Learning Curve
I just realized I haven't made an honest-to-goodness art blog in awhile, pushing close to a year ago in fact. Which is sad considering I spend most of my time on deviantART! Anyway, I thought I would remedy that by letting you guys know what I've been focusing on.
And the sad truth is I'm still focusing on basic improvements. Granted, art isn't my primary goal in life, but I would hope to be better than I was a year ago. Improvements are hard to judge for oneself, because sometimes we're just too close to our own work—stand too much in our own way—to notice. When I thought I was doing well, others told me they saw tons of flaws; when I was drawing for the hell of it and feeling like I sucked, I seemed to have produced work I was told to be proud of. It's a constant up and down, depending on the viewpoint.
However—and most likely it was my depression kicking in after finding out someone said I "draw like a 6 year old"—suddenly, I felt like I wasn't seeing any improvements. I came to a learning curve and missed the tilt completely, shooting off the artistic cliff-side instead. I started thinking of calling it quits.
Then I read How to Embrace "Incompetence" by Eliza Sydnor Romm in the January 2015 issue of Dressage Today (that's a horseback riding magazine for the non-equestrians among us XD), and I discovered the "conscious competence" learning model. It's a psychological theory developed by Noel Burch at the Gordon Training International sometime in the 1970's. It defines the four stages of how people learn any new skills, or more specifically, how they feel while trying to learn them.
Image from Zen Ex Machina Wordpress
Basically, it goes something like this:
● Unconscious Incompetence is not being aware you lack the knowledge of how to do something. You think to yourself: "Huh, art sounds like fun. Lemme try..." And then realize there must be more to it then you thought, seeing the clumsy doodles you attempted. ^^; But you want to face your ignorance and learn it anyway.
● Conscious Incompetence finds you being hindered in your desire to learn by realizing you don't know how to do it. You make mistakes, you get confused, and you hear not-so-pleasant things about your efforts—either from outside parties, or that negative little voice in your head. You think: "I suck at this."
This is the stage where many feel too incompetent to go on. It's hard to learn something new, and while some people love a challenge, others get overwhelmed and question why they decided to start in the first place. Confidence, motivation, and a positive attitude is needed to break any downward spiral and silence the depressive backtalk.
● Conscious Competence is finally understanding the fundamentals like a boss, and being able to tackle the higher levels of your skill. You know you know it! You've practiced and experimented enough to be able to "get it" more quickly and move on. However, your practical application still requires honing, and you find yourself struggling sometimes, having to concentrate and do it like you mean it. You still sweat buckets trying so hard.
● Unconscious Competence and yay! You've mastered the skill at such a level where you can do it without thinking about it. You're fluent in a language, you can paint something in 4 hours which normally would have taken you three weeks, or you can compete at FEI fourth level Dressage and place. You have confidence in your skill-set and know-how. Heck, you know enough to even teach others and upload video tutorials. The knowledge is second-nature, like breathing.
Anyway, myself? I am obviously at stage two with my artwork; I am conscious of my incompetence, and I do not like it. So at times I've been bummed and whiny, as is my way. But right now I'm coming up out of my blue funk and ready to at least try new means of art-ing. You guys maybe noticed from my recent uploads, but here is what I'm currently focusing on:
Still. After sketching almost every night, I reached a point where I'm comfortable enough with the mannequin technique to draw bodies without using references anymore. Yet I heard from a few people, including a friend and artist I truly admire, that I draw heads too big. I was not at all conscious of the fact I did this consistently. I know on one particular sketch it was pointed out to me, but I thought it was that once, not something I was regularly drawing. I still borderline don't see it, however, I am focusing on doing heads smaller.
Overall, I realize I may be doing proportions and limbs too wonky, and you don't even have to pin-point hands—those have always, always been my bane! I'm going back to using references on occasion, just to keep up.
I don't feel I'm at a level to do perspective pieces that will wow, yet I know it's something which will ultimately help me with creating more dynamic anatomy poses and background compositions. My friend MizDawesome has generously offered to help me practice, so this is something I'm looking into.
Frankly, I'm not even sure I understand the perspective term. I tried doing a character in a hyped-up angle to judge, and ended up sketching Young Justice Eduardo from a scene in my fanfic Louder Than Words, inside the steeple of a church with tables and chairs littering the floor:
(The second image I was practicing my digital "inking", though you can probably tell I was getting frustrated. XD) I particularly like the coil technique by @Sycra for doing bodies and other shapes not so linear. For some reason, my drawing style leans more towards circles and cursive, not the technical straight line work of, say, animation and architecture. I understand drawing a twister more than a grid.
I am old-school. People use the term "vector layer" and I draw a blank. Before, I've never wanted to learn the technical aspects of Photoshop, every function and tool and meaning. Slicing layers? Animating .gifs? Rasterize? Inverse selection? Who with the what now?
Since I was gifted the digital drawing tablet, I decided I need to learn. If only to save me time and money on pencils, paper, and erasers. XD Right now I'm fooling around, but look! I made a pixel chibi doll~
My hat's off to pixel artists because it. Is. HARD. Working in Adobe Image Ready on such a teeny-tiny canvas size, plus brushes that are pixel squares—wow! It ain't easy. I tried cleaning lil Eduardito up in Photoshop, adding some soft brush highlights, but it's still not awesome. Kinda cute, but not awesome. Is this something I'll keep trying? Maybe, if just to do the other Runaways!
I've tried the more painterly approach for coloring (see here) since that's a popular style, one all the famous artists tend to do. And then I finally did full digital lines, which I hadn't tried since Kai in December.
A few artists pointed out to do lines in any dark color except "dead black", so I did dark brown, as seen here. Then, having to swap this image back and forth a lot between my trial of Sketchbook Express and Photoshop, it ended up being black anyway. Meh, oh well.
You'll be happy to know I lasso-tooled Ed's head and shrunk it by 11%. I also moved around his arm. (Though in the final piece I noticed it's still disjointed. Sorry, I'll fix the anatomy again.) I also discovered when I started coloring that something about Ed's face was off; the downward tilt didn't look right. So I took it back to Sketchbook and redrew his face. (Damn those sexy high cheekbones.)
So I guess I'm still at square one, but thank you to all my loyal followers and friends, especially on deviantART! After it all, your support, encouragement, and help have kept me art-ing for this past year! I'm truly grateful and you guys make me want to keep going and be better!!
And the sad truth is I'm still focusing on basic improvements. Granted, art isn't my primary goal in life, but I would hope to be better than I was a year ago. Improvements are hard to judge for oneself, because sometimes we're just too close to our own work—stand too much in our own way—to notice. When I thought I was doing well, others told me they saw tons of flaws; when I was drawing for the hell of it and feeling like I sucked, I seemed to have produced work I was told to be proud of. It's a constant up and down, depending on the viewpoint.
However—and most likely it was my depression kicking in after finding out someone said I "draw like a 6 year old"—suddenly, I felt like I wasn't seeing any improvements. I came to a learning curve and missed the tilt completely, shooting off the artistic cliff-side instead. I started thinking of calling it quits.
Then I read How to Embrace "Incompetence" by Eliza Sydnor Romm in the January 2015 issue of Dressage Today (that's a horseback riding magazine for the non-equestrians among us XD), and I discovered the "conscious competence" learning model. It's a psychological theory developed by Noel Burch at the Gordon Training International sometime in the 1970's. It defines the four stages of how people learn any new skills, or more specifically, how they feel while trying to learn them.
Image from Zen Ex Machina Wordpress
Basically, it goes something like this:
● Unconscious Incompetence is not being aware you lack the knowledge of how to do something. You think to yourself: "Huh, art sounds like fun. Lemme try..." And then realize there must be more to it then you thought, seeing the clumsy doodles you attempted. ^^; But you want to face your ignorance and learn it anyway.
● Conscious Incompetence finds you being hindered in your desire to learn by realizing you don't know how to do it. You make mistakes, you get confused, and you hear not-so-pleasant things about your efforts—either from outside parties, or that negative little voice in your head. You think: "I suck at this."
This is the stage where many feel too incompetent to go on. It's hard to learn something new, and while some people love a challenge, others get overwhelmed and question why they decided to start in the first place. Confidence, motivation, and a positive attitude is needed to break any downward spiral and silence the depressive backtalk.
● Conscious Competence is finally understanding the fundamentals like a boss, and being able to tackle the higher levels of your skill. You know you know it! You've practiced and experimented enough to be able to "get it" more quickly and move on. However, your practical application still requires honing, and you find yourself struggling sometimes, having to concentrate and do it like you mean it. You still sweat buckets trying so hard.
● Unconscious Competence and yay! You've mastered the skill at such a level where you can do it without thinking about it. You're fluent in a language, you can paint something in 4 hours which normally would have taken you three weeks, or you can compete at FEI fourth level Dressage and place. You have confidence in your skill-set and know-how. Heck, you know enough to even teach others and upload video tutorials. The knowledge is second-nature, like breathing.
Anyway, myself? I am obviously at stage two with my artwork; I am conscious of my incompetence, and I do not like it. So at times I've been bummed and whiny, as is my way. But right now I'm coming up out of my blue funk and ready to at least try new means of art-ing. You guys maybe noticed from my recent uploads, but here is what I'm currently focusing on:
● Anatomy
Still. After sketching almost every night, I reached a point where I'm comfortable enough with the mannequin technique to draw bodies without using references anymore. Yet I heard from a few people, including a friend and artist I truly admire, that I draw heads too big. I was not at all conscious of the fact I did this consistently. I know on one particular sketch it was pointed out to me, but I thought it was that once, not something I was regularly drawing. I still borderline don't see it, however, I am focusing on doing heads smaller.
Overall, I realize I may be doing proportions and limbs too wonky, and you don't even have to pin-point hands—those have always, always been my bane! I'm going back to using references on occasion, just to keep up.
● Perspective
I don't feel I'm at a level to do perspective pieces that will wow, yet I know it's something which will ultimately help me with creating more dynamic anatomy poses and background compositions. My friend MizDawesome has generously offered to help me practice, so this is something I'm looking into.
Frankly, I'm not even sure I understand the perspective term. I tried doing a character in a hyped-up angle to judge, and ended up sketching Young Justice Eduardo from a scene in my fanfic Louder Than Words, inside the steeple of a church with tables and chairs littering the floor:
(The second image I was practicing my digital "inking", though you can probably tell I was getting frustrated. XD) I particularly like the coil technique by @Sycra for doing bodies and other shapes not so linear. For some reason, my drawing style leans more towards circles and cursive, not the technical straight line work of, say, animation and architecture. I understand drawing a twister more than a grid.
● Digital
I am old-school. People use the term "vector layer" and I draw a blank. Before, I've never wanted to learn the technical aspects of Photoshop, every function and tool and meaning. Slicing layers? Animating .gifs? Rasterize? Inverse selection? Who with the what now?
Since I was gifted the digital drawing tablet, I decided I need to learn. If only to save me time and money on pencils, paper, and erasers. XD Right now I'm fooling around, but look! I made a pixel chibi doll~
My hat's off to pixel artists because it. Is. HARD. Working in Adobe Image Ready on such a teeny-tiny canvas size, plus brushes that are pixel squares—wow! It ain't easy. I tried cleaning lil Eduardito up in Photoshop, adding some soft brush highlights, but it's still not awesome. Kinda cute, but not awesome. Is this something I'll keep trying? Maybe, if just to do the other Runaways!
I've tried the more painterly approach for coloring (see here) since that's a popular style, one all the famous artists tend to do. And then I finally did full digital lines, which I hadn't tried since Kai in December.
A few artists pointed out to do lines in any dark color except "dead black", so I did dark brown, as seen here. Then, having to swap this image back and forth a lot between my trial of Sketchbook Express and Photoshop, it ended up being black anyway. Meh, oh well.
You'll be happy to know I lasso-tooled Ed's head and shrunk it by 11%. I also moved around his arm. (Though in the final piece I noticed it's still disjointed. Sorry, I'll fix the anatomy again.) I also discovered when I started coloring that something about Ed's face was off; the downward tilt didn't look right. So I took it back to Sketchbook and redrew his face. (Damn those sexy high cheekbones.)
So I guess I'm still at square one, but thank you to all my loyal followers and friends, especially on deviantART! After it all, your support, encouragement, and help have kept me art-ing for this past year! I'm truly grateful and you guys make me want to keep going and be better!!