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.