Dear Proko community, Growth is a mindset, I find. Something I've been thinking about a lot recently. So, I've written a bit of an essay to accompany this post about it. There is one simple truth in art, I think. The boulder we all push up the hill is heavy, and we can never reach the summit before our strength gives way and it crashes back down. So it is with growth in this field. I, alas, am not a beginner anymore. I have pushed my boulder further than most. But then again, I am always a beginner. In the sphere of social media, if one is not a professional, nor a master by any means, it seems pointless. I'll never stand out or get noticed with my less-than paintings/drawings... How can I compete with so many brilliant people? They are better than I'll ever be in ten lifetimes! Such are the thoughts, and so the boulder goes back down. That boulder, as we go along our way, must be pushed and dropped and pushed and dropped for the entirety of our art lives! It feels like a never-ending lie, doesn't it? Like we must toil and see that our meager progress is, in the scope of things, an exercise in futility. I am pushing, and pushing and pushing, and, oh, oh... No... there it goes... crashing back down again! Time to start over. For. The. Rest. Of. Your. Life. That's the rub. In building this skill, one must become Sisyphus. And for many, that is too much. They see it right away, too. A few months, a few years into art, still a beginner. They can tell that they will never "win." Never ever reach that summit. They will always have to start from the bottom again and again. It's demoralizing. Humiliating. If one does not suffer from the Dunning-Krueger effect, one will inevitably suffer from imposter syndrome or a sunk-cost fallacy that traps us in our misery. There is no winning, ever! Period. Uh uh! How can we continue creating when the passion of our pencil is also such a source of pain? Why should we even try? It's the absurdity of Camus. Sure, we can embrace the struggle, assign value to the effort itself, and accept our fate as artists as actually fairly amusing when given perspective. It's the curse and the gift. The ambiguous nature of creativity. But that feels like a cop-out, doesn't it? Well... I don't have any answers to any of that. I can only speak to my own experience. I think we must strive and push ever onward because it is the only way to advance. The peak of the hill might always be too far away, but there is a point in between the top and the bottom when we feel strong, and like just this once we might be able to do it. It's really all we can hope for. So my journey has been one of obstinance more than anything. I have been too dumb and stubborn to stop pushing my boulder, no matter how many times I drop it. I am a mule. And admittedly, I love that process, frustration of starting from scratch and all. I just keep pushing that rock. It is my happy place. It feels like I'm doing something right. Like I'm fulfilling some destiny or something. Putting a little beauty back into the world, as Aaron Blaise would say. Yes, I like that. Let's all strive for a little bit of aestheticism. The art is for the art's sake, and the artist's peace of mind. Does there have to be anything beyond that? With all that said... As a middle-stage intermediate artist, I feel it is helpful for people who are just starting their art journey, who are tired and frustrated and feel like quitting because they see that mountain, to also see someone who is a little further along than they are. Yet not so far ahead that what they are doing seems totally unattainable. A person who is little more than a journeyman, a few steps ahead, who can show that the rough cliff we all traverse does indeed go forward, if not to an actual destination. This is my most recent painting of Katharine Hepburn. Mixed media on illustration board. I never thought I would be able to make something like this two and a half years ago when I set out to be able to paint people realistically. One day soon, dear friends who are just starting their push, with a little hard-headedness and a pinch of stupidity for lack of knowing when to quit, you can achieve the art that's in your head. All you have to do is do it. Become the mule. Laugh at your struggles. Push on! There may not be any point to any of it, but damn, is it a beautiful ride.

I'm playing with color palettes on a rainy day. Using the same subject, I tried four different color schemes: muted violet-gray, warm orange, sandy brown, and misty green. Lowering the saturation gave several of them a calmer, more grounded feeling. The gray-green-violet version is probably the closest to the colors I had in mind.

I've been wanting to put some more time into painting with gouache lately so I'm starting a study thread, feel free to join in! Here are two pieces from this weekend's attempts. The first is a Dean Cornwell study done along with a livestream from Jeff Watts. Clear reference was tough to find, so I just went along with the process I saw Jeff work though in the video. I spent about 3 hours on the Cornwell study and then applied the same process to an original sketch I did of Norman Rockwell from a black and white photo, which also took about 3 hours. Still getting the hang of organizing values on the palette, I feel like my palette gets crazy and disorganized quickly, so by the end of the Rockwell piece I was hunting and mixing a lot more to get back to the appropriate values. I'd love any feedback, suggestions, notes or revelations you've had during your own gouache adventures! Tools- Palette - Winsor & Newton Permanent White, and Ivory Black, Holbein Permanent Yellow Deep, and Flame Red Robert Simmons 785 Round #4 Arches Aquarelle Watercolor Cold Pressed Paper Livestream- https://www.youtube.com/live/gsTAsfjR_uk?si=l8BQy83zXAEOzYwk

Hello again Proko Community! Last night I found out about Jeff Watts' Gesture Portraits - like gesture drawing, except instead of two minutes to capture a pose, you have 40 minutes to capture a portrait. This is my first attempt at a 40-minute "gesture" portrait, and I'd love critique. The funny thing for me is that 40 minutes was a bit too long for me -- to the point where, near the end, I was fidgeting and futzing just to fill time. I don't know if that's efficiency or sheer hubris.

I tried watercolor painting after a long time and it was so much fun and relaxing so much of a stress reliving activity it is and especially the chaos style of watercolor that it can't be controlled and the fun accidental effects it give that's the beauty of watercolor painting and it is so much fun and that feeling how could I forget that when we mix paint in the water and the swirly pattern it creates and rotating the color seems like a movie in its own place and that is so much fun and relaxing I will try more of watercolor painting in future and it is really very very theraputic and I loved it and I am proud of the resultsss!!!!

As one moves along their journey in life, one may occasionally feel it's necessary to test oneself. To see what they are truly capable of if they put their maximum effort into something. To make something that expresses the full extent of their abilities. A piece to represent the culmination of their current progress. My friends, this was my objective with this portrait. To see what I can do NOW, with all I have learned. Two ish years ago I set out to be able to realistically reproduce the human face and form, ultimately aiming at painting oil portraits ala Sargent with high accuracy and realism, but also to be able to create my own illustrations for a graphic novel idea I have. Many influences have guided me. I have synthesized many ideas. This is the result. Not Sargent for sure, and not comic book looking art at all, but some weird hybrid. A mutant version of classic portraiture and pop/graphic art. Let me tell you, this painting nearly broke me. But it didn't. Even though the challenge felt insurmountable, that I would never achieve the vision in my heart, I persevered. At one point I threw it in the trash. Another point I sprayed it with water and tried to wipe it away. I considered gessoing over it and starting from scratch. Yet still I kept after it. Obsessively. All day and most of the night, only taking breaks to eat and go to the restroom. What I turned out may not be great. It might not even be good when taking into consideration my overarching goals. But it's the absolute best I could do without going insane, and for that and the fact that I stuck it out, I am hugely proud. I feel like I'm starting to develop something of a personal style, too, which is neat. The journey may not always take you where you think you should go, but I find it usually always takes you where you need to be. Humphrey Bogart. Mixed media on illustration board.

Here’s another Donald Duck still life study. Looking back at it afterward, I think the shifts in the sense of form and volume could be handled a bit more subtly next time. Some of the local color transitions became too strong, which ended up weakening the overall harmony of the piece.

These past two weeks have been all about waves. Placing this together with the dark blue cat painting I did before adds a slightly livelier atmosphere to the scene. I really enjoy this kind of low-saturation, night-like mood, and I’d like to experiment more with different compositions and material effects in the future. It also reminded me of The Silent Sea, which I watched some time ago. The textures of craters and drifting lunar dust on the moon’s surface feel like they would be really interesting to explore using this kind of approach.

Hi. I am a beginner in painting and unable to decide between Marco Bucci's courses and Digital painting fundamentals + advanced course by proko. My background is that i have bought and halfway through drawing basics course by proko. Any guidance is appreciated. Thank you.

i am taking ideacraft by sterling hundley, and i take digital notes. I wanted to revise today and found this in my notes but unable to recollect which video is this from. Can someone help ?

Here is my latest project. I thought it would take me a week but it have taken months. With a lot of challenges like chemical ractions and physics 😅 drying times and waiting for material i notice i will need. Like different caps to the spraypaint to try to get even shine. Or a special spray to even cracks due a chemical reaction. Or more varnish because it has taken a lot more than i thought because of different challenges. They where just plain wood from the beginning. I sanded them and spraypainted them. Sketched the motives. That i have sketched on my ipad at first to have an idea. Brushed on gesso. And painted with acrylic markers and acrylic paint and brush. And varnished them with spray varnish with uv-protection. Ive ordered wall mount so they will be hanged on a wall somewhere 😊

Tried painting my home wall And I used acrylic colors i used both round and flat brushes

One of my favorite artists right now is Drew Struzan, the master of design and likeness. His finished work is beyond extraordinary, yes! But honestly, to me anyway, his sketch work is far and away my catnip. The subtlety, the nuance, the shape design, the drawing chops, the hatching, interesting mark making... All with just pencil, toned paper, and a few colored pencils. They are the most simple of masterpieces. And I want some of that sauce! So, as part of my ever-evolving quest to improve my drawing skills, I'm going to be doing a series of master-studies on these sketches and posting them on here for the Proko community. I believe it will be instructive, not only to myself, but to many others, and perhaps an introduction to who I consider one of the great portrait artists of all time. So without further ado, the first post of my series: Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones. Mixed media on Strathmore Toned Tan. By no means the same level of mastery or accuracy as the original, but I could probably draw my whole life and never reach that level. At least it kind of looks like Harrison haha. If I could only just touch the hem of the cloth, I would be onto something.

This time I used this Czech pencil. When blended, it creates a brown tone with a subtle red-violet tint. It reminded me of the calm, grounded effect I got in a previous life-drawing study (second image). It works really well for darker skin tones, almost like having a built-in dual-tone filter.

I discovered Proko several years ago. It was the eye anatomy video. Something clicked hard and it got me back into drawing after years and years of me thinking I simply wasn't made for this. Seeing this realistic eye pop out of a blank sheet was wonderful. Then I stumbled upon Bob Ross videos. I understood that all this time I thought about drawing with the wrong approach. It was not about contours, it was about carving the paper ! Got back to Proko, binge watching the anatomy videos, making observations around me to confirm my new knowledge. Then I grabbed my old Tab S3 and worked hard. Couldn't afford any course, but the free content was already a gold mine. I made enormous progress since 3 years, grinding through countless failed sketches that tought me countless lessons, milking all the free content. Honestly I still think I'm not an artist, I'm just a passionate guy with a pen and a goal. This drawing I share is my latest one, my first polished piece. I don't seek criticism, I already see numerous things I could have done better if I took references. I just wanted to share it because I'm quite happy with my progress, and greatly thankful to have all that knowledge available here for free. The drawing is not my tribute. My hard work is. Thank you Stan

In celebration of Tax Day here in the USA, I posit a self-portrait of the artist, pissed off haha. Gouache and Prismacolor on Crescent illustration board. This is my first ever portrait painting, so it's a little timid in execution. I found it quite challenging, and I'm not sure I'm too happy with the results, but I learned a lot and understand how I can improve. The first of many, hopefully.

Hello everyone! I will be sharing portraits and caricatures done with acrylic in this topic.

Tried drawing a Border Collie for a change. First time drawing a long-haired breed. Compared to the short-haired beagle I did before, this one needed more attention to layering different fur lengths with varied stroke types.