Creative

Art lesson 2: Confusion

I have been delinquent in posting the past few days. I have no good explanation for this other than general laziness, so on with the lessons!

Having completed the Intro to Digital Painting 101 on https://www.ctrlpaint.com/getting-started I moved onto the series of videos on traditional drawing, in which Matt Kohr explains the tools to be used (mainly HB pencils and a combo of vinyl and kneaded erasers) and a few basics. The confusion came when he started referencing things in videos that I had clearly not seen. This made me check the user comments and for some reason, the videos are posted out of order. It wasn’t a huge thing, but it did not instill confidence in the rest of the material. I watched the following:

For those playing drawing along at home, the correct order as noted by a user, seems to be:

  1. Welcome to Traditional Drawing
  2. Crtl+Paint Unplugged road Map
  3. The Pencil
  4. Visual Measuring
  5. Unplugged: Pencils and erasers

The first actual exercise is to draw soft, loopy ovals in pencil, to help train the use of shoulder movement and get away from the tight grip used when writing–and rarely for drawing.

After the confusion of these mis-sorted videos, I went over to https://drawabox.com/ and started their lessons. They take a different approach, swapping in ultrafine markers for pencils, with the notion that this is easier because it lessens the urge to fix mistakes (no erasing) and just focus on the exercises, and the pen produces a single thickness of line that requires no pressure (one of the things they emphasize is to not mix different pen sizes). With pencils, the pressure will affect the stroke, as will the tilt of the pencil. Pens keep things simple and presumably easier for the beginner.

I have completed:

Lesson 0: Getting Started, an explanation of the lessons and tools needed, along with an overview of the non-technical skills that will be needed and refined through the lessons (patience, spatial awareness, etc).

I have read through but not yet finished:

Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes. This includes the first actual drawing bits (homework, as the site calls it), requiring a total of five pages for the three subjects. Repetition is a key component here–getting better by doing.

I have not yet taken pen or pencil to paper, because I am pondering the following:

  • Try doing both sets of lessons together (potentially confusing/overwhelming)
  • Do one set of lessons first, then the other
  • Stick to one set of lessons, then only do the other if I feel it’s needed

I don’t want to turn this into an excuse for not diving in, so I will likely start doing both and see how it goes. It’s easy enough to drop one and go back later.

Up next: Actual drawing! (?)

Art lesson 1: Intro to digital painting

I am treating my art lessons as if I am a beginner, as my last instruction was in high school, which was…awhile back

I have chosen to start this particular adventure with Ctrl+Paint, a site featuring copious free lessons provided by freelance artist Matt Kohr. It helps that Matt has a really calm, soothing voice in the videos, as opposed to say, Bobcat Goldthwaite’s.

I have completed the first set of lessons, Digital Painting 101, which comprises six videos. It introduces you to some key functions, features, and handy shortcuts in Photoshop.

The Ctrl+Paint videos highly recommend using Photoshop for ease in following the lessons, so I have temporarily renewed my subscription. I also dusted off my Intuos tablet and so far things are working as expected.

In time I will drop Photoshop, and transfer what I’ve learned to Affinity Photo and Procreate on the iPad. For now, I am following dem rules to keep things simple.

The initial lessons are traightforward, but the next set is where it will get interesting, as it goes back into traditional drawing instruction–using pen, pencil and paper. I have all three, so I am ready to start scrawling. I never practiced much in school because my attention was split among a bunch of stuff (as I mentioned in a previous post), so I may get somewhat better results this time. Or at least know sooner when to give up and go back to writing haikus.

I plan to start the next lessons tonight, so another update should arrive soon™.

Drawing trouble (offline and on)

One of the things I didn’t expect to happen in the past year (other than things like, uh, a global pandemic) was my rekindled interest in drawing. I took drawing and painting classes through junior high and highs school (five years total) and my only regret is that I never really got better–I simply didn’t practice enough, partly because my attention was split among a bunch of things–drawing. writing, acting, an interesting and bizarre turn at doing hurdles, along with all the usual distractions of youth–riding my bike, playing games (video and board), hanging with friends, figuring out my sexuality, stuff like that.

But last October I pledged to do Inktober and, to my own surprise, I completed all 31 prompts, nine of which brought back the Gum Gum People, to the delight of myself as well as others. After Inktober I let the drawing fall aside again, but the urge renewed itself on my vacation and I started digging into online resources.

I’ve settled on a few sites and their respective lessons and one of the key parts of each is that they emphasize and even require that you ground yourself in traditional drawing first–pencil and paper, not tablet and stylus. I like this because it goes against my first impulse, which is to just blunder about on my iPad, and “fixing as I go” without learning the proper lessons because when you go digital, you can skip a lot of proper technique in favor of brute forcing things.

Anyway, I’m starting the lessons now and will occasionally post my thoughts and perhaps a few sketches over the next little while. If this all ends in terrible failure, I will report on that, too.

And end the post with a single, badly-drawn tear.

Everybody do the dinosaur

In my quest to draw more, I asked for a subject and was told to draw a dinosaur. As a kid, I drew approximately five million dinosaurs–and this was almost two decades before Jurassic Park.

Here’s an example of one I found in an old sketchbook. Is Godzilla officially considered a dinosaur? I’m not sure. But you know what they say, great artists steal. This is one of four drawings I did detailing my take on the Godzilla story, inspired by watching every Godzilla movie from the 1950s on KSTW’s Science Fiction Theater, noon every Sunday. Those movies were terrible, and wonderful.

I don’t know why I had Godzilla frozen in a glacier, but it seemed like a cool idea (ho ho). I considerately recorded the year he emerged, which means I was 14 when I sketched this particular masterpiece of terror.

My Godzilla still has small arms, but they are like bodybuilder arms, so he obviously worked out before getting trapped in the glacier.

Disco was at its peak in 1978, but I would argue we’ve had stranger years since.

Here in the strange (and undeniably more horrible) world of 2020, I drew this quick sketch of some generic dinosaur in Procreate, using the technical pencil brush. The only fixing I did was to erase some of the extraneous lines. It’s not bad for a quick sketch. But no glaciers. Or background of any kind. Sad dinosaur walking a barren landscape.

Inktober 2016 in February 2020

I finally decided to start drawing again because drawing is relaxing and I need to relax more. I chose to return to what got me (temporarily) rolling again–Inktober!

You might note that it is now February. This is correct. But I didn’t take part in the first three Inktobers, so I’ve decided to start with the first set of prompts from 2016. I won’t necessarily post one per day, but I’ll try, because the quick turnaround is part of the fun.

The one thing I am doing differently this time is featuring Gum Gum People in not just some, but ALL of the prompts. 31 days of Gum Gum People. Hee hee, as they would say.

Here’s the first prompt from Inktober 2016, FAST.

FAST

A haiku to the first snowfall of 2020

We have our first real snow (not fake snow) of 2020 and it’ll be around for at least a few days, thanks to sub-freezing temperatures (it’s -6°C as I type this at midday). Rather than curse the snow, I will haiku it instead.

It's snow time again
That white stuff is everywhere
Stay inside till spring

NaNoWriMo 2019, Negative Day 2

Here it is, the second day of NaNoWriMo and I haven’t written a thing.

It feels great. So much time to do other stuff. I went to Costco today and bought a 20 liter jar of mayonnaise.

I am thinking I should keep up on the drawing now, because it’s fun and relaxing. But what to do? Possibilities:

  • Finish that book on learning how to sketch
  • Go back to one of the earlier Inktobers and do all of its prompts, either one per day or following whatever whimsical order I decide
  • Go back to my 2019 prompts and fix/rework the ones I’m not happy with or just try coloring all of them like Ted Turner
  • Start a gum gum person comic
  • Something else
  • Or maybe write something, just not something for NaNoWriMo

A lot of possibilities. I will choose by…tomorrow.

Inktober 2019 #31: Ripe

My first idea was a laundry hamper full of stinky socks. My second thought was a giant watermelon. Then a bunch of bananas.

Inexorably I ended up drawing a sweaty but athletic gum gum person.

Some personal Inktober Fun Facts™:

  • This is the first regular drawing I’ve done since 1985 or so
  • Every sketch was done using:
    • iPad Pro 10.5 inch (2017 model)
    • ProCreate paint app using the Studio Pen brush
    • Apple Pencil
  • Gum gum people are featured in 9 drawings; drawing them is a kind of meditation
  • My favorite gum gum person sketch is for the prompt SLING
  • The most “fail, start over” drawings I did for a prompt was five, for the prompt TREAD

I often found little mistakes or things I didn’t like in sketches, but never went back to fix them over the course of the month, with one exception–the prompt for INJURED is different on this blog than the original posted to Instagram. I fixed the arms and head because it just ended up bugging me every time I looked at them.

Overall, this was a fun experience. Much like discovering outdoor photography last year thanks to a kidney infection, I chose to do this at the last minute and am pleasantly surprised to have stuck to it.

Now I have to decide if I keep drawing and if so, what do I draw? An endless parade of gum gum people? Possibly!