Thanks for weighing in. I'm getting to the point now where I'm comfortable showing my drawings to others, and I plan on joining the DAB discord and maybe posting more on the Learnart subreddit to improve. As for a mentor, that is something I've thought about as well, but I'm not sure how to even look for someone to mentor me. Any tips?
Thank you for linking that video; it was a nice refresher. Once I get a good balance going for the 50% rule, I'm sure things will smooth out. I recently downloaded an app that I can use to log my time into so I know roughly how much time I've been learning and playing, so that should help. I remember feeling this way during the 250 box challenge, so it's a matter of time until I get into the groove again. Good luck with your DAB journey!
I think these turned out a bit better! I took more time to look at my reference and plan out my strokes more methodically and I think it paid off, at least somewhat. On the topic of rushing, it has been a big issue on my path of learning how to draw. When I look at my old work from about a year ago, I can see that I've gotten somewhat better at controlling it over that time, but I think this is something I need to tackle more seriously. Do you have any suggestions on how to mitigate this problem effectively? Or am I over thinking it and this is just something that will just get better over time? Both maybe?
I'll make sure to keep in mind what you said about the self-critique. Thank you for taking the time to critique my work, as well as the recommendation for the brush pen!
Here are my additional 50 boxes.
The 50% rule helped me a lot when it came to motivation and burnout.
I'm glad I took my time instead of rushing through these as I think I did a lot better this time around, although on some pages I got the boxes a little too close together.
Hello Benj,
Thank you for taking the time to critique my work, it feels great having an outside perspective to explain where I need to improve and what I've succeeded at instead of relying on just my own judgment for everything. I will definitely be taking notes here as well as applying the suggestions you made to my warm ups. I look forward to what lies ahead in the 250 box challenge and lesson 2!
Let's be real here for a second: fineliners can get pricey. It varies from brand to brand, store to store, and country to country, but good fineliners like the Staedtler Pigment Liner (my personal brand favourite) can cost an arm and a leg. I remember finding them being sold individually at a Michael's for $4-$5 each. That's highway robbery right there.
Now, we're not a big company ourselves or anything, but we have been in a position to periodically import large batches of pens that we've sourced ourselves - using the wholesale route to keep costs down, and then to split the savings between getting pens to you for cheaper, and setting some aside to one day produce our own.
These pens are each hand-tested (on a little card we include in the package) to avoid sending out any duds (another problem with pens sold in stores). We also checked out a handful of different options before settling on this supplier - mainly looking for pens that were as close to the Staedtler Pigment Liner. If I'm being honest, I think these might even perform a little better, at least for our use case in this course.
We've also tested their longevity. We've found that if we're reasonably gentle with them, we can get through all of Lesson 1, and halfway through the box challenge. We actually had ScyllaStew test them while recording realtime videos of her working through the lesson work, which you can check out here, along with a variety of reviews of other brands.
Now, I will say this - we're only really in a position to make this an attractive offer for those in the continental United States (where we can offer shipping for free). We do ship internationally, but between the shipping prices and shipping times, it's probably not the best offer you can find - though this may depend. We also straight up can't ship to the UK, thanks to some fairly new restrictions they've put into place relating to their Brexit transition. I know that's a bummer - I'm Canadian myself - but hopefully one day we can expand things more meaningfully to the rest of the world.
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