TERM 1 RECAP.
(It’s going to be a long read feel free to skip away)
Alright, so I decided it’s time to move on to term 2, else my anatomy loving was going to drive me mad.
First thing I’d like to mention is that I am very grateful to be here. This art school, the content Marc produced and this community is all amazing and has inspired me well beyond my expectations in a very short time. I feel I’ve learned a tremendous amount of things and am having a lot of fun. I’m also grateful to be able to learn for free from various artists on Youtube, I know that Sinix and James Gurney and various other artists that post their process in traditional media on the platform have helped me immensely to do things beyond the scope of what term 1 had in store.
I’ve learned the importance of gesture drawing to capture the character, pose and energy of a figure and to gain confidence in drawing. As I experimented I’ve realized that my line confidence definitely depends on medium, positioning and when on digital - the software. I’m currently using a Huion kamvas 16” at about 70 degrees upright using a parblo stand and when drawing with thicker brushes that have size (and sometimes opacity) to pressure works best for me (hard round in photoshop or graphite in painter). I make it a point to always use smoothing at 0 as it makes no sense to learn with a crutch like that, I wouldn’t be able to tell what is improving). In procreate I guess it’s the 6B pencil and now JensClaessens custom pencil brush (bought it to help an artist out plus I like his work). As for physical.. I hate real charcoal XD it’s way too messy and charcoal pencils break too easily so I abandoned that fast. I am using mechanical pencils (pentel 207 0,7mm and Uni KuruToga 0,5mm - lines are way too thin and exact for gestures but are otherwise awesome for drawing), technical pen (micron sakura 0,5 - also, too thin for gestures but I love it for crosshatching - it’s what I always used to doodle in school) and a fountain pen I had which is somehow incredible feeling to draw with. I now got some uni Hi 10B graphite pencils to be one in tune with Glen Keane and Gibli XD and to see how they fare to draw gestures (probably going to be good)
I’ve also noticed that time for gestures… I prefer 3 to 5 minutes. I always feel I need to flesh em out more so at some point I stopped doing the super fast ones and now I’m doing a little longer. Maybe not what’s intended but it works for me. I do go with immediacy trying to make out the gist of the pose and proportions fast then start adding some contours some anatomy, things that stand out to my eye and give it much more appeal in my opinion. I also make it a point to always use the entire canvas to draw the poses - the bigger the better.
I learned the importance to SLOW the hell down when I draw - I tend to be impulsive with drawing - and with that I manage to draw figures in proportion much better now although I still don’t have a real measuring system for it and am not memorizing that much, just eyeing it out. Through experimentation I also started dipping my feet in digital painting proper thanks to all the aforementioned videos that I like watching I have managed to make some color studies, figure paintings from reference and now a composition using references that I wouldn’t have dreamed I would be doing at this point, will definitely keep experimenting as I go on, just worried I might be doing something wrong and may create or pick up bad habits unintentionally as it’s not strictly part of the course at this point.
Perspective I learned is something I took for granted. Being one of the few things I actually learned in art in grade school, never gave it that much thought. Also learned how hard it is to draw things in perspective from imagination and how blank my mind can get when going about starting anything perspective based. It’s something that I definitely understand the basic concepts on - at least the ones thought so far - but am far far from mastering. Ordered a couple of books to supplement (perspective made easy and how to draw by Scott Robertson, this last one, probably overkill, but want to give it a try to learn drawing complex hard body things in perspective). It’s something I’m definitely going to have to keep working on as I go forward.
I finished reading Art Fundamentals (3D total). Have to say it’s a really good theory book. It goes over the basics of forms, line, value, color, anatomy, composition etc but doesn’t go too far into detail in any one of these things. It is NOT a practical book, but gives a lot of beautiful and very easy to understand examples of how these fundamentals work. I think it’s a great read to complement the first term, and does open your mind to many things that otherwise I wouldn’t think about when appreciating work by other artists and how these things can affect my own work.
Wow, this looks like an essay already, and I feel there’s so much more to say (to myself mostly, but why not share). I think I’ll leave the recap at that
I feel super motivated for term 2!
Next term I definitely need to work up the courage and draw some environments in perspective.
Also, as one of the key points of term 2 is the human face I’m going to be reading “Beginner’s guide to creating portraits” (3dtotal) and “Anatomy for artists Drawing Form and pose” by Tomfoxdraws
Cheers!
