Radio Runner Term 6, Final Round up
It’s been a while since I updated this blog but I’ve finally finished the Radiorunner’s Curriculum for the Solo Artist (Yay!). It’s been a long road and it’s been hard to maintain motivation. This year was especially tough because I started to develop other interests that ate up a lot of my time, such as learning Spanish (in addition to putting more effort into my Japanese).
Term 6, the final term, consists of Digital Painting 1, Digital Painting 2, Anatomy V Legs, Composition and Story telling 3, and finally Head Anatomy 4 Caricature.
For Digital Painting 1 & 2, after watching the videos on the playlists I decided to do Med’s Map which covers the same material albeit in a much more intense fashion.
Basically what I did is below. It starts off with lighting and shading basic shapes then onto lighting and shading colored cubes. Then Fruit are next, followed by studies of the human skull and facial features. Finally it moves on to portrait study in black and white then color, and finally stylizing and painting from imagination.
I had a blast doing the course and Ahmed Aldoori is a great teacher. I think the course is excellent and recommend it if you can afford it.
Next was anatomy of the legs, which just follows Proko’s videos on youtube. I find that studying anatomy is something you always have to come back to, I know I’ll be studying it again in the future. I’ve already forgotten so much.
Then I did Composition and Story telling, which was basically doing master studies of artists I admire, I chose Xa for a lot of them, but also some different artists as well.
Finally the last course which was on caricature. I expected to not like this unit, but it turned out to be excellent. I learned a lot about stylizing portraits. Maybe I enjoyed it so much because I like doing portraits and it taught me a lot of new ways to get started with portraits and stylizing them as well.
Final conclusion
I’m done after just over 4 years, chipping away at the curriculum in my spare time. All in all it took me from May 28th, 2020 until October 6th, 2024, which is just about 4 years and 4 months, for 4,750 hours. I would have completed it a lot sooner but I got side-tracked a lot. But that’s the curse of ADHD. Ultimately I learned a lot and I’ve improved a ton at drawing and digital painting. I am confident I could draw or paint whatever I wanted now, but I’m not satisfied with my level yet though. I kind of rushed through a lot of stuff at the end, especially the last two unites. I was starting to run out of steam and looking at some of the assignments I felt like it was gonna take me many more months haha. At a certain point Alex told me to move on when I feel I’m ready. So that’s what I did. I could have, and probably should have spent more time on this, but I needed to finish and move on to my own personal art.
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Do I recommend it for someone that wants to improve their art, or learn art in general? Yes, I definitely do.
Some Advice
After spending all this time working on fundamentals there are a few pieces of advice I wish I’d listened to. One piece of advice is to make sure to actually draw for fun. It doesn’t have to be 50% it can be 30% or 20%, but it’s something I didn’t really do, that I regret now. Why? because I’m still not sure what to do with my art yet. I also haven’t really developed my own style yet either.
That brings me to my other piece of advice, figure out what it is you want to do with your art and start working towards that from day one. Have a clear goal for what you want to do. The goal can be something simple like “just draw cool characters” or “become a concept artist” but make sure it’s not super vague like “draw cool stuff”. And then, keep an eye out for ways to work towards your goal as you progress.
For example if you want to draw awesome dragons, then always try to incorporate that into the studies and art you do for the curriculum. I guess I kind of did that in a way with lots of portraits, motorcycles and scooters and cute girls etc.
Last piece of advice, which is something I did do, be consistent and keep drawing. I can’t stop now after 4 years, that’d be really sad to just give up now. But I have built a solid habit and I still get surges of motivation to draw when I see something inspiring. I know I still have a long way to go but I’m enjoying the process of getting there.
What’s Next?
Next I plan to continue to work to improve my skills, and I want to develop my own style by studying the artists I admire more. I also want to work on an outlet for my art such as a game of some kind, since I have a bit of a developer background. Just something where I can display awesome art and also tell a story.
I’ve published some novels before, and I’ve always continued to write down ideas and try to develop and work on different stories. So, I have some ideas of what I want to do. Now that I don’t have the excuse of “I need to finish my assignment for the curriculum, I don’t have time for that!”, I can focus on my own personal art.
I might come back and update this blog again but I can’t say when that will be. But if you read this far, thanks a lot for taking the time to read it.
