Christmas Eve is near and the year 2020 (haunted by Covid-19) is ending soon. So, I want to take this opportunity to reflect upon what I have achieved during my drawing journey.
Everyone has a start, and for me, that was just before the start of Inktober 2018. I decided to learn how to draw with Jake Parker on Society of Visual Storytelling (svslearn.com) as children book art seemed less frightful to get started.
I haven't drawn daily since childhood, and never thought about doing art professionally someday. However, before my 30th birthday, I decided to give it a try, and get started with a cheap sketchbook I found at a local store. Then, it all started with an upside-down skull chaser with the instruction from Jake Parker. He said that by doing this upside-down, it would eliminate my fear, and I then just only need to draw contours without knowing what the actually subject was. It worked. I had successfully tricked my mind.
That was just the beginning. Other hardship came in with each following lessons. I could quickly realize that it was not easy to learn to draw at all when you know absolutely nothing. Even holding a pencil to make a decent straight line without any shakiness was a big struggle. How hard should I press my pencil tip, how to draw using my shoulder like I was told, and a bunch of other things to worry about. I had to spend like 15 minutes each day just to draw straight lines, curves, and ellipses to control my hand better before jumping to any new drawing lessons. Then, 24 days later, I could draw this guy using a vermillion color pencil and black ink over the top. It was a mind-blowing experience for me, for a guy who was at the age of thirty and had not drawn day and night since childhood could possibly achieve.
Then I discovered Aaron Blaise through Proko's Youtube Channel. He has, since then. become a major influence on me. I really like the way he renders light and shadow in his animal drawing artworks. The lion below was the result of a Pen and Ink Drawing tutorial from Aaron. I just simply enjoyed every second of it.
Later I bought a 13-inch Cintiq to step into the magical digital realm. At this point, it had been almost a year since I started my drawing journey, and yet, learning to draw digitally was still as hard. I had to learn to control my Wacom Pen and navigate my way around the mess of the mighty Photoshop (sorry guys, it was just that confusing at the start, so many buttons and functions to remember and I didn't know how to use this software either).
The donkey above is my first digitally painting artwork done with the instruction of Tim Hodge on Art of Aaron Blaise - Animation Lessons, Tutorials & Digital Painting Courses (creatureartteacher.com)
Then, it got better over the time, and I could manage to follow harder drawing instructions like this artwork below by Aaron Blaise. Aaron had so many useful things to teach on his website that even one year was not enough for me to learn everything he had offered in his annual subscription. The little guy below was from a lesson called Hidden Creatures of the Forest course on his website.
I started to learn to draw human this year. It is just as hard as any subjects before, probably the hardest subject so far, but I'm having fun learning it. I'm learning from Proko (Proko - Learn How to Draw with Fun Tutorials), Chris Petrocchi (you can read about him in my previous blog posts) and Steve Huston.
This man below is Nicolai, from a portrait drawing lesson from Proko. The portrait was created using charcoal, but I decided to experiment with Photoshop charcoal digital brushes from Kyle Webster at Adobe to achieve a traditional look and feel to my digital artwork.
Beside learning how to draw portraits, I'm also learning constructive figure drawing from Steve Huston as well. Even though I'm only learning from him more than one month, but I have gained better understanding about how to draw the human body. Steve can be considered my best online instructor now. His teaching method works so well for me somehow. This model below is Amy, from Long Poses in Charcoal lesson at New Masters Academy (https://www.nma.art/).
I know there are still billion things ahead to learn for the rest of my life, and that makes me feel great knowing that I will never feel bored with art. I hope you are enjoying your very own artistic journey as well. I will keep learning something new, even bit by bit each day, so that someday, we can be even collaborating with art projects, learning from each other, and passing knowledge on the next generations of artists.
I wish you, fellow artists, and art lovers around the world a very Merry Christmas and a Hopeful New Year!