Spring Term 2017 - 1/3 Months - April

I started this month with a new goal of doing 40 hours of drawing and painting practice per week, including watching instruction and also developing visual content for personal projects. The total hours I practiced, give or take one or two since I am not finished with today's work, is as follows:

1st week: 44.25

2nd week: 42

3rd week: 40

4th week: 27.5

Total hours in April: 153.75

Throughout the month, I wrote down notes in a word document about things I realized and things to pay attention to as I continue training. Rather than doing a longer summary of this month's practice, collecting these notes and writing something based on them, I will share these notes as they were written. In this way, they may speak clearer to the truth relating to my observations on my way to being a more proficient artist. Having taken these notes at the time that they were most clear to me, and re-reading them now is a wonderful, effective way to review many aspects of training, and re-consider these points as I move into the next month. There are 2 months to go in my Spring Term. Meaning, I will continue the same classes until then. Overall, I feel it was a good first month and I will continue this challenge of forty hours a week.

NOTES:

- Wasting time by biking to get pretzels and wandering about for too long looking for a place to sit and draw. Just sit and draw. It's not that you don't enjoy the scenery, but you actually enjoy it more when you do what you came there to do, and also drawing is observing the scenery, so you can enjoy it. Choose a spot and use it – time and space.

- Watching Youtube videos – Watts Atelier live – AFTER it's live, so I can watch it at 2X speed, hearing Jeff talk even faster and seeing the painting quicker too. Gather more information in less time, more effective, especially when my questions on the chat are ignored.

- At least an equal balance between drawing/painting and writing story content.

- Being conscious of the subtleties of procrastination. What's useful. How to study. Looking at images, really looking at them and understanding how you can use the visual ideas in your own studying/artwork, or just scrolling by like a TV show, getting nothing from it and being like a zombie?

- Learning anatomy – just writing the names unconsciously – reading the information about it and not absorbing anything, or looking and putting the knowledge into a place in your mind that has a practicality for execution, not just a bunch of words.

- Social media – has its place – sharing in an easy to do way, not caring much about tags/wording etc – details that could be thought about way too much and have little importance, and take time.

- Not wasting a moment. Get home from work. Start work. No sitting around, lazing about eating or doing stuff that's brainless/heartless.

- Head Drawing:

After drawing a few heads that didn't turn out so well one day, from photo reference, I realized that I really shouldn't be drawing heads at all yet. It's okay to do once in a while, but the Watts Atelier program lays out steps to progress there through Phase I to III. It's not til Phase III that you draw from photo reference. I am still at the skull in learning the fundamental concepts of what the head drawing involves. The skull is in Phase I and barely that far into it. I should spend my time learning these tools that will help me draw the head so I can get way more from drawing photographs when I get to it, in Phase III. So my head drawing class has been transformed into more of a head fundamentals class until I'm ready to draw from photographs, though I might do that occasionally still, but less than I have been.

- Really getting a better sense of watching every step I make and if I'm doing it properly or not. In all these ways:
How I hold the pencil.

Moving from my shoulder when I draw and not the wrist or forearm.

Applying the mantra: scan, identify predict, decide, execute with every move on the paper, and not simply drawing in a sketchy, uncontrolled manner expecting something good to happen as a result.

Paying attention to why I'm drawing/studying what I'm studying, and if it's the most effective way to digest the material and improve as an artist.

When I see something that I'm doing wrong in this way, by paying attention to the way I'm doing it, I can improve it by changing upon it, doing it differently.

- Good to look at others' artwork occasionally, but once every five days is enough, not to get carried away by the images and procrastinate on the work needed to make your own as good.
(Edit: I am sharing an artwork that inspires me every five days on Twitter: @whenanthonywas)

- Always keep your charcoal pencils sharpened when you end a session. Don't start a session with dull pencils that need sharpening. Prepare ahead of time, when you finish the previous session.

Always keep a few pencils sharpened.

- When putting in 40 hours a week, keep your supplies stocked. When doing the Watts Atelier method of practicing, stock up on Conte 1710 B pencils, smooth newsprint, razor blades and kneaded erasers.

4.13.17

- 40 hours a week is a perfect number of hours to push myself. Play the edge but not go over.

I feel less de-motivated than I have about the long-term-ness of my practice now that I'm doing a lot more of it. I'm too busy practicing to think about things like how difficult it is and how much practice I have to do to. And when I do think about how much there is to do, I'm inspired to do it, because I'm in the midst of it and am connecting things I'm learning with other aspects of it and it's awesome.

- Good to do a few outings as breaks a week, including my part time jobs as outings. Acro yoga and contact improvisation dance are my outings and good exercise to get away from art practice.

- I've changed my curriculum mid-way through this second week. I finished the Schoolism course Essentials of Realism, but I want to review it and do the exercises that were in it more than I have. I also want to continue learning from another Schoolism course though. So I signed up for Creature Anatomy and changed my courses to be like this:

Animation – I wanted to dedicate a whole class to this, instead of joining it with geometrical shapes and fundamentals

Inking Master studies – for now that is what I'm going to work off of more than anything else – until the Watts Atelier releases their inking class online

Figure Fundamentals – Studying from the Watts Atelier online program

Watts Figure Studies – Just like studying heads from photographs, I'm not at the point where they do that in the Watts program, so I'm not getting as much as I can out of it. Still good to do since I'm working on anatomy, but I think it's a better idea for now to stick with studying quick sketch and charcoal drawings of Watts students and teachers, instead of from photo reference.

Head Drawing Fundamentals – Studying from the Watts Atelier online program

Schoolism – Creature Anatomy

Still Life – Drawing Fundamentals (Watts Atelier and Essentials of Realism exercises)

Character Design – In here I will include head drawing practice from photographs, using them to create characters for my story. As I explained before, I really shouldn't be drawing heads yet if I go according to the Watts Atelier curriculum. So I will go more for the information rather than the detailed realism and use both photos and sketching at cafes and from life to design characters.

Environment Design – Urban sketching/plein air/master studies and using specific reference for environments in my story which need developing
(Edit: This class has turned into a specific visual development aspect of my personal project, which does not include urban sketching, master studies or plein air. It is more montage/imagination based.)

Anatomy- Arms/Legs – Watts Atelier/Other References

This is 10 classes. If I do 6 hours a day, which comes to 42 hours in a week, then I can do two classes a day of 3 hours each and my 10 classes are complete in 5 of those days, and 2 days are totally free to do homework/additional work on those classes. Of course I may not get 6 hours in everyday, but may have to do more than six some days and less on other days. And 42 hours is 2 over what I'm aiming at, so that's fine too.

(And this class is in there somewhere too: Figure Books: Marvel and Hampton)

I removed painting things, other than digital which I'll be using for Essentials of Realism and still life studies or maybe other things too. I will pick up gouache again in July.
(Edit: I have started a list of classes I would like to transition to next term. Nothing confirmed yet, as I continue to expand on my ideas of what is most beneficial and what I'm ready to move in to in my training.)

- Trusting my teachers. I have good instructors to listen to. I should trust that the information I need, whether learning a new animation software or what have you will be linked or shared by the instructor in some way and that I can get the information not too far from the online programs they have set up. This happened with TV Paint, where it's what Aaron Blaise uses on his animation course, and I was looking for tutorials on it in OTHER places, but when I went to his Youtube to see if he had anything, he definitely did. Stay close to the source, in other words.

- My meditation practice of 2 hours a day is so helpful in maintaining the balanced and detached perspective on life and the understanding of what I'm pursuing and why I'm practicing art as I am. It is essential to this art training in indescribable ways.

4.21.17

- Difficult to make goals for yourself, like, being proficient at figure drawing in six months, when you are not sure what level of proficiency you have to reach – how far it is – how much work it is to get there – etc. That's where a teacher could point out how realistic that is. Still, not bad to set the goals and aim for them even if not knowing the details about how they can or can't be accomplished.

- Have to stay watchful of procrastination. Do I need sleep, or am I just being habitually lazy? Such things are there and we must understand them so we're not slaves to our own patterns of laziness.

4.25.17

I have started to do a sketchbook entitled the Snow-run sketchbook. Snow-run is the title, because it is a sketchbook in which I draw something every day that I would run naked in the snow to see. It is borrowed from Iain McCaig, as a thing to do so that one day you can open it page by page and see who you are and what you are meant to show the world, when your skills are good enough to draw them again, how they are meant to be. I have been doing these drawings late at night, after usual art training and other daily activity hours. It is the best time to do it, I feel, because I am more likely to have the inspiration to draw something after a full day, rather than first thing in the morning, or even mid-day when I am in the middle of other things. I can think about it during the day and think of what I would like to run out naked in the snow to see. It is also part of Iain's description, in that he says, “something you'd stay up late to see,” or something along those lines. Meaning, if I were to stay up late to run out and see this thing, I might as well stay up late and draw it. It seems to fit the context. I'm not sure, sometimes, what I would like to see. In these cases, I go with what I would run out to experience, to feel and draw more the expression of that feeling rather than a conditional thing I am expecting or craving to reach. You have to dig deep down for these drawings, to find the pure thing, and not just something that is somewhat cool, that you really wouldn't run out naked in the snow to see.

~~~ Stay tuned for more.
On Facebook I share pictures of my practice sessions every 5 days.

On Twitter I share a piece of art by another artist that inspires me every 5 days.

On Youtube I share a video on the 1st and 15th of each month that shows my practice in action.

Thanks for reading,
- Anthony R.

Anniversary Reflection - One Year of Art Training

Just over a year ago. Two days over in fact, I signed up for the online art program by Watts Atelier. www.wattsatelier.com. It was April 1st, 2016 when I began my traditional training as a representational artist. I dove into the program and watched many videos, with little practicing. Of course I was also doing that with Schoolism courses, and it took me a while to realize that the practicing of art is essential to developing skills, not just listening to lectures about it.

A month or two later, I signed up for a workshop in San Diego to go meet Jeffrey R. Watts and the other instructors at the brick and mortar school. This made me want to practice more, to have some skills when I got to the workshop and get the most out of the instruction. This attitude of getting really good to supposedly impress the instructors in some sense was unrealistic. Not that I really was going for impressing them, but I was expecting growth that just doesn't happen in a summer of beginning this approach to drawing.

As I continued, I realized the effort needed to develop these skills that I had never tried to develop. My inspiration continued from the content I gathered from Watts Atelier, both for free on Youtube and from the month of taking the online program. The respect I had for these teachers and the work they must have put in to get as good as they are also expanded as I tried to do this myself. The balance of life's other activities and the practice and learning of art had to be understood and reflected on over and over. I've done a lot of pointless practicing and useless time spent browsing artwork or skimming over lessons without doing the necessary practice to actually learn these. This was done before this last year of practicing, but also during this last year when I was learning how to train in art properly.

Some of these things became clearer after the workshop with the advice from the instructors, like how to navigate the variety of things that can be drawn for practice, and to spend time on the right things to be a well rounded artist with a long-term progression in mind. In other ways, this wasn't entirely clear after the workshop, because it needs practice to be put into practice. The understanding of how to comes with the doing, and there's no real answer to how to navigate this learning, even now. It's a constant metamorphosis of learning how to learn this content, but I have some much better ideas after trial and error. Even with the guidance of the Watts team and other artist talks I've listened to, one has to figure out how to do it, especially without daily contact and guidance with one of these teachers who has already gone through these trials. Even then, it's up to one's own discretion.

I feel that I've experienced many of the symptoms of beginning a serious art discipline that Jeff Watts lists as commonalities for students in their early year development, spoken of in his inspiring Youtube video: How to Train to Become a Working Professional Artist. It's been good to have that talk to reference, to understand that I'm not different than other beginners when it comes to learning how to spend your time and energy wisely, schedule your training and follow through with the practice. I think the approach the Watts school takes with 3 hour training sessions/classes, with 20 minutes of drawing/painting and then a 10 minute break, repeated, is beneficial for focusing, memorizing and committing to the work. After jumping around with ways of creating practice time, like an hour and a half session, or 1 hour sessions, or no sessions and just working whenever I can, I've returned to the 3 hour Watts way and found it is best.

One thing I've realized too is how to be balanced and do a lot of work. This is also a changing understanding, but something that I am developing is a detached intensity. It is not healthy to get frustrated over lack of practicing, but it is not going to help your skills if you don't practice at all. It also doesn't help to be frustrated and go into your practice with that mind set, thinking about how you need to do more and losing your attention on the task at hand, which is your practice. A wise man needs to be calm among the chaos. The chaos is learning art. The wisdom is doing so with a deep sense of balance and a view of timeless practice, all the while scheduling the sessions of time to develop this. It is this long term, or eternal (timeless) view of practice that is necessary, but the understanding and urgency to do it today that makes for healthy work. Something that helped with this was spending some of the time doing sketches for fun, inventing imaginative work and working on personal projects. The more playful, 'do whatever you feel like' work is just as important for balancing the academic work. It has helped me have more fun so I can keep learning and see where my skills are lacking. It inspires you to do the academic work and makes you understand why you're doing it, which is usually to express yourself in an authentic way, tell stories and create worlds.

In January I started to make Youtube videos, so that there will be a consistent video log of my development. The videos are not tutorials by any means, though at some point they could go there. I'm learning from Schoolism, Watts Atelier, Proko and Aaron Blaise, so I'm going to reference those to people wanting to learn, rather than teaching in videos on the web. It will be interesting to see the many videos I make (2 per month) as years go by. It may be an inspiration for someone in the future who is beginning to go through all this practice like I am. I'm at a point now where I feel I can see my mistakes as I make them, and therefore am beginning to learn quicker. It is good to have this understanding and you'll see it in the videos as I continue.

As last April started my real training, this April is considered to be an anniversary for my art. It is now that I begin with more vigor and have the goal to do 40 hours a week of training. Half of it will be learning academically and the other half will be creating worlds of my own for my personal story. Yesterday I came across an old blog by Stan Prokopenko, who now teaches on Proko.com and was trained at the Watts Atelier. The blog post went through every year he was at the school, and what classes he took. It described in a short paragraph what he had learned and what was a good or bad choice in how he directed his training at this time. It made me hopeful in the sense that his first year of training was slower than the other years. He practiced more as he continued, and I feel the same desire to do so, knowing that it's the only way to get as good as I need/want to be to express the stories I write in an authentic, beautiful way.

At the same time, balance is needed. It's a greater skill to learn how to work 40 hours a week on art while being aware and content, rather than losing your mind and your sense of well being through frustration in training, or guilt with "not good enough, need to practice more." I don't have the bad job I need to get out of, or the living conditions that are determining factors for some people on why they want to do something else with their time. They do it to escape current conditions and this can often lead to unbalanced attachment to the thing they use as escape. My conditions are perfect when I'm peaceful with them. I understand this more and more in my experience, with wisdom. To consistently do something to improve, but remain peaceful and unconditional with it is a skill to appreciate. I'm basically understanding what a path of mastery is and how to walk it, using art as my main context. I also have a passion project of a story to write and it needs nice pictures to give it more life.

I continue my training with a 3 month plan in mind. Every 3 months I will switch 'courses,' as if I am taking a slightly longer term at Watts Atelier. (They do 2 and a half month terms there.) I will incorporate each class into a 3 hour session once a week. Just to be clear, I am not taking classes other than studying online and from books. In this way, I'm getting lessons, but have to self-direct my training and motivate myself without guidance or a determined 'class' to attend each week. In this way, while I work two part time jobs and other things happen, my self-taught 3 hour classes won't necessarily fall on the same day every week, and they may have to be divided into more than one session (two 1.5 hour sessions for example) if needed. Each course title is based off Watts Atelier courses that they teach at their school, as well as set up to work with what programs I am currently in online and the resources I have available to teach myself. The classes are divided based on the skill level I feel I currently have, what I need to practice and how to be well rounded in portrait, landscape, still life and figure. They are based off this previous year's understanding of how to learn and practice on a day to day, week to week, month to month, year to year (one year so far) basis.

The courses are as follows, listed with the details of what I'm using to train in these areas.

1. Gouache Portrait Painting
(Once a week, paint a gouache portrait in monochrome and/or watch demos on it)
- Schoolism class: Realistic Portraits by Jason Seiler
- Painting videos on Watts Atelier Youtube in Gouache
- (perhaps Gouache online course on Watts Atelier school)

2. Head Drawing and 20 minute head layins
(Once a week, do head layins (20 minutes each) or a longer (3 hour) head drawing from photo reference or a model (friend/local life drawing class))
- Schoolism class: Realistic Portraits by Jason Seiler

3. Figure Drawing - Design and Invention
(Once a week, study figure drawing from books and online courses)
- Figure Drawing (book) by Michael Hampton
- Force (book) by Michael D. Mattesi
- Gesture Drawing (book) by Alex Woo (received at Schoolism Live workshop)
- How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way (Stan Lee)
- Watts Atelier online school
- Other (Youtube etc.)

4. Intro to Tonal Drawing and Animation
(Once a week, work on fundamental geometrical shapes/2 value construction)
- Watts Atelier Fundamentals Phase I and II content - online school
- Aaron Blaise lessons and begin animating with simple shapes

5. Head Fundamentals
(Once a week, work on head fundamentals)
- Watts Atelier Head Phases I and II online school
- Other (Andrew Loomis books)

6. Inking Essentials
(Once a week, study inking from other artists)
-Mark Schultz
-Robert Watts
-Watts Atelier inking class (when it comes out)

7. Anatomy of Arms and Legs
(Once a week, study anatomy of arms and legs)
- Watts Atelier
- Aaron Blaise
- Proko
- Other

8. Basics of Perspective
(Once a week, study the basics of perspective)
- Ernest Norling books
- Scott Roberston Youtube
- Watts Atelier and other

9. Still Life monochrome painting in gouache
(Once a week, paint a still life in gouache - photo or observed from life)
- Watts Atelier

10. Figure Drawing and 20 minute figure layins
(Once a week, draw figures from photo reference or life)

(The following classes are associated more with inventing and creating the worlds of my story)

11. Plein air/Urban sketching and invention
(Once a week, observe nature and use local environments to develop and create your own)

12. Level/Puzzle/Game Design
(Once a week, study game level design and perspectives and develop your own.)

13. Storyboarding/Comics
(Once a week, study existing comics, storyboards and develop your story's layout)

14. Creature and Character  Design
(Once a week, develop your story's creatures and characters and study other artists' work)

As Stan Prokopenko's blog post (and many other things) guided me to start this structure of classes, and document it as I learn, so may these blog posts guide another learning artist to practice and develop the skills to live a healthy, balanced life on the path of mastery.

Wish me luck!

- Anthony