As was foretold, we've added advertisements to the forums! If you have questions, or if you encounter any bugs, please visit this thread: https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/240191/forum-advertisement-faq-and-reports-thread/
Options
[Enrichment] RESOLUTIONS 2017
Iruka
Registered User, Moderator mod
Registered User, Moderator mod
Set Your Resolution.
>>Enrichment Directory<<
This Monthly Enrichment is super simple. Get in here and talk about your goals.
Look, I know it sucks. Sitting down and asking yourself where you want to be next year can feel like you are setting yourself up for failure, but listen, I'm going to try and help you out. I have some talking points for you,
1. Reflect on your growth so far
If you tend to be down on yourself, practice cutting yourself some slack. Look at your work with a critical eye, but also try and carve out the positives, where did you improve this year? Try to take a step back from the emotional investments you had in the moment, and look at everything you did with fresh eyes.
2. State some new influences
You've had a whole new year of lookin' at shit. So, what new things did you see? What new artist have you developed a crush on? If you haven't got something for this, its probably a good time to tell yourself to look at more art, and try to retain more information about things you see.
3. Choose a technical thing to work on
Instead of saying "IM GOING TO DRAW EVERYDAY" or "I WANT TO IMPROVE ALL OF MY THINGS", pick something you know you are weak at and decide to focus on it. Perspective, Light, Form, all of the basic building blocks are intertwined, but sometimes choosing one thing can make it seem less daunting. Focus in on one thing for a few weeks, and then let time do the natural thing of guiding you to the next task.
4. What is something you'd like to experiment in, you know, for fun?
Remember when art was super fun? Art is super fun. Think about some bullshit that you are going to do that is totally unrelated to your career goals and whatever else you do. Trying to become a concept artist? Well, maybe you think it would be cute to knit a beer cozi for a week. Glue some macaroni to some construction paper like a 5 year old. Give your self a few minutes to not care.
5. Make a long term goal
That standard looming resolution. We are all going to make them. Remember that you can plan a trip but you cant predict the weather. Set your sights, work as hard as you can towards them, and do everything in your power to not make yourself miserable in trying to achieve that goal.
That's it!
If you don't want to use this helpful format, that's fine! If you want to do one of those weird deviant art improvement memes you can do that shit too.
>>Enrichment Directory<<
This Monthly Enrichment is super simple. Get in here and talk about your goals.
Look, I know it sucks. Sitting down and asking yourself where you want to be next year can feel like you are setting yourself up for failure, but listen, I'm going to try and help you out. I have some talking points for you,
1. Reflect on your growth so far
If you tend to be down on yourself, practice cutting yourself some slack. Look at your work with a critical eye, but also try and carve out the positives, where did you improve this year? Try to take a step back from the emotional investments you had in the moment, and look at everything you did with fresh eyes.
2. State some new influences
You've had a whole new year of lookin' at shit. So, what new things did you see? What new artist have you developed a crush on? If you haven't got something for this, its probably a good time to tell yourself to look at more art, and try to retain more information about things you see.
3. Choose a technical thing to work on
Instead of saying "IM GOING TO DRAW EVERYDAY" or "I WANT TO IMPROVE ALL OF MY THINGS", pick something you know you are weak at and decide to focus on it. Perspective, Light, Form, all of the basic building blocks are intertwined, but sometimes choosing one thing can make it seem less daunting. Focus in on one thing for a few weeks, and then let time do the natural thing of guiding you to the next task.
4. What is something you'd like to experiment in, you know, for fun?
Remember when art was super fun? Art is super fun. Think about some bullshit that you are going to do that is totally unrelated to your career goals and whatever else you do. Trying to become a concept artist? Well, maybe you think it would be cute to knit a beer cozi for a week. Glue some macaroni to some construction paper like a 5 year old. Give your self a few minutes to not care.
5. Make a long term goal
That standard looming resolution. We are all going to make them. Remember that you can plan a trip but you cant predict the weather. Set your sights, work as hard as you can towards them, and do everything in your power to not make yourself miserable in trying to achieve that goal.
That's it!
If you don't want to use this helpful format, that's fine! If you want to do one of those weird deviant art improvement memes you can do that shit too.
+1
Posts
2016: http://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/202615/enrichment-resolutions-2016
2015: https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/186005/jan-monthly-enrichment-set-your-resolution/p1
General Enrichment info:
Enrichment activities aim to encourage you to tackle a small but useful assignment every month. They are either multifaceted, or loosely defined, giving you the option to mold it to help you reach previously held aspirations. They will mostly be assignments that you can fulfill in whatever media, and commit whatever time you feel benefits you.
What Do I Gain From Participating?
If I'm at all qualified, I will try to provide crits and support to the people who participate. I hope that people in the thread also engage in a little more cross talk when they are working on the same assignment. I will do my best to not let anyone's work go un-commented upon. I will also try and load the OP with resources for everyone to draw from on the topic at hand.
May I post an old work if it fits into the topic?
You may post work that you are currently working on, or plan to revisit during the month. Don't post old work if you have no intention of touching it. If I spend time commenting on year old work and then you never do anything to it within the activity, I will shun you.
May I post inspiration and links even if I'm not going to really participate?
So long as this aspect doesn't get in the way of people posting work for actual crits, this is a great place to just throw up some art that is related to the topic and you think its helpful. Link the source, and spoiler images so they don't detract from people working on assignments.
May I suggest a topic?
Sure! If a bunch of people have something they want to work on, I'm happy to make that the next assignment. Just try and keep it something that all artists can do (like color studies) and not something that requires materials that are inaccessible to a large percentage of members (like ceramics, or metalwork) If there is something that members would like to do and it has a fairly low material buy in, like sculpey maquettes, I'm cool with that too.
Deadlines
I will pretty much rotate these out monthly without exception. Perhaps if there is a popular one I will let it run for two months.
Previous Threads:
2013
JAN-BrandYourself
FEB-Simple Shapes
MAR-Show Your Work
APR-Color Studies
May-Hands and Feet
JUN-Still Life
JUL-Character Construction
AUG- (off month)
SEP- Perspective and Environments
OCT- Thumbnails and Silhouettes
NOV - NatCoWriMo
DEC - Secret Santa.
2014
JAN- Resolution
FEB/MAR- Anatomy
APR-Color Theory
MAY- ??????
Jun- Finding Inspiration
1. Reflect on your growth so far
I spent a lot of 2016 putting out fires in other parts of my life, but I got a lot more confident in my drawing and sculpture once I gave myself permission to just try things instead of trying to create perfect perfect perfect things all the damn time. (Hey, I also bashed out a novel in three months this year, and that's pretty far from perfect; I don't know why I expect instant perfection everywhere else in my life.)
Life drawing outside of a classroom context has been super helpful for my portraiture and I'm actually possibly going to start teaching intro level sculpture and mold-making for the casual adult-learner art school a few blocks from my house (?!?) so I'm feeling a lot better about my fundamentals and abilities than I was this time last year.
2. State some new influences
I read a lot of webcomics this year. Like kind of an absurd number. My art crush du jour for 2016 is Taylor Robin of Never Satisfied; I seriously admire how fast Taylor works. I bought a commission from her as one of my self-care rewards for finishing my novel this year and holy crap is it awesome and cool and... totally different from my own goals as an artist but totally inspiring all the same. Very skilled at evoking character through body language and expression. Even though she's not stylistically similar to where I want to be as an artist, I'm definitely studying for insight.
The Shiflett Brothers also figured out a way to reboot their old forums via Facebook Groups, so now I get a ton of awesome sculpture stuff on the daily, to remind me I need to keep pushing and working hard there as well.
3. Choose a technical thing to work on
I have a couple of technical things for varying degrees of technical.
I want to get better at finding the natural stopping point for a piece or project. I'm really, really bad at this. I stop some things (most things) before they're really finished because if it's a sketch or a doodle or a study it never has to be perfected, and then some things I'll redo fifty times trying to get it "right" instead of just accepting that maybe it's not the best ever but it's still like, good or okay.
I want to get better at rendering certain things as I think I have used style as a crutch for a long time and ugh, it's super frustrating, but I will cover that... in the next thing-->
I need to work on not being so damn ridiculous about letting people see my work in progress and to that end, one of my tangent goals is starting an actual real art thread in here instead of just periodically doing a driveby in the doodle thread.
4. What is something you'd like to experiment in, you know, for fun?
I definitely want to keep doing my dumb side projects like randomly working on doll heads or whatever, but I'd like to be a little more focused with some of that stuff than I was last year. Though, in fairness, a lot of the past year has just been shit because of Family Trubs, but. whatever. I need to get back in the saddle, etc.
5. Make a long term goal
I have a short story that I think would make a great (finite! shortish!) webcomic, and I think ultimately I would like to make that a side project. I need to do some development work to make that worthwhile, which I think would be a good project for getting better at seeing the stopping point of something--making myself let go and publish a page whether it's perfect or not might be a good goal, or it might be terrible. This is something I would want to do for fun, so I'd have to come up with some parameters that would keep it from becoming The Worst.
I'm giving myself some space to enact this; I'd rather spend a fair amount of time on developing the art and style and taking my time, but I'd like to use that as a place for ultimately creating myself a parameter of output. I feel like the goal of eventually putting out a comic is like the "by the end of the year" goal, and doing the development work is the making and using my personal thread to learn some shit and hopefully make some cool stuff.
let's do this thing, 2017! Please feel free to nag or remind me that I said I wanted to actually work on improving some shit because I am sure I will "forget" accidentally on purpose. >.<
Uncanny Magazine!
The Mad Writers Union
Life drawing is looking better than a year ago. Physical media is starting to feel more natural. Digitally, I'm drawing right onto my Surface, which has been fun and challenging compared to a tablet. I applied to a job with a comic book. I finished a comic book, which is a pretty big deal for me.
2. State some new influences
Akira Toryama comes to mind, who I've always liked generally, but in exploring Dr. Slump and his illustrations for Dragon Quest has become a growing influence. Sam Alden is a new discovery, whose comic "Hollow" played so impressively with the passage of time. I don't follow artists half as much as I used to.
3. Choose a technical thing to work on
Drawing from the imagination is a pretty big road block for me. Visualization is hard to do. Form does not flow from my mind. I don't know how to work at this one, except to follow any phase of study with a phase of sketching, application of what I've learned.
4. What is something you'd like to experiment in, you know, for fun?
I want to make a mod for a game. Maybe just a map. A room, even! I've been thinking a lot about chiptunes, too- but maybe I should stick to the visual arts here!
5. Make a long term goal
I'm going to stop lurking and actually talk to artists. Even if it's just a drive-by compliment on Twitter, I want to be able to say I've put in the effort and communicated, every day, rather than hid. This post counts btw.
As far as tangible product, I want at least three new portfolio pieces. It hasn't been updated since graduation, I'm not even trying. New Portfolio, 2018! ...Though a clearer idea of what I want to do for a living is probably a smarter place to start.
This past year has been one long grind of fundamentals, focused on portraiture and figure drawing. I have improved a lot, relatively speaking. Face construction is good enough now that I need to look to individual features and expressions. For figures, I can do a generalized figure with some issues outstanding (joints, stiffness, etc). I'd say that right now, I'm in the awkward adolescence of basic portrait and figure drawing. Everything looks awful as I work through the uncanny valley.
Influence
I can't name a specific person as dominant. I've been trying to avoid imprinting too hard on Watts and collecting a lot of cool concept art to try and expose myself to a variety of techniques. If anything, I've been shedding artists as I start to notice their deficiencies. I'm a bit afraid of committing to strong influences at this point.
Technical Goal
My current technical goal is to finish basic figure drawing and portraiture by summer. I don't consider this to be any kind of stopping point, but the point at which my figures look recognizable and human so that I can start building towards more complex expressions.
Experiments For Fun
Wait, people have fun with art? I kind of figure fun is the thing that comes after fundamentals when you can actually execute on ideas.
Long Term Goal
Aesthetics. I want to work on pleasing anatomy and portrait. I know the basic structure of an eyelid, but I'd like to build that eyelid into part of an aesthetic whole. Same for figures. I can draw a bunch of bumps and flats for muscle groups, but they need to link together before that gives me the impact I want. Eventually, that opens up questions of style, but I want to focus on realism from reference and imagination before that.
Also, I should probably post more on the AC, even if my art looks awkward.