Do I have an art style? I don't know. As I am learning, my drawing and painting quality improve slowly over time, and it shows in my artwork. Thus, I have arranged my drawing journey into stages when the way I draw changed accordingly to whom I was learning from.

Stage 01 - Jake Parker

It was super hard to start learning how to draw from scratch for me. Luckily, I saw a post on Twitter from Jake Parker where a craft knife accidentally dropped and cut in his thigh. It was not a post that I expected to see when I was looking for a clue to start my drawing journey. I, then, read more of his Twitter posts and started to like his inking art style. That was how my whole drawing journey began, my dear readers.

Stage 02 - Kirsty Patridge

I was looking for a way to learn watercolor and I saw a video from Kirsty Patridge on YouTube. I really enjoyed the way she explained how to create different effects with watercolor by using stuff like salt, napkins and food wrap and started to learn from her. I also learned to do charcoal rendering from her as well.

Stage 03 - Aaron Blaise

Drawing human is a tough subject since any mistakes will be super obvious. That was why I wanted to learn how to draw some Disney style characters and hoped that it would somehow be "easy". Haha, it was not easy as I thought but I got a chance to learn from Aaron Blaise. I was impressed by his clear explanation on how to do art digitally in Photoshop. Before learning from him, I was still very clueless about this industry standard software.

Stage 04 - Trent Kaniuga

I was super impressed by his strong voice and interesting personality of Trent on his YouTube videos. I was addicted to his way of saying things that I watched like five videos per day at the time I found him, around May 2020. I've been watching his videos weekly ever since,

Stage 05 - Kyle Webster & Proko

Lots of people say that you can do lots of things with hard round, soft round brushes and lasso tools in Photoshop. However, it did not work out well for me. I almost gave up digital drawing because I was too tired of their mechanical look and feel. Then, coincidently, I saw a "Draw along with Kyle Webster" on YouTube and his digital brush strokes looked so real, so organic in Photoshop. I was given hope by simply seeing that video and started to follow him on Twitter and download every single brush he had made for the Adobe Subscription Plan at that time (July 2020). I've intensively used Charcoal brushes of Kyle to study many Proko's drawing lessons.

Stage 06 - New Masters Academy

After running wild with my art, I wanted to learn more art fundamentals from traditional artists. I found a 3-hour Head Drawing video from Steve Huston on YouTube this time. His clear explanation of how to construct a head from different angles was an eye-opening moment for me! That was the reason I paid a subscription of New Masters Academy to continue learning from him. After that, I've discovered other talented artists on the website like Joseph Todorovitch and Mark Westermoe to further improve my portrait painting skills. I am following along their lessons using Live Oil and Live Watercolor brushes in Adobe Fresco.

What a journey it has been! I don't know if I will have an "art style" one day, but I do know that I am enjoying the process of growing both my software skills and art knowledge little by little each day.

Have a wonderful time with your drawing journey too, everyone!

I have focused on portrait painting for about a month since my previous blog post. It has been a great journey. I can control the digital brushes better and get to know how to mix paint as well. It was a strange yet interesting feeling when I decided to follow traditional art masters with my own way using Live Oil and Live Watercolor in Fresco (all these Live brushes are free even in the free version of Adobe Fresco). Gladly, it's working well for me and I want to share results of my learning effort to you, my dear readers.

[Portrait in Oil with Joseph Todorovitch]

I organize my digital oil painting and watercolor painting in the Study section of my website (Khang Ta Art - Digital Painting Study). I also let my viewers see the name of the masters I'm learning from as well. If you like the result of my study, you can go study with them too. I'm not sponsored by anyone, but still, I'm sharing hints to keep you going with your art journey. Quite a few of my friends have quit learning art even though they learned like about two to four years ahead of me. They continuously felt their lack of skills or talents (but guess what, I can get this far after two years of learning online by discipline and persistence).

[Portrait in Watercolor with Mark Westermoe]

I'm posting my practice, study, and fan art on Instagram quite often every week to motivate myself and celebrate small success or progress. I can see that if I want to be professional artist and making artwork for the rest of my life, I need to find a way to enjoy my drawing journey. It can be in form of a blog post to share my learning experience, a website to display and organize all my work nicely over the years, an Instagram post to engage with the art lover's community, or a YouTube video just to know how it feels to be on camera.

[My third YouTube video https://youtu.be/XiHSYghCDVg]

I recently created the fan art below by using what I've learned from figure drawing courses and some color mixing knowledge from Portrait Painting in Watercolor and playing around with cool brushes in Adobe Fresco. So, it has been a bit of learning and a bit of playing to keep the fire burning in my heart.

[Ishstar Fan Art - Fate Grand Order anime on Netflix]

Thanks for reading till here, my dear readers. I'll try to post once every month. Have a great journey, everyone!

I started to learn digital oil painting, online, since beginning of 2021, online, from traditional painters. I have tried my best to replicate oil on canvas texture, feeling and technique using digital oil brushes in Adobe Fresco. It has been a fun ride for me, and I hope you're going to like the experience too. So, let's have a nice sip of coffee, relax, and enjoy the story.

(Notes: I'm not sponsored by Adobe or New Masters Academy at all. I'm writing this blog post because I think it will be useful for other fellow artists who would like to learn digital oil painting skills but do not know where and how to get started. I'm currently very happy with the result of my training, and I hope you, my dear readers, may eventually find satisfying results with your drawing journey too!)

"Was it hard to learn digital oil painting?", you may ask. For me, I had never thought about learning oil painting traditionally or digitally at all in Photoshop. Everything changed when I gave a free app on Windows called Adobe Fresco a try because of its Live brushes. In the app, it was tricky to know which Live Oil brush would do the job in Fresco at first. There are seven of them, and I did not even know how to do traditional oil painting at all. So, i thought it was about time for me to look for a real oil painting master to learn from, So, I started my oil painting training on January 2021 on New Masters Academy (https://www.nma.art/) (this felt kinda like a New Year Resolution).

I started with Introduction to Painting with Steve Huston on NMA. I thought it would be better to understand digital oil brushes when I could see how real oil brushes and real oil paint work. Yes, guess what. this thinking worked for me because I could at least know how to mix Black and White paint to create monochromatic painting. The fun part was to see wet paint smudge or blend with subsequent brush strokes in Adobe Fresco. I also discovered that the Oilpaint short brush in Fresco would lose its strength over the length of my stroke. This helped me create gradient effect on the box in the image below where light lost its intensive as it travelled down the lit side the box. The Oilpaint chunky is great for covering large areas quickly while the Oilpaint detail is better for tight corners.

After knowing how these seven brushes worked, I then tried portrait painting from Joseph Todorovitch on NMA to see how far I could go with these Live brushes. He is a great traditional oil painter in Los Angeles. His oil paintings feel so lively that I just want to learn from him to improve my digital oil painting workflow. The knowledge I learned before from Steve Huston's Constructive Head Drawing, has combined magically with this portrait painting course from Joseph Todorovitch. This led to my first portrait made by Live Oil brushes in the digital canvas below.

I'm really impressed with Joseph's teaching methods. He clearly explains how to approach a painting from a blank white scary canvas. I only need to start grouping light and dark areas and paint with big brushes at the beginning. Then, go with small brushes for intricate areas like the eyes. So, big to small, loose to tight and only with the mixture of black and white oil paint can really create wonderful portrait painting. I'm very pleased with his calm voice and logical approach. Following him along his oil demonstrations has really helped me get better at portrait painting digitally using Live Oil brushes.

I'm still learning and improving my digital oil painting now. Today is Sunday, February 14, 2021 which is the third day of Tet holiday in Vietnam (Lunar New Year), so I wish you all, my dear readers, a Prosperous, Productive, and Youthful New Year. Hopefully, COVID-19 pandemic will be soon over, and we can all enjoy a brighter future ahead.

Hello fellow artists, since August 2020. I've been playing around with Adobe Fresco brushes, and I've found a whole new exciting way to enjoy this app on my Windows desktop.

As you can see on the picture above, I have:

• a 13-inch Cintiq weighing on two sheet metal screws on a wooden drawing board,
• Wacom Express Key Remote with (17 buttons and one touch ring) on the left side (I'm right-handed),
• a wireless Logitech keyboard on the top left corner is resting on an easel in case I need to press some extra keys,
• Five 25-mm binder clips to keep the drawing board and the remote stay in place,
• I have just switched to the Microsoft SideWinder x6 with 30 programmable keys (it will be fun when I figure out how to deal with all of them), and surprisingly, the numpad key can be attached to the left side of the keyboard. Can you believe that? It's awesome!!!)

I have made a video showing briefly how I use them here (https://youtu.be/K3Fl8-sQF90):

Here is how I usually layout panels of Brushes, Brush Settings, Color Wheel and the Touch Shortcut on my left-hand side. I love drawing on a square canvas and position it to my right-hand side.

For the Wacom Express Key Remote, I assign as shown in the image below based on what I usually press during my drawing process in Fresco. In future software updates, I hope to see shortcuts for Smudge and Mixer brushes or I will be allowed to assign customed keys to each of them right in Fresco. I still have three empty slots on my Remote for that reason.

I think that's it, for now, and I hope it's useful for you. If you like it, feel free to apply these tips to make your drawing experience with Adobe Fresco using a Cintiq on your Windows desktops/laptops more comfortable.

You can connect with me on social media as well via @khang_ta_art on Instagram.

Thanks for reading this blog and have fun with your art journey, my fellow artists!

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!

I have been practicing a lot of Reilly Rhythms and Asaro Head for drawing better portraits recently.

Here is my summary.  These drawing that I did may be far from being great, but it certainly helped improve my portrait drawing a lot.

I used myself as the model to review what I have learned so far. Somehow, this works for me as I can validate and consolidate my knowledge with a face that I'm far too familiar with. I hope these reviews will be helpful to you in your drawing journey.

I would like to thank Chris Petrocchi, my mentor from https://www.drawjuice.com/ for his wonderful portrait art instructions. I'm improving my portrait drawing skills way faster with his guidance and feedbacks.

Thanks for reading this blog and have fun with your art journey, my fellow artists!

I tried to limit what I saw in reference photos within light or dark only to simplify and see better as an artist. I skipped intricate details and only focus on the big shapes of light and dark.

I tried a different background effect with the image below to spice things up.

Photo references for my drawing practice are from Cyberpunk Girl Reference from Graffit Studio (https://www.artstation.com/grafit/store) and Pritham Dsouza (https://www.behance.net/themetalfarmer).

I'm studying Portrait Drawing with Chris Petrocchi now, he's a great mentor (https://www.chrispetrocchi.com/).

Have fun with your art journey, my fellow artists!

For the first time ever, I joined the very first LightBox Expo Online from September 11th - 13th, 2020.

I was so happy to receive this welcome message after I purchased an online ticket a week before the event started.

I also received cool digital goodies along with my ticket (only available for $10, $25 and $40 tickets) which include great stuff like this brush pack from Kyle Webster:

There were virtual Artist Alley, Live sessions, Merch store and Discord channel for every participant.

I particularly enjoyed Art Jam events where famous artists joined and drew together in an amazing web app called Magma Studio. It was really an unforgettable experience for me!

There were also traditional art live streams from my favorite artists like Heikala and Gonzalo Carcamo. Hurray!

Thank you, LightBox Expo team, for lifting my spirit by creating such an amazing online experience during this crisis time of COVID-19 pandemic. Hopefully, we can all meet again in person next year!

 

This is the very first time I drew a Birthday card for my dad. He was kinda shocked at his own caricatured version but happy at the same time.

I feel great to be able to draw something for my own family with my art. Even though it may look simple, but it took me about an entire day to draw, print and cut it to a proper size.

Above is the birthday card along with a coffee set from my brother as gifts to our father.

Have fun with your art journey and draw something nice for our loved ones, fellow artists!

I have finished Proko's portrait drawing lessons a few weeks ago. Here are the results of my training:

I'm very happy to make art with charcoal texture on my Cintiq 🥳. Even though I'm drawing digitally now but I still want my art to look textured like a traditional one 🤣. Is there any of you sharing that same feeling with me? 😄

My art learning journey is almost 2-year long and I'm feeling very excited to learn a bit more about drawing traditionally or digitally each day passes.

I'm looking forward to attending the very first LightBox Expo Online this weekend September 11-13! Have fun and enjoy your journey, fellow artists!