Tag: artist

The Lost Artist – Chapter 1 – Where do I start?

Paper? Check. Pencil? Check. Eraser? Check. Drawing table? Check. Now, what do I do? Well, you draw.

Sounds simple enough, but it’s easy to put in action. The greatest challenge beginner artists face as they embark on their creative journey, be it as a hobby or as a long-term professional goal, is finding an answer to the big fat question staring back at them from a blank sheet of paper,

WHERE THE HECK DO I START?

The worst part about this question is in trying to find an answer you can easily fall into a rabbit hole of opinions, comments, and suggestions from various professionals in the field. All that information, coming from so many different directions, can leave one confused and stressed. I’ve been there and it took me nearly two years to get out of that cycle and find my own path toward my creative goals.

To start, the most common advice you get to hear is, to begin with the fundamentals. This covers everything from learning how to draw with lines, shapes, forms, adding value and texture, alongside a slew of other things like perspective, figure drawing, etc. While this approach works REALLY well for a lot of people, it isn’t necessarily the ONLY recipe for success.

When I started, I took this advice wholeheartedly and went hardcore on learning all the fundamentals. I sat there deconstructing my subjects into forms, practicing my lines, shading, and a lot more. But, after a while, the whole process felt tedious and, to be honest, boring.

I reached out to the community. I read about what other artists had done, and in most cases, the answer I got back was to keep pushing on. Practice makes perfect and that is true. Every artist and mentor I reached out to had the right idea but there was something more to their advice that flew completely under my radar.

After nearly a year of inconsistent progress, I took a step back to get some perspective. I gradually recognized that just as much as art is a subjective medium, so too is the process or path that one takes toward becoming an artist. There is truly no RIGHT way that works for all.

This doesn’t mean practice doesn’t make perfect or that learning the fundamentals doesn’t help. Rather, how one goes about learning the fundamentals or gearing practice sessions to their needs and interests can make an enormous difference in maintaining enthusiasm and commitment to their goals as an artist.

My initial approach had focused too hard on perfection and too fast on success and so much so that I never really got anywhere with it. I purchased a good chunk of reference books, looked up a lot of online resources and courses, practiced the fundamentals, jumping from one lesson to another, and only ended up being overwhelmed.

Taking a step back helped me realize there was nothing wrong in starting with what I liked to draw and slowly building out from there. In due course, I recognized the skills I needed to tackle different aspects of my projects and artwork while gauging it against the work of other established masters in the field.

Adopting what I considered a “project-oriented” approach, I redefined my artistic lessons based on my personal goals: to take the scripts and stories I write and bring them to life through art. I wanted to enhance my writing through art. And using that art, I wished to work toward a possible long-term goal as an animation director. [I have backups too in the form of a comic book artist]. I finally had a direction.

Having identified my destination, I was able to pinpoint the relevant skills I required to start my journey. The fundamentals were certainly important, but more so than that, was also the need to draw consistently. Revisiting the references I had scoured through earlier, I slowly put together a solo artist program (currently in progress and under continual development) that not only met my specific interests (from the types of drawing media I gravitated to, the styles, etc.) but also enabled me to learn my fundamentals through projects of my own liking.

While this approach is highly subjective to my personal goals, they gather inspiration from other artists in the field whose courses I have followed and who provide a great bunch of online resources that all beginner artists can follow. Thus far, I can say that I have found great success and motivation to keep up with my goals.

So, from this noob artist here to my awesome readers out there, if you are much like me (or otherwise) and prefer a project-oriented approach that also enables you to tackle and learn the fundamental skills necessary, my advice would be to start by identifying your personal goals for your art career.

Knowing a specific endpoint, no matter how far down the timeline, that you are aiming for can really help get you started in identifying the skills you need. This helps build focus and also avoid stretching yourself too thin.

Following this, use projects or subject areas that interest you as a platform to build your fundamentals in an iterative but dynamic learning process. For example, if you love drawing animals and love pen-and-ink as a medium, there is nothing wrong in structuring your studies to focus within that medium and build out from there.

You can begin by learning how to deconstruct animals into basic forms and build out the animal’s physical structure using lines. As pen-and-ink is a “linear” medium, you then get to add to the details using various kinds of line strokes. Through each step, you learn something fundamental and you get a drawing done.

If it wasn’t obvious, I love drawing animals too, and here is one of a lioness I happily whipped up using Clip Studio Paint.

Most importantly, recognize that it is completely OK if you are not satisfied with your end product. It is OK to fail. Just don’t dwell on it. Continue onward to another subject and work on what you missed the last time around. In what is a constructive and iterative process, you get to hone your skills regularly while also enjoying the process.

Using this approach protected me from getting overwhelmed by the resources out there and learning effectively in a piece-wise fashion. An apple a day keeps the doctor away. Similarly, learning one small facet a day, be it as simple as looking at subjects and deconstructing them into primitive forms, IS progress and can really keep your doubts away. Trust in the process! After all, you made it out of your own willingness to improve.

On that note, I will see you next in Chapter 2, where I share my experience of the first two months of my solo artist program, the courses I have undertaken, and some awesome resources that all beginner artists must indulge in.

And, as always, don’t forget to follow my artwork at LockeInArt on Instagram!

How to get started as an amateur artist – my journey so far!

Back in November 2021 I wrote a post about Getting back into Art and how it boiled down to a balancing act between my day job as a freelance science writer and my nighttime escapades as a story writer and aspiring comic book artist.

Just a few weeks after that post, I landed a permanent, full-time position as a science writer for the magazine Lab Manager. 2021 would come to a close with my family relocating to Calgary, Alberta. The months to follow would be wave upon wave of developments. My baby daughter was growing up, and fast! It was all I could do to keep up with her, my day job, and an assortment of other day-to-day commitments, while my wife was off to grad school.

My prospective plans for the Story Art Mentorship program I had enrolled in for 2021-2022 crumbled to pieces. I realized that I needed to be realistic with the time I had available for myself (there wasn’t much). I had to be patient and wait for my baby daughter to become the toddler she was destined to be (when I could recover a semblance of regularity in my daily activities). Until then, art (and writing) would have to remain in the sidelines.

This was awful but I found a way around it. I began organizing all the knowledge I had gained toward my artistic goals over the last four years. all the way from my experiences at the various comic-cons and art expos, the many mentors I had met and connected with, the various art books and online resources I had purchased, to the persisting doubts and questions yet to be answered. I collected all of this into a mental journal of sorts which I transcribed into my OneNote Notebook. Come 2023, this journal has transformed into an all-encompassing organizer and a solo art study program that I have adopted for myself.

What I had originally perceived as a step backward from my creative goals, became the greatest jump toward them. Ever since my last post, I have had the chance to build upon my artistic skills and foundations in an iterative manner (as you can see in the header image). No mistake about it, I still have a LONG way to go. At times, I do feel like Achilles racing against the tortoise (representative of my ever growing list of goals and challenges), in Zeno’s paradox. But, I’m very glad with the progress I have made so far.

Moving forward, I would like to share this journey with all my readers and any of my peers in the artistic community, reading in. While my approach is largely subjective to my circumstances and personal life, I hope that some part of the resources that I have found and the steps I have taken, connect and help any aspiring artists among my readers.

Next up, I will begin by addressing the first and biggest challenge for most beginner artists getting started on their journey, and one that I particularly had difficulty with: How does one start in the first place?

And before you go, remember, you can also follow my art work and progress at at LockeInArt on Instagram where I post my finished pieces!

Follow me on Instagram!

After attending the Lightbox Expo I was hard-pressed to start an Instagram account dedicated to my artwork. Aside from The Pensive Reverie and The Procrastinating Scientist, my presence on other social media platforms is sparse.

My lack of interest in social media notwithstanding I would be a bigger fool to deny that social media can be a productive resource on its own for individuals pursuing creative endeavors. Nevertheless, I was initially reluctant as I felt my art skills were too amateurish to warrant sharing my work in a public platform.

But, the journey is always a part of reaching our goals and destinations. Thus, I have decided to start an Instagram which will record my rare successes, frequent stumbles, and hilarious fails in my journey to be an artist.

Much of what I intend to share on Instagram will revolve around my growing art skills, my brief stints of inspiration, and whatever is the ensuing result when my ideas meet paper and pencil.

For those among my readers who are also active on Instagram, I would really appreciate your support by following my adventures on this platform as well. So, with that being said, here’s to a prosperous Instagram art journey at Ajay Peter Manuel@lockeinart.

They say the pen is mightier than the sword, let’s hope my pencil is equally mighty in reproducing the worlds that flourish in my brain.

Reviewing the Wacom Intuos Comic and my art journey so far…

I love writing, and even more so being lost in imagination of the worlds I desire to construct for my stories. The last I remember, my love for drawing was at its peak during my early teens. With my father being a pretty good amateur artist himself, I tried to emulate him by drawing whatever subject that piqued my interest in the weekly kids’ magazine. But as the years passed, my interest in drawing evolved to resemble an empty, short-sided affair amid random spurts of creativity.

Much of that changed in 2017 when I completed my second book, A Little Bit of Everything. It was around then that I seriously began engaging in the possibility of a creative career. Much thanks to my awesome wife and our love for manga, comics, and animated media I began yearning for more than just writing a story. I wished to draw out the worlds of my imagination and make them come to life.

I enrolled in an introductory art class at the local arts center in Edmonton in 2017 and not too long after completing A Little Bit of Everything, I purchased the Wacom Intuos Comic to begin my foray into digital art. Having used this drawing tablet for about four years now, I felt it was time for a review.

Digital art comes with the caveat that one must NOT mistakenly assume that it is easier. In general, one must first learn how to draw to be able to be good at all. Switching between traditional and digital media offers select advantages and disadvantages but it does not correspond to your drawing skills getting better. Rather, what makes the difference is practice; the more you practice (no matter what media) the better you get at drawing.

After installing the Wacom Intuos Comic, I began exploring the digital medium landscape by trying out the limited-time software offer of Clip Studio Paint, alongside various other different free software including FireAlpaca, Krita, etc.

The surface of the tablet is smooth and quite sensitive (which can be managed via tablet settings). What did take a while to get used to was the hand-eye coordination between the tablet and the screen. This is because the Wacom Comic is a drawing tablet as opposed to a graphics tablet. Though this was highly frustrating at first, I eventually got the hang of it. Having to balance your hand-eye coordination also motivated the good practice of focusing on my monitor, and observing the subject of my drawing, as opposed to switching back and forth from my tablet to the screen (as one is often prone to do when drawing with pencil and paper).

The Wacom Intuos Comic comes with a pen as well as extra nibs provided in the package. Getting used to the tablet also involved getting the hang of how the pen worked on the tablet’s surface. Much of this was made flexible via the tablet software allowing one to make relevant modifications on pen pressure to helping it feel akin to an actual pencil.

My art journey over the last four years has been an on and off affair between my doctoral studies and whenever I get a chance to draw. The Wacom Intuos Comic in my opinion is an awesome drawing tablet. The greatest pro to it is the fact that it introduces you to drawing on a tablet with ease. It is light-weight, looks awesome and can be carried wherever you want. The caveat is that it is a drawing tablet and therefore requires you to have a computer around to be able to do any kind of drawing.

The Wacom Comic that I bought in 2017 still looks brand new though the smudges and the pen marks on the tablet have grown visible over the years. Recently, I upgraded to a new graphics tablet in the XP-Pen Artist 15.6 Pro. My reasons in doing so stemmed from THE one personal con I had with the Wacom Intuos Comic: a small working area.

Being a giraffe (I’m 6’2’’, long ass fingers, and lanky as heck) in my own rights, despite getting used to the hand-eye coordination involved in using the drawing tablet, I often struggled with the small working area (7 inches) which left me often feeling uncomfortable and cramped up during long drawing sessions.

Obviously, this is a personal opinion. I have found many artists who are physically similar and just fine using the same. In my case, translating the free space in traditional media of pen and pencil (on a drawing desk) to the Wacom was difficult no matter how much I tried. I would ultimately find a working process in doing my rough sketches by hand mostly and using the Wacom as the final resort for finishing touches.

This doesn’t take away the fact that the Wacom Intuos Comic is the perfect tablet for anyone to start their journey in the digital medium. On those days when I can’t lug around my XP Pen, the Wacom Comic remains my go-to portable drawing tablet. Learning software aside, I’ve loved working on the Wacom Intuos Comic. The added bonus of the free software, and relatively cheap prize (around $80) makes it a perfect comic for the budget artist. At this point in time, I believe the Wacom Intuos Comic is no longer offered at the Wacom site, but its successor in the Wacom Intuos S is equally competitive and smartly priced for the budget artist.

With that said, as I wrap up the remaining chapters of my doctoral studies and shift my focus to more creative endeavors (with a new graphics tablet to boot), I intend to keep you all posted on my progress starting with a follow-up post on my new Instagram where I intend to share all my success and the occasional (hopefully) hilarious fails in my journey to become a competent artist.

Return of the Lost Blogger

If I were to wait a few more months, I could cap my absence to one complete year since my last update. Incidentally, the subject of that last post also sets the stage for discussion on the progress I’ve made thus far. I left describing the steep learning curve that accompanied my aspirations to become a writer/comic book artist. A year down the road, those same aspirations are now ambitions that I’ve decided to fully commit towards.

Setting aside the myriad happy developments in my personal life, I struggled to consistently keep up with my writing and my art-work. While this was initially frustrating, it turned out to be a gift in disguise. My lack of consistency was largely due to the hectic schedule of my doctoral studies. Rather than spreading myself thin, I decided to focus on my immediate concerns while taking it easy on myself (which being as stubborn and obsessed as I can be about my goals, it took some time getting used to).

Those immediate concerns culminated, just a few weeks ago, in a closed-room event involving a three hour session of what was my PhD candidacy exam. I’m glad to say that I was able to pass what was ultimately a challenging but wonderful learning experience. Having completed what is often perceived as the greatest obstacle in doctoral studies (aside from the final defense itself), I can now look towards a clear-cut, and focused journey in scientific research over the few years before the final defense.

But, this journey is not all about science. While I was busy preparing for the candidacy exam, I took every opportunity available to build on my thoughts and set the foundations for my art and writing aspirations. Funnily enough, stepping away from my writing and art work helped me discover what I was missing and the skills I required moving forward.

That being said, I have continued to slowly develop the script for my graphic novel. Although the story is fully developed in my mind, a few more months may be required before I complete the first draft of the script. In what will ultimately be a long-term project, I intend to transform the script into art and a full-fledged graphic novel. These efforts will also accompany the development of a new writing project involving a story of the political genre that has been in the workings for more than a year.

Much of this is just the beginning of what will be the first step towards my determined pursuit of a career in writing, and possibly one day, in animation. Having found a common love in writing stories and communicating scientific knowledge, I’ve decided that the Pensive Reverie will remain an outlet where I can share my daily adventures in the artistic landscape. Additionally, I will be starting a new blog that will be more focused towards discussing topics rooted in science and research in an effort to support what may become my future day job as a science writer (at least until I’m able to establish a foothold on my artistic aspirations).

This is all I have for today, but I will return very soon with a new post!

So What’s Next?

In my latest post, I discussed what exactly makes my imagination click.I thought it would be most appropriate to now carry forward the discussion to where my imagination takes me next, at least in the current scheme of things.

Ever since I started my PhD back in September 2017, my focus has largely been towards completing my course requirements for my degree. This has taken a predominant amount of my time, barring me from any measure of progress in my personal writing goals. Now, with the academic year having come to an end, I look forward to a summer extravaganza of writing and a revival of my previously planned projects.

The prior summer I had published my second work in A Little Bit Of Everything, a spiritual successor to my first work, Our Last Summer.

Authorgraph

Both books shared a similar origin in that the foundation of their plots were largely based on my life experiences. Having written the two books, I felt a great measure of happiness in coming to terms with various significant events that had occurred in my life over the span of the last few years.

Closing the page on my personal experiences, I wished to set the stage for my next writing challenge in a series of projects I had envisioned covering the genres of fantasy, science fiction, and politics etc. Intermixed with my new passion to write comics, I’ve spent the last year gradually aggregating ideas on the plots for two different books I intend to write over the course of this summer, and possibly well into next year.

One of these books will be a comic while the other will be a novel, with both being relatively unfamiliar grounds to tread upon. Having taken an extensive course in figure anatomy, I have only just begun my journey in becoming an artist. It is a difficult path, most recognizable in the horrible doodles I have had to endure with far whenever I put my pencil to paper. On a similar note, I have never written a novel, and in the case of the one that I have in store, my goal is to get it published at a traditional publishing house unlike my self-publishing efforts so far.

As I have done earlier, I hope to share my progress on this new journey, amidst my other weekly posts,with everyone on this blog. Tomorrow will be Day 1, and hopefully in a year from now, I will be close to, if not, accomplished my goals with regards to these two books. Let’s see what the year brings!

With that being said, I look forward to entertaining everyone the following weekend with a new post. Until then, toodles!

Image result for goodbye anime boy