Animating and Art Talk with Special Guests (Livestream)

Watching this discussion around 1:15, it strikes me that there is some essential missing life-experience here on the part of Sinix & Zapata. They are groping to understand what is commonly referred to as "muscle memory". I have experienced this phenomena in sports, performing live music, self-defense, and now art. When you are first learning a process, everything is routed through a very delibrate "frontal cortex" cognitive processes. You are using a "general purpose" portion of your brain to carefully think through something new to you. However, after some amount of practice-time, your brain grows the necessary pathways to perform certain tasks (like Sinix's example of a drummer doing syncopation) so that these actions become "automatic" and (cognitively) much, much faster than having to effectively "think them out". That's why they speak about "letting yourself go" in art (or music). All that really is happening in that case is that you are getting your slow, cumbersome, frontal-cortex "self" out of the way so that the fast-path reflexes can take over. Those reflexes are super-efficient at doing pre-learned, repetitive actions only...not new tasks. This is the origin of the phrase "don't over think it". Sinix is clearly in the early stages "just getting into music". Hence his enthusiasm, and need to disect the various elements with his cognition, in order to break it down into elements to practice. That's exactly where I am right now with art. It's a new skill and so takes a lot of time and thought. Other, older, skills like playing soccer...I just do the mechanics subconsciously, freeing the conscious "self" to do things like focus on strategy, since tactics are now "hard-wired". The other thing I noticed was that, unlike Marshall---who has a later-in-life generalist's interest in eclectic minutia---the younger crowd has a much more career (or "what will be my functional place in the world") focus to their mental exploration. What's "interesting" is almost wholly a function of what you still need to learn.

What are some non-art skills that helped you most in your career?

Just stopping in to say hello, must go teach soon, nice to see Marshall back and everyone

Will you post the vod on youtube? I'm in philosophy class at the moment :'(

Most of you currently or have offered paid mentorships to students. This is clearly an appealing option to art school for many reasons. I'm curious to know what are the minimum level of pre-developed skill is best to bring before starting one of these mentorships? This is something that I don't really see listed by potential mentors. Will you take anyone and work with where they are, or recommend a certain amount of self-education first? I'm very curious about what is best to maximize the experience for both you and the student.

Any advice or tips and trick for an inspiring concept/illustration artist in planning his/her day out. What I mean is how much time do you need to invest in the creation of different parts of a portfolio, doing studies.. etc. I'm awful at planning those and I'm also kind of stuck, not knowing where to begin or how. PS. Especially if you're working 9-5 ':D Thanks in advance, and hopefully my questions are understandable as English isn't my mother tongue.

Hi fellows! You should talk about NFTs stuff. That is my topic suggestion for such legends! Many Thanks!

What are your thoughts about the idealization of the old masters?

Any updates on Marshall’s perspective course? For the meantime. If you had to choose, what is the one beginner perspective course or book you recommend?

Hello to all, Drawing cubes from different angles is the most effective perspective exercise that I know. Shading basic geometric shapes is a exercise with equal importance for well, shading. Is there a exercise for practicing colour theory that is as important as the above mentioned are for their disciplines? Best wishes from the Netherlands, Iggy

What was the last thing you all drew? (Unposted artwork only!)

Your opinion on 3D art and is that “safe” future job for artist?

1) I really enjoyed Sinix video on pre-realism, realism and post-realism as part of an artist's journey. It opened my eyes to what an artist contributes to what he or she sees, and why hyper-realism is not very exciting. I would enjoy hearing the group's thoughts on that. 2) Also, Ahmed Aldoori's physical sketchbooks are (to me) much more exciting and inspiring than his (or anyones?) digital art. I'm not sure what is missing from most digital art, and I would like the group to discuss its short comings (we all know its obvious advantages). In his book, Patrick Jones talks about a piece getting over-worked and having an eye for when it passes it peak---is it possible that digital art makes it too easy to blow past a piece's best version and polish out all of the quirky character that makes it unique and interesting? 3) I was listening to some of the Black, White, Grey (https://www.bwgcast.com/) podcasts and was stunned to learn how reliant on references (photo shoots) modern professional artists have become. Is this a result of the schools, the easy access to digital media, or something else? I had heard that comic book artists from th 1950's and 60's actually frowned upon using reference. It seems like there should be a happy middle ground that needs to be (re)discovered. A great artist not being able to draw (a kangaroo) from imagination is sad to me. 4) Here's a recent post about NFTs from the artist Matt Ray: "It looks like the NFT “crypto-bros” are starting to set their sites on any “low-hanging fruit”, i.e. small-time creators like myself, in an effort to purloin our images in the NFT gold rush. If anyone ever sees my art/images as NFTs, 1. I did not authorize it, and 2. please report as I will not support NFTs." What is often advertised as "helping out the little guys" (i.e. starving artists) often gets twisted into something that ends up helping out "the money guys" instead. Is anyone in the group worried about this kind of theft? 5) Lastly, Marshall should talk about Kley and his upcoming course (which I'm very excited about). If he had to pick just one Kley book to buy, from the ones he recommends, which one would it be?

If one of you said "I feel a bit peckish" then took out your phone and ate it like a chocolate bar and said "Hmmm delicious",would you say anything about it? Also do you guys have any underrated artist that you want to shoutout?

Hi dear Marshall, hi dear guests! I am following you for a long time now, and I must say I learnt a lot of things from you, in the Draftsmen podcast - which I miss so much! At the moment I am a full time artist working on casino slots games, but since about 5 years I am trying to build an independent artist career. How can an artist like me, with a very small social media following (around 2000 followers on multiple platforms) reach a larger audience and grow, in order to live off personal merchandise, Patreon, etc? Or is it better to just focus on the quality and technique of my art, on the honesty of the ideas I want to portray, and on having fun while I am creating? And just let go of wanting that social media growth, since it is totally out of my control? Thank you !

Three questions: What is something undiscovered (in your opinion) about art and/or design that you are personally seeking to discover? If you had to create a guide book on art, but it had to be the most specific topic you can write about, what would that topic be? And finally, who among you likes beer and puzzles?

How do you learn composition the best way? Are there book recomandationen, or did you learn it just by trying things out? Thank you, Linus from Austria

I find myself passionately pursuing the freedom that drawing from my imagination gives me. I am having trouble finding ways to expand my imagination and find my own truth with art. Even with all the resources available on the internet I find this subject hard to get concrete feedback on. I was hoping to find some guidance from professionals such as yourselves. Best wishes, thank you for the time.