Tim - Art School Journey

NPCMacros 2021-12-04 20:12:30 UTC #1

Hey everyone. An introduction seems to be the standard, so I start there.

About myself, my name is Tim, I'm 36 Years old and I'm completely new to art. I work as a programmer on a game with a small indie team and have very limited time between my work and family, but I wanted to give art a try. I just expect very slow progress because of my time, but I will try to get something done every day.
How I got to art is pretty simple: In the game dev team I'm probably the least artistic person but I'm very impressed what the artists are able to create and archieve. At first (about 2 month ago) I just wanted to improve my understanding of art, so I can appreciate and critique the work of the artists from a better perspective, than I'm able to do right now. While reseaching for a bit I began to find much more that I would like to learn and that wasn't totally obvious to me at first glance. Like learning to read emotions better (where I got some problems with) and become a better observer. And by now the fascination about art took over and I wanted to try and learn it by myself.
My goal is also straight forward: I want to be able to create fanart for our game (and maybe other games) where you can clearly identify it as such. My thoughts are, that with this goal, I will achieve or at least tackle every other goal I have mentioned on the way, I hope. I'm pretty sure the goal will develop further if I get this one done.

With that in mind a friend gave me his old tablet (Wacom Intuos CTH-690) for a couple of bucks and I started by searching and watching beginner videos on YT. Pretty early I came across Marc, liked his style of teaching and explaining things and with that I landed here (currently on the trial course to see if it's for me) and I'm currently on my 5th day of ever using a tablet to learn digital art. I'm a bit ashamed on posting these works, but somehow I have to get feedback and tipps. So I appreciate all critique, feedback and tipps from you and hope this stuff is not too basic for this forum. And I hope everything is understandable, since english isn't my first language.
I watched the first two videos of the course (Visual Communication and Photoshop for Digital Prod - I'm not sure about the order, but I understood everything so far) and did the first assignment several times.

Term 1 - Pen Control

Already struggling with that one, but I guess that's true for everything you do for the first time. It's extremely confusing for me to paint in front of me and look at the monitor at the same time. As settings I use the newest Clip Studio Paint and the brush is the G-Pen with brush size 5, pressure only for opacity (except the first attempt) for the first three tasks and size 70 with the needed pressure options as needed. All with no stabilization (I don't know if it matters and what it does excactly, but when looking at the settings I thought, that that's surely not helping for what this assignments try to teach)

Here is my very first attempt:

Here after 5 days. Every day after the first I made this two times. So this is the 8th or 9th attempt:

It's only 5 days, but I hope it's okay if I post this assignment multiple times in the future. As I understood this thread should serve as a Journey and I like the Idea of having a timeline of progress like this.
I also did the Image Adjustments once, but unfortunately I didn't save this one. I will do it again and post it when I did.

Kosmonaut 2021-12-04 21:30:48 UTC #2

Welcome to the forums! so great practice so far and don't worry about being embarrassed we all start somewhere in art. For your pen exercises I would say try using your whole arm or should when you draw lines that way your lines become easier to draw, and also try drawing fast strokes as well that helps your line look less wobbly when doing a straight line or drawing a circle.

NPCMacros 2021-12-05 03:23:28 UTC #3

Hey, thanks a lot for the advice. I already try not using my wrist and more of my arm, but I think it's not working good so far. I think it's because I'm used to use my wrist and fingers a lot more while writing with a pen. But I'll focus on that and faster strokes as you suggest.

NPCMacros 2021-12-22 20:19:54 UTC #4

Hey, I tried the suggestions and felt comfortable enough, that I just started the next part of the course (Nude Figure Drawing).

Again the first assignment with the suggestions you gave me (draw faster and use the whole arm). After looking up how to use the arm and holding the pen I think I found a comfortable way of holding the pen and barely use my wrist anymore in these assignments. Also I deliberately try to speed up the lines. I still struggle a bit to follow the lines at the circles with more speed, escpecially in the second half where I "push" the pen (I'm left handed and draw circles counter-clockwise, so the right half when going up from the bottom point).

Then from the first assignment the color Adjustments. I tried the last one quite a long time, but couldn't get it better. I can see, that some parts are off, but since all operations should affect the whole image, I couldn't find the perfect balance:

And last some first tries at finding the action line.
As I saw from other posts nudity is okay for this purpose? Also I hope it's okay that I use these images. I got them from https://quickposes.com/ and just used the "Free model poses" library there. It just sais you shouldn't use the in my work, but since the page is for training purposes I guess it's okay.
If either one is not okay, I will delete them right away. Please just tell me in this case.
So here are the tries. I would like to know if I'm on the right track with those before going further and adding the marks for head, ribcage and pelvis.

Kosmonaut 2021-12-22 22:17:24 UTC #5

so for your line of actions, they don't have to only extend from the base of the neck down to the butt nor do they have to follow the spine exactly either. You could definitely push those lines of actions more and if you see that the line extends/flows through the body to the arms or legs then don't be afraid to follow it there, other than that great work and the Mei adjustment is very hard and almost no one gets it 100% correct so don't worry too much about that.

NPCMacros 2021-12-23 17:27:00 UTC #6

Ah, I see. Thanks for clarification. I rewatched this part of the class and tried the assignment again with the same models. This time a bit more by feeling. I think I focused a bit too much on the explanation the first time. Here are some examples that are a bit different to the ones before. Most of the others just extended in comparison to before.

Is this more into the direction it should go?

Kosmonaut 2021-12-23 18:27:25 UTC #7

these look a lot better than last time, but the fourth to last one you can break that line of action down into one smooth line instead of two, great work!

NPCMacros 2021-12-24 03:28:40 UTC #8

Okay, I think I see what you mean. I wasn't sure with the ones where I added a second line, but comparing with the top ones I can see the difference. Thanks.

NPCMacros 2022-01-22 19:12:15 UTC #9

It's been a while since my last post. I tried to get daily practices done with varying results. But most days I got at least half an hour to an hour to do some daily art practices.

I just started with the skeleton-cylinder drawing and wanted to share my first two attempts and ask for feedback. I still struggle with clear lines and getting the cylinders exactly as I want, but I hope the direction is right? Most of my "cylinders" are more like a truncated cones. Is that a valid option or should I focus on making cylinders with matching size on both ends?

Lockenheim 2022-01-22 19:30:17 UTC #10

Nice work so far! One thing Marc frequently suggests when drawing cylinders on a figure is to increase the amount of curvature lines on each cylinder to better see the volumes and to pay special attention of the angle of the curve. This was very hard for me at first and my lines were so bad. I did the pen control exercise every day for a month and saw huge gains on my lines. Working curves / ellipses on the cylinders over and over again helps a lot. I know it can be boring to sit and draw the same curves over and over again but it is totally worth the effort. In terms of the truncated cylinders I don't have a good answer, many of mine are the same way and I am also new. Keep up the great work!

Gordon003 2022-01-23 06:51:02 UTC #11

You are on the right path but I do encourage you to use different colour to separate key body parts (e.g. orange for arm, blue for body). I too am a programmer so this is a totally new challenges but it's very interesting and can complement your approach to programming too (art makes me think even slower which massively improves on my programming skill).

If you need any help/reference on progress on nude figure drawing, have a look at my blog - https://forums.cubebrush.co/t/gordon-art-school-journey/10726/11. Not perfect but it gives you a good idea on what to expect.

NPCMacros 2022-01-23 11:45:43 UTC #12

Thanks for the feedback. I started with the cylinders just a couple of days ago, but I will keep it up and follow the daily practice for now, where you draw a page full of cylinders every day.
And that's a good point with the colors to distinguish between the body parts. I used different layers, but I will introduce colors too. I checked your blog and I'm looking forward in getting there, too.
Thanks for the feedback.

NPCMacros 2022-02-20 14:21:08 UTC #13

Hey,
I still have very little time, but I'm still on it. Here are some more of the cylinder-drawings I made in the meantime and my first attempt of the proportion drawing I finished today. As always feedback is very appreciated.

Lockenheim 2022-02-21 05:43:41 UTC #14

Nice work! Don't be afraid to draw more of the contour lines one the cylinders to show the volume, it is a useful skill that will come in handy later! Trust me! I am fighting a giant cylinder right now. Keep it up!