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Well, I'm gonna be the spoilsport here but no, completely useless as far as I am concerned. Progressing in Art is long, difficult and tedious. Learning to deal with frustration and accept that to do great things you'll have to spend hours on end doing shitty stuffs is part of the journey.
Confidence is not born from doing pretty things, it's born from doing shitty things day after day after day for years and seeing the improvement as you go along.
If you start trying to take shortcuts at this point just to "feel good", how are you gonna deal with what's ahead? There's colors and lights and complex perpective and composition to learn as well. Are you gonna use an eyedropper tool everytime you try to work on a reference instead of training your eyes to gauge the colors? I know somebody who did just that, and she's been doing the same thing for over 10 years. Since she works in photo manipulation, that's ok for her professionnaly but these past two years, she's been trying to really improve her drawing and painting skill and she's not moving forward. Obviously when you've got a full time job, studying on the side is tough and dealing with frustration is way more difficult than somebody who's learning full time. And she never truly dealt with how frustrating line drawing can be, so she sort of stays in her area of comfort, not regressing, but not truly moving forward as fast as she could if she could just accept that sucking is part of the deal if you want to become an artist.
Anyway bottom line, I'm no expert in anatomy, but I've been working on it on my own for a couple of years now (You can see part of my imaginative poses without references on deviantart: https://www.deviantart.com/la-plume/gallery/all ) and it's long even if with experience, I can tell I didn't suck as much as I thought I did when I started (though I've still got a long way to go and I'm planning to take extra classes this year).
Finally, I wanted to show you one particular illustration I'm currently working on: https://digitalpainting.school/members/la-plume/gallery/creation/77685
This one was done using a photo reference (obviously the photo didn't have clothes nor the shovel). The position I decided to draw is slightly different than what was on the photo originally.
But what I want to show you is THISAs I said, this was done using a reference ( not tracing the lines obviously). The picture in black is the relatively final sketch ( I still made some changes after), the sketch in blue is the original one, the sketch in red is the first revised version and the second revised version and relatively final is the black one.
As you can see, the differences are small, but only a trained eye can see why a position works and why another doesn't. I originally didn't see what was wrong, a professional pointed me that my perspective was wrong initially... But it was obvious to me it wasn't that because I sort of had followed the original picture I had seen... BUT I must have had done something that made that professionnal see the problem... and it's because I'm used to REALLY observe and draw shitty stuffs that I finally figured out what I could slighty modify to get something correct (actually there are more changes that should have been made but it involved much more work so I settled for correct instead of good). The changes are subtle but only hours of training can give you the eye to discern what changes needed to be done.
Even with a reference, you can make mistakes so nope, want to progress? Accept that there's absolutely no shortcuts. What's hard today will be easy tomorrow, or the day after, but if you start using shortcuts just to "feel good", it will remain hard. Plus, what's your end goal? Feel good? Or improve?
Doesn't mean that you can't relax from time to time with tracing if you like it... But consider those recreations not learning times.
Good luck on you artististic journey!
1 3@Dante
I get the same problem and sent two emails regarding this issue...
I'm reposting here to mention that the counting is still off. I've been practicing for almost a year without interruption with clear targets but since the time registered isn't correct, I get days when I practiced which are considered "not practicing day"...
Yesterday for instance... I did a 2 hour class... and it counted me... 36 MINUTES ( so since my target is 55 minutes minimum a day... that's another day not counted, thankfully I keep my own diary because I can't rely on this website).
It's always been a problem but it's the first time the difference was that big and it was Tuesday Pacific time not Monday... so...
I also have an issue regarding the tips... I get the drawings but not the writing... This wasn't the case when I subscribed in January 2019 but this problem has been going on for months...
Like Brothamanben, I also get the same photos over and over again even if the number of photos available is over a 400... It seems I don't get access to the full set of pictures...
This site is my favorite online resource as well but I'm also considering cancelling my subscription until there's some quality back...
I don't get spams though... but I'm using adblock.
I'm giving myself until the end of the month, if I don't get any change by then, I'll get back to the free version and alternating with other websites... I've been having issues for over 6 months now and have been waiting for things to get better but so far nothing's been done.
Hi!
First I apologize for the eventual grammar and spelling mistakes in this message. English is not my first language.
I've been struggling for almost a week now on this new feature so I thought I'll give my two cents on the subject. I've got to mention first that I'm currently learning digital painting on another website... Since the first part of the program doesn't contain lots of drawing, I registered on this website to 'not lose my touch' until I get to the second part of its program which focuses on lineart drawing.
Since I don't have lots of time to come here, with learning digital painting and my job, I basically only come here everyday to do the 30 mn class session for now ( I'm hoping to do longer classes in the future but that's it for now). So my comments are only concerning the 30mn class session for this particular feature.
I'm used to draw living creatures... but I'm near an absolute beginner when it comes to drawing scenes and objects...
So here goes:
1. The format
It would be great if we could select whether the pictures are in landcape or portrait format. I never really paid attention to that before when drawing creatures, but basically it's VERY complicated when you start, to know how to organize your picture. There are lots of pictures which are square or close to a square in the images proposed so far and from my understanding it's very rare that artist work with square images since they're a struggle for composing... Seems to me, we should stick mostly to landscape or portrait format and avoid square or 4:3 formats which are scarcely used.
2. Guidelines
That's from my experience after a week of personal torture. It would be great if we could have lines dividing the pictures either in three vertical and horizontal lines or eventually in two... I'm suggesting this as a help for complete beginners because truthfully it is a NIGHTMARE to see how to divide your canvas . Proportions are always a problem, but I just feel that it's worse when it comes to environment drawings. ( Most of my time was given to divide the picture to have the right amount of 'empty space' which didn't leave lots of time for the drawing part. The 30s pictures look like abstract art).
3. Advice
I know it's a beta version but could we get some advice anyway? Because really that would definitely help. As mentionned above by another subscriber, some scenes are pretty simple and the difficulty comes more from how to work with lights and shadows to creature texture... BUT some scenes are are truly complicated. Those featuring cities in particular, with people, LOTS of building and vehicules... How are we supposed to select what's important and what's not is not an easy feat...
Last remark that comes to mind now, but which is global is the fact that it would be great if we could see the result of pictures made my confirmed artists on these particular exercices. It's difficult to know exactly at which level you are or what you are supposed to get at a good level. We only see finished art on internet scarcely what a confirmed artist is able to do in 30s, 1mn, 5mn, 10mn and so on so forth. Yet, at least when comparing what we manage to do and "an ideal result" in the time given, it would alow self-evaluation easier.
Hope it wasn't too long.
(On a side note, I know it's not the place, but payment in euros would be welcomed, I'm tired of paying an extra € each month because this website is only in $)
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Kannadin
edited this post on May 12, 2019 4:36am.
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