Hello daggers!

[Steve H]

Greetings! Salutations! Hi... I'm Steve, 25 years old and living in south east England. I am not great at introductions or writing anything biographical so I will keep this short. As you may gather I am quite a nervous guy. The type of person who'll sit quietly in a room full of people, and only really speak once I've got a feeling of the atmosphere and what the conversation is. Which very often means I'll actually end up saying nothing at all. :s

I am still at a very basic level when it comes to artistic ability. A lot of my process owes more to happy accidents than any real honed skill. When alls said and done there is usually something kinda lifeless and quite unfinished about the final result. To that end I have taken this year to be the start of my attempt to fix that by learning and honing myself.

Still trying to figure out how best to get myself into a schedule as well as build a list of things to learn. At the moment I am currently working through the lessons on the drawabox.com, and just started going through Figure Drawing for All It's Worth by Andrew Loomis. All while fighting an uphill battle of thinking I am not good enough to even attempt to draw anything, especially with all this laundry that needs folding! Any resources you think will help, advice, or anything you would recommend. I'd be most grateful!

I just have got to say it is really inspiring to see how people here have progressed from learner to learned over time!

As far as long term goals of what I'd like to do with art, I'd someday love to draw my own comics someday. I recently read Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud, and even though I've always had a love for comics that book made me appreciate the medium to new degrees.

Anyway I have rambled into a much longer intro than I really meant to do. Bottom line I am really hoping to get to know people and overall feel less alone in not being where I want to be, while I attempt to get there.

Thanks for reading! :D

[RottenPocket]

Hey Steve,

I can empathize with you greatly on some of your points. The happy accidents, and making the decision to push that skill further. Feeling like you're not where you want to be. Oh, and laundry...

Welcome to daggers, you should start a sketchbook thread in the forums and post your work.

[John]

Hi Steve.

Looks like you got your art regimen covered. Let's get to it! Welcome to the Crimson Daggers!

[Artloader]

Welcome to Crimson Daggers Steve :).

Good to see another UK resident - I'm based in the East Midlands :).

Sounds like you're on a good path already with drawabox and Loomis. If you're into figure drawing, you should also check out Proko's YouTube channel - really great quality free content as well that will nicely supplement your Loomis stuff.

I've got the Scott McCloud book as well - a great read I thought. If you ever want to chat comics, PM me - I'm like you in that I'd like to eventually get my own comic book going. I've been working on a script for the past year or so but it's still very much a work in progress. Actually there are a fair number of daggers who are into comics creation and there's also a comics study group thread which isn't too active at the moment but I keep an eye on it anyway:

http://crimsondaggers.com/forum/thread-7074.html


Looking forward to seeing your progress mate :).

[Steve H]

@RottenPocket - Done, I'd actually meant to put some stuff up at the same time as this intro, but ran into issues in my attempts to upload images. Thanks for the welcoming words!

@John - Thanks, it sounds kinda pathetic but I never thought drawing a bunch of straight lines would be something that takes so much thought to get right... and the first couple of pages of Loomis are proving to be pretty daunting. Nonetheless, I am pushing through it and am just really glad to be starting after putting it off for so long.

@Artloader - Thanks for pointing me to proko, I actually stumbled upon one of his videos on drawing the human skeleton a few years ago, but couldn't find it when I was actually looking for it. Really big library of videos and a wealth of information there to digest!
I'll Certainly make it a point to get some discussion of comics going. Would love to try to figure out the whys and the hows and of what it is that makes a great comic. (Ex. How certain writers and artists achieve that really great flow between comics that is really noticeable when it just isn't there). Right now my ideas for comics are little more than just small notes and nebulous feelings that when said out loud are mostly combinations of "umm" "errrh" "sorta" "kinda" "like" interspersed with words suffixed with "-ish".

Again, thanks everyone for such a warm welcome!  
I'm a pretty slow writer, but I'll be doing all I can to stay as active as possible on these forums.