Whenever I hit a plateau in the art skill learning curve, I hit the reset button and play the part of a beginner. This is the first time I've done it with instruction.

Most of my skills are instinctually ingrained from self-teaching. I have taken two college drawing courses and have better technical knowledge (and fulfilled my dream of doing in person life drawing), but the only thing I discovered was a dream of scientific illustration - likely of the nature or zoological variety. A clear direction for I want to go is nothing to scoff at but I had no idea how to efficiently achieve it without burning myself out - grinding skills to illustrate with precision can easily become mental torture.

This Skillshare class made a massive difference in both my precision and helped me understand what I want to communicate in my art - not knowing what I want to express feels like there's an angry little goblin in my brain shouting incessant gibberish every time I put pencil to paper.

Basic Skills with Brent Eviston (Final Assignment) - image 1 - student project

Here is the final assignment for this course, something called a Tawny Frogmouth. I referenced Jane Kim's "The Wall of Birds" - the book to be precise. The book title refers to the Wall of Birds Project, a massive mural endeavor she took on for the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Take a gander here if you're interested: https://academy.allaboutbirds.org/wall-of-birds-project/

Basic Skills with Brent Eviston (Final Assignment) - image 2 - student project

... And then I couldn't resist going all out. I was too happy with how well my first shot at this assignment went!

After a week and a half completing all the earlier assignments, I had built up not only better techniques but arm strength and stability. By following Brent's instructions on not touching the paper, I never had to erase smudges or wash my hands after using graphite. By the time I started the final project I was far more confident in my freehand drawing.

I spent only an hour or so on the underdrawing instead of 2 or 3 because I could trust my arm and hand to mark on the paper what my eyes were marking on the reference.

Basic Skills with Brent Eviston (Final Assignment) - image 3 - student project

Basic Skills with Brent Eviston (Final Assignment) - image 4 - student project

Basic Skills with Brent Eviston (Final Assignment) - image 5 - student project

And there it is! And what a journey it was to get here. Only 2 weeks and my improvement is astounding. Granted, I tripled most of the fundamental exercises and as good ol' Sycra on Youtube says: one of the most effective ways to improve is iterative drawing.

I'll see you later in the Dynamic Mark Making course. Thank you so much for such an instructive and enjoyable expedition!

One last little note: using the pencil holding techniques shown in this course made my signature look better too, haha.

Kelsey Wheeler

Live and learn, imagine and create.

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