Shady Art Business

 Art, Education  Comments Off on Shady Art Business
Mar 022015
 

I’m getting ready to start the latest Pencil Kings challenge. This month, it’s the Shading Drawing Challenge, where I hope to get better at shading my drawings, so they look less like lineart and more like … real drawings of real things.

I love how Pencil Kings runs these challenges. It’s easy to pick up a lot of useful info just watching YouTube videos, but just watching videos is a one-way kind of learning, where it’s hard to ask questions or have some kind of ongoing dialogue. The time differential really messes that up, and by the time I get a response, sometime I forget why I asked a question in the first place.

But the PK challenges are a fun kind of group activity that gets everyone doing the same thing, and we have meetings online twice a week, where we can chat with one of the instructors while she goes over some of the topics we’re covering that week. I love that kind of instant feedback. I’ll gather up my questions during the week, and then fire away! The Figure Drawing Challenge in January helped me a great deal, so I expect to get a lot out of this one, too!

Figure Drawing Challenge

 Art, Education, Technology  Comments Off on Figure Drawing Challenge
Jan 302015
 

I use art and photography to feed off of each other. So that one helps the other. Art helps me be creative with photography, and photography helps with art. Pencil Kings rebooted their Figure Drawing Challenge this January, and I had a blast. It was just enough work to learn some useful stuff and make good progress. My drawings are still too awful to share with the outside world, but I’m pleased enough with my progress for now.

I recommend checking out their site. I like their tutorials, and the challenges are great as social and artistic events.

Pencil Kings

 Art, Education  Comments Off on Pencil Kings
Aug 042014
 

To improve my photography, I work on my visual sense. So I draw. To work on drawings and photography, I use Photoshop (and other programs). But my drawing has always kind of… what’s the word?

Sucked.

Yeah, that’s it.

Well, I kept hearing good things about Pencil Kings, so I’m in the middle of giving it a shot. In particular, I’m working on Sycra Yasin’s very thorough tutorial on painting in Photoshop. It’s a really good way to sharpen up those Photoshop skills. For photography, I use Lightroom more often, simply because I think it’s a better tool than Photoshop for dealing with a giant pile of photos without that… Photoshop look.

So far, I’m digging the info in the tutorial, even if I’m sick of drawing the pears and apple. Oh well. That’s how practice is. You draw the dull stuff to make the cool stuff.

It’s worth giving a look. The pricing isn’t too bad– $99/year or $250/lifetime. I’m giving it a year, and if it works out, I’ll do the lifetime thing.

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