Marco - Art School Journey

[MR151]

Hello,

my name is Marco Richter I´m 31 years old and from Germany. I purchased the full art school program nearly a year ago with the goal to improve my drawing skills to a new level. I´m trying to learn drawing traditional for roughly five years now with different programs free programs on the internet but my goal when I started my art journey was always to become a digital artist. When I first saw Marc Brunet´s program, I was drawn to it due to the huge coverage of all necessary skills needed for digital art in combination with the clear structure and the exercises this program offers.
Since last September I worked actively on the program but after I saw the new weekly study companion guide Marc has released, I decided to start over and follow this guide to push me a little out of my comfort zone (I tend to move to the next lesson or term only, when I have the feeling I mastered it and I think this slows down my progress). With this restart I also decided to share my progress on this forum and try to interact with other artists here, which I avoided until now in nearly all other drawing programs I did until now.
Since I work fulltime as project manager for a small company and English isn´t my first language, and therefore need a lot more time to write the comments here than in my native language, I don´t know if I am able to reply every day to possible comments from other users or post my current progress but I am at least to reply two times a week on Wednesday and either Saturday or Sunday, so please be patience if your comment something and I don´t answer asap.

[MR151]

With all
the introduction done, here are some examples of the exercises I did on week
one.

Starting
first with Pen control. Below are my tries of Day 1(Tuesday), Day 3(Thursday)
and day 6 (Sunday) and from today (Today I reduced the size of the brush from
3px to 1px to give make the exercises a bit harder). Last year I modified the picture bit, so that I can practice all 8 directions
for the straight lines and both directions of rotation for the circles on one
sheet. Since I have some mileage with this kind of exercises, I think my
straights are Ok but is clear that the horizontal lines are my weakest part and
therefore wavier then the others. I still try to find a comfortable movement of
my arm to draw them but made some progress over the last months. Overall I
think there is also some room of improvement to the other lines but I´m content
with my current progress.

For the
exercise where we should divide the rectangle with straight lines, I did just 2
directions per day, because this takes a lot of time. In general, I find it
much harder to draw get straight lines here, in contrast to the first exercise.

The circles are ok, but I have to try if I can get smother lines if I draw
them quicker without losing the accuracy. This is something I am going to try
this week.

Finally my thoughts
for the pressure control exercise. I think they are also ok, but there is also
a lot of room for improvement, especially in the sense of uniformity between
the lines and the, maximum pressure, where I often don’t push enough to get the
max. possible outcome.

Her is also
my attempt for the image adjustment exercise. The first 3 exercises are ok but
could be better and with exercise 4 I’m not satisfied. I tried several hours to
get the right values but every time a came close with one part, another got
worse and for the sake of my sanity I left at the stage you can see, where I
think it is somewhat close to the original. I think I will consult additional
material how the 4 tools we learned so far work an try this exercise after
finishing term 1 again.

[Norma]

I think, the beach beauty with the coconut-drink is our all nightmare to adjust right. Welcome to the forum!

[snakker]

Welcome aboard!

I wouldn’t suggest to go overboard with color adjustments. Almost everyone has a hard time with the beach girl

I suggest doing it enough to just get used to the tool and get to know it, have a general feel of what you can do with each adjustment tool but not to worry too much. As long as you do a little each time you’ll have what you need for when you need it (which for now - currently in term 2 - has been never for me XD. ) but I know if I ever need it I can always use it and know it exists there

Cheers

[MR151]

Hello snakker and Norma,

thank you for your concern, but i don´t have the plan to go over board with this exerciese. The sole reason i spent so much time with it this week, was that on the first week of Marc´s Study Guide ther aren´t so many exercieses yet, so that i had a lot of spare time. If this was not the case, I probably would have stoped earlier.

[MR151]

This week, there are the first three assignments of “Nude Figure Drawing” at the agenda of the study guide and here are my first attempts of them.
Starting with assignment one (Line of Action over photos as warmup) I included my first attempt from Monday. I think this assignment is straight forward and I don´t have to many problems to find the primary line of action on the most poses, however the sitting poses are a little bit harder. On the last pose, I´m not sure if it is better to draw a secondary action line for the arm like I did ore if it gives more clarity to leave it out.

The next assignment was the one page of the cylinders and here I included my pages from Monday and today. In my opinion this exercise is a lot harder for me than they look on the first glance, especially if I try to draw the cylinders like Marc did it in the video for this lesson. At day one I experimented with Marc’s construction Method and the method I used until now and the hardest part with Marc´s method for me is, to draw the same ellipse two times for the top and the bottom of the cylinder without a boundary on the sides. This leads to cylinders, where the bottom is too big or has a false opening and therefore cylinders which don´t appear in the right perspective. I also sometimes struggle to align the ellipses around the dots and, so that the top and bottom ellipses are offset. Forward I choose to stick with Marc´s method and think at some cylinders I made some progress in today’s attempt compared to Monday. At least, it feels better when I draw the ellipses, than on Monday.

Monday

Today

The last exercise is the one, where we should draw a simple skeleton over photo references.
Here I posted my tries from Monday and today. I must note, that although Marc mentioned his video for this lesson, that the ovals and rectangles as replacement for the head, torso, and pelvis doesn´t work to well for poses, which are in a stronger perspective I also included a few of such poses. The reason for this is, that I have a lot of poses due to a past membership of new masters academy and there are of excellent quality, these poses aren´t sorted in as specific manner on my hard drive, so that I would need a lot of time search them for simple standing poses, which I see a bit wasted. Instead, I just pick some random images and load them into photoshop, which results in the random selection of poses. I know that this is not optimal but as long as I have “enough” simple poses, I am also willing to try this exercises on some quite hard poses. What I have registered so far, is that ovals are somewhat ok for this hard poses but simple rectangles don’t work at all. Since I have a little experience with boxes as replacement, I am going to try to abstract the head, torso, and pelvis on this poses with them and have a look, how this works out.
For the cylinders as limps, I think, that I am mostly able to see, in what direction the cylinders should be open, even on very flat angles, but have some problems to find the correct degree of openness of the ellipses, that start and endpoint of the cylinders and sometimes I try to hard to match the contour of the limps. This are definitively the points I am going to work the most on, on the remaining times, I do this exercise.

Monday

Today

As I mentioned, a lot of this poses are from my membership of New Masers Academy,
and I don´t know exactly how the copyright situation are for this. If this
should be a problem, I immediately remove the pictures and must search for some
with an open licence. Although it will cost me a lot of time, I rather would
like to stay safe.

[snakker]

Looking good
Drawing cylinders is definitely harder than it seems, in this case they are simplified ones. If you were to draw them more technically then starting with a box in perspective would definitely help

Cheers

[Gordon003]

Study looks good so far. Keep it up!

[MR151]

Today I finished
the last attempt of the Pen control exercise I have to do following Marc´s study
guide. Compared to the last one I posted, there isn´t much change in the
quality and the accuracy of the lines, but I was expecting this. Next week this
exercise gets replaced with pen control practice from Marc´s youtube video “Top
10 Drawing Exercises” and I can´t wait to try them.

Next is the cylinder exercise, of which I attached my attempt from today. My biggest problem so far was the right placing of the two ellipses for the bottom and top of the cylinder and that often they didn´t match in size and the degree of there opening. In this regard I think I had some large improvement and the cylinders look much cleaner now, but there is still room for improvement.

I also think that I made improvements on the simple skeleton drawn over photo references of which I included todays attempt. As I said on Wednesday, I tried to draw boxes instead of rectangles for the head, torso and pelvis for the more complicated poses, but often I didn´t get the orientation and size of the boxes right. This is going to be my focus for this exercise next week.

The last to exercise for this week were “combining Images” and “Selection/Liquify/Healstamp”. My attempts can be seen bellow and for the first try, I´m quite satisfied with them. For the “combining Images” exercise I added the wooden house on the water, the Stonehouse in the background, the two otters and the geese.
On the image with the wall, I added some stones on top of it.
(Note I didn´t had time to finish the young to old part of the exercise yet and have to see if I am able to do it next week or not.)

[MR151]

This week, the Pem Control Practice from Term 1 was replaced by exercises from Marc´s YouTube Video “Top 10 Drawing Exercises”. Because 9 exercises (I excluded exercise 10 – Gesture Drawing, since it has it appears as a separate point in the schedule) are a lot for one day, I decided to do 5 exercises ala 5 Minutes every day respectively and alternate between the fist 4 and the last 4. For the 5 exercise I did the rotation of the boxes every day, because it is the hardest one for me. Below are my first try for each exercise, which I did on Monday and yesterday. Here I think, the exercises I found the easiest is the one where you should draw a line, which becomes bigger, as farther it goes followed by ribbons and the dividing of the rectangles. The hardest were as I already mentioned the rotation of the boxes, because I find it particular hard to get the right proportions and orientations of the lines down, in such a manner, that the boxes appear as the same box in a different perspective. Also, the colour blending exercise and the circles are harder than it appears.

On the cylinders isn´t much development from the last time I posted a page of these, so I don´t think I need to show my newest try’s here. I will post my last page I have to do on Sunday instead.
For the simple skeleton my main goal this week is to get better at drawing boxes for the head, torso and pelvis instead of rectangles, to and I think one some poses I made progress and start to get better at the process, although I have a lot of potential for improvement. Attached todays try of this exercise.

The second new exercise this week was 30s-Gestures. This was not the first time of doing this exercise and over the last years I developed a mixture of techniques from Michael Hampton and Steve Huston whereby the influence of Michael Hampton prevails in my opinion. I also rarely did 30s poses in the past and struggle to finish the whole pose most of the time, but hope that I will get faster with some more experience. Mostly I didn´t have time to finish the arms.

[snakker]

You're doing great! Keep it up!

[MR151]

Thank you.

[MR151]

With the
end of week 3, I finished with doing the first tree assignments of “Nude Figure
Drawing”, according to Weekly Study Companion Guide. The first assignment
became very easy for me, and I can identify the primary line of action on
almost all poses I had after max. 3 seconds if not earlier.

I also
think that I made quite a progress on assignment 2 my cylinders do look better
than when I started it, but I sometimes have still problems to draw the top and
the bottom ellipse the same but I’m sure that with more experience, this will
become also better. The picture I attached is my try I had today.

As I wrote
on last Sunday and Wednesday my main focus for exercise 3 was to get better at
drawing boxes as substitution for the head, torso and pelvis. One some poses, I’m
quite confident to draw them now, but on other possess, especially if there more
in an site view I still struggle, because I have problems to find the change of
plane there. When I use ovals for the 3 body parts, I´m comfortable even on
more difficult poses and the simple skeleton doesn’t fall apart, even, when I
hide the figure beneath it. In my opinion this also applies on most of the
simple poses, when I use boxes, so that I am overall quite stratified with the progress
I made in this two weeks. This also should get better the more you know about
anatomy I think, but correct me if I´m wrong. Attached is here also my attempt from
Today.

For Gesture drawing, today was also the last time for now, to do 30s-Gestures and next week I have one minute. I look forward, to see, hoe my gestures come out if I have a
little more time. Here I also attached todays work.

At last, according
to the schedule we had to do 5 studies (lineart only) of characters from video
games, movies, shows wee like. I didn´t know exactly hoe to do this exercise and
after watching a YouTube video of Marc, about this topic, where he says at
level 1, you should copy the reference as best as you can, with your current abilities,
I did that, but was only able to do 1 study, which I attaches below. The other
studies I try do next week.

To be
honest, this exercise makes me very uncomfortable, because this can feel overwhelming
and I didn´t know, how to tackle it. At first I tried to copy the lines, as I see
them, but the result, was a big mess and I started over, using a bi of gesture
drawing and ovals for the torso and pelvis as an foundation. This worked much
better, but it is nevertheless very hard, especially with the clothing and accessories.
My attempt is in the picture below. If you have tips you want to share for this
subject, feel free to do so. It would be a great help and I would appreciate it
a lot.

[Inkpendude]

Those Cylinders are looking pretty nice! You should also remember that if the cylinder is on perspective, the contour lines get closer to each other as they get further away from the camera, I hope you know what I mean

[Inkpendude]

also check out this info about how to draw Cylinders and how they work in a 3d space: https://drawabox.com/lesson/250cylinders

[snakker]

Yo, you did a pretty solid job on the study!
What you say about using the gesture as a foundation is similar to what I would recommend doing

Start your study with a block in, start big and go smaller as you progress. For example drawing a faint line for height and feet, a box to limit the sides, straight lines to enclose head chest and pelvis maybe a gesture practice on the side to analyze the rhythms of the pose and from there I try to locate the position of the hands and feet before adding the elbows and knees. Constructing cylinders and connections and building details on top of that or directly with shading

Cheers and keep it up!

[MR151]

Hello Inkpendue,

Thanks for the advice and I think I know what you mean. Also, thanks to the link. I did
the Drawabox program roughly two years ago but only managed to get to lesson 5 and
didn´t try the 250 cylinder challenge, so that I only read this page, but had
no physical practice and forgot the specific details. This is a great reminder.

[MR151]

Hi snakker,

Thank you for the tips how I can tackle the studies, I will try them out this week on the remaining studies I have to do and see, how it goes.

[MR151]

This week brought the first two assignments of “Perspective 1” alongside assignment 5 – Proportions from “Nude Figure Drawing” as new exercises to the table.
Since assignment 1 of the Perspective 1 class isn´t a daily assignment and according to the study guide should be finished after this week, I am going to post my tries on Sunday, when I finished it.
Bellow you can see my page of boxes in one- and two-point perspective from yesterday. The concept was not new to me since I had a lot of exposure to basic perspective on other courses I did and also did the infamous 250 box challenge from Drawabox roughly 2 years ago. This said, it is still a challenge to get all angles of the converging lines exactly right, when you don´t draw them all the way to the vanishing point, but I´m quite satisfied with my first tries, after a long time.

The male and female proportions in the next picture were all drawn from memory of Marc´s video, without drawing alongside him and I think I on today’s try, I did a good job to construct the figures in the right proportions, although I have to work on the forms of the arms and legs, with which I struggle. I will also rewatch this part on the weekend to see if I forgot something or remembered it incorrect.

In addition, to the new exercises, the time for the gesture drawings increased this week from 30s to 60s. This gave me more time, so that I was able to include the arms more often and I also could take more time for all the lines, which results mostly in better flowing and nicer lines. The next step for me is to become a bit quicker with this, so that I am able to finish all poses in one minute including the arms. Attached are my gestures from today.

[mitsuki-youko]

Wow your lineart is just amazing!!

You have such good line control and these gestures are so smooth and flowy and.... alive!