McChuckles - My Art School Journey

Good Day,

I introduced myself in Discord in January 2024 and have yet to start a blog or consistently maintain a schedule for this wonderful purchase my wife gifted me. I'm hoping to change that now.

A bit about myself. I served in the military for over 20 years which has now allowed me to retire and pursue other goals in life. About 5 years ago I realized that art has always been a passion of mine that I want to explore further and see where I end up with this journey. I'm also currently a stay-at-home dad with twin babies, so I am very busy; however, I have always been inconsistent with my priorities and have found it hard to maintain any kind of motivation when it comes to my personal goals and growth. I recently have been diagnosed with ADHD and am currently on medication to help me focus better and not procrastinate. I'm hoping this stops the trend of me taking a long hiatus when things don't work out and then starting from scratch months later.

I'm an old-school Advanced Dungeons & Dragons and comic book nerd. My artistic interests revolve around those mediums. Particularly, I enjoy the works of Joseph Linsner, Larry Elmore, and Clyde Caldwell. I like the portrait art for various CRPGs like Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 and my more immediate goals revolve around being able to create my own custom portraits for my characters in similar games. Long term, I thought it would be cool if I became one of the artists for a new pen-and-paper rulebook or created my own comic book.

Even though I have had this course for almost a year now, I have barely made it through term 2 and as mentioned earlier I'm hoping to change that by being more active in the community and sticking with the gameplan, knowing that there might be hiccups along the way as life with twin babies can be chaotic. I plan to spend an hour every Sunday updating my progress and hopefully providing feedback to others who wish it. I'm starting week 1 again so I'm open to suggestions on what assignment is a good one to put in my next entry for progress updates.

I should also mention that I don't have Photoshop. I was gifted an IPad a little over a year ago and bought Procreate for it. I would also appreciate any suggestions from anyone who uses Procreate and maybe how to find alternative functions to what Photoshop provides. Below is the most recent character portrait that I drew with Procreate. I also have the portrait on my near-barren DeviantArt page.

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It's Sunday, and I'm sticking to my promise to update weekly.

First, I’d like to thank daceronine and uggievang for their replies and feedback on engaging with the community. I’ve set Sundays aside in my schedule for these blog updates as a way to keep myself accountable for my progress. While I do check Discord a few times each day, I rarely post; however, I did post a few times this week and hope that, in time, I'll feel more comfortable giving feedback in the future.

Thank you also for complimenting my portrait drawing! I put a lot of effort into it, and I’m glad with how it turned out, though I want to keep improving. I received some recent critique that it looked a bit flat, which the reviewer attributed to my colour choices for the face. Personally, I liked my colour choices and thought it might have more to do with my blending; I tend to smooth everything out rather than using hard transitions and I've seen a few videos on Youtube on how important using both are for applying depth. Any input on this would be really helpful. For the colours, I chose saturated blue for shadows and saturated yellow for highlights, if I recall keeping them on opposite ends of the color wheel. I also used a light red for the ears, cheeks, nose, mouth, around the eyes and a few of the transition areas.

I don’t have much to share visually this week, as I’m focused on keeping to my study schedule, which includes visual communication, pen control, and assignment 2 for Photoshop. I don't see any value in posting my pen control exercises. As for visual communication, I often forget to do it, though I’ve been managing to stay consistent daily this time. I’ll post my progress on assignment 2 since I found it really challenging and would appreciate any guidance. While I feel confident with hue/saturation and levels/curves adjustments, I struggle with color balance (which you will notice). I actually noted back in January to revisit this exercise but kept avoiding it. I don’t even touch colour balance in my personal projects, even though I’m comfortable with the other adjustments.