School Begins

Well since my last post I’ve have learned a lot and I’ll let you be the judge of that by comparing two pics I’ve done, a before and after, my mid-week critique. It has been a week since I started back to school at Smarter Art School. The classes or so much better than I even thought they would be. I was able to sit in on all the instructors classes and just listen to their years of experience and picked up so much useful information that I had forgotten over the years or didn’t fully understand.

What I came away with was always use reference photos with good contrast, the more the better. Most stressed doing value studies called thumbnails sketches in order to work out your content and composition of your picture. There was plenty more information passed on but if you want to know all the facts take the course. Every instructor evaluated each of their students work in order to see where they were at presently, then asked them where they wanted to go with their work so that the teacher can guide them in that direction in the coming weeks ahead.

In my first class, my teacher also did the same evaluation asked me questions and looked at my website. He gave me clear feedback on my work and on my site. At the end of class, he gave us an assignment which you can see some of my progress below. Right now I think that I made the right choice in the instructor that I picked to study under and feel I will learn a lot to help me obtain my career goals in the future. Tonight I get to sit in on another class to listen and learn. This will be the class that I will monitor for the rest of the semester. Tomorrow is my class time, time to show my 1st drawing. l know that its not great but I think you’d agree it’s way better than my original line drawing I started with.

Back To School

Since my last post, I happened upon a really cool site, due to a Facebook group I’m in because it is just what I hopefully need to push my art in the right direction. The Site is called Smarter Art School and is run by Rebecca Guay a 20 year veteran in the art and illustration world.

I’m not sure if all the teachers are the same every semester or if they rotate, but this semester which starts next week and runs thru the end of May has some very impressive heavy hitters teaching.

The classes are very small no more than 10 people to a teacher which allows for a lot of one instruction time. Each person who signs up gets to choose who they want to study under. As I said it’s an impressive selection of talent from Traditional Fine Art painter Brad Kunkleto legendary fantasy painter Donato Giancola to Todd Lockwood who is a cornerstone of the Sci-Fi/Fantasy world. Then you have fame cover artist Scott Fischerand newcomer Dan dos Santos whose work can be seen on book covers, comics and in films. Lastly, you have Gregory Manchess, who is a celebrated artist in almost every area of of illustration. For those without any formal training in drawing or those who just have a basic understanding of figure drawing there is a Bootcamp Basics 101 and a Beginning Illustration102 class that are offered. Both are taught by Marc Scheff who runs his own Bootcamp along with Lauren Panepinto, who is the Creative Art director at Orbit Books.

It was sad having to just pick one person to study under but the course does offer you an observation seat in one other class. Even though you can’t participate, you just know you’re going to be able to pick up a lot of great information by just being there and listening. Each class will have a special guest, who will talk about the art and illustration field. Not only will they be a wealth of talent on hand but a treasure trove of information.

I'm really excited about it all, but then I wonder if I maybe reached to high on the class I picked and the teacher who I’ll be studying under. I just hope I don’t embarrass myself or waste his valuable time.

I invite you to tag along and see how much I improve in my overall style and approach to my work in the coming months. I will be posting a brief summary on wot I've been learning. and who knows you might too.

Below is an example of how my shadows get muddy when I push towards a more realistic approach. I hope to vastly improve on this problem once I finish this class.