Hey Lydia I just joined SCBWI here in Arizona so I haven't really been able to attend any events yet (there aren't any happening any time soon here) Good to know about the dummy book. I will defiantly make sure mine is done before I go. Congrats and good luck with Cricket Media please let us know if anything comes of it. I've been trying to come up with a good design for a post card myself but it's really hard to figure out what kind of image to put on there. Also really hard to come up with a mailing list.

@Katrina-Fowler so far I am liking it. Have not been able to play to much with it as it took some time yesterday to install everything I need for work on it. I did however take it will be this afternoon while my dog was getting groomed and played around a little in photoshop. Once I am done working today i will finish with the setup. I do have a external monitor which will be set up to use when in my office as well as an external keyboard. The nice thing about the surface book is the keyboard that comes with it, i just think when i flip the screen to draw that keyboard would become unusable. Either way i will work on my new work flow.

I just purchased AstroPad -- thanks for the recommendation! 🙂

@mattramsey He is a freelancer, so I'm not sure what they regularly do... He didn't give me a ceiling but I do think I would come up with an overall cost if I pursue this. It would make revisions and a kill fee easier to understand.

@Biscuits Thanks for your recomendation!

@Lee-White lol That's very true. Thank you for your insight! I always appreciate it!

@Camomilla Looks like you are getting it under control! nice work.

@smceccarelli Thanks for the recommendation will definitely pick that book up.

@Russ-Van-Dine Thank you so much for sharing!

Did I miss the drawing mammals class with @Jake-Parker? I could have sore they were going to release that this month. Or I heard wrong...

Oh thanks,the background is killing me lol.

First off, welcome, and take a deep breath 🙂 The courses are self paced, you can binge watch or watch 15 minutes at a time.

As far as i know, no age limits on the courses. From the ones i have taken, they are good for all ages. There is a new Fundamentals course, and How to Draw Everything is good as well Start with what you are comfortable using! All you really need to start is something to draw on and with 🙂 I believe there is a prompt to pay by credit card when you check out Nothing special is needed. I've used digital and traditional mediums for the classes 🙂 The live course will be critiquing 25 illustrations, and will be open to watch to all. In the past the chat was open to all to ask questions, but the main focus will be on the artist that created the image.

I'm not a collaborator, just been here a while hehe

THANK YOU SO MUCH!! I'm really satisfied with the answer you gave me! I want to master as many as I can if I apply for the courses, Of course I'll have to do the basic first. But I'm really grateful for the reply! I'm so excited about doing this!

Thanks you guys, I'll be sure to check out his classes straightaway!
The thing that daunts me a bit is that I'll have to start coming up with my own landscapes soon... sure, using reference is always a thing, but. I dunno. It's hard to explain.

Camomilla, I thought the same thing but found (and you may know this already) if you click on the double down arrows at the top right beside the, 1 out of 3 etc it takes you directly to the bottom post 🙂

@Chip-Valecek Thank you Chip I will take a look!

I've used Inkscape a bit, though it was a couple years ago. It definitely isn't as good as Illustrator and if you're thinking of doing a lot with vector there is really no comparison. BUT for the price (free 😉 it does a decent job. If you're doing simpler stuff it isn't bad. I don't blame you for wanting to avoid CC--I'm super glad I got CS6 when I could--but if you end up doing a lot with vector, then... well, Illustrator has my vote.

@Dulcie said:

https://forums.adobe.com/thread/1186172?tstart=0

Thank you so much. It works now!!! You Rock!

Hi @Anda-Ansheen, wow this is so magical! LOVE the type integration in with your illustration - it's very strong compositionally and the colour is just fantastic!

I want to point out that just as with your illustration, you should watch out for tangents with type as well:
tangents.jpg

I did a paint-over of your type - I fixed the tangents, and there's at least 10 other extremely subtle things that make a huge difference too. I also thought it would be fun to intertwine the 'S' and the 'C'.

Hope this helps!

myPaintOver.jpg

Glad to help! Actually the other video that might be useful, is Lee's SVS class called Chaos to Control: Custom Brushes in Photoshop...in it he shows how to make various brushes with nice texture, including to make backgrounds, shapes and brushstrokes..it gives a really good run down on how to tweak brush properties to make them work better, and then he also shows a few quick examples of how he uses his own digital brushes in his work.

(I'm also interested in creating digital watercolour so these parts of SVS have stuck in my mind pretty well!)

Hey, long time no post! I registered for the above conference (starts April 29th) and was wondering what I should bring. I also registered for the portfolio review so I know I need to get some images printed. This will be my first time attending a conference. I live really close by so it seems perfect for me! Anybody else going to this?

For fundamental skill, figure drawing seems to be important. I like the DVD course offered by Glenn Vippu (vippuacademy.com or vippustore.com). For books, I like Figure Drawing for Comics and Graphic Novels. Also, Movement and Form by Samantha Yousseff is quite good (studiotechnique.com). If you want to draw from the figure, I like the Live Model series of books and DVDs (livemodelbooks.com). There are many good sources of information. Of course, it depends on what you want to draw.