@pinkapricorn
added comment inThinking in 3D
5mo
Been waiting three years for this. It's rewarding to see this part of the course finally coming into being.
2yr
It's all about addressing and resolving the emotions that brought me to the low place. Granted I have cPTSD (among other things) and thus am more "screwed up" than many people, but I still think that to get far with art study we all have to have something supporting us emotionally. What that looks like will vary from person to person but for me it's laying out a clear path to follow, knowing what "good enough" is so I know when to move on, being organized and knowing exactly what I want to work on when, having somebody approachable to critique my work, and probably most important having somebody safe that can lift me back up when things get rough and I fall apart.
This is what sustainable art-study looks like for me. How about you? Have you considered the emotional side of things? Figured out anything yet about what helps or hinders you?
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@Liandro Now I finally know what you sound like, haha! :) We had many a good conversation through Proko email back when getting critiques that way was a thing. You were so approachable and always read what I said carefully and wrote me thoughtful responses. You really helped my thinking as I navigated the messy journey toward being able to make the art I want to make.
How are things going for you today? Are you still able to contribute to student growth as much as you want to?
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2yr
Had it preordered before the promo video even finished playing! I've been waiting for this for a long time. I've been so in need of a compassionate, competent run through of the core fundamentals, especially construction.
@Stan Prokopenko When you start releasing lessons in January, do you have a ballpark idea of how long it will take before all lessons are released? By ballpark I mean are we looking at months or years?
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2yr
I enjoyed seeing your drawing. You're definitely above me in your ability to make an eye look convincing. I like how there's a wide range of values and the darks next to the lights. And how there's a lot of contrast where the iris is and lines pointing in toward the pupil. It really directs my attention toward the part of an eye I care about most. And I found the texture in the eyebrow interesting.
The eyelashes are just meh to me but they look realistic. Real eyelashes are not always amazing. So that isn't necessarily a flaw!
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I can't watch the new video3yr
When I click on it nothing happens. It's just an image.
Also note how in the video list it doesn't look like a video, either.
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Self-Study Systems for Art3yr
Those of you that are learning on your own from books, videos, and whatever else you decide to use, what is your overall approach to art study?
And how do you deal with problems like:
-Knowing what to study, when, and for how long?
-How do you keep the difficulty level appropriate--not so easy it's boring but not so hard you spend most of your time spinning your wheels and losing morale
-Tracking your progress and actually being able to feel the sense of progression
Thank you for pointing this out. We are aware how confusing this is and will fix it in a near future release.
@pinkapricorn
3yr
Cool beans 👍
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3yr
I got really confused wondering why the button wasn't there but when I navigated to my albums through my classroom > albums I was able to get the button.
The place on the site where you can view your albums and add a new one, and the place on your profile where you cannot, they look very similar, so it communicated that were the same kind of "thing" in the system and my brain expected the same functionality, hence the confusion.
My suggestion is either make these two ways of viewing an album look different or make it so there is an "add album" button with viewing your own albums on your own profile.
looks like a really good book. The amazon reviews are high also. I may put it on my wish list. I studied from Paul Ekman's book Unmasking the Face which is not for drawing but for understanding how our faces show expressions very very quickly and other cool science about reading facial expressions. It's a fun side study at best. I will have to get our book for sure soon
3yr
Interesting book. That Ekman one. I put it on my wishlist for consideration later.
I haven’t, but it looks interesting, and it’s one I told myself I would get eventually (but didn’t when I had it in my hands - also I was holding a Japanese copy). I wouldn’t say I have learned facial anatomy, but I had a wonderful course in uni with Marshall’s mentor who had us drawing skulls from a life sized plastic model we purchased and assembled. Then we added the muscles in plastic clay, and drew that. I had a portraiture course with Jason Seiler, and he did a wonderful job with the basics and nose. What looks good about the resource you found is that it focuses on facial expressions, so that’s dealing with the functionality of the anatomy in a way that is important to us. Beyond that I would also look into the materials for medical students as Stan did for preparing the course if I wanted to take a deeper dive. Given your skill set, you could create your own interactive facial anatomy teaching tool if you wanted to, I bet! Great topic! Keep us posted 😊
3yr
Second reply because I grabbed some examples of what I'm talking about. I cloze out whatever structures I either don't know the name or I'm slow at recalling it. Stuff I know well I don't bother.
Two sets of:
1. original scan
2. front of card
3. back of card
Edit: If anybody spots errors let me know. I can still edit these files.
3yr
Yeah I spend quite a bit of time in medical anatomy resources. A life goal of mine since like 2003 has been to "master" dog and horse anatomy (be able to identify pretty much any structure in the big, thick anatomy books) and become decent with human anatomy (I'll be satisfied with just clinical-level). I've finally got a good system going for thoroughly learning dog anatomy and it's going so well and I know I'm gonna make it to my goal this time because I have a great, sustainable study process that is extremely effective. So I'm thinking ahead to the other anatomy boxes I wanna check, so to speak, during the course of my life and what the resources are that could get me there. I don't wanna just be able to point to a structure and regurgitate a name. I wanna draw that sucker too haha. Along with all of its homies lol (E.g. drawing the deltoid with the triceps and trapezius and latissimus dorsi)
And yeah I make a lot of my own resources. I've been scanning images out of my dog anatomy books, putting the scans in photoshop and I've turned them into coloring books where I get on the cintiq and color each structure a different color. And then I use the Image Occlusion addon for Anki to make flash cards where each one asks me the name of a structure structure and I get immediate feedback if I was right or not. And the Anki algorithm has spaced repetition that keeps track of how difficult each card is for me and shows me the ones I struggled with more than the ones that are easy. So I get the most memorization for the least amount of effort.
But don't get me wrong it's still a lot of effort especially since I make my own resources... but I've been wanting this for almost 18 years now. I pride myself on being an amateur anatomist even though nobody else in my life gives a shit haha I still feel like I'm cool. Because anatomy is cool 😂
And that's neat about adding muscles with clay to a skull. I wanna do that. You're building a face from the frame up!!
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Has anybody used the book "Anatomy of Facial Expressions"?3yr
Proko has an anatomy and a portraiture course but nothing for the anatomy of the head, especially when it relates to facial expression. So I went looking for outside resources. The book Anatomy of Facial Expressions looks promising but I'm wondering if anyone here has used it? Or if you learned your facial anatomy another way?
The link:
https://smile.amazon.com/dp/1735039047/?coliid=I2L0D1NEUNYUW8&colid=3MVOZQXDOKDXC&psc=1&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it#customerReviews
3yr
Whoa neat idea. I do something innovative kind of like this but to study perspective and structure. I use the 3D modeling/animation software Blender to create simple still life's from primitive shapes and I can light them however and turn the camera different angles and I learn how when, like, the light source moves the shadows change. Super helpful!
Anyway stopping movies sound like a really great idea as well. When I was in 4th grade (way back in the 90s) I remember we had a kid in our class that would draw by stopping Disney movies and drawing what was in the frame. And I remember being impressed by the stuff he brought in to show everyone.
I also think movies can be better for learning how to draw people/animals in all kinds of poses because with still images they usually only post the images that look good but you can stop a movie in, like, in between phases and see poses that, while ugly, are ones you'd never see otherwise.
3yr
Many months ago I heard somebody on the staff say this was planned but they hadn't got around to coding it yet. I guess they still haven't.
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3yr
Looks good. My brain does latch onto these better and find them more meaningful but........ it's April Fools'! What's the catch? Am I gonna click a link and water sprays in my face? lol 😆😋
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Is the resume learning tab bugged out/not there on the home page of the website? If so that's a bug that should be reported, bc it should be there and smooths out navigation issues
Otherwise though, under your profile on the main page there should be a "resume learning" section (light blue in pic) which lists up to the 3 most recent courses you purchased/acccessed. In that same section there's a "Go to courses" option (yellow) which will automatically take you to a tab where the courses you have purchased/follow/added are visible. Alternatively there's also the courses tab itself (green) which will take you to that same page
3yr
The resume learning section links have always been working on my end (no bugs I've seen) but a lot of times I'm entering a course because I wanted to refer back to something and I dunno I just often end up getting lost for a little while each time.
And sometimes even when I do just want to pick up where I left off, I don't necessarily think about the Resume Learning section and might just mindlessly click "browse" in the main navigation and get confused.
It happens over and over and I'm not totally sure why but I think it's something about the visual hierarchies, like what looks most dominant relative to the content around it, I guess subconsciously tells my brain, "What you want is this way!" But it's wrong.
I have ADHD but I don't struggle like this in any other app, so I'm thinking it's the app. But if I'm the only one it happens to then I don't know.
I might just save some shortcuts in my browser and use those instead.
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3yr
They are replacements for the subscribe slider that was there before. They both do the same function
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Still struggling with the site navigation3yr
I talked about this many months ago but I thought I'd bring it up again because it's still an issue. I constantly forget how to get to my specific courses that I have purchased and always end up on the browse page wondering why there's tons of courses that aren't mine and then even when I remember I have to really think what path to take to get to the section of the site with just my stuff.
Am I the only one who has trouble following the navigation sometimes? I can get to my profile page no problem and the forums pretty quick but navigating to my courses is hard. I always have to come out of autopilot and really think about what I'm doing. And then I forget why I was going to a particular course haha oh man :)
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Follow buttons?3yr
I just noticed follow buttons next to each board on the categories page. Are those new or am I blind? I always come in through that page when I go to the forum.
Editing this after Jesse Yao's comment: These new follow buttons are way more compelling to my brain than what was there before. To personify it, you could say they call out to my brain like, "Hey! I'm here! Consider clicking me!" And my brain is like, "Okay! Hmm... what ones do I wanna sub to? *looks through* Oh, how about this! And this..." So to speak anyways.
What was there before, it made my brain assume that it was uninteresting and not worth my consideration and I think that's why I was barely aware of it. This I couldn't not notice.
Now that may or may not be your intended effect but I figured at least I'd give you feedback on how my particular brain reacted :)
