Week 41 I drove to Berlin and jumped head first into the art scene. I went to urban sketching meet ups, figure drawing, group portrait drawing, went to the natural history museum twice and even organized sketching at the zoo, to which 8 people showed up. I'm enjoying socializing and talking to artists so much that I can't believe how I managed to stay isolated in a little town all these years. This week marks one of my biggest triumph over my social anxiety. It has stopped me from so many good things happening in my life, but now that it wanted to stop my from getting good at art, I took out a baseball bat, broke it’s legs and bashed it’s head in. It’s still alive and always will be, but I’ll be ready, swinging my bat. So while the discomfort and anxiety is as high as ever, I’m simply pushing through. Like the first session at the museum was freaking nerve wrecking, having a crowd behind me and people constantly watching and commenting. I was sweating and blushing and all that stuff. It was also quite tough to pose for the portrait session. I used to get nervous when someone might be looking at me… what a nightmare then to have a room full of people go silent and intensely stare at me. The upside of doing uncomfortable things though is that I’m getting comfortable at it :-) I’m also making an effort to approach people and be friendly and positive, instead of being the shy dude in the corner judging everyone. In just one week I’ve had so many awesome conversations with interesting people from all over the world, and hopefully laid the ground work for future friendships. To my anxieties dismay, I’ve had nothing but positive experiences. Like earlier today I was sketching people at the train station while sitting next to others. It was too close to hide my sketchbook and I knew sketching moving people was going to look like crap. I did it anyway and this couple next to me started talking about ‘this dude is doing some awesome drawings, like he just draws the people over there’, apologized for watching, but then we chatted and they said how much they liked it (wasn’t that good though, lol). I’ve also been asked 3 times now if I’m a professional artist, which I take as a nice compliment. On a side note I’ve applied for a game dev job, there was this thing called money that I could really need. I haven't heard back so I guess it won't happen. Maybe for the best as I feel art is calling me louder every day. Damn sirens... Pics are subway sketches. Always a pleasure when someone falls asleep in front of me :-)

Week 13 + 14 Did plein air pretty much every day, sometimes 2 or 3 paintings. Living isolated with no distractions in the sunniest place of Europe is quite productive (I wouldn’t even know if there is a crazy lockdown going on or not). I got my backpack with all the sketching stuff ready and don’t need to check the weather. Only taking a brake on Sundays because too many idiots shooting around with shotguns, today there were 3 hunting parties and they looked far from professional. Anyhow, all this plein air painting is leading to a break through moment that I can almost grab. I knew the theory of color and light, and could probably tell you where the bounce light is hitting etc., but I feel like I’m reaching this kind of Neo sees the Matrix moment, something that happens to me once every few years when I go all in on something and battle through. It’s not there yet and the damn gouache is sabotaging my breakthrough moment, but I’ll strangle this bastard into submission eventually. I did well with the draw a box insect lesson, did it every day first thing in the morning without distractions. Insects are incredibly fascinating and come in such freakishly shapes it’s hard to even imagine crazier things. I ended up drawing over 30 insects with construction, all in ink without presketch, which means even more drawings ended in the trash. The next lesson is animals, and I want to really crush it. I can see myself go into creature design, so this is the perfect lesson because it’s not just about drawing animals by copying a reference, but comprehending them in their 3D form and function.

Lesson for ArtWod as to choose different animal references, break them down by forms and then combine them to form a new monster.

Starting with the ArtWod program as discovered through Proko. I dig how his instructions are focused around construction. I took what I learned from Draw-A-Box and I can push what I learned about forms even further through ArtWod.

Working on my head anatomy! I like Angel Ganev's course on it. Though he targets digital art medium, for the most part I find his break down and approach to head anatomy very accessible for beginner's like me. Lol his planes of the head video is about 1:30:00 but took me over 3 hours as I kept stopping to take notes. Anybody else do this?

head study

Not sure where these go yet but been working on my portraiture/head anatomy.