Hello! Over the last four weeks, I’ve been taking it easy with In-depth. When I was feeling creative, I picked up my iPad and started drawing. I didn’t want In-depth to be an area of stress for me, especially over Spring Break, so I didn’t push it too far. I’ve met with my mentor twice since my last post. We both shared the work we’d been doing and commented on the details in each piece. This ‘show and tell’ type format has really helped to get comfortable with sharing art and indicating different techniques and styles in an easygoing, safe environment. There is no pressure.
During one of the meetings, Xylia introduced a new shading technique that she has also been experimenting with herself. I learned a little about how to draw spots of light and shadow, which is a great way to add more detail to a piece. I will be trying this out on my own as well!
These are two of the drawings I did over the break:
How to Have a Beautiful Mind:
Chapter 9 – Concepts
A concept that was part of the meetings with my mentor is ‘tools’. There are a wide variety of digital tools on any well-known digital art app. For example, the lists of options on Procreate, the software that both Xylia and I have been using, seems endless at times. This overall ‘tools’ concept includes a group of inking tools, sketching tools, painting tools, etc. With so many choices, you can be sure that you have a tool that can help you get the desired effect for a piece. Although it is important to experiment with some different tools, I normally stick to a few that I’ve found work best for my style of drawing.
Chapter 10 – Alternatives
Some alternatives that my mentor gave me stemmed from the question of which digital art software to use. At the beginning of In-depth, I downloaded a couple different apps to try out. Xylia directed me to the one she had been using for her art. After experimenting with that one and a couple others, I decided to look more into Procreate, as I felt the most comfortable with it. By having my mentor give me these different options and having her there to ask questions to, I had a variety of alternatives to choose from.
Learning Centre:
Although I have not flushed out all my learning centre ideas 100%, I know that I will be showcasing only a few of the pieces I’ve drawn over the course of my In-depth project. This could be a timeline comparison of where my art skills were at the beginning of the project and where I am at the end. I can also simply show my favourite pieces and give a brief summary of the tools, techniques, and ideas I used when working on each of them. Obviously, I cannot show every single piece I’ve worked on, and I cannot talk about every single concept I explored in depth. But I can certainly talk about the ones that were prominent in my learning process. I’m hoping the audience will be able to see the main goal I had in mind for this project. I didn’t strive to “get good” at digital art; I strove and am striving to improve from where I was at the beginning — which is nowhere, considering I had absolutely no prior experience with this type of drawing. This is something that I want to be very clear to everyone I am presenting to, because it helped me stay in the right mindset throughout my work. My mentor and I will be talking about all this during our next meeting.