@Emma-Echter "I am ridiculously in love with it" Yeah, exactly!!!!
I had an intuous pro before, it is a big difference. And I always use the shortcuts from my laptop too so no problem at all!
I recently changed to Krita. This program has a pop-up palette in wich you can choose color, brushes, enter full screen, rotate the image, mirror it, etc. very useful
here's my set up:
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@Griffin I looked back at mine and remembered I had a variety so this is how I laid mine out (below). Maybe it will help you also because I didn't want to snip off the edges of any of the work. Note these are digital and I don't work digital anymore. I love seeing these and what people choose.

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I think I tried to limit to 3-4 values which was tricky.

@Griffin If the assignment is composition and value try to find drawings "coloured in" not just line-based. I think if you find some really nice compositions in line work then use them for the composition part only. I suppose once you find work whether paintings or drawings and do the value study part, you could try and place what you learn value wise to the line drawing compositions to experiment. If you don't want to do that much work I'd stick to the homework more closely. I am sure you could find other line based work that has more values -graphic novels etc.

I very much enjoyed this class though I never completed it and struggled to apply it to my own work. I look forward to returning to it in the future.

@LauraA Oh, that is interesting, I hadn't noticed the swirls, but you're right, I am drawn to more organic shapes and linework for sure. Thanks for pointing it out! That may be a visual theme I try to be more intentional about as I do thumbs for the new pieces.

And yes, the making-work-too-dark thing is something I am trying to be more intentional about as I push forward in this. I am actually currently in the process of lightening up many of the pieces here because, yeah, too much black, haha. Especially if I want to lean into the kidlit market for sure. I think it's probably because I am just drawn to that look personally. Hence my struggle with "do I want to do kidlit, or YA graphic novels?" Cause I feel like you can get away with more darks in a a GN.

I really appreciate the feedback! Next week I'm planning on really intensely doing some research and media studies to figure out what I want the focus/theme of my portfolio to look like. I've got a few ideas bouncing around, I just have to remember not to put too much pressure on myself since I'm at the stage of my career where I'm still finding my style/voice and my portfolio will probably change pretty regularly as I "get the bad work out," if you will, haha.

@m-barron My understanding was that they tried to design the courses so you can work digitally or traditionally (I could be wrong, but I feel like I’ve read that somewhere). I would also think that if you’re planning to work digitally in the end anyway that it should be fine. And better than not doing the course at all! 😊

@Kiel-Ewing Very nicely done!

@Heather-Boyd I think the believability would depend on the context / world in which it lives. But you could still tilt the head down a little so it will have more of a projected beam directed downwards, if that makes figuring out the light / shadow of your scene easier... :-]

I took the advice I keep hearing from Jake, Will and Lee to do master studies. I feel like I am just copying but I am trusting the process of building my new alphabet. EDC28E36-1293-478F-917F-310D530D2E82.jpeg E5AB477F-CCA6-4F8C-8875-26AB0DF5D6FF.jpeg 3BA22EA9-B599-4DF5-8093-9B299A48E9F9.jpeg 57340997-6E41-4D89-A6C1-5EE43A9A993C.jpeg

@evi Very nicely done!
I hope you feel that having that foundation of simple shapes (okay -- boxes) helped in creating this image, which has so much more life in it!

Assignment 5

Here's my interstellar space-junk collector vehicle. :-]

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@Kiel-Ewing Congrats on finishing the course! I think your final assignments turned out great. On to the next course 😃

Ok this wraps it up for me! Purple! Thank you @AnnaDaviscourt for this lesson it was really fun! How to plan and complete a big illustration project!48ECEC57-4097-4A8B-926B-756AD97590D7.jpeg

I originally did this illo for nov prompt together but decided against so with a different color pallet here she is purple!

@djlambson Thank you! I really liked the project idea and is one of the reasons I signed up for SVS in the first place. 😁

I usually don't do super detailed pieces like this either, but I took it one section at a time, and was really proud how it turned out. You totally should continue with the class and I'd love to see what your looks like!

Thanks again!

BEAUTIFULLY DONE!

@Jacy13 thank you! It was kind of a tough one for me. I’m not the best at drawing vehicles as it’s hard to ‘see’ the image while sketching it out but I tried my best to muscle through. I just realized how jacked up and out of proportion the tires are but it’s too late to go back and change it. Ah well haha.

@Griffin you may be going about it backwards. Choose your traits and make the shapes match them. That's what I got out of the class. I wanted a solid jovial yeti. An oblong shape is rounded (friendly) and have some heft to them. So that is what I chose. Maybe if you think like that (traits first, shape to match) the process will be easier. Need someone menacing? Make him angled and sharp. Dependable? Go with a square. Turn the problem on its head. Hope this helps.

@Griffin thank you I’ll have to take a closer look at them!

@txels looking great

I really like the colour choices, and you've definitely got the start of something really cool design wise. It's got a nautical vibe, puts me in mind of a space yacht. I feel like more use of reference could've informed the overall shape... at first I thought the right edge was the front, until I saw the smoke trail. Seems like a lot of flat surfaces at the front would give it real trouble if it ever travelled through an atmosphere.

In terms of storytelling, go back to the reason the vehicle exists. Research. Also is the vehicle new or old? Do the researchers have a big or small budget? That could take it from looking clean, state of the art with bells and whistles, to looking beat up with patches all over the place, maybe even a dented sattelite dish. What are they researching? If it was comets and asteroids, put more dents in there from when they got too close. If it was marine life on other planets, but some alien barnicles on the underside from when they stayed on an ocean planet for a year. If they're measuring cosmic waves, maybe the ship took some damage and parts look a little burned... also it could have more aparatus on it as well as the dish. Think of the roof of the car from Ghostbusters as an example.

This last summer I took Dave Malan's course on portrait drawing and I recommend it. What I found most useful for me was the emphasis on systematically approaching drawing from the larger shapes to the smaller ones and details at the end.

I had made myself a challenge of drawing a portrait a day on summer 2019, and repeated it again on August 2020 starting with Dave's course. The idea is 1-2h per portrait at most.

Here is a sample of the portraits I made, in chronological order. It feels great to see the progress that comes from continued practice.

Feedback is welcome!

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