How did your mentor gain their experience/ expertise?

My mentor, Sarina, has been doing art for a very long time. I remember that even when I was a little kid, I was amazed by her art skills. According to Sarina, half of her experience in art was gained through local classes, and the rest was self-taught. I imagine this required a lot of practice and passion for art.

Here are a few examples of Sarina’s background art:

What wisdom have you gained from your mentor so far?

On February 5^th, I had my first online meeting with my mentor. Though we didn’t start any art lessons, we created a very thorough plan for the rest of our project, using my goals as guidance. It became very obvious that my mentor knew a ton about art. I’ve never before heard of some the points she brought up, such as the Rule of Thirds and atmospheric shading. This makes me even more excited to learn from Sarina and I now appreciate her wisdom even more.

What have you learned so far, in terms of facilitation strategies, that might contribute to your own development as a mentor?

One of the most important skills my mentor has learned is communication skills. It is very important in a mentor/mentee relationship, or in any other relationship, to be able to check in and see what we can do to help each other. Good communication, from both ends, will lead to our project reaching its highest potential.

Report on any progress and sub-skills learned so far. 

To start off our meeting, I showed Sarina my goals for this project. I want to become fluent with at least three brushes and learn at least five points about what makes a good background by the end of In-Depth. I want to learn colour theory, perspective, and more, applying it to my own drawings. We discussed how we would accomplish this and based a rough outline around it for each lesson. The outline contains:

Lesson 1 (Feb 5^th): Introduction and Outline

Lesson 2 (Feb 19^th): Digital Brushes

Lesson 3 (Mar 5^th): Colour Theory

Lesson 4 (Mar 19^th): Composition

Lesson 5 (Apr 2^nd): Perspective

Lesson 6 (Apr 16^th): Backgrounds (Basics)

Lesson 7 (Apr 30^th): Designing Backgrounds

Lesson 8 (May 14^th): Final Project

To prepare for our next meeting, Sarina and I went over the brushes I currently use for drawing. We draw in different drawing apps, but this shouldn’t be a problem because we can find similar brushes and maybe even download the same ones. I currently only use three main brushes, one for lineart, one for backgrounds, and one for shading. Below is an image of each one.

Though I’m happy with the lineart and shading brushes, I want to expand my toolbelt of background brushes. As stated in my goals, I wish to become a near expert with three of them. This will take a lot of practice and lessons from my mentor.

Next, we decided exactly what we would be learning each day. Sarina’s notes are shown below, and I like them because they give a detailed outline and may help me prepare for each meeting and plan out my practicing times.

Finally, we took a quick look at a few different styles of backgrounds. The image below is the closest to what I want my art to look like by the end of this project.

This In-Depth project has been off to a great start. My mentor has been so helpful and the plans we created for the rest of my project give a great glimpse into the future. This project shows so much potential for fun and insight into the world of art. I have my next meeting tomorrow, and I honestly can’t wait.