Tips on where to go on from here as a beginner.
9mo
@oneward
Hello! Since the Drawing Fundamentals course is still ongoing, I'm curious about where one can dip their artistic toes in between new lesson releases. I'm particularly interested in the figure drawing, anatomy, and portrait drawing courses. Ultimately, I plan to complete all of them.
Would it be optimal to wait and complete the entire Drawing Fundamentals course first, or would it be okay to explore other courses in the meantime? If so, what would be the most logical order to go through them? I'm concerned that I might easily become overwhelmed as a beginner.
I honestly would go through the previous lessons again just to see how much you have improved. I've been through the figure drawing course a million times over the past 2 and a half years.
Asked for help
Stan may add more entries to the Drawing Basics course, but the ones he has already uploaded lay a solid foundation for future lessons. In my opinion, there is no better place to start learning how to draw than the Drawing Basics course. Over the years, I've honed my drawing abilities by revisiting some of the classes.
I’m coming into the course late so I have no problem with having to wait between lessons yet, but what I am planning to do when I eventually catch up or finish the course, is to go through it all again! Then I’ll be set for other learning in books I have, that have assumed the basics that I’m learning now.
Once you get through the perspective stuff in the drawing basics course, you'll be ready to study other courses that use structural approaches. Two that really lean into that are Marco Bucci's Understanding and Painting the Head, and Micheal Hampton's Introduction to Figure Construction. I haven't taken every course on Proko, so there might be others that reinforce heavily what you've already been exposed to.
Even if Stan posts more in the Drawing Basics course, what's posted so far sets you up well for a lot of follow up instruction. The Drawing Basics course is hands down, the best introductory resource to drawing that I'm aware of. I've been drawing for decades and I keep coming back to some of the lessons to shore up my skills.
The only one I wouldn't necessarily jump into right away is the anatomy course. It's great, but it's a deep dive that will take a while to get through, and I think you would be better served spending time on a variety of shorter courses first to reinforce what you've learned so far.
I'm kind of in the same boat. I'm working on the Drawing Basics course here as a main priority, but have dabbled with a few other smaller courses at Proko when I didn't have any other assignments for the fundamentals course. Recently I started working through the self-study syllabus created by Kristian Nee, which has a thorough (multi-year!) course plan for self study. So far I've found it really helpful! I've attached the full syllabus (it's a super long image file) in case you want to use it also. (Credit: Kristian Nee)
Hello :)
It's a seemingly easy but difficult question!
There is nothing wrong with taking other classes but you're probably right on the fact that the more you learn at the same time the more you'll feel overwhelmed.
The easy answer would be to say work hard on your fundamentals and then go to anatomy and from there branch out to other things like portraits, figures, ...
I've tried to be as logical as possible in my studies but honestly I haven't witnessed any of the "accelerated learning" I thought I would get from it. Also I don't think that any rigid thinking or systems is any good.
I think that if you take good courses like the ones on proko.com you can't really go wrong . Balance somewhat of a structured learning and pleasure learning.
I've heard so many of the great painters said that their education in art was scattered and "they should have focused on this or that" but they are amazing painter now so... Guess we always look for "the best way".
At the end of the day accept that you'll have periods of progress and stagnation and just stick to painting and you'll do just fine :)
This is my own opinion and experience of course. Hope this helps !