END OF YEAR REVIEW OF THE ONLINE ART COURSE
I was very happy to complete the art course before the end of the year. I began it in November 2023 so it was just over a year in completion. Nice to start the New Year with a clean slate and try and catch up with some of my other much-neglected projects!
In addition to my normal annual review, I thought I would do a separate one about the art course.
This post will include only those art works directly associated with the course. Please click on the links to take you to the relevant blog posts (and sometimes the ones immediately following) which give fuller details of each project.
During the year I have worked on other pictures, following what I was learning on the course, but I haven’t included those here. They will appear in my general end-of-year review post.
How I discovered the course
I came into this pretty much by accident (except that I don’t really believe in chance – it was definitely meant to be!). Back in November 2023, I saw the teacher Phil’s ad on YouTube for his DrawAwesome course. I am not usually one to follow up on YouTube ads as most of them are rubbish, but there was something compelling about this. Phil asked if we had ever wondered why some people seemed to be gifted at drawing, while we felt absolutely useless at it. I have been creative all my life in one way or another, but always felt that realistic drawing was my weakest area. In Phil’s ad, he invited us to take his free tutorial as a taster, to prove to us that everyone can draw, if they are given the right teaching.
Phil’s introductory lesson and my first drawing
I duly followed his mini-tutorial, and drew the elephant he suggested.
I did go a little beyond his brief, adding some shading. Not a bad effort, but I was to do much better in the coming months! I drew this sketch with an HB mechanical pencil on normal printer paper.
Like most beginner artists, I drew the outline first and then added the detail.
Phil was to show us that this is the wrong approach. Real artists see things in simple shapes which they draw first, and then add detail. This way it is much easier to get the proportions correct from the outset, and you don’t have to go back and correct the basics when you’ve already added lots of detail. It also teaches you to observe, because the spaces between objects are just as important as the objects themselves. What he was teaching us was a different way of looking at the world.
This tutorial was tremendous fun, and quite an eye-opener for me. I was hooked, and signed up for the course. At just under £30 per month, it worked out at about £7 per lesson, which is considerably less than you’d pay in a live art course! Add to this that Phil is an absolutely brilliant teacher, and the course is structured in such a way as to ease one into it gradually with plenty of opportunity to practise everything before progressing to the next level.
It is carefully structured so that with each module, your knowledge and experience is gradually built up. Because of this, it is not possible to download the whole course all at once, or to pick and choose which modules to download. Each successive module is only available as you complete the previous one. This also helps to prevent one feeling overwhelmed. It’s a brilliant strategy, and makes the whole learning process feel like a lot of fun, and as Phil says in his introductory video, you are practising without it feeling like practice.
How the course is structured
The course is divided into modules, and if you keep up, each module lasts a month. There are three weekly sessions where Phil teaches you what to do, and you draw along with him. The fourth session is a self-directed challenge, where he tells you what to draw, usually giving you a choice of different reference photos to follow, but doesn’t hold your hand while you do it. This way, you put what you have learned in the first three sessions into practice on your own, and the results are very encouraging. The final week is a rest week, when you can do what you want – you can re-do any challenge you aren’t happy with, or you can use the same medium or subject matter to produce a picture of your own choice, or do something completely different, or simply have a rest from art altogether! This is great, because it takes away any sense of pressure from the course, and enables you to consolidate and reflect upon what you have just done.
Materials and themes
The first half of the course concentrates on different materials, beginning with monochrome before advancing on to colour. The second half dealt with subject matter – landscapes, animals, portraits etc.
The first module – graphite pencil
We began with graphite pencil. The very first session was all about how to hold the pencil, and how to observe the direction of the light source and how shadows are formed.
Here are my first efforts from session 1.
The overhand grip on the pencil was really difficult to get used to! One is tempted to draw as one would write, holding the pencil near the point, and quite tightly. After a while on the course, holding the pencil further back became second nature and I was loosening up nicely, and able to produce basic shapes with ease. Phil also taught us to see curves in the form of short straight lines, as you can see in the fruit drawings above.
Our first challenge
The very first “real” drawing we did looked like an impossible challenge at the start! A group of onions and garlic. However, under Phil’s expert tuition, I was able to come up with something which I found hard to believe I was capable of!
One thing I learnt very early on was that most beginners are frightened of the dark values – the shadow areas – and draw them much too light, which makes the picture look flat. Getting right into those shadows with a soft dark graphite pencil really brought the picture into 3-D life! I now find this one of the most exciting parts of any art. Contrast is everything!
Other drawings in the Graphite module
For the rest of the first month’s module, we covered eye and figure studies. When I saw that we were to draw eyes in only the second week, I thought that was impossible! Surely eyes are amongst the most difficult things to draw? However, I was yet again amazed that I was able to come up with these eye studies.
I kept having to pinch myself. Did I really draw this? Surely I’ll wake up in a minute and find that Rumplestiltskin did it during the night!!
Figure studies
For the third week of the course, we did a series of studies of street musicians. This proved very difficult for me as it immediately highlighted my weakest area – getting angles and proportions correct. Phil taught us the “envelope” method, where you draw a 5-sided shape around the figure to set the parameters for proportion and angles. I really struggled with this! Eventually I managed and here are my studies.
The self-directed challenge
Back to still-life again for the self-directed challenge for this module, this time to draw some fruit.
Module B – Charcoal
Charcoal was definitely my least favourite module of the whole course. I am glad that I stuck at it, though, and got through to the end, so that I could progress on to more enjoyable things! It would have been such a shame to abandon the course at this early stage.
Charcoal is messy and dirty. People love it because it is fast, and you can manipulate it easily, but I detested it from day 1! My final challenges came out well and I was pleased with them, but this was not enough to convert me to this horrible medium!
If you look back to my very first elephant drawing, following Phil’s free tutorial, you can see how much I’ve improved by the end of the charcoal module!
Module C – Ink pens
I really felt I was in my element with this medium, although I had never used these pens in a “fine art” style before. I have had a lot of practice using them for pattern drawing and a more illustrative style, and to use them in a sketchy way was new to me.
For our warm-up, we learned different ways of creating varied values with the pens, from the right choice of tip thickness to various shading methods – hatching, stippling etc. Most of this was familiar ground for me.
The first project
This series of small drawings was an interesting challenge. The ones I thought would be the most difficult proved to be relatively easy – the bee, and the water jar. I didn’t get the foreshortening of the banana correct and re-did this later. The most difficult one was the hammer – really surprising! Again, I was struggling with proportions and angles. This one took ages to get right.
The second project
This drawing of the wreck of an old car was one of the most enjoyable drawings of the course. I loved doing this. My hubby joined me in this session. It was a combination of ink pen drawing and a wash of black watercolour paint.
The third project
The final directed challenge in this module was this drawing of an iguana. A lot of people complained that all those scales drove them crazy, but with all my experience with Zentangle, they presented no challenge to me. In fact I found the repetitive nature of this drawing to be quite relaxing.
I was thinking so much along the lines of Zentangle that I decided to do the whole reference photo of the iguana in this style.
This drawing generated a lot of interest on the ArtKula forum which we were all encouraged to join. The DrawAwesome board on there is a private board, just for course members, but there are numerous other public boards, and it’s a brilliant forum for artists. I’ve made some good friends on there, and got a lot of inspiration as well as encouragement there.
The self-directed challenge
Our final challenge in this module was to do three small drawings using the ink pens, and adding shading with a black watercolour wash. One of the reference photos was of a teddy, but I decided to draw my own teddy for this challenge. He was given to me when I was born so he is now 71 years old and a little the worse for wear but still going strong! Nice to celebrate him with a little portrait.
I loved doing the ink pen module. Using them in this way, and adding a wash, was a revelation to me, and definitely something to pursue further..
Module D – Pastel Pencils
Colour at last! I think it was great that the first three modules of the course concentrated on monochrome, to give us a good grounding. We needed to learn the basics of shape and proportion, and how values work, without the added complication of colour. Module D was definitely a step up the ladder.
First challenge – avocado
Our first challenge was to draw an avocado under Phil’s expert guidance. It is amazing, with the right techniques, observation, practice and patience, a good sense of realism can be achieved.
I loved working with the pastel pencils. You can build up the layers and create lovely rich colours quite quickly. However, I didn’t much like the feel of them against the dedicated pastel paper, and enjoyed drawing with them better when I used different papers. They have a slightly sticky feel to them on pastel paper which I found rather unpleasant. Also, Phil taught us to sharpen these delicate pencils in the traditional way, with a knife and a sanding block, which I found extremely tedious and difficult. I bought a Derwent pencil sharpener which was designed for pastel pencils and it worked brilliantly to start with, but soon got blunt and kept breaking the pencils. My Mobius+Ruppert German metal one with a box of spare blades is working much better so far, and I now have a hand-cranked one by Swordfish on order from Amazon (recommended by a fellow forum member) which I am keen to try. Can one ever have enough pencil sharpeners?!
The second challenge
My attempt at the hen, the second project in the module was not so successful as I didn’t place it correctly on the paper and it came out rather small. It wasn’t my favourite subject, either. Here’s a close-up.
Challenge 3 – bubbles!
The third directed challenge was our first portrait. Because we were concentrating on the medium and not on portraiture, which would come much later in the course, we were told to trace the face to save a lot of time. This is a charming portrait of a little girl blowing bubbles – I think we all enjoyed this one.
Self-directed challenge
This was a series of facial features. I think I did OK with this, but didn’t particularly enjoy the subject matter, for some reason. (I didn’t do a blog post about this at the time.)
Module E – Ink pens and watercolour
Back to the ink pens again, but this time with the addition of some colour in the form of watercolour. I really enjoyed this module. This is also my hubby’s favourite medium, so he sat in with me for this part of the course and worked the projects with me. It was fun putting up the results of our work on the mantelpiece and comparing notes! Not having had the benefit of the earlier parts of the course, he didn’t know to make his dark values really dark, so his pictures lacked a little depth, but other than that they were great. It was such a joy working together. I had been trying to persuade him to get his paints out again for years, without success, but seeing me doing it was the spur he needed, and he has been doing bits of art work on and off since then, which is great. This is one of the best benefits of the whole course for me – to see him using his talents again!
The first challenge – tree frog
This tree frog was one of my favourite drawings of the whole course. I loved the vibrant colours and the loose background. We had a choice with the background, to add more or less detail, to make it more or less messy with spatters and runs. I loved the latter so I had fun with that.
I like the effect of the ink work with the watercolour. It defines the edges and details. Building the layers of colour results in great depth and richness.
The second project – sketches of buildings
There was quite a lot of work involved in this challenge, and it wasn’t among my favourite of subjects. The sketches were small and didn’t take too long to do each one.
We began with some exercises in colour mixing, which I found fascinating. From just three primaries, you can create a range of greys and beiges, useful for stonework and skin tones. The differences are created by the relative amounts of each colour added. People can paint pictures full of amazing colour variety from a very limited palette indeed.
The third challenge – smoking man portrait
We began this project with nore colour mixing experiments, concentrating on skin tones. Again, we used a very limited colour palette and it’s amazing the range you can get.
This portrait was another of my favourite projects of the whole course. I wasn’t sure I liked the reference picture much to start with, but as I worked on it, I got quite attached to what one Aussie member of the forum called “the old geezer” and the name stuck!
The self-directed challenge
An adventure in en plein air sketching! We were instructed to get out and about and make a series of quick watercolour and ink pen sketches of local buildings, each to be done in a very short space of a few minutes. My hubby and I took a trip out in the car and did this project together which was fun. We chose buildings as different from each other as possible: a modern bungalow, a thatched cottage, a seaside villa and a Gothic revival Victorian manor house
Accuracy wasn’t the aim here, but just to capture the essence of the buildings. I really enjoyed doing these. Working in such a loose style was a new experience for me and I let myself go and had fun creating pretty un-photo-realistic renderings of some of our local buildings!
Module F – Coloured pencils
This was the final module concentrating on different media, and it was one I was looking forward to immensely. I love coloured pencils and was keen to have some good tuition on this. I’ve followed a number of artists online who produce stunning work with this medium. It takes time and patience to build up and blend all the layers, but you can really get “into the zone” with it and it’s incredibly relaxing, not to mention the awesome results!
Our first project – a bunch of vegetables
This challenge took a long time, because there were so many different vegetables in the collection. We worked on one at a time until the picture was complete. Phil encouraged us to employ a sketchy style but I am not so keen on this, and I spent more time on my drawing, rendering a more photo-realistic finish which I prefer.
I loved how the addition of the really dark values brought this picture to life as I progressed with the work. It was a most enjoyable project.
The second project – hands
I love drawing hands. I’d had a bit of practice by this stage, and really enjoyed this particular project.
I find the foreshortening aspect of different hand positions very fascinating, and interesting to draw.
After doing this series of studies, we concentrated on the drawing of a single hand. I wasn’t very keen on the reference for this as it showed tremendous tension in the hand gesture, with all the tendons standing out. It was an interesting exercise, though. Before doing it, we had some practice in blending skin tones with coloured pencils.
Third project – robin
This was another absolute favourite of mine from the whole course. I loved this little robin singing his heart out! For this one we were definitely encouraged to use a more photo-realistic style, which was more to my taste. It took a while, and in the end I was very happy with the result.
The self-directed challenge
For this one, we were encouraged to draw one or more of several animal eyes. I chose one of our cats. I made the surrounding fur much too brown (she is a silver tabby and white cat) but it didn’t really matter as it was the eye that was the focus of the exercise. I confined myself to a single drawing, as I was already working on other projects and was quite busy at the time.
Module G – Landscapes
The half-way mark of the course! Into June! Now we were to concentrate on subject matter rather than medium, and to kick us off, we began with landscapes. Each project was worked in a different medium, or mixed media, and it was a most enjoyable module, with one or two exceptions!
Project 1 – graphite pencil
For this series of landscape sketches, we went back to the beginning and dug out our graphite pencils again. For me, this wasn’t a great success. I prefer to use graphite pencils for other subjects, and felt that my drawings looked a bit messy.
We began with some small studies of clouds.
We then moved on to a larger landscape drawing featuring a cloudy sky.
This project was my least favourite of the challenges set for the landscapes module.
Project 2 – pastel pencil and ink pen
We moved on to colour, using a combination devised by phil – pastel pencils and ink pens. I don’t think this worked particularly well, and I omitted a lot of the ink pen lines that Phil included, particularly in the sky, because somehow the hatching for the shading ruined the picture for me. Just a matter of taste, but I preferred my own end result. The picture itself was gorgeous – an abandoned boat on a deserted beach.
The ink pen work was great for the detail on the boat, and the texture of the beach and water, but the sky was definitely best left alone.
The third project – a camper van in a desert landscape
This project was definitely fun to do. Again, a combination of media – pen and watercolour. Because cars and other vehicles are notoriously difficult to draw, Phil didn’t want us wasting time focusing on that at the expense of the rest of the project, but encouraged us to do a basic drawing of the camper van on a separate piece of paper and trace it off for transferring onto the drawing proper. This saved a lot of time.
Working on the textures of the rock formations and the grassland in the foreground took a long time. This was quite a lengthy project to do, but quite enjoyable.
The self-directed challenge
For me, this was probably the highlight of the whole course. The instructions were pretty open-ended – draw a landscape of your choice, in the medium/media of your choice. I decided to let myself go and do one of my favourite things – an interactive project! I chose a particular view of the gardens at Dartington Hall, one of my absolute favourite places on earth. One of the things I dislike about many English landscapes is the predominance of green (yes, I do love our “green and pleasant land” but for art it can be a bit tedious!) – so I decided to depart from green altogether and go radical with an entirely different palette. I made an under-drawing with watercolours, coloured pencils, ink pens and a few touches of Inktense pencils, and painted a border featuring tiny pictures of favourite things found on the estate, using my new Kuretake Japanese watercolours which have a lovely grungey tint to them. I then made an overlay from vellum. Onto this I traced the outlines of the drawing beneath, and filled them in with texture in the form of Zentangle patterns and other mark making, using ink pens. I have used this technique on a number of occasions in the past and think I can say I invented it! Each layer enhances the other and creates something more than the sum of the two parts. It is also interactive in the sense that one peels back the top vellum layer to reveal the drawing underneath, which is fun. This kind of art does not lend itself to framing and hanging on the wall, of course, but then my artistic talents tend to lead me towards more tactile and interactive stuff anyway – I love making books, to be handled, interacted with, and whose textures are to be enjoyed in a very tactile way. This is why I love pop-ups and other surprises in book pages. This particular drawing was definitely destined to be a page of a book and not to be hung on the wall. It generated a huge amount of positive comment on the forum, much to my delight!
Finally, a video to show it in action.
Module H – Animals
This was another absolute favourite module for me. By this stage of the course, I believe we were all developing our skills and becoming accomplished artists, thanks to Phil’s brilliant tuition. The subjects were delightful and I enjoyed them all, even this first one in my dreaded charcoal, which I thought I’d put away for good!
Project 1 – Eagle in charcoal
Lesson 2 – Boston terrier in graphite pencil
For me, this was a better use of the graphite pencils than the landscape. I so enjoyed drawing this charming portrait of such a cute little dog!
Project 3 – Tiger in pastel pencils
You could never fail to please me with a tiger as the subject of a picture. I adore them.
Self-directed challenge
Again, the brief was fairly open-ended, to draw any animal of your choice in any medium, but Phil suggested a pet portrait of any animal known to you. I decided to draw another tiger from a reference photo I found on a royalty-free site, of a tiger drinking. This was a huge challenge with all the complicated reflections in the water and it took me a long time, especially as I chose to work exclusively with coloured pencils. I changed the background colours to complimentary purple to the orange of the tiger, to make it a bit more personal to me and for added impact. I was very pleased with the result of this drawing.
Module I – Figures
This was an interesting module. Phil taught us how to use a measuring stick to get the proportions of the body correct. He uses a coffee stirrer but he said any strip of stiff card would do, and I used an offcut of some mount board. You mark off the measurement of a head, and then see how many times it fits into the body, to get the proportions right.
1st project – clothed figures
This was a series of fairly quick sketches of figures in different positions. We were not expected to draw them all, but could choose. I chose a total of four. They were worked in watercolour and ink pen and were quite fun and interesting to do.
2nd project – nude figure
Phil chose a tasteful nude for our nude study. When I’d seen on the forum what other people had drawn, who were ahead of me on the course, I wasn’t sure I was going to like this picture, but once I got into it I enjoyed it. This was supposed to be drawn with charcoal and a sanguine pastel pencil but I drew the line at getting my charcoal out again! I drew the whole thing with pastel pencils. This time I didn’t use pastel paper but some ordinary white card which I had coated with Golden satin glazing liquid which makes a lovely surface. The black and orange (closest I could get to a genuine sanguine colour) pastel pencils were still pretty messy, especially the black one. Another change I made was to draw this on an A4 sheet rather than the suggested A3, as I didn’t have any suitable paper of that size. Also, I wanted all my art work for the course to be on approximately the same size as I intend binding it all in a book eventually.
3rd project – cyclists
This was one of my least favourite projects of the whole course, mostly because I wasn’t very interested in the subject and didn’t want to spend a lot of time drawing a picture I didn’t consider very attractive or interesting! However, it was quite an interesting project to work on, and it didn’t take as long as anticipated as we worked this one in pastel pencils which are quite quick.
I did get some positive feedback on the forum for this one, which was encouraging.
The self-directed challenge
We were given a choice of several reference photos for this one, and I chose a very charming picture of a mother and her little girl, looking as if they were walking home after a day at the beach. Being a pen and watercolour painting, my hubby joined me with this one, too, which was fun.
I thought the little girl was really cute and adorable, with what my Scottish friend on the forum desribed as her “chubby wee arms” haha! This was a really lovely drawing to do.
Module J – Portraits
Coming into September now, and tackling the really hard stuff! I thought this was going to be the challenge of all challenges, but with Phil’s expert tuition as always, it really wasn’t too bad and I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it, producing some very interesting faces. Old, or weather-beaten faces are a lot easier to draw, and I think more interesting and have more character, than smooth young ones. The lines give you lots of reference points for getting the proportions right. Phil taught us several methods of plotting the features of a face in portraiture, and we used these different methods in the different projects.
Project 1 – young boy
What an interesting face this boy has. There were differing opinions on the forum about the meaning of his expression, but to my mind he seemed to be the youngest of a group, perhaps aspiring to join a gang, and trying to look tough and street-wise! He certainly doesn’t look too happy.
His frown lines gave a nice lot of reference points. I loved getting his skin tone and the texture of his hair with the graphite pencils, and merging his neck and shirt into the background. I was very pleased with the result of this one.
Project 2 – man in a hat
This was an ink pen drawing, after we’d mapped most of it out with graphite. A really seamed, weather-beaten face! Interesting to do but perhaps not my favourite of the module. Lots of interesting texture in the skin and beard.
Project 3 – woman with dark hair
Another interesting portrait of a lady possibly of Indian extraction. She has such beautiful eyes and a broad smile. This was a monochrome drawing and the suggested colour was blue, but I preferred the sepia tone which is warmer. This was worked in coloured pencils. On the reference photo she appeared to be wearing lip-liner and most people followed the reference faithfully, but I disliked the hard outline of her mouth so I omitted this.
The self-directed challenge
This was an interesting one – we were directed to draw a self-portrait! I thought long and hard about this, and not feeling particularly enamoured of my current appearance, weighed up whether to do one of me as a small child, or me as a bride. I really couldn’t decide, so I chose to do both! My hubby was absolutely delighted with the wedding one especially, saying it looked exactly as he remembers me appearing on that momentous day back in 1986. The baby portrait was drawn from a black and white studio portrait photo from the mid-1950s so I made up the colour of the dress. Mum made all our little smocked dresses in those days and I remember wearing them when I was a little older than this. The wedding picture was pen and watercolour, and the baby picture was done with coloured pencil.
Module K – Drawing on grey
The final module of the whole course! Amazing to have come full circle to the end of the year, and to have achieved so much. How quickly the time has gone.
I didn’t enjoy this module as much as I thought I would, probably because of the subject matter.
Project 1 – leaf and flower studies
I did enjoy doing the leaves, with their white outlines which made them look like cut-outs.
These drawings were all done with a mixture of different media, from coloured pencil, ink pen, pastel pencil and watercolour. Phil taught us a mixture of coloured pencil and watercolour, which is a very interesting combination and can really improve the look of a finished watercolour painting as the coloured pencil smoothes out any imperfections. It’s definitely a technique I shall be using in the future.
2nd project – animals
This was my least favourite project of the module. I think the wolf was my favourite of the three studies.
These were also worked with a mixture of different media – pen and watercolour, and pastel pencil.
3rd project – cherries and art materials
This final directed project turned out to be one of my absolute favourites of the whole course! It combined the really loose watercolour style of the cherries, and the fine detailed work of the art materials used to create it. I loved the 3-D effect of the illusion of the small piece of paper on which the cherries were painted. This was just so much fun to draw and paint, using a combination of watercolour and ink pen, and coloured pencils and pastel pencils, and a white ink marker (which also featured in the other projects in this module).
I am looking forward to doing further work on this grey-tinted paper. I have wanted to do Zentangle art on coloured paper for ages, using a white coloured pencil for highlights in addition to the normal graphite for the shadows. I prefer the use of monochrome with this paper and have various ideas to put into practice as time goes on. I shall probably also work on kraft paper, or even brown packaging paper and cardboard in this way, as well.
The self-directed challenge
For the final challenge of the whole course, the brief was completely open – use any medium of your choice, to make a picture of any subject you like. This required careful thought! I wanted to do something really special, and also in some way to pay tribute to Phil for his year-long superb teaching.
In the end I made a combination of digital work on the computer and laser printer, and coloured pencil.
I created a digital border of tiny images of many of the works I completed during the course, and printed this onto some gorgeous Bristol vellum paper which is thin enough to go through the printer. I then made a portrait of Phil himself, taken from a screen grab from his initial introductory video to the whole course. The final touch was to draw the text banner across the bottom, with the dates between which I completed the course.
Phil was totally blown away by this and loved it! This was so satisfying, and I was delighted to be able to please him in this way and show my endless appreciation for everything he has taught me over the previous year.
How the course has changed me
As I have mentioned several times during the course of the year, I cannot believe what I am now capable of achieving, by working through this course. I still have to pinch myself to see if I am awake – and am constantly asking myself, “Did I really draw this?” It still seems unbelievable to me!
Am I an artist?
Over the years I have been reluctant to call myself an artist. I did think my work encompassed more than the label “crafter” would describe, but it seemed somehow pretentious to call myself an artist. These days, though, I no longer have such reservations. I truly believe I have acquired the right to describe myself as a real artist, and it is down to Phil’s excellent tuition. I now feel that I can tackle anything I want, and nothing is impossible for me.
Refining my choices
The course has revealed to me what I really love, and what I dislike and would not want to pursue. Even while working through the charcoal module, for instance, I knew I wouldn’t want to use this medium in the future, but I persevered, as every project was honing my observational skills and teaching me so much. I have learnt how to combine certain media such as watercolor and coloured pencil to great effect, and been introduced to media of which I had no previous experience, such as pastel pencils. I have learnt that there is another whole world associated with ink pens, as I had hitherto only used them for illustrative and pattern work, and not in a more fine-art sense. I have learnt how to approach a drawing from the beginning, examining basic shapes; I have learnt to be bold with dark values, and with practice, my weakest area, the rendering of proportion and angles, is definitely improving.
Forum friends, inspiration and knowledge
I have had the privilege of joining a wonderful art forum in ArtKula, open to anyone to join. The DrawAwesome board is private, open only to course members, but once you have completed the course you have lifetime access to it. This way I can go back in and see how others are progressing as they work through the course in the same way as I have done, and offer encouragement and appreciation. I have made several good friends on the forum, and have gained so much inspiration and knowledge from them, in their various styles and media of choice, and learnt of other courses in which they have taken part, and been introduced to other professional and amateur artists through the various recommended YouTube channels. And so on, and so on… A whole new world has opened up to me! I have been privileged to share a lot of my own work on there as well as my course work, and this has resulted in so much positive feedback, and ideas for further work.
Future plans
What an absolute joy this course has been! I felt such a sense of achievement at the end of it, but also a feeling of loss and bereavement as the regular weekly commitment was no longer there. This has spurred me on to search out other courses, and I have purchased a year’s subscription of Domestika, and used my credits to buy a whole selection of creative and artistic courses, all shorter than DrawAwesome, and taught by different artists. These are all courses to look forward to working through in the coming year, so watch this space, as I shall be publishing the fruits of my labours here on my blog.
