Greetings! I am Shackman, a failed novelist who became a failed game developer and now I want to become a… really good artist! I used to be a poker player and publicly writing about your journey was really common because it encourages honest self reflection, motivation and tips from others, and the occasional friendly kick in the butt. It was also really cool to have those blogs all in one place and in a forum so there is high visibility and very little friction for discussions. I keep hearing about this thing for art journeys back in the days at conceptart.org, but that site is gone and I couldn’t find an alternative. Instead of whining I decided to take a shot at getting the ball rolling myself. I chose this site because there are a lot of artists here who are beginners/intermediates but dedicated enough to have a promising future ahead of them. I also trust in Stan and his team to keep this site alive and bustling. I asked in the suggestions forum if I can do that here and got the go ahead, I also asked for a category but there is of course no demand yet. I’ll do my best with this blog so it will motivate other to start their own thread, and maybe one day we get a category. Week 1: I have been drawing on and off for a few years now, but lack solid fundamentals. About 2 months ago I decided to go all in with art. I have made a challenge to draw from life every day. Currently at day 50 something. I use watercolor and paint mostly plein air for maximum frustration. So this week I want to do a few watercolor tutorials, Marco Bucci just uploaded one and there is a recent Gouache tutorial on the Proko channel. Besides that I’m doing the 250 Box Challenge for drawabox.com and some Blender tutorials. I use an app to track my progress, and split my time into equal parts of drawing tutorials, drawing for fun (podcasts listening allowed), Blender tutorials and Blender freestyling for fun (no podcasts though as that would just irritate me when trying to do things in Blender).