Hello from the UK (and some advice needed on where to start, please)!

[Dan]

Hi folks, I’m excited to be here! I live in a small city on the east coast of the UK and work as a character designer in the animation industry. I have become more and more dissatisfied with my artwork of late and have decided to pause my career for a number of months in order to retrain my drawing skills in a more classical sense, hence choosing NMA. I feel like I never really got the in-depth artistic training I always wanted from my time at art college (many years ago), and I want to become a lot more confident with things like anatomy, gesture, animal drawing, the figure and portraits in order to make my design work stronger overall.

I’d just like to ask everyone’s opinion regarding a learning path on here for myself. The amount of amazing content is a little overwhelming and it’s difficult to know where to start! I can draw to a reasonable standard but really want to get back to the fundamentals of drawing and rendering, and am very much attracted to the classical manner of teaching found within the Atelier structure. I was considering starting with the “Beginning Head Drawing” course but I feel like I should go right back and study “Complete Sight-Size Drawing” instead, as I’ve never studied from Bargue and think it would be an excellent place to begin. I need to improve my rendering skills and get back to using traditional media after many years working digitally, so perhaps this would also be benefited from studying Sight-Size.

Any thoughts?

Wishing you all the best in your work during these troubled times! Cheers 🙂

 

[Joshua Jacobo]

I would recommend starting with our Beginning Drawing Course and then moving onto Renaissance Figure Drawing with a Glenn Vilppu. 👍🏼

[Josseline Jeria]

Hi Dan and welcome!

It agree it can be overwhelming, as all the courses are very in depth and fantastic. I started here with the Beginning Head Drawing course. My skills excelled throughout the course, and this is coming from someone who has very little drawing experience – I can imagine you’ll be able to get even more out of it! The way the course is structured allows for a good progression of understanding and gets you exposed to a number of instructors. Each has their own unique way of approaching structure and construction, which I found quite useful as some things clicked more for me and others, as well as they all build on and support each other.

Alongside it I did Bill Perkin’s Colour Bootcamp course as I wanted to be able to improve my colour theory knowledge and practice, to be able to improve my painting – it sure has! by miles. Highly recommend this course for your future studies.

Having done both simultaneously was very challenging and in hindsight it would have been better to dedicate myself to one course at a time, as I found it difficult to get lots of extra work done.

Let us know how you go with your first course 🙂

All the best

 

[Joshua Jacobo]

Dan, just wanted to check in with you. How is your learning experience going?

[Author]

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