Journey of someone who has never drawn

[magic breach]

Time to pile on another commitment; one that I have been wanting to do for many years. My two motivations are:

• As a game developer I want to be able to tackle both programming and art.
• I want to draw cool stuff and tell stories at a visual level.

Funnily enough, I said on this very day one year ago that I'd start art but university ate up my time, hopefully this time I can commit to this properly

With art style, I don't know yet since that's something that's going to be developed overtime. I'm definitely going to start traditional with pen and paper only but eventually make the move to drawing digitally once I am good with the fundamentals of art. I do want to be able to draw backgrounds, objects, and people, so I can honestly expect myself to spend years until I am good at these 😅

I'm going to focus solely on mastering the fundamentals first instead of drawing completely random stuff. This means my first order of business is starting with drawabox and learning the fundamentals of linework.

Also, as an aside, feel free to criticize any artwork I post here or my way of learning things. Criticism is my bread and butter.

[magic breach]

Day One

Short day since I started this pretty late. I want to try committing 1-2 hours to art daily most of the time.

I like drawabox so far, although I need to mentally prepare myself for the 250 box challenge. Since I am hyperfocusing on learning the fundamentals of art first, I will need to face the grind 💪.

I did my first exercise with superimposed lines and I think the results were mediocre. I got the hang of drawing with my arm which is much better than using my wrist.

A lot of things had went wrong this exercise. I did not have a pen and hand which was needed for the course, so I ended up using a pencil just this one time. I think it made a very subtle inward dent where I drew, which either threw off subsequent lines or allowed me to draw a near perfect super imposed line. My hesitation on some lines did not help as well. Over all, the fraying is pretty ugly but as it was said, just move on. I'll redo this exercise in the future to gauge my improvement.

Overall, I'm enjoying this. The process of drawing lines nonstop which will eventually accumulate into drawing boxes was oddly relaxing after a long day.

Tomorrow I will do the ghosted lines and ghosted planes exercise.

[magic breach]

Journey of someone who has never drawn

[magic breach]

Day Two

First full day of learning art. I continued with Drawabox and I'm happy with what I got done compared to yesterday, likely thanks to following the instructions this time by using a pen.

The ghosted lines exercise went very smooth. The first handful of lines were wobbly but I corrected it fast. Overall, these are good lines apart from the overshoots and the missed goals here and there.

The ghosted planes exercise also went surprisingly well, not much I can say on that. The first three were pretty bad; I wanted to see how well I'd draw them without rotating my paper to a comfortable angle. Nonetheless that was a bad idea. Outside of some wobbly lines and releasing my pen too early for some lines, I am satisfied.

Tomorrow I'm going to take a break from Drawabox and draw a few everyday objects. I said in my initial post that I'd strictly learn the fundamentals first (lines, shapes, and perspective) but I realized this may be harmful to my journey. I'm going to suck it up, accept bad results, and try to draw other stuff while applying the fundamentals I am constantly learning.

[carmine island]

hey man, gl on ur journey

wishing the best for u 💪

also ive seen u wanted to start with drawabox, i started with drawabox too but weeks later i quit due to burnout, so one thing that has helped me the most for drawing everyday is trying to make the process as enjoyable as i can

i started learning how to draw again but i took it with a different mindset

also i recommend u look at prokos drawing basics course, u wont regret it

[magic breach]

Thank you! I'll be sure to check out their course.

[magic breach]

Day Three

Today was a failure in finishing good artwork, the first of hundreds I will anticipate. Today was a success in learning.

Today was the first day I seriously took the time to draw something other than lines and plain shapes. I watched the first set of videos on Proko's free lesson samples uploaded on Youtube which was a tremendous help. In the future I'm definitely going to buy their full course.

I decided to draw three things: A pear, an apple, a pickaxe, and a coffee cup. These would all be based on reference photos.

My first attempts at this turned out really ugly, which I won't share. I did some digging around on Youtube and I eventually learned an important thing which will shape my mindset: Breaking everything down into simple shapes. Very useful.

Very funny thing, this took me two hours. Drawing the linework was long and shading took me even longer. I hope it does not take me twenty minutes to draw something simple like an apple when I get better.

As for my self criticisms with each piece of artwork:

• The pear was satisfactory. Definitely the best of the three. I chose to draw one of those lumpy looking pears and I think it turned out great. The proportion on the bottom right was really unnatura and I think the dent on the bottom could look better. I did not approach the shadows right at all I think. First, there's an inconsistency where I spent the first half of my time shading this doing repeated small strokes before switching to repeatedly moving my pencil to handle the shadows.

• The apple is terrible. I have no clue why I felt dissatisfied with the first apple whose shape looked decent enough. I could've just shrunk the indent and moved the stem but instead I redid it and ended up with a horrible looking apple. I halfassed the shading and it turned out horrible.

• The pickaxe is bad. I think the linework is a bit messy and I did not do a good job cleaning up the sketches. The proportions of the blade is misaligned and it seriously did not help I ran out of space in my paper. The shading turned out decent though.

Although my focus isn't shading right now, I feel like my approach to shading is wrong. The direction of the strokes composing the shading follow the light source but I feel like it should follow the shape of the object so I can easily define more features like its roundness? I don't know. I'll find out soon.

I will be sure to cherish these ugly drawings.

[lime belfry]

welcome to the art community dude! we're all happy to have consumed another poor soul lol

i would be really interested in helping you or giving you some pointers or ideas if thats something you would want! obviously no pressure, youre doing great so far :)

good luck!!! dm me if you want some in-depth pointers :)

[carmine island]

u shouldnt look for good artwork but improvement, It doesnt matter if ur drawings look like shit bc thats normal u are barely starting, dont get too attached to a drawing bc otherwise u could get frustrated if things dont come out as u expected

[magic breach]

Thank you! You're free to give pointers and advice whenever :).

[magic breach]

You are correct. I do strive to make sure what I draw is the best as possible but I am expecting my art to not look good for a while until I improve. I'd definitely like to compare these drawings to what I end up drawing in the far future to see how I improved since it'd be great mileage.

Ultimately, I think I'm doing the right thing as long as I am enjoying drawing.

[carmine island]

yes

as long as u are ENJOYING the process

then the rest wont be too much trouble

[carmine island]

also i didnt mention it but the pear and the pickaxe dont look bad

gl bro