I know this has been discussed before and I am not the best, when it comes to studying-practices. But I still wanted to share my latest findings.

I have come to realize that there is a inherent hierarchy, when it comes to practicing the micro-skills, that make up the macro-skill of doing art.

These micro-skills are: 

Line weight
Tone
Proportion
Silhouette
Light
Shadow
Design
Concept
Form
Composition
Color
Value

Source: www.mrjakeparker.com/blog/10000minutes

There are definitely more, but for me, this is sufficient. Also, each of them has sub-categories (i.e. Hue / Chroma / Temperature ... when it comes to color).

The hard part is to juggle them all, when making a painting. I know I have struggled a lot through paintings, because I tried to do 2 or more things at the same time.

So instead now I am trying to focus on each micro-skill and train it seperated. This is one aspect of something that is called "deliberate practice".

You can read about it here:
​ www.amazon.com/Peak-Secrets-New-Science-Expertise/dp/1531864880

So in order to get better at composition, I went to the museum and made small (ugly) simplifications of the master-pieces that were on display there. After doing these simplifications I tried to find hidden structures beneath the painting, as you can see on the sketch und the lower middle. It was super-fascinating to find these hidden lines and rhythms. 

After seeing them and understanding the grid the artist used, I could then use it in my own work.

I know these sketches are really basic. But it is this basic stage, that I neglected before and that made me struggle through the paintings a lot.

The thing that really helped me get the most out of these studies, wasn't trying to get everything correct, but to focus on the thing I needed to learn. That way I could do more smaller studies and find those hidden principles or micro - skills that the artist used to create their master - piece.

Before I did photo-copies, where I wanted to get everything exactly as in the source. I now realize that I was training too many micro-skills at the same time, which made growing my skill slower than it had to be.

Please tell me in the comments, if you are struggling with studies a lot or if you had a moment where you found a similar way of practicing.

This is my entry to January's Character Design Challange, which is held monthly on Facebook.

Following what I had learned in the Character Design Course I am taking, I started with the pose and a lot of sketching. It took a while to figure out the proportions of the character, since I wanted it to look cute, but not child-like.

It was a lot of fun to do this and I really feel like, I have learned a lot this year already.

This is exciting! So much great art for a cool movie! Check it out, if you haven't already.

onanimation.com/2019/01/13/the-art-and-making-of-spider-man-into-the-spider-verse/

Hey guys. This time the assignment was to design a character with 3D forms, then analyse a pose and use it for said character. To top it off, the pose should be drawn from 2 angles, so one had to be invented. Very challanging.

After watching some critique - videos Wouter did for other students, I edited my designs, based on points that were applicable to me as well. This is really fun :)

Hey guys,

I started a 1 year Schoolism subscription. This is the assignment from Wouter Tulp's "Expressive Character Design Course" week 1.

I do them traditionally to get a bit of a break from all the digital work.

Topic was to push shapes of a reference - photo, after deciding on a topic for the character.

Here are some illustrations, I did a while ago for Ulisses Games Publishing and their Dark Eye Series. I grew up with the Dark Eye and working for that company was such an honor to me. More to come. 

Studies and things I did to practice and help me with the illustration.

To warm up, I did a study of a random google-street-view-location. You can use http://www.mapcrunch.com/ for this. It is great to get better with landscape painting, without spending too much time, finding something to paint.

Hey guys,

a friend showed me this great video by Scott Robertson on Youtube.

So in order to get better at constructive drawing, I decided to study a car. I used Autodesk's Sketchbook Pro. 

I find it better than Photoshop, because it has some built-in tools for drawing in perspective.

I looked at a photo of a cool car (cool to me, at least) and did a side-view study of it. Then I used Sketchbook Pro to plot my own perspective and get to drawing.

I could have cleaned it up way more. Actually Sketchbook gives you at ton of great tools for cleaning up, like ellipse guides and even french curves. But since it is only a study, I figured I learned enough from it.

It was definitely out of my comfort-zone and I struggled in the beginning. But after I managed to get past the initial problems, it went quite well and was actually fun.

So, if you are having trouble with perspective and constructive drawing, give this a shot and tell me what you think.

All the best,
​Flo