[Daniel Norris]

If you make any updates, post it, would you? I feel invested in this now! 😀

[Daniel Norris]

Texas!? I just moved from the Dallas area to Arkansas. (But my family’s all in TX, so we’re there all the time)

Start by checking out the live courses that are currently going, Isabelle. I just joined 3 weeks ago, and I’m doing the beginning drawing class (starts tomorrow), the Intro to Animal Anatomy, Renaissance Head Drawing, Fundamentals of Drawing & Perspective, and Complete Human Anatomy. All of those either just started last week (believe you can still enroll and catch up, since everything is recorded and available online) or, in the case of 2 of them, are starting this week.

My ultimate goal is to get into oil painting, but it feels like starting with the basics is the right approach, may work for you too. Also, check out the discord. These forums are kind of dead, but Discord is where everyone talks.  (You can see the link to it at the top of this page ^). There are separate discord channels for every class, so you can hang out with other people and get feedback on assignments and such.

live.nma.art <– live classes (no idea how to make that a hyperlink, but just pop it in your browser)

[Daniel Norris]

Wow! Pages 5/6 are a clear advancement from 1-4. Definite progress. I’m, dare I say it, kind of flabbergasted. (As an aside, I sketched the Proko cowboy too. I was so inspired by Wiestling, I had to do something artistic, immediately, lol!)

[Daniel Norris]

That. Is epic.

[Daniel Norris]

I’m late to the party, but I had a thought or two, so I figured I’d share it. First off, this is amazing. I aspire to one day paint anything remotely this aesthetically pleasing. I like the tonal dynamic shift from the light in the top left toward the dark in the bottom right. Creates a lot of interest. The high contrast in intensity between the fish and the rocks is stunning. It just refuses to be ignored. Love the positioning of the fish, all moving toward a similar point, but each at a different moment in their procession towards it. Creates an easy, natural feeling to the composition.

(The following is just based on my intuition. I couldn’t paint what you painted to save my soul, lol. Just clarifying that, before I proceed…)

Regarding the water, a couple of thoughts. If you are intending a stylized look, I think you achieved it in a pretty interesting way with those almost sine-wave-esque curves in the wind-blown ripples on the surface of the water. If it’s intended to be a bit more realistic, I would suggest that water does not tend to pile up in those tight bunches of wavy ripples.

One other thought that’s probably more compelling in my mind, versus the shape of the ripples: The fish almost appear to be skimming above the surface of the water. I believe that this is due to the fact that those same wind-blown ripples appear to dance around the fish, versus passing over the top of them. Each of the fish ends up with what is essentially a thick, dark outline where you’ve worked the ripples around the fish, instead of carrying those forms over the top of each.

To be fair, it wasn’t immediately obvious. I had my wife look, and it wasn’t clicking, until I asked her “Spatially, where do the fish look like they are positioned in relation to the water,” and she immediately said “on top of it.”

Hope that helps!

[Daniel Norris]

Wow. The sculpted quality of form you’re getting with that gentle blending is beautiful. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my short time trying to figure this stuff out, it’s that subtlety is king (and also the destroyer of many). From some of the other things you’ve posted, to this last drawing, it’s clear that you’re starting to figure that out. Some day, I’ll probably hit you up for tips, because I’m currently clueless in that arena; I’m actually about to post a few crummy drawings I did on newsprint that are horrifically textured. Hoping some of y’all can help me understand what’s going on… Looks like you’ve got it figured out, so uh, maybe help lol!

Thoughts on the eyes:

Coming at it with a fresh perspective, I can see that her right eye is a bit off (the eye that’s on our left as we view the drawing). The way I’m thinking about it is, if she turned her head to face me, would that downward slope toward the bridge of the nose carry through, or would it continue to point down at that rather severe angle. Feeling confident that it would point down more than you’re wanting it to. In the same vein, I did a quick measurement with the end of my pencil and it looks like the distance between the brow of her other/outside eye and the top of the lid is considerably larger than the same gap on her inside eye. It actually looks to me like you’ve got the eyebrow descending into the bridge of the nose a bit too low on that outer side, which is potentially contributing to some of the relational/positional notes around the eyes, in general.

Perspective looks great, in general. My biggest problem so far seems to be making the nose too big, so I can appreciate how perfect yours appears to be here ;-D Not sure who the bust is of, but if she’s supposed to have a sort of sultry, smoky, confident countenance, you’ve nailed it.

[Daniel Norris]

Amazing. I’m tooling through these forum posts to get a little inspiration before I dive into the next lesson. This did the trick. Your clear intentionality behind the focus on her mid/lower form is quite well-executed, I think. I will now further my strivings to suck less. (As an aside, this looks like a few different mediums – what did you use?)

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