Term 1: Figures and Starting Term 2
Term 1 figures is a lot of Proko, but I also did Robert Marzullo and Marc Brunet’s anatomy stuff as I stated in my last post. This time was a weird period of my art journey where I got distracted by a lot of other courses. It culimated in almost a year of studying portraits and figures. In hindsight I wish I’d wrapped it up a lot quicker, although I’m sure it all had an affect on how I draw now.
Term 1: Figure Drawing II
The Proko videos (free on youtube) were pretty straight forward. Doing trace overs of anatomy images provided by Proko. Then doing drawings from photo references not using tracing, using the simplifications that he teachers. Learning to simplify parts of anatomy for better communication and understanding is a good skill to have. It’ll make your drawings clearer and easier to understand. After all art is about problem solving and communication.
I think the Proko videos might have been better in the long term because it focused on fundamentals of structure, and those simplification skills I mentioned. However even though the Marc Brunet and Robert Marzullo’s videos were very informative it’s hard to retain that knowledge I think. I still enjoyed them and learned a lot. A few years later I probably need to do a review though. This warps up Term 1 though.
As I mentioned before, I purchased Marc Brunet’s ART School Ultimate Anatomy videos (not the entire ART School course) and I also bought Robert Marzullo’s Dynamic Anatomy Gumroad.
Term 2: Introduction to Composition
Man looking back, this was really not and perhaps still isn’t, my strong suit. Compositions and painting have always been tough for me. It’s something I want to continually work on, however setting up compositions and rendering them out takes a lot of time so it’s a struggle to get motivated to do it. It’s something I have to really plan and make time for.
Looking back I’m kind of embarrassed about what I did for these assignments. I remember working really hard on these. I feel like my illustration skills have improved a lot since then at least.
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Next we start Term 2, which is more figures and head drawing and painting.
Term 2: Figure Drawing III — Riley Rhythms
Back to my comfort zone, drawing figures. This time with Riley Rhythms. I find this method very fascinating and like to revisit it from time to time. It relies on patterns called rhytms that seemly connect landmarks on the body and make it easier to construct and draw.
Term 2: Planes of the Head — Marco Bucci’s Course
For this I did the paid Marco Bucci course, but frankly it’s worth it. Marco is a good teacher and the course has everything you need to learn planes of the head (pluse the course is inexpensive). In fact I kind of want to give it a revisit and brush up on my planes knowledge.
As I mentioned, due to getting side tracked and spending some time doing extra head / portrait courses, it took me about a year to finally finish Head Anatomy II.
One of the extra courses I found was on youtube. I tried learning Angel Ganev’s method:
It involves spending a lot of time learning the lay-in and doing trace overs. Then redrawing your trace overs, and then finally building up to basic shading. The goal isn’t to be as accurate as possible, but more to understand the planes of the face and get the structure correct. I spent weeks on it. Thankfully his entire method is free to check out on his youtube channel. He has some paid courses now too, but at the time I only had the free videos to go by.
Then I also did the wonderful Realistic Portraits in graphic by Diego Catalan Amilivia course on Domestika which I highly recommend.
The same instructor has a wonderful anatomy course, that is incredibly in-depth for a course that is around $8–9 on Domestika. I really recommend both of these courses. However, I do need to mention that they are in Spanish. The portrait course has an English dub, which is okay. The anatomy course only has subtitles, which can be hard to both read and watch what he is doing. However, don’t let that turn you off, both courses are really detailed and worth it IMHO.
Around the same time I also took another wonderful figure drawing course on Domestika by Shane Wolf. I feel like I could do a whole post on just the Domestika courses that I’ve done. I just did one on Atmospheric illustration recently and several on making comics, for example.
Anyway that course was a lot of fun and I did some nice figure drawings on bristol.
Conclusion & Thoughts
I meandered so much during this time, that it’s hard to remember exactly what I did. I also completed Part 11: Color and Light II but I can’t find anything I did for it right now, so I’ll have to cover it in my next post. I also did some other extra courses such as environmental sketching.
I think staying focused on one goal at a time is best so that you can quickly get through the fundamentals and not waste too much time. Although there’s nothing wrong with spending a little more time on things that interest you.
Today, I try to stick close to the curriculum and move along at a steady pace. I really want to finish by 2024. I picked up a lot of figure and portrait skills throughout all this. However these skills weaken if you don’t use them. I recently got back into figures after a break and it’s a bit surprising how much rust has built up, but I think this is learning in a nut shell. You always forget and have to relearn. However as you do this, you develop your skills and style as an artist. I feel like portraits and heads are still one of my strong skills, and I enjoy drawing them. Compositions, not so much, but I’m slowly working on changing that. I want to be able to do full scenes and landscapes.
