May or may not help, but Marco did a head painting tutorial on YouTube with proko. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kYtGh2xTAlg really helped me.

I never liked anything I did, either. I had to learn (the hard way) that your imagination is limited by your knowledge. You may feel like you have awesome ideas (and you probably do!) but they will always be filtered through your fundamental skills. If those skills are lacking, the image produced by your imagination gets watered down and ultimately does not reach the potential you'd envisioned. So: to overcome that, I just practiced my fundamentals in the life drawing room. I drew countless thousands of gestures, studied how to build on that with basic forms, and then how to distill all of that into simple, readable graphic shapes. The figure is helpful for this because it's a very complex thing, which means that learning it will make other things easier. From there I continued doing my own imagination art. Inevitably they'd still fail, BUT I was starting to see small improvements. That buoyed my spirits and I was just always very honest about where something failed, and then sought out exercises to shore up those deficiencies. In a few years I was able to create something that I could be happy with. I hope that helps!

I'll take whatever I can get my hands on. I've got Winsor/Newton, Holbein, Daniel's, and more. These days I've been enjoying the Daler Rowney brand, which (admittedly) Strathmore sent to me as part of a promotion, but I really like it.

Hi Octavio, thanks for the questions! This is a very personal situation you're sharing, and I'll do my best to contribute meaningfully. For your first question - I did have just that experience with anatomy! That's actually how I first discovered the Proko YouTube channel - I was searching for some anatomy lessons that I could start with, in terms of finding out what it is I didn't know. It never feels amazing to be a beginner at something, but honestly, I so enjoy the process of learning that it doesn't really bother me. I'm pretty generous with myself, in that I don't expect perfection fast. Or ever. I just want to improve one little step every day, even if that improvement is not noticeable yet to anybody but me. Just inch your way forward, that is the secret, I'm convinced! I don't know who said this, but some wise person once said that the key to improvement is to compare yourself to who you were yesterday, NOT who other people are today. The feelings indicated in the first part of your comment feels like it could benefit from that quote. Anyway, the good thing about art is that everything's related. When I went back to learn anatomy, I didn't really have to start at step 1. I knew how to draw gestures, and build solid forms. So when Proko taught me about the complexities of the forearm muscles, that information was new to me, but I was able to plug it into my existing skillset. So that's the thing I think you should do: make sure your most essential fundamentals are in place. This, to me, is gesture and form. Be able to capture gestures quickly (movement, pose, weight), and then build on that framework with simple 3D forms. You can then apply that to so much of art. Perspective is another one that you should really get down early (as it's very related to drawing 3D forms.) With those tools under your belt, you will never be back at Step 1 again! As for the second question-- I don't think it's BAD to want to do all those things, but you have to prioritize. If you are still gaining skills, choose the subject or area of study that's going to give you the most overall mileage. I think that's usually the figure, as the lessons you learn there will make virtually everything else easier. Then from there you can break down the various art processes and filter them into your study. So maybe on Monday and Tuesday you only use lines to construct forms. Then maybe on Wednesday you try and add tone to your drawings with just one dark value for all of the shadows. I would avoid lots of jumps from figures to landscapes to concept art to illustration, etc. It's great to do that over time, but what I think is best is to establish momentum on one thing (again, I recommend the figure) and really try to get some mileage in there. Maybe a few weeks' worth of study is in order. Then maybe ease yourself into adding landscapes to the mix. Eventually any and all art practice will just be branches of the fundamentals. But at first, you want to find a topic to "settle into," and let that be a primary outlet for your study. That's my opinion, anyway! Good luck with your journey :)

Thanks, Matthew! You know what, I think 'Multiply' mode is the only mode with an analog equivalent! Other modes are a little more "digitally algorithmic" with how they affect value and color. For example, if you're in "Screen" mode (a lightening mode), it will lighten your value and color, *toward* the color you have selected. So if you've got a medium yellow color, it will lighten your colors and also move them toward that yellow. Color dodge and Linear dodge are similar, just more aggressive versions of it. I suppose in traditional media this would be like lightening a dark color with, say, Cad Yellow Light, or something. But digital color mixtures don't always act the same as physical pigments, unfortunately. 'Multiply' mode is really the only one that acts almost the same as its traditional counterpart. There is definitely a bit of a gap to manage there, coming in from traditional! But honestly, as you can see in my class, most of the time I'm just in 'Normal' mode, painting opaquely on a layer. But I do vary my stylus pressure. Often times I use my trusty ol' round brush with "wet edges" activated (in Photoshop.) This makes the middle of the stroke translucent, and the edges opaque - also similar to how pigment acts in watercolor. I find that I can almost simulate a watercolor wash by getting a very large brush with those settings and pressing lightly on the tablet. Give that a try, too! The nice thing is, this being digital, you have the ability to either go lighter or darker with this 'wash' style of painting. Good luck with your navigating the medium switch! I do find it to be very instructive, using both.

Hey Jeremy! My main advice would be to try painting without a line drawing, AND start with only value. If you are highly skilled with lines, and you feel like that gap is large with your painting skill, then you will always be disappointed with adding colors to your lines. So discard the lines and see if you can start making shapes with swaths of value! The good news is - your drawing skills will be in place for this to be possible for you. After all, a shape is a shape - and whether you're using lines or values to make it, if you know what shape needs to go there, you can adjust your technique accordingly. Using only value will help get used to the change in approach. It will definitely feel uncomfortable to work this way at first, but give it maybe a week or so, and it'll start feeling less foreign. If you're having trouble, try doing a drawing with lines (maybe even shade it with a pencil), then try to recreate that same art but starting with blobs of paint first. Once you can render something with values, then you can try applying color lessons. The most basic and valuable lesson I recommend is separating things into warm vs. cool. Pick a warm light source, and let whatever it hits get that warmth. Is it a red sunset? Everything that sun hits will get a veneer of that redness. Now you have room to let your shadows be cooler by NOT influencing them with that warmth. It's hard to say this in text, but thankfully I have a video on Proko that explains this visually! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYtGh2xTAlg&t=3s Also, paint very simple geometry at first. Put spheres into other people's paintings, seeing if you can get your sphere to match the lighting and color palette. This is a lesson I assign a lot to my own students. A sphere is super easy to draw and paint, so it allows you to just focus on the color aspect. Good luck!

Hi Emyss! The way I do it is I try not to overburden myself with personal assignments. Art block seems to be a function of stress or anxiety, so if I can clear my mind, it really helps put me in a creative place. I try to focus on one task at a time. If I'm making a YouTube video, for example, all my creative energy goes there. And anything I do counts: maybe one day I record a whole demo, but another day I just write 2 sentences of script. Both count as progress! Don't treat yourself harshly if you didn't make huge artistic strides. Just take another crack at it tomorrow, (knowing that we're lucky to be in a place where we can be reasonably sure we have tomorrow as yet another day to try.) This is also how I avoid burnout: but having focused tasks. I can't do 10 projects at once. Well, I can, but all 10 will be compromised. If I do 1 project at once, it gets all my devotion and thought, which always serves in its favor! Also, if a project isn't working, give yourself permission to take a day to try and solve it. But after that, if you haven't made any progress on fixing it, put it away and move onto another one. I learned this, incidentally, by reading books. I used to think I had to finish a novel when I picked it up, as some sort of achievement. Now I'm like...if I'm bored, I'm putting that novel down and picking up another one. So, one thing at a time, count every single thought and contribution as good progress, and try to solve a problem, but recognizing that sometimes the solution is to move on. Oh, and know that you're in this for the long run, and over time your body of work will just grow and grow, to the point where nobody will think you've ever suffered art-block!

Ciao Stefano! Yes, I am Italian, but I don't speak it. My parents (both immigrants) never taught me the language, as they wanted us to be fully immersed in English! I wish I spoke it, but alas. Anyway, I'm unfortunately not sure what you mean by "warm light against cold light." A general rule of thumb is to make the light source influence the temperature of the colors it hits. So if a cold light (eg. Overcast day) is hitting a white ball, that white will shift to a cooler hue. Then the shadow of that ball may NOT shift quite as dramatically to that cool hue, thereby making it feel warmer in comparison. Opposite for warm light. When I paint on multiply mode, I usually am picking very light colors, knowing that everything I do will darken my painting. It's very easy to crush your shadows too dark too soon, and I try to avoid that (unless that is the aesthetic of the picture itself.) I do like to lay in a solid shadow shape first, which will determine the separation of light vs shadow in my picture. Then I can use multiply mode to either add halftones to the light side (which is just a slightly darker version of the average light value) or some dark accents in the shadows. I'm happy my videos have been helping! Good luck with your work!

Thank you, Tobyh - that is high praise indeed, as that is exactly what I want to capture in my art! I honestly don't think there is a specific memory/event/person that I draw upon. It's just the broad feeling of nostalgia and the innocence of being a kid. It informs the way I work, from the subject matter I tackle to the physical way I move my hand and create brush marks on the canvas. Other artists have inspired my aesthetics too, of course, and I've done so many studies over the years. Ultimately those studies lend insight as to what other artists prioritize, and allow me to then reflect on that and ultimately decide on where *I* want to put those things in priority. In terms of movies/media that directly inspired me to pursue this path: the MYST series was absolutely huge for me. Not sure I'd be an artist without them giving me an early jolt of heavy inspiration. RIVEN is my favorite game of all time, to this day. I think it's still fantastic, and holds up despite its technical limitations. Also Toy Story was huge for me, as were a lot of the mid-90s Disney movies.

Hey Mariusz, good question! For beginners: Draw simple 3D forms (boxes, cylinders, pyramids, spheres, etc.) that feel like they exist in a cohesive 3D space on a 2D page. Sometimes you'll need a linear perspective grid to help visualize that space, but practice to get to a point where your brain just interprets the 2D page as a 3D world, and you can "reach into it" with your pencil. Then all you need to do is replace or combine those simple forms to make complex ones! For advanced artists: Challenge yourself with creating different compositions. Go outside and find a scene you like. Study it visually (no sketching.) Then go home, open up a digital canvas or your sketchbook, and jot down 5 different thumbnails that capture that scene in unique ways. Find how to emphasize certain elements and downplay others. Pictures are so malleable and there are a hundred different ways to flavor an idea with composition. Give it a try! All the best with your work,

Thanks, Nathan! Oh, yes. I have a huge horror side of me that comes out in my art - usually around October. It's scattered all over my instagram page (@bucciblog), and I love putting my usually upbeat style into a dark image. Here's a picture of a girl disposing of a body, for example: https://www.instagram.com/p/B393LbEjiK_/ Here's one of a swamp demon! https://www.instagram.com/p/CGII2--Hk51/

Good question. This is my list of important and major art fundamentals, in their simplest form: - Linear perspective - Simple 3D forms - 2D shape design (resulting from your understanding of 3D form) - Gesture drawing (capturing motion, weight, and flow) - Light and shadow shapes (this is how we get into rendering) - Edge variety (hard to soft to lost) - Color temperature (warm vs cool) - Composition (how all of the above elements get arranged into a readable, engaging picture.)

Hi Charline! This is a complex question, and I'll try my best to shed some light on it. Instead of getting mired in blending modes vs color picking, simply try to understand what the color temperature is doing in your reference. Find a simple object outdoors (say, a squareish shed, or an easy-to-draw house), and look at it/photograph it during all times of day. Look at those pictures, and sample the colors. Paint your sampled colors with simple swatches, contained within LIGHT and SHADOW columns. Now study their relationships. You'll find that in the morning and evening light there is a severe difference in temperature, while in the afternoon it's more subdued and a more subtle palette. The nice thing about these "swatch studies" is that you can do them over a cup of coffee. There's literally no drawing or painting involved! But they're helpful because they get you thinking about the overall question of comparing colors. Warm vs cool. Then what you can try and do is recreate the photograph as a quick painting based on what you've learned. See if you can capture the feeling of evening light vs afternoon light by mimicking the temperature differences you see in your swatch studies. I'm pretty agnostic when it comes to picking colors with the color picker vs. using blending modes. I do both in my own work, depending on the effect I want. So long as you understand the relationships between the colors you're using, I don't think the way you tackle it matters so much. Hope this helps a bit!

Thanks for the question! The thing I think is most scary about color is you have SO many options with it. So my best advice is to limit those options. Try a simple complementary palette. That means you only have two hues to choose from (any 2 hues, so long as they're at opposite ends of the color wheel), and you can work within their ranges of gray to create a simple color harmony. This palette is a great intro to color because you basically can't screw it up: it's only 2 colors! You will also garner an appreciation for the power of grays when you use this palette, as that's where most of your colors will exist. My favourite complementary palette is yellow vs. purple. Yellow tends to capture sunlight well, and purple tends to capture the cooler shadows well. Obviously the sun isn't just yellow, but this is a good starting point to capture nature with. Another easy-to-use palette is the Analagous Palette. That's when you choose 3 or 4 neighboring hues on the color wheel and let your painting exist entire within that spectrum. Again, with so few hues to choose from, you're more likely to be creating color harmony and less likely to pick "wrong" colors. While limited palettes help ensure you don't screw up your color choices, you CAN, however, easily screw up your values and lighting. If you do that, no amount of color work will help. I haven't seen your work so I don't know for sure, but the difficulty you're describing sounds sneakily a little more like a value issue than color. I see this a lot in my students' work, too - that is, the thought that it's a color issue when really the values don't read. So make sure that you fully understand your picture's values first! This means clear light and shadow shapes, and then whatever subtle modeling you do with in those light/shadows, you make sure those values have clear shapes, too. If you are viewing your image in grayscale, that picture should read as strong 3D form. If you want to test this, simply paint an image of a sphere casting a shadow onto a table. That is very easy to draw/paint, so you're more likely to get it right. Then you can experiment all day with color options! So, back to the complementary palette. After you've tried that, then try adding a 3rd color. Usually this is called a "Split Complementary Palette" and it's where you take one of your compliments, and choose a color on either side of it. So orange splits off into yellow and red, and you still have the purple on the other side of the color wheel. Give that palette a shot! I don't mean to advertise here, but I just released a class that talks all about this stuff: 'The Color Survival Guide,' available right here on Proko.com!

Traditional work has hugely influenced my digitals. Mostly because with traditional you get used to the idea of working within limitations. We don't have a million brushes to choose from, so you learn to do a lot with a little. That helps demystify and add focus to all the options that digital painting apps present. My best advice is find what strokes you like to make traditionally, then find brushes that come close to that in the computer. This is what led me to my love affair with Photoshop's smudge tool! It seems to act very close to how impasto oils act on canvas, or wet gouache or something. It blends colors and helps harmonize them, which is something I do all the time traditionally. Going the other way, certain layer modes digitally really helped me figure out color. For example, laying some sunlight into a painting with "Linear Dodge" mode really helped me understand how disparate local colors will get "bullied" by an overall sunlight color. I actually want to make a YouTube video about this! Then I could take that knowledge into traditional, and mix my colors with that effect in mind. For example, how does a blue local color look when warm sunlight hits it? Photoshop's linear dodge mode helps to see that (the blues get grayer) and then I can mix with that in mind, when working traditionally. I also love how "Overlay" mode looks, as well as "Soft Light" mode. I use them a lot in my digital work. 'Multiply' mode too, which basically mimics how watercolors work. I hope this helps!

Thanks, Roxane! Style happens naturally over time, and I honestly did not ever really feel like I was ever focused on it. I just practiced my fundamentals. And the stronger they got (for example, my ability to design clear shapes over and over) suddenly unlocked segments of my personality. Things that were already inside me, now could come out. I could move my hand more and more the way I naturally want to, while still putting down good fundamentals. That's what style is - your own personality (which you already have!) coming out on paper, bolstered by good fundamentals. That's also what makes my work (or anyone's work) recognizable: you see their character and personality in the work. Just like you know your friends' quirks and characters, that happens in art too. You just need to give yourself the time to gain intimate familiarity with the many fundamentals of art, and slowly but surely your personality and style will ooze its way in. It's kind of a magical process to have unfold. Enjoy it!