Mastodawn

After almost 2 months of hyperfixation and learning to draw, I've finally completed a ref sheet of myself!

I'm so grateful to critters who suffered me sending loads of cursed WIPs and gave me feedback and were supportive as I made progress!

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Froogal

Mar 6

@Zander wow it only took you two months to get to this level? You are inspiring me to pick up the pencil again. Ive never considered my are that good but I went through an obsessive time about 6 months ago where I drew one thing every day no matter how good it was and it helped but wow you are really good after 2 months!

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Zander Mar 6

@Froogal Well, I'm flattered!

I will say though that while what I said is technically true I had a lot of advantages for rapid improvement:

I had the luxury of being able to spend several hours on this same image in the same pose over and over, every day.

Also I did have some basic knowledge of how to use GIMP, which is what I started off with.

Then I switched to Inkscape to do it in vector art (which also felt favorable to an inexperienced artist), where 5 years ago I had some prior adventures doing a few emotes and one front facing view of old anthro Zander.

While none of the actual ability to draw stuck around after that long so I was starting from scratch in skill, I think it did help with being able to use Inkscape more effectively as a tool.

Also last but definitely not least I had the husbanderg who was giving me a lot of constructive criticism and help in the process from his perspective from 3-d modeling things, an art friend gave me a few character design nudges as well...

All that being said though... This was extremely rewarding and it felt like my perception of the world grew a lot from this experience, like needing to look at details of what something is made of instead of just identifying what it is, you know? So I absolutely recommend scratching that itch again for that!

(also, less importantly, it would make me very happy to hear I inspired someone else with my determination too~

)

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Froogal

Mar 6

@Zander awesome! I do appreciate you sharing your journey. I still have plenty of art supplies, maybe I will scratch thay itch. Most of my art is on Reddit right now, and its all physical art. I heard its better to start off physical and move to the computer later, whats your experience with that?

A bat enjoying a banana
https://www.reddit.com/r/FurryArtSchool/s/ki5IEenBj1

Me
https://www.reddit.com/r/dragons/s/x1Ex4CNpcJ

My first digital derg
https://www.reddit.com/r/dragons/s/bFK1c28NWl

For some reason learning the computer drawing was harder for me than regular drawing, and im good with computers.

Also I noticed after I drew a few dergs I noticed they all had the same facial expressions!

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Zander Mar 6

@Froogal I've never done any physical art, but what I can say in general that blanket advice for such a general concept of art sounds a bit odd to me.

It really depends on your goals yeah? If you want to be good at traditional pen and paper art then spending a bunch of time dragging curves around in Inkscape like I have would be inefficient, wouldn't it? You'll get better and more specialized with the medium you're using but there's always going to be transferable skills between them as knowledge in a subject crystallizes.

I like how you can organize all your layers with digital art, drag and resize things, and use perspective tools. Really helps accelerate playing around with something you already drew to see what looks good or better or worse, ya know?

That being said the art you've linked looks good for a sketch a day type thing where you're learning from scratch! I can't say for sure I'd be doing any better if I was given that task.

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Froogal

Mar 6

@Zander its an experiment honestly. Ive always considered this form of art beyond my abilities, but everyone says its just practice and patience so I put it to the test. The goal was to see if I could see measurable improvement over time and after each sketch. The challenge for me is judging my own work too quickly and too harshly. If my dragon doesnt look amazing the first time im not a good artist mindset, I struggle to let that go.

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Zander

@Froogal You can totally can learn how to art! Any type of art! If you are methodical and are consistent you will always get better! I believe in you

But yes, it's important to be a critic of your work but not a judge I guess? Because for me getting good at any skill the process of improvement is the point, not the result of the thing. Results are just a side effect.

So finding weak areas to improve and figuring out how to do that thing better is good. But saying "this looks bad and is disappointing" is not very constructive.