Michael Hojenski (HojoFlow) - Art School Journey

[hojoflow]

Hey everyone, I'm Michael Hojenski, after a long-term injury that kept me from art I am finally ready to begin this art school that my wife bought for me in 2018 (she's a keeper).

I've imagined worlds for as long as I can remember and have begun writing as a means to get the abstract creative chaos out of my spirit and manifest in the world. I have had a hand full of pens since I was able to hold them and carried them everywhere I went. I'm hoping that I can add awesome art skills to my storytelling tool belt and so I'm excited to share this journey with you all.

My primary interests lie in fantasy and sci-fi character art but I feel drawn to environment art lately too. Sprawling scenes are great at sucking a viewer into a story.

I'll be posting my homework here regularly to keep myself motivated and I'm excited to get to know you all and your work here as well.

Here are a couple of examples of where I was at just before the evil injury.

Hope it's not back to square one but we'll find out together i guess.

Peace, Love and Passion.

[hojoflow]

Lines have been drawn

[playforwho89]

Hey Michael! Welcome to the formus, your work looks awsome. Can't wait to see your late assignments.

[Lockenheim]

I am glad to hear that you have recovered! I am looking forward to seeing more of your work! Welcome back!

[hojoflow]

Thank you so much. Even your encouragement is making me start to get excited for them too! You've just helped me program some dopamine motivation for the long haul of this course. Much obliged!

[hojoflow]

Thank you, that means a lot. It's been so hard being away from art. (i'm sure you can imagine) It's nice to hear encouragement from a fellow artist.

[hojoflow]

It is such a pleasure to be using photoshop again, I was excited to try out assignment 2, despite it involving no drawing. I can see why a young grasshopper may skip them, but Mr. Miyaki taught me with age comes the realization of waxing those skills to a buff perfection. And so (Ctrl+U) on (Ctrl+U) off ...

This was surprisingly fun, it felt wonderful to be working with color again.

I was pleasantly surprised by how quickly I was able to identify which of the big three needed changing. Then I got the top one in the third row. I needed a lot of colour picker tests to nail the distance. It was minimal, but I just wasn't happy that I couldn't figure out what the last little bit needed.

This was in itself wonderful because checking repeatedly gave me a deeper understanding and a keener eye for hue, saturation, and lightness.

Ok, I', learning that I get some strange pleasure from matching things exactly.

I haven't much used the curves tool and spent a long while with it for the top image. Then I bounced to the levels tool and back to the curves tool and that made all the difference. I started to pick on the brightest whites, then the darkest tones, then picked individual grey spots and matched those.

When I repeated that with the second pic - it made it much quicker.

I felt like I could obsess if I wasn't careful so made myself stop (self-medication for the creative perfectionist. This may be going too far down the nerdilicious rabbit hole but I may well be watching some videos later on exactly how the curves and levels tools work so I can utilize them to master level as I progress

Also what a picture! The woman at the feet of a massive mech! Sparking my imagination for what that mech looks like! Topgun Gundam!

This one befuddled me a little, I'm making a mental note to look deeper into Midtones, Highlights, and Shadows. I wanted so much to lower the transparency on my version because It felt too dark and contrasted. If anyone can see where my lighting knowledge needs refining please give me some feedback. For now, this will have to do.

Ok firstly, Marc is a cunning man for giving us this image, I can see that he's picked a great image to teach me how to use both lighting and colour to adjust this. I started this one from scratch, and although pretty close the luminance of the canister was too hard for me to match and I lost some detail in the lady along the way.

The perfectionist in me is whispering that I need to tweak and tinker, but the better side of me can see that for now my job is done and a greater knowledge of colour and light will make this a breeze on the beach in the future.

All in all, a fun and stretching assignment, highlighting to me my need to dive into the world of colour and light theory. Can't wait for the next assignment.

[hojoflow]

This was an involved one for me. I tinkered and tweaked obsessively for a while. I had several other images I wanted to include such as a bridge, people, and at one point a portal!

In the end, this process was a lesson in less is more and what not to include.

Would very much value some feedback as I'm not sure if I should be pushing to make this one succinct image or if this is good enough for the purposes of this lesson. Still loving the course.

[hojoflow]

Went for a 10k walk today with my beloved one. Tall cliffs and the oceans are good for the soul. Being tired and making myself do more this evening is a good lesson in and of itself.

It's making me shred some of the meticulous perfectionism I restarted art with as I started this course a few days ago. I don't have as much time to faff with the assignments and so I am doing them faster. I want my learning to compound and solidify like layers upon layers of rock. So ... excellence and moving forward, never petrify in perfectionism. Excelsior!

The odd thing about this one is the age difference. I think the methods in the video are really tough to get such a young-looking man into such a mature one. I am very tired though so I'll hit the other one fresh tomorrow. Should have stopped after the apples ... another lesson learned. Non-tired eyes are better eyes.

[hojoflow]

Do you believe in life out there?

The alien face took a few attempts. I learned a couple of things worth noting for myself and others.

• Tackling one side then the other left my image unsymmetrical and grotesque. So when working on the large shapes of the face, such as the contours I did right then left and repeated in all areas until the big areas were fairly same-same.

• Only then did I tackle small details and even then mostly by clicking on and off the human layer occasionally going back to having it transparent. Flicking between the two. I found that otherwise, I was warping the alien layer too much.

I'l settle my attempt there unless anyone gives me feedback to the contrary as I feel I have the gist of the tool and I believe that is the point of this exercise.

On a personal note, I'm pleased with being back into photoshop every day and only having minor pain in my arm and back which seems to be dissipating by morning. So onward to the figure drawing. Very Very excited.

Catch you all in the morrow, and as always - much love.

[playforwho89]

I think the idea of initial photoshop exercises is to familiarize you with the software. And I think you done great work on them especially the composite picture good job!

[hojoflow]

Thanks. I'm glad I took the time to ease back in and it has fed the flame - I'm excited to make something everyday!

[hojoflow]

I hit the first figure drawing lesson today, I love the human form, it's a beautiful machine, wonderfully made.

Feel very much as if I've been training my eye to observe which feels satisfying and I'm expecting to sharpen that eye the more I dig into practice.

I feel pretty good about what I did today, I think the Pelvis box and hip joints could be more on target. That will come with practice.
The cylinders became smoother and easier as I did them and once I enter a flow, and stop overthinking the prominent angle comes easier.

Another good day with a pen. Much love.

[Lockenheim]

Nice work with these! Those photoshop exercises are sooo on point! Really nice job!

[hojoflow]

Thank you kindly, I really enjoyed these - about to start some more. Hope you're good mate.

[hojoflow]

I hit the nude forms again today. I want to get myself familiarised with the lesson before I move on to the next part.

Pelvis boxes still elude me slightly. I have a lack of confidence in my ability to identify them clearly and know precisely what I am creating a box around. I think some study into the anatomy of that area will help a lot.

I've been thinking a lot about when one should move on to the next session.

Highly creative people seem to have two demons that whisper in their ears constantly when trying to progress and express themselves.

The first whispers "But is this one tiny part PERFECT though?" and the other whispers "Be FREE from form and structure! The rigid world contains your creative whims of genius! Spontaneity! Chaos! Follow these winds and divine inspiration!"

I think to truly harness the creative spark within us that begs to be expressed in manifest form (be it painting or some other form of consumable media) we need to know when to tell the one to shut the hell up and to demonstrate to the other that the chaos of the unsaid needs a word, pen, and page to harness it.

If we fixate on a perfect step then we'll never take the next one to learn the skills to express ourselves.
If we run in the wilderness with no boundaries to contain us then we'll have no road to direct us to our dreams.

Be encouraged at every step you take and don't pitch a tent too long in any one place in case you never start moving again. The road you are on is a structure to a dream you have. Go get it.

[hojoflow]

Decided to go further and deeper into the rabbit hole today.

I watched the male proportions part of the tutorial and then tried it with Marcs finished product next to me for reference.

It was okay and I was eager to move on (getting the dopamine hits from learning new skills) so I attempted to do it from memory right away.

I wanted to highlight the gaps in my memory so afterward, I did a paint-over with Marc's reference again and made some notes of what I needed to solidify in my grey matter.

I distilled that into what I considered lynchpins; 3 easily triggered things that would have a knock-on effect and would mean I didn't have to remember all the orange notes (just the green ones.)

The next two pics were again from memory.

I'm pleased with them, and I'm hoping it all gets filed into the long-term stacks in my archive (won't be letting any redheads with a candle in there ... wondering who gets that reference

)

When operating from memory I felt so loose and free. It was very much a pleasure to be drawing. I think I just got a taste of what working from a visual library feels like, the sense of flow and freedom was both relaxing and fulfilling.

[hojoflow]

And to make sure the previous part of the lesson is refined I got in some lines of action, head, shoulders, hips, and then cylinders.

I figured I'd push myself a little and tackle some overlapping bodies. I liked having to push my observance and think about them both in a 3D space.

Having understood the Pelvis in relation to the rest of the anatomy after the proportions exercise I tried circles instead of boxes. It clicked so much better.

One lesson compounds on another and it feels goooooooood.

[hojoflow]

Watched the female proportions portion of the video today. So similar to the men I figured I'd check male was in my memory and then go from memory to female straight away.

[hojoflow]

I traveled into the world of pen and thumb measurement next it got messy.

However, I realised something interesting as I painted over my attempt to see what was wrong with it. If I grabbed it with the pen tool and squished it ever so slightly to the left then everything almost aligned perfectly.

I realised that the second orange line I used for a grid line (right of my sketch's head) was too long. Mostly because I used my fingers to measure instead of the pen. That being the only line that made the difference is encouraging as it means the rest of my work was completely right.

I'll certainly practice this a couple more times before i move on to gesture drawings but so far so pleased. Much love.