Been a while since I posted in here... Get my sh*t together and do some proper practice. I've (surprised myself!) drawn every day since July 7 this year, but it's mostly filler and little real progress. I've struggled for a while with actual 'ideas' of what to draw, but recently realised a lot of that is actually not being confident to be bad at art for a while and just have a go. I see the things I would *want* to draw and think 'no I couldn't make that,' or 'well I'm just not that interested in topic X to do serious practice.' For example, - I'd love to draw characters from my favourite video games or novels, but feel I'm not into learning figure drawing. But, I don't need to learn figure drawing; I need to learn character design and clothing because I'm not trying to be Michelangelo. - I love Rally, but I feel I don't like learning with measurement and tools like rulers, ellipses, etc. But, if I want to draw car, plane or sci-fi ship designs, I need to buckle up and take it on. - I like wasps and insects, but I feel it's too tiresome to sit and do all the fine details with accuracy. For this, I need to just give myself more time. The 'draw daily' thing has actually hindered this, as I'm more in a rush to 'fill a page' (I started each day on a dated fresh page) rather than work on a longer piece. This subject has also hurt my progress because I have actually done some 'good' paintings of wasps and so feel I should be further than I am otherwise! For inspiration, I'm going to make sure I read more inspiring stuff: I enjoy fantasy and sci-fi, but have honestly read only little. I want to have a vast library of source worlds and characters to create from. So these are my goals: - Learn character design, including figure fundamentals. Draw some of my favourite characters, do studies of them. Be comfortable being bad at it. - Learn vehicle/spaceship design: be able to draw cars at different angles and do sci-fi vehicle concepts. - Do more detailed wasp/insect drawings with some fantasy creature designs based off them. - I will jump around between these to keep interest and perspectives fresh. - I will not 'draw every day,' but might do targeted practice for a week or so at a time when I feel I need it. - I'll keep enjoying it, If I stop having fun it's time to stop or re-evaluate - Bonus goal: find an online or in-person community that I can contribute to and benefit from to push myself and enable positive feedback, support and engagement And, Happy New Year all!

I love ballpoint pen too! Great interview, April is such a down-to-earth artist and it's nice to see just a natural passion for creating.

I think it will find uses eventually, but not to the level of hype or threats discussed now. I think fundamentally, 'AI' generated pieces/references/whatever are *empty.* I think we (people) like the idea that a piece either came from something in our world, or was *someone's* idea. AI creating it out of 'nothing' in a sense leaves no exploration for 'why' or prompts to investigating the artist's choices. The AI (Well, ML really...) just *did it*. What do you explore with that other than algorithms? I think you're right on this use-case though, prompts for ideas will I think continue, but they are meaningless (literally) without the artists applying their ideas over it. Sure, people are still going to be wowed by the generated art, but the interest will disappear immediately after that, because who *really* wants to follow an algorithm. And sure, scammers, as there ever has been, will continue to try and fool us (i.e. photobashing) and so we must continue to be careful. On top of all that, I just don't think 'AI' will be profitable enough for these use cases. And, if people are all using these generation services for 'free,' then we have to ask how they are making money then.

Here's my attempt. I think maybe still not simplified enough? I wanted to be gestural as I tend to forget to relax and head into detail instead. I feel like my biggest concern is my line weight, which is always light... until I'm having any difficulty. Sorry, my phone has a terrible camera, I'll try and get better photos tomorrow in daylight.

Really good discussion around AI there, appreciate the insight and I like Jeff's attitude towards retaining individual style while mastering technique.

Just FYI, that insect is a fly pretending to be a wasp :)

First thing I would say is try to make sure photos are in focus and with even lighting so the drawings are nice and clear. I think you have really good proportions and forms, I would try to work on line weight so they're not so dark all over, then add heavier lines for important focus areas or overlapping forms, etc.

Very crude job, but fun anyway. Caption "ah, this is the life"

Ok so I tried to implement the feedback here: added slightly more contrast to the wasp body/head, toned down the contrast in the cocoon with slightly cooler shades (maybe too much?), added a little more detail to the leaf and some light cross-contours to the centre of the leaf. The changes are fairly subtle but I think work well and leave the wasp most focal. Thanks for the feedback!

I think you've done something quite fabulous here. You have great color unity. You've well described so many different textures: the reflective glassiness of the wings, the shiny body, the matte smooth leaf and then my favorite is the fuzziness of the cocoon. If your concern is that the cocoon is distracting, it is a dominant element: You have the highest contrast in values (brightest light, near darkest dark) and it takes up a significant portion of the image. If you don't want it to be a dominant element, it probably would be difficult to recompose at this point without losing parts of the wasp, but you could make all the values on the cocoon more mid range, and increase the difference in values on the wasp where you want people to look (maybe brighten the highlights on the abdomen right next to the dark rings (ridges? I don't know wasp anatomy. Sorry) All that said: I like it! You're good with wasps. What's your medium?