Rafael - Art School Journey

Hello there! I'm Rafael.
First of all I'm really sorry if I say anything wrong at some point or if I'm not very clear with what I want to say, English is not my first language and I struggle with it sometimes.
My art journey started back in June 2020 when I got some ideas for a project but I had no clue how to express/execute them at the time, then discovered basically for the first time how to draw anything, I had no experience prior to that and I [almost] never used to draw as a kid so it was a new experience for me.
I focused more in practicing lines and circles from the beginning but I had no idea how to organize those studies so I ended up wasting some months doing only that (but not in a good/proper way). I then decided to focus on figure drawing (and some of anatomy too) because I wanted to create something out of it, and that's what I've been doing since.

Most of my drawings/studies were done traditionally but I can't take proper photos of them and from February 2021 I started using a small drawing tablet (One by Wacom) so I've been doing most of my stuff digitally. This is all I made so far (that I'm at least a little bit proud of (?)):

This first one was an experiment with some brushes from Krita (bad idea), and I don't really know what to say, it was one of my first attempts at making something "decent" (and also a landscape).

I dunno if I did this before or after the last one but it was around the same time

Some time after that I did a bunch of studies, sketches and such, so I never finished most of my bigger projects (or they ended up being rushed and badly rendered)
These are a couple of examples of that:

I think it was at this point where I changed from Krita to CSP

Then when I thought I was getting really good at making stuff I joined an Inktober type of challenge (bad mistake) and spent the entire month of October doing silly little things such as these ones:

After that month I got incredibly burnt out (I wonder why), and my left hand also got a lil bit injured from drawing everyday. So I took some time off, spent less time drawing and made some changes on my daily routine (and also changed my tablet settings).

Sketches from the beginning of this year

Since then I haven't been doing much except for studying and that's when I decided to start the year with Art School because I was lacking a lot of stuff (as you probably noticed) and to also take this more seriously. It was something I was considering for a while, because at this point I wasn't really looking for feedback nor studying properly. I'm really bad at asking for advice or even feedback so I'm hoping to change that with this course (and also my study sessions).

So yeah that has been my journey to this day, I already went through the first assignments and tried to make almost all of them (realized most of the stuff in there are really hard to replicate). I had some issues with the more Photoshop-oriented ones (I use CSP), so I don't really know how to make those and I think I'm just going to skip those for now.

Thanks! I was just starting to do more of those studies from the assignments of Term 1, I really needed to do those studies a long time ago haha.

Thank you! I'll do my best

I almost forgot to post this here but this is my progress so far with the first Term of the course:

Pen Control

I've struggled a little bit with this first assignment, no idea if it's a problem of my drawing tablet or if I just need to practice more. But in any case I'll just do these studies more often.

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Image Adjustments

This one was very complicated to make. I don't know how I did it to be honest.

After this assignment I gave up on the other ones because of how focused on Photoshop they were made. I completely understand the purpose of those assignments, but it felt a little bit unnecessary and overly complicated to do (at least for me as I don't use Photoshop).

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Figure Drawing
This class of Term 1 was honestly pretty fun, and I discovered a couple of areas that I was struggling with that needed to be worked on.

This first image is one of my first attempts tracing images using cylinders. And realized that my understanding on forms was not very good (at least in certain angles/perspectives), so I started focusing on studying that and then a couple of days later tried to do some figures from imagination.
This is the result of that:

I'm pretty happy with the results, but feel like I still need to study more.

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I got into the Proportions Class after that. Honestly it's something that I've already seen a while back, but it was good to revisit it again and learn a couple of new things.

I don't really like using this method for drawing to be honest, but it's kind of useful for certain things.
The figures from the left were made following what Marc was doing, while the ones from the right were entirely done from memory. I know the anatomy looks a bit wonky and weird but I've tried not to focus too much on that as Marc said it is not the focus of the class (and I also tried experimenting a little).

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Next I went into Gesture Drawing. I really liked this class and it made me start doing more complicated exercises.
When I first learned how to do Gesture Drawing on my own I used to do it with a 5 min limit, because I couldn't do gestures in less than that and my mind would stop working if I even tried doing 2 min gestures.
After watching the class I started doing some 30s exercises that ended up being really bad, but that made me realize how I should approach those studies. So then I did some more gesture drawings focusing on different things to see what works and what doesn't for me.

I still can't quite do 30s gestures very well, but I think I'm more capable now than before.

That's what I've got so far, I still need to do the measuring assignments and keep studying what I've learned. But I think I'm going to start working on personal stuff for now idk.