Nice to meet you!

[Navaali]

I'm thirty something and I've been drawing since highschool. It's been a long time I'm stuck between being an amateur, giving up drawing, and being professional... I studied art and I have experience doing commission work, so it's not nothing, but at the same time, I lack confidence and I've never earned a living with art. I am not very consistent and I have a lot of weaknesses.
I want art to be more central to my life and I'd like to really become confident in my skills and experience.
Creating stories, making up characters and settings is something I take great joy in doing. It's the reason I started drawing. I want to finish at least one comic book, and then become better at it. I try to make manga art and to learn in that style, but I have a large style range (am very inconsistent) and I also look at realism to build up better fundamentals. Honestly, I want to be a professional manga or comic artist, but first I want to do some and develop my own stories and way of doing things before I confront myself with questions of level, competition and edition. 
I also want to review basics and become a better artist in order to teach art to people without feeling like a fraud. Learning and teaching actually go hand in hand I think, but the more I can practice the better I could teach.

I appreciate this place that gives me a chance to share motivation and inspiration with others. It's also a way to take a step back and write my goals and check my process, progress, etc. I hope it will help me become more consistent, to practice more, while not losing sight of what I want to create and the heart I want to put in my creations.
In the past, the experience of art school and a inhumane critical environment made me distanciate from my hopes, desire to create, and personality. I put a lot of effort into it, but I was unable to achieve things for myself and in the end, drawing was just not something I did with pleasure anymore. It felt like something I had imposed on myself, a huge mountain of difficulty with no reward, serving other people only. I stopped wanting to be a pro, but I didn't stop drawing.
Now I sometime feel that it's a tool that belong to me and I get closer to love what I do. I also realize how important it is to me, and I don't want to give up on that. I have already put so much time and effort in building my skills, and I faced a lot of hardship - it's a shame to not do anything with that.
The most important thing is that I focus on achieving my creative projects without getting distracted by too many other things- but I feel like training in a place like here can still help me with staying focused on improving certain areas, organize better, get motivated, and share the joy and hardships of drawing with people! I'm looking for feedback and happy to discuss anything art-related.
Thanks for reading me, have a nice day~

[JosephCow]

It's nice to meet you and welcome. It sounds like you have an interesting story, though maybe not too unlike a lot of artists. I relate to a lot of what you said, at least.

[RottenPocket]

I too am thirty something, figuring shit out, and resort to moonlighting to keep the art moving. Welcome!

[darktiste]

A secret that may evade a lot of people with aspiration of there own it not what you say it what you do. But as long as you clarify form time to time what you want to do there odd you will do it.

After all it would be a bit ridicule to not have people at least have a sense of what you are trying to achieve we can't read mind.But Making sure you have control over your own intention require a bit of privacy not for the sake of secrecy but because sometime you need to be shielded from people taking the wheel of your art specially if you a people pleaser type.

Privacy to a certain degree is also to ensure to a level that you walk the walk and not talk and talk. As i might heard somewhere create intention doesn't make a good artist.

We all need a community of like minded individual it multiply the chance of success there time for transparency and there time to be distant to be able to take your own direction.

It really depend if you are still trying to figure thing out and need support or if you are further down the road in knowing how to cook something up. Sometime to many cook in the kitchen can hinder the direction you had initially for the better of for the worst.

Comic is certainly something that can be very broad specially when your into world building and story telling it not the easy path certainly it a lot of practice for sure depending on the complexity of the project. But now a day i heard it not as hard as before to make comic using 3d.

I recommend you get blender and look into grease pencil there also clip studio i heard is a create tool for comic and manga artist.

[Navaali]

@Josephcow Thank you for your welcome! It's nice if I can share something relatable, although I wish people a simpler experience with doing art than mine!

@Rottenpocket Thank you. I wonder if looking for art communities on forums isn't something thirty something people would do... So I'm not surprised I'm not the only one around that age.

@Darktiste Thank you for your thoughts. When I was a teenager I talked about my projects to an Australian artist I happened to meet and he told me (I barely knew any English then) "don't talk about it just do it".
Even though it's the most important art advice I ever received, I couldn't apply it for a long time and I still need to be careful about talking instead of doing. Here too. 
I agree about privacy. I've experienced that, and I would like to still keep some work private so I ensure I don't fall into the trap of creating only for a demand, instead of setting my own path. 
I except I will always be figuring shit out. But I can have feedback and support and also keep some direction if needed. Too many cooks in the kitchen... is exactly what went wrong with criticism in art school for example. All the teachers just gave contradictory feedback while not seeming to care about what your project was or meant.
Comics are time consuming... but I really like it. I don't want to wait, I need to start making it right away and learn along the way.
I am actually starting to use Clip Studio Paint, for the reasons you mention! I've heard it can save a lot of time, and even if I want to be able to draw without 3D and other shortcuts, if I want to tell the stories I have in mind, I will need to cut on the process.
Blender seems fun as well, I might look into it too.

[darktiste]

I certainly encourage you to use it but certainly would not advise to rely heavily on the 3d model aspect you want strong drawing fundamental first but ultimately comic is not necessary about pretty drawing but appealing story.

A good reminder is that setting up model won't teach you about basic such as anatomy or character design.

Never use something to a level where you feel like it limit you.

If you want to do comic right away you can always start with stick figure this way you can also deal with concept like composition, environment and props much earlier.

As far as the material you are studying are you following video tutorial,paid content or have book?


My advise is if you don't have money right now is to go to a local library they might have resource on how to draw comic you just have to look for some comic or manga related book that could teach you the basic and all you will need is to borrow the book what even better is you probably don't even have to visit a library because some library might allow you to borrow book digitally so only have to sign in and other stuff probably.

Anyways let me know if you need help for book suggestion or where to find them.

[Navaali]

Well, I'm not beginning right now so I have some fundamentals already. I sometimes do storyboard/base sketchs with stick figures that I then complexify, but I can draw characters in space good enough that it's understandable; I do drawings, digital illustration... that I would say look rather good when I put enough work in it. So I have a little experience drawing comics. A dozen pages as exercices during my studies, but in the last two years when I wanted to get back seriously into it... I only managed to do 5 pages :(
With that I consider myself a beginner, I'm only scratching the surface on how to do a good scenario, story-board, picture and page compositions, drawing of background, inking etc. At the same time I'm not a real beginner. I wish to put the various things I've learned together and actually do something with it.

For studying materials... I own a good number of books that I'd like to actually take advantage of (too often owning the book makes you feel like you're progressing... but I haven't really used it in a meaningful way). I tend to collect books... I'll make a list of the things I study as I prioritize it, I haven't really decided yet.
For manga, I plan on copying some master's pages. I've also found an old book about french comics from the 80's or 90's that seemed pretty solid.
I've done some drawabox, not passed the first lesson... It was very useful for me back then, helped me understand some of my main flaws (lack of ability to plan and execute strokes).
In art school we did a lot of observation drawing, figure drawing, objects...
I watch Saito Naoki's videos on youtube as inspiration.
I plan on using one specific book I bought about inking manga, but I haven't really started.
I'm always curious about study material suggestions, but I feel like I need to identify my priorities and what I need to study first.
I considered signing up for more classes/content, but I'm waiting a little for this. I feel I was given a lot, and need to engage with what I have. Or I might just trick myself into buying/looking at/reading/watching instead of working.

[darktiste]

I suggest just to get the ball rolling by starting with draw a box exercise you can then slowly build momentum.

I also advise not to over think i had the issue of over collectiing and over planning.

The trap you want to avoid is being at a place where you do thing to complex for your current skill set.

Small victory are preferable to big defeat.

I suggest you read this post i made https://crimsondaggers.com/forum/thread-5494.html

it should help you maintain focus on your priority and give you the condition to put the odd on your side to succeed.

You can also read my post of positivity that could be helpful to break some of the negative feeling you might have toward your artistic journey so far https://crimsondaggers.com/forum/thread-6483.html

Beside that i am going to shut up and encourage you to pick the pen and start .May it be just doing the drawbox exercise and posting in the a sketchbook post or if you need a bit of inspiration collect 5 to 10 image of work from artist you appreciate to help get a general direction for the journey just having a few role model is also a great place to start even if it can also be a bit like comparing were self to giant we just have to accept the road that is ahead of us and take the first step like the did themselves.

[Lillen]

Welcome! I'm also a bit older and had a rough start with regard to art school. It's great to see you pursue some of your long term projects. :)