of desk space now and have to break out the Razer Nostromo and remap keyboard shortcut keys (or just keep the keyboard in my lap)... and reconfigure my work computer footprint too. Good problems to have.

I actually have a license for Clip Studio Paint and it's a great program. But my license is currently on an inaccessible SSD and I can't find any documentation emails. I might try the key I have for Manga Studio EX 4 sitting over there... hmmm... Distraction or worthy of effort...?

Good tips and advice about being reasonable, seems like that's the biggest release valve for stress, especially when it comes to doing something that you enjoy. Otherwise, you will stop enjoing it pretty quickly.