@uggievang Thanks, that's some solid advice!
The past week was pretty busy, but I've still been grinding away when I can. I hope everyone has been doing well. I've been trying to stay current on everyone's progress, but I fell behind over the past couple days, but I'll fix that as soon as I post this. I have not yet been able to focus solely on Art in my spare time, but I also have not been playing any video games lately. But I also think it's probably a fool's errand anyway, as long as I'm making stuff and improving, I'm going to be happy. There's no reason for me to stress about progress or taking things seriously. The habits will take care of all of that. My energy is needed elsewhere. Waves of Manifestation, my friends. Waves.
I continued with spending more time on Week 3 with the vague goal of "feeling like I had mastered it." So I focused back on doing Loomis Balls, with plans to repeat construction of the facial features. And I had a couple sketch sessions in there too.
While doing that over the last week, I became painfully aware that my flaws are from the fundamental shapes. So I started practicing freehand circles and then this morning I added freehand lines. While there are several circles present in the post, there were tons more that got ctrl+z-ed. And what's there is not bad, but clearly needs improvement. But what kept popping up in my brain was "slow down." Not just my learning speed, but my drawing speed. When I try to draw too quickly, I make mistakes and there is a frantic energy to it that rarely makes a better drawing. Sure at some point I'd like to bang out 30 character designs or a full page of comic art in one day, but there's far too much that I need to learn and be concerned with before speed. Be intentional.
So this is me telling myself (and you!) that I need & want to slow down, and giving myself permission (yet again) to stick with things until I am comfortable with them before moving on to the next Lesson. And right now, I'm feeling comfortable moving forward into the Three Point Perspective studies.
It is entirely possible that after spending 6 more weeks toiling away at heads, I may never master the exact placement of the retina on that second eye (godsdamn it!), make a perfect circle, or draw a perfect straight line (without assistance). But that's okay. Learning is iterative and there is zero reason to completely halt progress, because all of these things will continue to present themselves as I work through the rest of the course. I mean I've seen what ya'll are doing and you haven't stopped drawing heads or faces. Besides, it's not like I don't have some foundation (albeit shaky in some circumstances). So yea, I'm going to jump into Week 4 and start working on my very lackluster 3pt perspective skills.
Alrighty, I hope you all have a great rest of your weeks!
Cheers,
-Jim St.
