Hey hey!
Let's not waste any time and get stuck into my resources, thoughts, 'aha moments' and announcements directly from my brain to yours from this past week.
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- Resources
Book - Graphic LA and the balance between 2D shape and 3D form
Graphic LA by Robh Ruppel is a fantastic book, that I may have mentioned many weeks ago, but it’s one I consistently keep coming back to.
Robh's examples and illustrations are mainly based around environment design, but it offers so much when it comes down to simplification of forms and values and can be translated to any topic you want to draw/paint.
I love how real the illustrations and concepts look but at the same time they are still so stylised.
A nice little quote from the book that is worth a mention…
“Everything is an excuse to find depth, overlap and form”
In my opinion, this book is a must have.
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Video - [Cool New Disney+ Show Announced called (Sketchbook)](
&t=1s)This came across my feed and thought it looked like a pretty cool show!
It's featuring artists from Disney animation and one of my favourites Jin Kim! Looking forward to checking it out.
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Video - Proko and Aaron Blaise interview
Aaron Blaise is one of my favourite art content creators and if you haven’t already you should check him out!
He’s a former Disney animator that’s worked on some of the most well known Disney films.
I had this one on in the background and was fascinating hearing about how Aaron got started in the industry, and how he was lucky enough to work under the one and only Glen Keane.
Great little interview to throw on in the background while working.
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Video - [The magic trick of brush work and an argument why you should ‘blend’ less](
&t=11s)This is a great video from 6+ years ago but was one that came across my feed that I remember helped me a lot when it came to that painterly brush work.
Mark Carder is an oil painter and Youtube content creator who’s content is specifically geared towards traditional oil painting techniques.
If you want to learn a more painterly approach, why not take advice from great oil painters right?
Now to be clear, Mark isn’t against blending, but he sees that a lot of the time, his students will over blend their paintings, which completely removes that lively brush work a lot of us are looking for.
In the context of digital art, because it’s so easy to just pick up the smudge tool and go for it, it can leave the piece looking very ‘digital’ if you know what I mean?
Not to say that’s bad by any means, but is kind of the opposite of that painterly feel if that’s what you’re after.
A very interesting watch if you want to explore the more painterly approach to digital painting.
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Video - Kim Jung Gi on learning perspective
When the master of imaginative perspective drawing talks about learning perspective, I drop everything and listen!
A great interview by Proko
I found this part 4:09 particularly interesting about how he initially learned perspective.
The super quick one phrase summary… observation is KEY!
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Video - Observation and life drawing
Another fantastic interview by Proko with Karl Kopinski (you can see the youtube algorithm throwing me a lot of Proko content this week!)
Karl is another awesome artist that does a lot of imaginative drawing and one I highly suggest you check out.
One particular part stood out when he was talking about life drawing class and how observation isn’t something that just happens, but it’s something you’ve got to train and he’s found that to be an invaluable tool.
He starts talking about that here -> [13:21](
?t=801)
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Updates
The secret project
I've made some solid progress on this one over the last few days, trying to cram as much value into it for you guys as possible.
So stay tuned! Previews/sneak peaks and pre-sales comings soon
Blog
The blog has taken a bit of a backseat this week. My full time job (my company Keepon) is ramping up to launch some new features, so that's been where most of my free time has been spent.
What have you found most useful about these newsletters?
I'd love to get some feedback on these, as they're literally what I've found most useful, but I'd love to hear what resources you got the most value from!
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That's all for this week.
And as always... stay consistent, use reference, have fun with it and remember, it's only pixels baybee!
Cheers,
Ben
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