art project: 101 hours?

WHAT NEXT? :D

So I’ve got four more Udemy courses, I think I mentioned that:

• “how to actually use clip studio paint in a functional way”
• manga character design/drawing manga
• more generalized character design
• superhero anatomy

and…

oh, no…

…I went to Udemy to make sure I remembered what courses I’d gotten, and the two anatomy courses I’d been eyeing were on sale, along with a bunch of other things, and I accidentally bought

• a two-part anatomy class
• a gesture drawing course
• and a ‘how to draw everything’ course from the superhero anatomy guy

I am NOT (right now) buying another perspective course, but – look, a lot of the goal here for me is to practice, and intellectually I know I could do all of this without the courses, but again, the concrete path to move through is really helpful to me, and there’s definitely going to be a bunch of overlap between what I’ve done, what I’ve got, and what I’ve just bought. But the practice is the point, and the practice will help me gain confidence.

So, okay. Let me take another run at this:

My biggest immediate interest right now is improving my anatomy work. The superhero anatomy course is kind of a “later on” project for me, because I’d like to have a better handle on underlying realism before I lean heavily into the greater stylization of superhero/western-style comics work. So these two anatomy classes I’ve just bought are about…50 hours of videos, which would be intimidating if I hadn’t just finished a hundred hours with time to spare. (Er, that doesn’t make sense. You know what I mean, though.) So I’ll probably move that up to the next part of the overall #CatieDraws project, and aim to have them done within a couple months. Ish. Possibly along with the gesture drawing course, which is…another 14 hours. And honestly, even the superhero anatomy one is really like ten hours, so basically I could look at this as the next 100 Hours is Anatomy, and that would be totally reasonable. I won’t get through all of that in two months, for sure, but that’s fine, because it’s a hell of a lot of study anyway!

Theeeeeeee … the other thing is the Clip Studio class, which, like, realistically I believe I’ll do the anatomy classes on paper because I like drawing on paper and I’m more confident with it. But for web comic purposes I need to be able to work digitally, and tbh, I’d like to do more perspective courses but I’d rather do those digitally because you can lay down perspective lines within the program and that would just be easier. So I probably want to priortize that after the anatomy stuff.

(imagine me making my thinking face)

…so, well. Okay, here’s a thought that I just had, which is: I drew the first two pages of my still untitled web comic at least six years ago. Another six months or even longer is not a meaningful delay, from that perspective. Because what I would LIKE is to get through the anatomy stuff, which I think will be REALLY good for me, and to tackle at least one of the character design courses before I knuckle down on a web comic.

The character design course teacher wants you to watch all of the coursework videos before starting, which…I can see his point, he thinks it’s valuable to see all the steps you’re building on. The manga one, which I’m ~halfwayish through watching already, is relatively short, but the other one is about 30 hours and I don’t think I’m woman enough to sit through it twice. (That said, aggravatingly, the manga course has already had two REALLY HELPFUL anatomy things from just a watch-through, so it’s obviously worth watching! But also, it’s not the direction I want to go in, I just have a specific use for it that makes it valuable for one thing in particular.)

This is mostly putting the cart before the horse, although unlike with the first 100 hours project, I now have a fair amount of confidence that I’ll get through whatever the next set of challenges I set for myself are.

(pauses)

…yeah, ok, I’ve just added up the total number of course hours from the Udemy courses I now have and it’s in the region of 140 hours, and… at some point a while ago I did say something about “and maybe I’ll end up doing 250 hours of coursework before I feel prepared to tackle the web comic,” and…

Well, we’ve all met me, haven’t we. We all know what’s going to happen here, don’t we.

Well, that’s okay. If all I ever do is get a lot better at drawing, that’s still a great accomplishment that will make me happy. But also, if that much work is what it takes to get me to where I’m ready to do a web comic, well, then, that’s how much work it takes. Because, again, I have levels of expectation for myself that I would literally never put on anybody else, but at this point I’ve mostly come to terms with that. :)

ALSO I … forget what I was going to say bc I got distracted by my son needing something. Um.

Oh! Hah. Yeah. Also part of me just wants to spend a bunch of time copy-drawing Elfquest and Strangers in Paradise and Bone and Digger and working with shading the way those B&W comics do, but I can do that as doodles and, if necessary, do it LATER to teach myself what I want to learn from them. Although there’s probably a course in it, too. :) (Yes, having spent five seconds googling it, there are definitely youtube videos on the topic, at the least.)

Anyway, so, yeah, guys! A hundred hours of anatomy coming up next, I think. Shall I keep posting about it all?