Hello, haven't introduced yet so Paul here, guy from east Europe. I'll be posting studies, sketches and other stuff i do on my free time aside my full time job. Currently working in small mobile games studio, but it got monotonous doing assets day by day, so joined daggers, hoping to have great time here. 

Main goal is polishing fundamentals and getting that portfolio going. We will see what happens after few years :)

Hello, I'm 31, from Houston, Texas. I decided to join this forum in order to get help since I'm having a lot of trouble learning even the most basic things about drawing . I started taking drawing seriously back when I was 20. I ended up going to a local university for classes. I primarily wanted to study drawing but ended up taking painting, digital imaging and, graphic design as well. This did not go well at all. These classes were nightmarishly bad but, in the opposite way of how most people online talked about their art courses. Instead of having professors who would tear up work or yell at students, every class I had was with ones who would refuse to critique and simply told everyone they were doing fine. Very little was actually taught in these classes and the handouts had minimal information. I tried hounding them for answers but, they simply told me I was doing fine.  By the time I graduated I had a bachelor's degree in art yet, made absolutely zero progress towards any of my goals. I have heard of the degree not mattering but, i had hoped to at least learn the skills needed to get started. Instead, I learned absolutely nothing about drawing to spite my best efforts. I had no contacts and found no local communities that have even remotely similar interests. Worst of all my prospects for getting any sort of job in the field were abysmal. I even tried classes outside of college. My experiences with those were even worse.

I have also had a hard time with books. I recall going through the exercises in Betty Edward's "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain" and just ending up confused. Supposedly it was intended to help with symbol drawing but, I was not able to put anything from it into use. I'm lost on how to improve.

I checked out the Daggers discord but, I don't feel as though I'm anywhere near the skill level that the people who post there are. I'm still stuck on some very basics concepts. 

Hi! I'm Kazy, I'm 18 and I'm a student in Southern California.  I'm interested in improving my art and meeting other artists! I hope to pursue a career in concept art, but I know I still have a lot to learn! 

I'm going to be taking some online art classes in the near future (if you have any suggestions please share). I've been going to community college so far, but I've very recently come to the conclusion that following the university path isn't going to get me where I need to be to reach my goals. So I guess you could say this is my first step in getting serious about art! 

Here's about where I am right now:

Thank you for opening this :D I hope I can meet artists and talk with you about art  
I saw this site on a youtube video and was curious about it :O so here I am writting my first text. I hope this is a great way to start??


So I would be very thankful if anyone could explain me this website x33
Or just write me something lol :D

 I aspire to be a graphic designer btw


I put my newest digital drawing in the attachments :3

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Hi! My name is Vladimir. I am 23 years old. Born and raised in Ukraine. Right now i`m living in Kiev. I start to draw seriously back in 2012. My main goal is to become professional digital artist/illustrator, as most of people here, I think:)
Didn`t quite get there, so far) 
I joined the forum to make some friends who are related to digital art. And of course to get some feedback/advice/critique on my work. I added some of it in the sketchbook section here. Feel free to checkout and tell me what you think :)
P.S. I am really sorry for any mistakes i might did. I am not really good English speaker.

Hi, my Name is Yasmin and I'm new here. I'm still learning how to use this forum to be honest. I don't know what to post where yet but I guess I'll learn eventually. I've been drawing since I was a little kid and tried painting last years of school and studied art in a university for four years specializing in traditional painting. After I graduated I was a bit depressed about displaying and selling my art so I stopped making art for a couple of years. But now I'm trying to get back to sketching, drawing and painting although I have a full time job... Hope to enjoy being part of this community and if you want to talk about anything related to art don't hesitate to send me a message.

Hello! I'm Mirna, I'm 23 living in a small, unimportant country. I joined the forum because I've decided to get serious about illustration and design but have been feeling pretty lost regarding the directions I'm taking, so I'm hoping to get pointers here. Moreover, I want to force myself to be consistent and follow a schedule here. I've failed over and over on other sites. This time I feel like I've got it figured out.
I really don't know how long I've been drawing cos everyone drew as a kid. I'm in the 2nd year at the local fine arts academy and it's helping me mostly in time organization and it provides live-model classes. I'm terrible at making myself work at home as I'm easily distracted.
One of my biggest issues, though, is marketing. I haven't the slightest idea on how to sell myself. I've tried fiverr and deviantArt and I just don't know how to get followers or commissioned. Hell, even if I did, I wouldn't know how to proceed. I'm overly anxious about it and I don't know the technicalities (invoices and such).
Another issue is that I'm afraid I'm too late in the game. I've wasted years getting a Bachelor's in something I'm not interested at all, and I'm counting on needing at least 2 more years to become hireable.
Sorry for rambling.
I really want to surround myself with more people doing concept art. I hope I make friends. :)
I will go and make my art thread now!

Hi, my name is Anna but friends often call me Yumi so it's up to you which one to use. I'm from Poland and I'm currently at my 4th year in art high school(which kind of sucks but traditional printmaking tools and cool classmates made me stay there xD). I've been drawing my whole life but I'm not satisfied with my art soo it's prooobably a sign that I should study more.

I'm currently going through Color and Light by James Gurney. Also I'm trying to get into design a little bit.
I'd love to become a professional artist someday so for now my goal is to develop a habit of studying art whenever I have a little bit of free time to draw in-between working on a school assignments. I hope that taking part in this community will help with that c: Also seeing all your progress and drawings is super motivating and inspiring o:

So yeah, nice to meet you all!

Hello Daggers,

Been lurking for a bit, thought I might as well say hello although I don't have much to contribute to the community as of yet.

At 38 I decided that I would like to fulfill an old dream of mine of becoming a concept artist. I've had no real prior training in this field, so I definitely have my work cut out for me. I work in health care full time, and spend the rest of my days drawing.

Reading through the many great sketchbooks here on this site has been a great source of inspiration, thank you for that. And its quite motivating to see everyone's progress. Hope one day to have something worthy of sharing.

So far, the two biggest things I've learned is, it comes down constant reflective practice and Visualization of form (caps intended as I find this is key for me). Now if I could only do it consistently...

As for my biggest hurdles, if I had to say, it would likely be rushing through practice at times, losing focus (autopilot), lack of structure and diversity in practice (as in i'll spend a whole day/week focusing on one thing and one thing only i.e.: lines), very little life drawing (close to 0), a sense of having poor control over my lines (i.e.: how I intend the line to look and how it ends up doesn't always match, especially with curves), poor visual library. Also I noticed sometimes I find myself being fearful, the thing is I can't tell whether i'm afraid of doing poorly (unlikely as I expect to do poorly at this stage) or of actually doing well or better than expected... is it that i'm afraid of doing something nice and not being able to repeat it? I don't quite get why I feel this way at times, it doesn't really impact me as I just power through it anyways but its been interesting.

Currently i'm taking Dynamic Sketching 1 at CGMA, and slowly going through Proko's figure drawing course (still at the beans, had a hard time with gesture), also got the Hampton's figure drawing book (yay for a method to the madness...)  and Framed Ink (looks like a nice read on composition) on the way from amazon which i'm excited to dig into. I have the pdfs of all of Loomis books (thanks to that nice fellow that been hosting it for years), and a very nice little book on perspective called Perspective made Easy.

Any suggestions for other resources useful for someone at the early stages as myself is most welcomed.

Hello! New to Crimson Daggers as the forum I was previously involved in closed down. Trying to find the right community to build friendships and improve together. I am a jack of all trades, and a master of none so I have decided to start from the beginning and work my way up. I have two separate end goals; the first is a dream to become a tattoo artist, and the second is a vague view of concept art as a hobbyist. 

Currently I am studying lectures by the wonderful sculptor Sabin Howard: Fundamentals of Human Anatomy, and anatomy of my head. Currently this is what will fill my Sketchbook (for the most part) here a CD.

I don't feel that tattoo art has a huge role or place in these forums, but if you are curious I do post this style of work to my instagram account. 

Looking forward to my time here!