SmART School Week 3

You know when is the best time to post about a class? The night before the next one, just at midnight.

Anyway!

I ran myself into a bit of a corner this week. I needed the full, finished drawing for Rebecca, which meant I needed a full model shoot... which I couldn't rangle until that Friday. That Friday was also the opening for the Spectrum exhibit at the Society of Illustrators, and then Saturday was Art Out Loud, and then Sunday and Monday I had work. So I had a bit of a sprint at the end!

Here's the photo comp that I put together and projected onto my paper, as the base for the drawing:

Beautiful, right? Haha... anyway. About 90% of that comes from my own photos, with the tree in there from my sketch, and the skirt composited from a couple of different images. No armor on the lower figure, and the wrong legs, both of which I referenced separately because it was honestly easier at that point.

Here's the final drawing that I took to class!

I was seriously expecting to get killed this week, since here was where I needed to have solved every inch of the image in preparation for the painting. Instead, this is the paintover I got:

This class is forcing me to come to terms with the fact that I'm operating at a level where I should be trusting myself. I will never get it perfect, but after three consecutive weeks of critique that involves things being pushed, not fixed, I need to start sitting down each time to work without the nagging anxiety in the back of my head that maybe it's all been a fluke and this is the day it stops. It's not just SmART School that's giving me this push to change my outlook - the IMC supports it, as does this past weekend at Illuxcon.

I definitely am still in a position where I have a whoooole lot to learn, but you know, I'm no longer a college student making college student work. I have a vision and a voice that I'm developing, I have definite technical strengths that I am gaining more and more confidence in tapping into, and my weaknesses are being worked on with each new piece.

Though, I mean, it's not like it's ever going to be not humbling to have Rebecca Guay have minimal crit for a drawing of mine.