I resonate with what you said around the 3 minute mark. I chose other professional paths, but being filled with tons of ideas inspired by fantasy and sci-fi, and the desire to draw them out has never gone away.
I fell victim to buying courses that I didn’t need or courses that are bad in quality from the likes of Udemy and Domestika. Just fancy trailers with no substance especially for Domestika courses that are marketed as "Friendly for Beginners" that would help you become a good artist through a 3 hr course. Then I recently discovered the NMA and found out how severely I am lacking in foundations. The realization of how my skills sucked at the time had shattered me into confused and defeated pieces, but I am bouncing back now and I finally know what I need to improve through good structure and good teachers at the NMA who genuinely know what they’re doing. Tim, I just stumbled across your channel like an hour ago or so and this confirms what I went through.
That's interesting, thanks for sharing your experience with those courses! I have checked out some of the cheaper stuff out there on those marketplaces like Udemy and Domestika... There are some interesting ones by good professional artists (Just showing you how they create their specific style of art with their process) but not a lot of good basic drawing courses for beginners. NMA is great, so much good content (almost too much stuff, so it can be challenging to find what you need). You also get a good taste for how those teachers approach the craft. Which I think is super important! Good luck!!
I think it's a great opportunity to have sooo overwhelmingly many possibilities to get the art foundation. It used to be so hard to receive the knowledge, both in theories and practical sense. When I was young, one not only needed skills, time, effort, money, etc to receive appropriate knowledge, but also the right personal contacts at the right time. I'm talking about the 80's, when there was no internet. When the internet came up in the 90's, there hardly was any art content of this kind accessible for everybody. No there are artists sharing their knowledge all over and you can access it from your home whereever it may be. You just need to understand languages and put in time and effort and not that much money as back in the old days to gather skills and build a strong art foundation. I used to be a mother of a hand full of sons in various ages and I was a freelance journalist. Now tht my sons are all mature and have moved on into their adult lives, I have the opportunity to learn from several sources, hich I do. I am so thankful for the artists, like you, that share their knoledge. I guess people nowadays tend to think that they would not have to invest anything bit talent to become a well known artist, because they experience so many not so knowledgeable people getting fame and money for nothing, which is why they are called "influencers". With the progression of the internet, many people rely completely on knowledge being stored in clouds and distant servers, and don't actually believe in storing knowledge in their own brain. So with the rising accessibility of so much information online, they see no reason to get this information quasi downloaded into themelves today for the gains of tomorrow. This is what I am experiencing in Austria and Germany, where I am from. A few days ago somebody told me that my youngest son would be sooo lucky to have the possibility to already choose between various options for his future job life. People very often only see the outcome, but not the effort that has been put into this outcome. On my youngest son's side this meant going to school to have good grades, becoming a professional farmer over the course of four years, which meant working time from 4 in the morning to very often 2 at night, due to the animals involved. And right after he finished this profession, he started studying at university and had several side jobs, which again iinvolved learning besides the university studies. Of course he is not into an art career, but the same actually applies to an art career as well. You can and must learn from the available best at every time of your life to achieve yet higher goals. There is no such time in which you can just lean back and invest nothing if you want to reach higher goals in life. But if there is no foundation to build on, the efforts mostly make no sense at all. So THANK YOU for sharing your knowledge and skills with others like me. ;-) Cheers from Germany. (-: EDIT: I somehow can't find my own style. This really bothers me a lot. Does it come some day suddenly over night or is there anything I can do to build my own style?
Hey Tim, I have also only just discovered you, sorry. I'm a lot older than a lot of others on here and a late starter having only taken illustration up a few years ago and an now a published illustrator, however, one thing that struck me was one of your videos mentions something that I've always struggled with and that is colour! Like you in a pencil and paper person and almost entirely reference free, but one of your videos happened to give me a moment of clarity, certainly around colour where you talk about simplifying the way that we colour, one of my issues has always been over working an image which has caused me a few sleepless nights and tight deadlines, the problem I have that I've always been able to draw but never really practised colour. I've never had any art training I'm ex military so I'm late to the party but in a roundabout way I wanted to say thanks for teaching me so much already, literally within a few session of your videos. Kindest regards Dan
Hey me too! I'm 30 now, and only started drawing at 28. I have the vaguest memories of drawing as a kid, but the last 12 years of my life have been given to the military as well. Now I'm working toward making art a career. Surprising how many ex or current military members I've met since I started drawing/painting. There aren't many, but the fact there are others says a lot. I suppose no matter what job you did in the military there's a desire to go back to something kind of calming, and that's drawing. Because as a kid, you didn't care what you were drawing and I think that military members, the more creative folk anyway, tend to gravitate to that lost feeling of innocence, where things are just simple again.
I’m still in high school and I want to learn as much as I can cause I love this medium and I only know how to draw people but I want to learn everything and I want to be able to have a lot of options when I leave high school
I like to thank you. After watching some of your videos more importantly this one. It has help realize on how I should develop and build my strong art foundation.
Codex.. even though I don't want to be a professional artist, I totally agree with you, can't build a house if you don't know how to lay the foundation, ba,da,bing..
Forms have been particularly hard for me to get right. But at least I'm getting better at drawing flat shapes which often helps a bit. Also, I really like how you talked about both sides of the fundamentals, why should we take them, and why we could skip them. Looking at more than one perspective can go a long way into benefiting the growth of many artists!
HI Tim. I think the problem with learning perspective is that it is based upon project geometry. Math in general is boring to learning. To me, learning perspective in the shortest amount of time with a deep understanding is the most important criteria I have so that I can get on with what I really want to do. I found that learning the principles of perspective reduces my time and allows me to remember how to draw complicated situations (i.e., drawing believable shadows inside a room with a signal light source, drawing a reflection of a surface not parallel to a mirror, or drawing a curving road with hills) without having to look it the how to draw the situation.
I resonate with what you said around the 3 minute mark. I chose other professional paths, but being filled with tons of ideas inspired by fantasy and sci-fi, and the desire to draw them out has never gone away.
Art foundation is like learning nature. I think is best to learn both at the same time
I fell victim to buying courses that I didn’t need or courses that are bad in quality from the likes of Udemy and Domestika. Just fancy trailers with no substance especially for Domestika courses that are marketed as "Friendly for Beginners" that would help you become a good artist through a 3 hr course. Then I recently discovered the NMA and found out how severely I am lacking in foundations. The realization of how my skills sucked at the time had shattered me into confused and defeated pieces, but I am bouncing back now and I finally know what I need to improve through good structure and good teachers at the NMA who genuinely know what they’re doing. Tim, I just stumbled across your channel like an hour ago or so and this confirms what I went through.
That's interesting, thanks for sharing your experience with those courses! I have checked out some of the cheaper stuff out there on those marketplaces like Udemy and Domestika... There are some interesting ones by good professional artists (Just showing you how they create their specific style of art with their process) but not a lot of good basic drawing courses for beginners. NMA is great, so much good content (almost too much stuff, so it can be challenging to find what you need). You also get a good taste for how those teachers approach the craft. Which I think is super important! Good luck!!
"... become a good artist through a 3 hours course..."
I think it's a great opportunity to have sooo overwhelmingly many possibilities to get the art foundation. It used to be so hard to receive the knowledge, both in theories and practical sense. When I was young, one not only needed skills, time, effort, money, etc to receive appropriate knowledge, but also the right personal contacts at the right time. I'm talking about the 80's, when there was no internet. When the internet came up in the 90's, there hardly was any art content of this kind accessible for everybody. No there are artists sharing their knowledge all over and you can access it from your home whereever it may be. You just need to understand languages and put in time and effort and not that much money as back in the old days to gather skills and build a strong art foundation. I used to be a mother of a hand full of sons in various ages and I was a freelance journalist. Now tht my sons are all mature and have moved on into their adult lives, I have the opportunity to learn from several sources, hich I do. I am so thankful for the artists, like you, that share their knoledge. I guess people nowadays tend to think that they would not have to invest anything bit talent to become a well known artist, because they experience so many not so knowledgeable people getting fame and money for nothing, which is why they are called "influencers". With the progression of the internet, many people rely completely on knowledge being stored in clouds and distant servers, and don't actually believe in storing knowledge in their own brain. So with the rising accessibility of so much information online, they see no reason to get this information quasi downloaded into themelves today for the gains of tomorrow. This is what I am experiencing in Austria and Germany, where I am from.
A few days ago somebody told me that my youngest son would be sooo lucky to have the possibility to already choose between various options for his future job life. People very often only see the outcome, but not the effort that has been put into this outcome. On my youngest son's side this meant going to school to have good grades, becoming a professional farmer over the course of four years, which meant working time from 4 in the morning to very often 2 at night, due to the animals involved. And right after he finished this profession, he started studying at university and had several side jobs, which again iinvolved learning besides the university studies. Of course he is not into an art career, but the same actually applies to an art career as well. You can and must learn from the available best at every time of your life to achieve yet higher goals. There is no such time in which you can just lean back and invest nothing if you want to reach higher goals in life. But if there is no foundation to build on, the efforts mostly make no sense at all.
So THANK YOU for sharing your knowledge and skills with others like me. ;-)
Cheers from Germany. (-:
EDIT: I somehow can't find my own style. This really bothers me a lot. Does it come some day suddenly over night or is there anything I can do to build my own style?
Hey Tim, I have also only just discovered you, sorry. I'm a lot older than a lot of others on here and a late starter having only taken illustration up a few years ago and an now a published illustrator, however, one thing that struck me was one of your videos mentions something that I've always struggled with and that is colour! Like you in a pencil and paper person and almost entirely reference free, but one of your videos happened to give me a moment of clarity, certainly around colour where you talk about simplifying the way that we colour, one of my issues has always been over working an image which has caused me a few sleepless nights and tight deadlines, the problem I have that I've always been able to draw but never really practised colour. I've never had any art training I'm ex military so I'm late to the party but in a roundabout way I wanted to say thanks for teaching me so much already, literally within a few session of your videos.
Kindest regards Dan
Hey me too! I'm 30 now, and only started drawing at 28. I have the vaguest memories of drawing as a kid, but the last 12 years of my life have been given to the military as well. Now I'm working toward making art a career. Surprising how many ex or current military members I've met since I started drawing/painting. There aren't many, but the fact there are others says a lot. I suppose no matter what job you did in the military there's a desire to go back to something kind of calming, and that's drawing. Because as a kid, you didn't care what you were drawing and I think that military members, the more creative folk anyway, tend to gravitate to that lost feeling of innocence, where things are just simple again.
I’m still in high school and I want to learn as much as I can cause I love this medium and I only know how to draw people but I want to learn everything and I want to be able to have a lot of options when I leave high school
I like to thank you. After watching some of your videos more importantly this one. It has help realize on how I should develop and build my strong art foundation.
Hey Edward! That's cool to hear! Let me know how your progress goes!
Codex.. even though I don't want to be a professional artist, I totally agree with you, can't build a house if you don't know how to lay the foundation, ba,da,bing..
I love your videos so much!
Have you found it difficult or easy to study the art fundamentals?
Forms have been particularly hard for me to get right. But at least I'm getting better at drawing flat shapes which often helps a bit.
Also, I really like how you talked about both sides of the fundamentals, why should we take them, and why we could skip them. Looking at more than one perspective can go a long way into benefiting the growth of many artists!
Thanks Clanker! (Sorry only just saw this reply here)
Colour theory is one of my weak point
It's actually not hard at all due to the accessibility nowadays. It certainly involves plenty of time, but it's worth ist.
HI Tim. I think the problem with learning perspective is that it is based upon project geometry. Math in general is boring to learning. To me, learning perspective in the shortest amount of time with a deep understanding is the most important criteria I have so that I can get on with what I really want to do. I found that learning the principles of perspective reduces my time and allows me to remember how to draw complicated situations (i.e., drawing believable shadows inside a room with a signal light source, drawing a reflection of a surface not parallel to a mirror, or drawing a curving road with hills) without having to look it the how to draw the situation.
12:59 nyeow