It all started during the 2020 lockdown
Inspired by Litmusik I want to recount my art journey here as both a way to look back on my own progress but also, hopefully, to inspire others to start their own art journey.
Just as COVID was hitting Japan, I was transferred to a new city in the northern region of Japan, Tohoku, when I suddenly found myself with several months off due to school closures. I was bored one day and watching videos on youtube, it was then I stumbled upon how to draw and how to 3d sculpt videos. This lead my down a rabbit hole that exposed me to Proko, Sinix, Ethan Becker and many other learning channels. They all mentioned something I never heard anyone talk about before, fundamentals. Around this time I also discovered a post by Alex Honeycutt (Radiorunner) on reddit about his self-taught curriculum, which I started to follow. At first I followed the old curriculum and kind of did it haphazardly but when he released the new streamlined version I switched completely to that.
A little background
I took art classes in college because I wanted to be a professional artist but I struggled to improve at drawing. The prevailing idea seemed to be “you just have to draw a lot”. I once asked an artist at LA Comicon, and he said the same thing “I just draw a lot.” I heard the same thing many times from amazing artists, the absolutely unhelpful advice to just “draw a lot.” Maybe it’s because I may have ADHD (or possibly ASD) that I was still left wondering “How? How exactly do you draw, and what do you draw?” I ended up finishing my degree in IT. Although I did work in graphic design for a few years, but that was all page layout oriented (technically my original path was called commercial art.)
I had been fond of drawing as a kid but I never got really good. I tried to improve at one point in my early 20s, but ultimately I gave up because it seemed like it was impossible.
In college it was just kind of assumed that you would just “get it” through enough practice. Realizing that there was actually a set of very specific exercises you could do to improve, realizing that art is a set of technical skills that can be learned (and mastered) quite easily through repetition and practice, was a game changer.
Once I started drawing again I realized how much I missed it, how much I loved it. I’ll try to recount my journey over the last 3 years as clearly as I can. There maybe some gaps, I’m just referring to my spreadsheet where I track all my progress, so if something wasn’t documented in there it might be lost in the sea of sketchbooks I have taking up space in my tiny apartment.
By the way at the time of this writing, I have 3901 hours spent doing art stuff over the past 3 years. It averages out to about 3.5 hours a day (including only days I drew on, not every day. I often took off Sundays or whole weekends here and there to spend time with my SO). I’m just starting Term 5 in the Raidiorunner Curriculum.
Draw-a-box
I started draw-a-box in the final days of April 2020.
Some of the exercises were grueling. I think everyone starts to hate boxes by the end. However now that I’m finished I realize how important it is for developing your sense of thinking and seeing in 3d.
Now we start getting into the fun stuff with plants and insects, unless you hate insects.
At this point I decided to do the final lesson digitally using Clip Studio Pro.
Final thoughts on Draw-a-box
I’d recommend it. It can seem daunting, but if you set small goals and just do a little each day you can get through it and the benefits will be a solid drawing habit and a good foundation to build future skills on. However, one thing I want to say that I did many other things at the same time as DAB, mainly due to it being broken up in the RR Curriculum but also for sanity’s sake. In the end I was only doing DAB a few days a week. This was also due to me having trouble sticking to the 50% rule and drawing for fun. Drawing from imagination was not a fun experience for me and I struggle to make time for it even now. I had brief stints where I was able to do it but it seems like the well would run dry and I’d run out of inspiration. I’ll have to make another post on that.
