Jim St. - Art School Journey

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.

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:

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

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