Greetings

Hello!

I'm new here, so I thought I would introduce myself. My name is Joel Hemphill, though feel free to call me Tales. I am a relatively inexperienced hobby artists, and have only really been drawing for about 3 years. I haven't had any formal training/education in art, though I have read/used a book called "Drawing the Head and Hands" by Andrew Loomis. Other than that, it has simply been miscellaneous pieces of advice off of forums and from few art-majors I have spoken to at college.

When I started out with art, I did the occasional sketch on paper, as well as a number of pixel-art drawings. Eventually, I realize that pixel-art was serving as a sort of crutch for me artistically, since it allowed me to get away with not learning proper anatomy. I would often just add or take away a pixel here and there and say "That looks about right..."

When I headed out to college, I finally had a chance to meet and talk to art students. Even though I wasn't in an art degree (I study Computer Science), I decided to take advantage of my peers' knowledge in art. I used the school library to acquire the aforementioned book, and would often take my work to my art-friends to receive critique.

Since then, my art has evolved to where it is now. I focus mostly on digital and traditional art and animation, and have shifted focus away from solely anthropomorphic animals, to instead including numerous human characters, as well as environmental objects (buildings, trees, busses).

Now I am here, trying to learn to improve my figure-drawing skills, in an attempt to bring more life and believability to my drawings. While I do still love cartoony artwork, I hope this site will help me to ground my work to a believable source.

I hope to get to know all of you during my time here. So, once again, hello!