Nathaniel - Art School Journey

[natpen1]

Hey everyone! My name is Nathaniel, I'm 36 and currently working retail. I actually went to a four year college with a illustration degree and I've even done further studying with 3D and was briefly at a game start up. Over the past 8-9 years however, my motivation for doing art had been slowly declining to the point where I didn't even want to do it anymore.

Over this past couple years, I had been taking some CGMA 3D courses for game art, but my interest in that kind of diminished as well, mainly due to the amount of time it takes to create finished pieces and various technical difficulties has left me uninterested in pursuing it further. This past year, I had been just playing around with drawing from lessons from new masters academy, and I'm glad to say I am enjoying myself again. I bought this course in the hopes that the structure will keep me on track and consistent.

Here is my old work just to show where my current skill level is at. https://www.artstation.com/natpen

[natpen1]

Term 1 - Figure Drawing Assignments
Critques are always welcome.

[snakker]

Welcome aboard

Checked your art station. really cool stuff, can't wait to see what you come up with next

cheers

[ksermione]

Welcome! First assignments already looking really nice.

[Lockenheim]

Welcome to the forums! I really like your art station! I look forward to seeing your progress!

[natpen1]

Term 1 - Perspective Assignments

Here is my perspective work. So I've drawn perspective pieces before in a similar way that Marc does it in the video, but I found that creating a piece that way tends to stiffen up the piece too much and take too much time, so I've opted to try and free hand most of it. I find it has a bit more character to it.

[snakker]

These are really nice

Cheers

[natpen1]

Term 1 - Digital Production
Last but not least, the digital production hw. It's been awhile since I've done a proper photobash, but this was quite fun to do. The matching color assignment one was tough though. I can still tell I'm off a bit. Overall I'm happy with the progress here so I'll move to term 2.

[natpen1]

Term 2 - Anatomy 1

Here is my work for the heads. It's been awhile since I've painted in photoshop, but this was fun! The last image with the practice heads, I decided to play around with how to draw/paint it. The last one on the lower right is a technique by Thomas Fluharty which he calls "blind contour not really." It's definitely a fun way to sketch because it is very freeing and loose.

[prinzmoana]

I love the head studies, especially the construction ones ^.^

[snakker]

Wow. These heads are great

[natpen1]

Term 2 - Perspective
For the perspective one, I didn't make it as extreme with the 3rd point. Personally I don't find it that appealing for it to be so extreme, so for this I made it more subtle.

[prinzmoana]

Amazing mood in that piece, makes me wonder, what lies behind that big door 👀😄

[snakker]

I like the perspective there, feels organic

[natpen1]

Study Break!

So before I move on, I just wanted to work on something more fun as a mini break. I was looking around characterdesignreferences.com and looking at animation works and I came across masters of anatomy. I love the way their works are stylistically drawn, so I decided to buy all of the ebooks and do master studies.

This first set of sketches is from the character design ebook. I just scrolled through and picked random artists. The artists I picked were Ben Fiquet, Brett Parson, Celia Kaspar, Christine Chatal, Drew Hill, Kyu Bum Lee, Matt Doering, and Kshiraj Telang.

My main goal was to study shape language and getting used to pushing and pulling shapes. I also noticed I have a tendency to draw my subjects taller/skinner and I tend to straighten angles when I should be pushing them more.

This second set was from their How to Draw Expressive Faces and Hands ebook. Unfortunately I couldn't find the name of the artist who did the original drawings.

[prinzmoana]

Wow these look so clean and nice :}

[natpen1]

Term 3 - Anatomy
For the second assignment, instead of looking for skeletons to do a draw over, I figured it would be better practice for me to do a mannequin version of the figure and then draw the muscles over that. The back had always been a weak point for me.

[snakker]

These are looking great. Excellent work!

[natpen1]

Term 3 - Clothing Studies

Here are my clothing studies. I got the references from New Masters Academy.

[natpen1]

Term 3 - Invented Cloth

This was a tough one. Making up clothing was quite tricky.