Strifer - Art School Journey

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Term 2 - Week 7

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Study of Melina by Idaero Ace. I could really do with looking up some textured brushes, would help to sell things like the cloak in this case.

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Term 2 - Week 7

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Study of the Firekeeper from DS3, the reference used was posted nearly 10 years ago on DA, but the source gives me a 404 so can't find the original artist. Been having fun with these type of studies, but it's time to move on to week 8. https://www.deviantart.com/art/Firekeeper-Dark-Souls-3-609065320

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Term 2 - Review

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Looking back at term 2 it feels like I've been on a roller-coaster, a very slow start, followed by an intense period on the middle, and then a very quiet ending. But it's also been a period of exploration, mainly in gesture drawing methods, where I've gone from a more rigid style to a more chaotic one. Here's a comparison of 1m gestures at the start vs the end of Term 2.

9th Feb 2025 -> 28th April : 78 days

The way I draw heads went through some stages. Learned a lot during this part of the term. Looking back I should've stayed in it for longer and done some more heads for myself.

I've also been looking up more references from outside the course, even picked up a few books along the way. Mainly Morpho, Anatomy for Artists, and How to Draw, by Scott Robertson. Had some anatomy study sessions during week 7.

Been drawing more for myself this term in comparison with term 1.

Some things to focus on for next term is to stay with the technical studies for a while longer, and do spaced repetitions of them during the weeks. That should solidify the knowledge better. Another things is too look up more references from other teachers sooner. Marc does a good job, but I feel like I learned the most when I was trying out different methods, then picking one that suited. I also learned a lot from the master studies I did during week 7, even though they could've been more focused.

All in all I'm very happy with Term 2, it really pushed me outside of my comfort zone. There's much I don't know yet, but it's time to move on to Term 3.

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Term 3 - Week 1

I kinda stopped posting here as I made a blog on the discord instead. I'll try to keep this blog updated too but it'll more sporadic and more as an archive.

Week 1 in Term 3 was a lot from the get-go. 10 heads from photo reference, 3 environment drawings and some daily clothing assignments. Not included in this post is also daily primitives.

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For the environment I decided to study some of Marcos Mateu Mestre's work in "Framed Ink" I really like how much information he can capture with just values. You should check him out when you have the chance.

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Some notes I took on clothing and folds.

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The first clothing assignment was pretty fun, I started using refern.app to find my references and It had some pretty cool drip on there!

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Term 3 - Week 2

Week 2 we where back to gesture drawings, clothed figure drawing and some fan-art-esq assignment. I never really stopped doing gestures so that wasn't much of a step up in terms of work-load. Just shifted a few to 2 minute instead of the daily 60x1m gestures I've been doing.

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The real struggle for this week was the clothed figure drawing assignment. Folds and clothes have no business not making any sense, but alas it was a real kicker to go through. Had to go out of my way to find other tutorials other than Marcs to do this one, but even so I'm not really getting it. Definitely something I should practice more.

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The clothing study from photo reference was a little easier, but still found myself going to hard on the details rather than looking at the broader strokes.

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The drawing of characters was fun, I'm glad the course interweaves these type of assignments.

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Term 3 - Week 3

Week 3 started anatomy in ernest. The assignments tied to anatomy where not very interesting so not posting them here. Just gonna add some of my notes and the other assignments done this week. Mainly a bust from imagination, and my own studies of construction drawing from another course by Michael Hampton.

I've posted some of that course here before, but I never finished it back then, which I did this time around. It's a very, well, constructing method, to go from gesture all the way to anatomy. I like Michael's approach to drawing and his subtle humor.

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Term 3 also had us do 1 more clothing drawing, I really liked this one. Having a subject-matter you care about makes such a difference

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Here are some of the notes I've been taking during the course.

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This was my attempt on a bust from imagination. Albeit I did use an asaro head as reference for some of the planes of the face.

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Also painted this during Term 3, trying to use what I've learned in previous painting-studies from this blog. Her name is Kiko. She's a kitsune who's banished from her shrine; due to her negligence (lazy fox) she disrupted a very important ritual. She's not allowed back until she can prove mastery of the major schools of magic.

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[Nazario22]

Great looking spider! I like that you already find uses for cylinders, very quickly one sees that they are actually everywhere.

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Thanks! It was a good exercise seeing past the details.

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Term 3 - Week 4

This week introduced Z-brush as a tool and our main assignment was to sculpt a barrel and a character. I personally have no interest in Z-brush so I skipped all those assignments, instead I tried to focus on anatomy studies.

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Term 3 - Week 5

By skipping the Z-brush assignments the last few week of stuff have become kinda muddied. Anyway, I took what I learned and applied that by trying to draw muscles on skeleton figures.

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Managed to hit 50h of gestures on Quickposes.

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I also squeezed in some more clothing studies because it's been a while since I did those.

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[JimSt]

The anatomy studies are well spent. Good variety of poses and angles. Well done!
Congrats on the 50hr! I'm creeping towards that with these 5min Dailies in Term 4 Wk1.
Clothing studies look solid too! There seems to be something askew on the closer shorts leg of the bunny character, the shading makes it look like the front of the shorts is twisted at the waist causing the other short leg to overlap the closer in the groin area. An easy fix might be to adjust the closer shorts leg from going under the shirt - maybe adding a horizontal line as if there is a small fold?
I scrolled up a bit and see you're doing quite well in your studies overall. Good job!
-Jim

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Yeah, I see what you mean. It's looking a bit flat, like its not connected to the rest of the shorts. It could also be clearer how the fabric follows around the leg. Thanks for the feedback!

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Term 3 - Review and Week 6

As I'm no longer posting here daily this review will be a bit different than my previous ones. Term 3 was clothing and torso anatomy all the way, it had some face studies too but that was more a refresher from Term 2.

I think this term is a divider for a lot of people taking the course, maybe its the honeymoon effect but there's been a lot of drop-off in the discord channels when getting to term 3. I think the nature of tracing muscles on photos got many down, I know it did for me. And then when you think you're sorta getting it, the course steers into Zbrush, throwing the Term into a completely different direction that I don't think many signed up for.

To make it more interesting for me I decided to instead focus more on anatomy via the Anatomy for Sculptors book, (its in the pinned comments on discord), which helped me slog through it.

The clothing assignments where difficult, especially the non-lineart ones. There's just something about it that didn't really click for me. I will tackle similar exercises again, but what I think whats holding me back is actually my knowledge in value. I tend to overwork it, making a muddy mess of it all. Hoping that term 4's color and light theory will help me in this regard.

Overall it's been a strange Term, on one hand I didn't do all the assignments given, but on the other, I found a way of studying that I can apply on other things in the future. The slow building of knowledge is starting to scrape away at the mountain that is fundamentals.

28th April 2025 -> 4th July 2025 : 67 days

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Drew this as a capstone for Term 3, my Miqote from FFXIV being chased by a Yan, if you know, you know. On wards to Term 4!

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Term 4 - Week 1

Week 1 started off with Color and Light Theory and some insight into the various production lines in the industry, which I thought was very interesting! My daily 60x1m gestures have been taking a step back during this week, was making me not wanting to draw at all knowing those where looming, so I cut back on them.

Instead opting for doing the 5m gestures mandated for this week.

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Also squeezed in some value studies during this week. I should do more of them, or even better, apply the knowledge gained into my own drawings; after doing a bunch of studies I feel like I should focus more into applying it into my own stuff, else the studies become their own bubble, separated from the studies in a way.

If there's a long stretch between just doing studies and doing your own thing, there's so many new skills picked up, usually learnt in a vacuum, so its hard to apply it all into your own piece.

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For the Color and Light assignments we where asked to try varying color pallets for the same character In order to see what works or not. I felt mostly drawn to low saturated split complementary colors, but did try some other pallets too. The pallets that really worked was the one I stole from other characters, such as Tracer or Sombra in OW.

I think this is due to not just the hue, but also the amount of high vs low value in the original. This is something I should study further, I think it might be a big reason why some things I do reads well, and others feel muddy.

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After watching some videos on character design and silhouettes by Kyoung Hwan Kim, been trying to incorporate more design thinking into the last few characters. The cat-astronaut was circles and ovals, the fairy creatures was combining leaf + plant/bug. The bunny was It was less guided by silhouette and more that I thought the idea of those rabbits drawn in medieval books are just funny.

From what I've learned its mainly a method to get many ideas on the table, and then when you're happy with the direction you can start adding more details outside of the core elements.

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[Nosnibor]

Great work! Is this drawing from imagination?