Thanks for the lessons Marco! I enjoyed watching you work with apparent abandon, letting go of the line art early on. I also like your take on color temperature and hope it makes my current digital painting more coherent. One quick question... I think you mentioned a download of your working brushes included with the course, but if that's so, I can't find that file anywhere. Help? Thanks again, Dick

TAS - Nice work! You've got some really lovely things going on there with the lighting and design. I agree that Hearthstone nailed it on their magical style. If you want them to look more "Hearthstoney", here's a few suggestions: 1. Design. Hearthstone has a stylized realism to its world. Very solid 3D forms feel "real" within the picture in spite of the exaggeration. Look at how other Hearthstone artists have pushed and squashed features and proportions. Your dragons look too real world compared to Hearthstone's more fantastical aesthetic. HS things tend to have a clear and solid planar quality - surfaces simplified and emphasized. Look at how buildings (and other things) are kind of "chunky" with certain elements emphasized and proportions altered. Look at animated movies, 2D and 3D, to see how artists stylize characters and props to differentiate them from "realistic" versions. Hearthstone is similar to that, but with a traditional, hand painted finish applied to everything. 2. Painting style. Your style has an almost watercolor wash or oil glazing layered look to it where you can see colors showing through other colors on top. That's fine. But Hearthstone has a very opaque, solid painted look to it like oil/acrylic/guauche that hasn't been thinned. Some might say a "traditional" storybook illustration look. Everything kind of sits on a single layer. Lots of clearly separated and saturated colors that help clarify design shapes. Purple metallic armor on green skin, for example. 3. Clear textures. Hearthstone has an almost hyper-textured look to it's varying surfaces so that stone looks very "rocky" next to something that's metallic, or skin, or wood, etc. Surfaces are sometimes designed for visual appeal before strict realism. Again, colors are saturated. Those stone formations might have a purple cast to them. The leaves in the trees have sunlight illuminating them so they glow bright yellow and green, etc. 4. Silhouette. Characters and elements have clearly readable overall shapes that read well at a variety of scales. Use value contrast to support this idea. 5. Story clarity. Each character should be immediately recognizable from its attitude, shape design, costume, setting. Everything is telling the viewer, "This is who I am". Not subtle. One simple idea: Crazed Goblin, Poisonous Assassin, Steadfast Knight. 6. Whimsy. Every character and object in the game is designed to be a little (or a lot) over the top. Insanely evil demons with glowing eyes, heroic paladins with glowing armor and square chins of righteousness. It's all a little silly and tongue-in-cheek. Monsters may be horrifying, but also a little ridiculous. Finding that correct balance of humor is key. Anyway, enough of that. I recommend that you take some sample Hearthstone artwork and do a direct and faithful, one to one copy of it. This should help more than anything as far as technique and color choices. Look up your favorite HS artists and see if they have any tutorials. Study their work. Follow them on instagram. Good luck! Dick

Hi @Dick Hill, I have no experience with the "sight size" method, but hopefully I can help with some tips on proportions. First, in this video Stan Prokopenko explains how he measures proportions with the help of a pencil: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzDGO0LssEM&list=PLtG4P3lq8RHFRfdirLJKk822fwOxR6Zn6&index=8 When I draw I often start the way you describe, by putting a line at the top and the bottom of my canvas, around the places where I think I want my drawing to stop. Sometimes I also do this on the horizontal axis. With every line or point I put on paper, I try to compare this new line or point with the lines/shapes I already put on paper. What I focus on are the angles and distances between my lines. I also imagine vertical and horziontal lines through certain points of my drawing (sometimes using my pencil), to check if certain elements line out correctly. I think Stan also explains this in his video. I usually want the general proportions of my big shapes to be in the right place first, and when I am happy with how these turned out, I work my way to the smaller shapes. There definitely is room for inaccuracies this way, but with the help of a pencil (like in the video above) and by checking and comparing continuously, hopefully there is less chance of such inaccuracies. When you really want to be on point, the help of a grid can come into place. Useful for drawing from photos, but also from drawing from life if you make use of a frame ( so a bit like ratio glasses ;)) : https://www.npg.org.uk/learning/digital/portraiture/perspective-seeing-where-you-stand/the-drawing-machine.php http://www.howtodrawjourney.com/drawing-grids.html -Leon

Dorian - I just watched the accuracy section of your drawing guide, great stuff, thank you! Quick question: When drawing from life, it's often the case that my drawing will not be "sight size" on my drawing surface. How can I accurately measure my subject and then transfer that measurement accurately to my drawing? Is it a case of simply deciding to place a hash mark where I think the top of head should be on my paper, and a hash where I think the bottom of the foot should be, and make that my vertical "master measurement" that all other measurements are compared to? It seems like that leaves all other measurements open to guestimation and inaccuracy as you translate measurements from the subject up or down in size to match your first measurement proportionately on the drawing. Is there a better way? Ratio glasses perhaps? ; )

Any suggestions on how to improve consistency? sometimes I sketch something I'm proud of, considering my level... the day after is terrible

Stephen - Thanks so much for this demo! On my Proko page video feed the drawn image is distractingly going in and out of focus. I'd guess that the camera is set to autofocus and that when your hand moves in to make a pencil mark, the focus moves away from the paper surface and tries to focus on your moving hand. Maybe try locking focus on your camera onto the drawing surface to avoid this "focus pull".