My side view drawings one using a separate reference and another following the video I like to add watercolor to my drawings

First camel and skelly guy were my solo attempt. Second set was while following the demo. I put way to much detail into my skelly guy. And after hearing that shoes were pretty tricky, I wanted to give both level 1 assignments a try.

Day 2 - It's a Mario!

Some quick dino sketches! Trying to get comfortable with the supplies I bought.

Let’s do this!! Get ready to fill pages and pages!!

My sketchbook: printer paper, 3-ring binder, and a 3-hole puncher. Each day have several sheets pre-punched - art ritual. At sketch time pull a pre-punched sheet off the stack and go. When done, add it to the 3-ring binder. Fun to see the sketch book grow over time. Nothing precious either, can just toss warmup sheets out, but I like to include them. Warming up is part of the journey.

Great video as always. I particularly enjoyed Marshall's wise words at the end. I tend to treat my sketchbooks like portfolios and that's stunted my exploration and play. Looking forward to filling my sketchbook and not worrying about perfection.

Happy new year and winter 2023 from Finland! The temperature is chilly and more the reason to spend time indoors with art. I took time and really thought how i should i go about this course. I'll have to start with traditionally, i'll be going on a vacation trip to Florida and won't be carrying ipad around. So here's some marker, and colorpencil studies from Douglas Hall's children's book and one mechpencil bird inspired by these and the cold weather. The biggest obstacle for me is the shading. I watch a lot of great illustrations and I love watercolor and the lightshading that pros do, but everytime i try something similar it feels unfinished. Anyway, happy to join the course, hope to chat with all of yas! Have a great coursetime! 🎉🎉🎉 - Teo

Hi guys, This is a digital materials related post. Since starting the course, I have been experimenting with the default charcoal brush set on Procreate. I have a few charcoal pencils at home, but for the sake of portability, convenience, and lack of a mess (along with a one year old baby), I found this to be the most appealing medium for now. This piece was done entirely with the 2B and 4B compressed charcoal brushes and an eraser. The lay-in/ preliminary sketch was done with the 2B compressed on roughly 50% opacity and 5-10% size, to keep the lines nice and light. Once the features were established, I realized the face was too wide so I erased it down and redrew it. Same for the mouth, which was initially placed a little low. This is something I’m always struggling with. From there I switched to the 4B brush for the rest of the piece. This was at 100% opacity and varied in size between 2-10%. Values were controlled with applied pressure with the Apple Pencil, just like an actual pencil. Generally I tried to work for large to small. And tried to simplify at first (which is also something I struggle with greatly). I started by blocking in the shadow family of the face. Then half tones and progressively refining from there. I then framed his face with a large blocked in dark area for the hair. There were several tweaks needed to get his face shape corrected. The hair was blocked in with solid medium/dark value and I then found the next biggest, darker, general shapes, progressing to medium and smaller sizes. Then it was really all eraser from there. I used a standard round brush eraser at 25% opacity. I find that this gives me the most simulated feel to an actual eraser and I can control it with my hand pressure. Same idea as before, just inverted. I found larger to medium light areas, then progressively added lighter forms and highlights. I just wanted to share. I love seeing all the various posts and mediums used and am very excited to start working on whatever assignments come next. It’s such an awesome community and I’m looking forward to learning and growing with everyone.

I hoard art supplies more than use them. Hoping to turn that around with this class and a daily habit of having fun while making art. This was relaxing and enjoyable, which I need to remind myself art as a hobby is supposed to be. Looking forward to the basics course!

Antecipation for the Beginner’s Course!

Love this card! Great work on the rendering & light/shadows. I love the pose you selected, too, of the reindeer flying towards us, then the sleigh coming behind. A nice difference from the traditional side-view and a great use of perspective / depth.