Me, grumpily, to my husband, as I stared hatefully at all the upcoming “how to draw a REALISTIC tree/bird/frog/skull” things in my art project: do you know who else was a major influence on my style? PATRICK NAGEL. YOU KNOW. THE GUY WHO DID THIS KIND OF ART:
Not gonna lie, guys, every step of this last ten hours has been a S T R U G G L E to get myself to do. I do not care about drawing realistic trees or photo-accurate cityscapes. I despise grid drawings. My husband basically had to talk me into doing the trees. I came much closer to quitting here than I have at any other point in this stupid project.
I hoped I’d finish the entire 3rd segment of the 100 Hours thing and the 7th (of 11) of the Udemy course by (with, at) Hour Sixty, but I’ve got 2 ‘half hour’ drawings* left for the 100 Hours and 2 segments in section 7 to watch for the Udemy course left to do (though I think they’re going to basically just be informational).
So at the 3/5ths point, I’ve essentially worked my way through 75% of one course, and 65% of the other. That is…well, it’s 126 videos/slides so far, but some of them are just “download this” or “this is what we’re doing next,” so it’s probably around…a hundred lessons? And there are about… (goes to count) 45 left, between them, so…this is probably not going to take me a full 100 hours unless things slow down a LOT over the next lessons. But yer man spent 20 hours on a single portrait, and lads, I’m not gonna do that. :)
Anyway, so the trees probably wouldn’t have been quite as awful if they’d actually given us reference photos to work from, but we were supposed to follow along with the instructor’s drawing, and like, how the fuck are you supposed to know what the instructor is going to do next if they’re not working from a reference photo that we can see. How are you supposed to work through the details if they just fade from one complete section to another one suddenly being done. I hate it.
I DON’T EVEN DISLIKE DRAWING TREES. Trees are kind of cool. But I do not want to be a photorealistic artist. It is not fun for me. I’d have been better off if the assignment had actually been “go outside and draw some trees” (except the weather has been very, very bad and I wouldn’t be able to go outside. Never mind. :p). (although i do like working in pen & ink so i don’t hate the ones on the left so much, except the swamp thing weeping willow is terrible.)
And grid drawings. God, I hate grid drawings. I’m also really mad that this one turned out well. I’ve never done one well in my life.
and here is what brought me up to HOUR SIXTY i cannot believe i made it through the above stupid stuff and actually got this far:
The frog’s legs on this side are kind of fucked up, but that’s on the video tutorial instructor, who once more put a small image for the viewers to work with instead of something the details could be seen well in, so this is basically what it looked like to me. I’ve been told the spoon is really good, though.
*these were both ‘half hour’ drawings and took me more like 40-50 minutes each, so the ‘half hour’ thing is really “you can do this in half an hour if you’re a professional art teacher doing tutorial videos but as an actual student you’re going to pause the video repeatedly, extensively, while you try to catch up to where the teacher is in a few effortless seconds, NOT THAT WE’RE MAD ABOUT IT OR ANYTHING”. (I’m not really mad about it, but I may be somewhat weary and exasperated.)
I…will stop going on about this now, but I’m afraid next week you’re going to be subjected to more THOUGHTS ABOUT WHAT I WANT OUT OF THIS PROJECT, so brace yourselves. :)