IMAYousaf

Hello.

Thank you for your thoughtful response.

What is the name of that Facebook group, and similar groups that you think might be helpful? I think that finding communities like that online could really help me.

I'll make sure to check out Alfonso Dunn. Is there someone in the art world who is considered in the same light that programmers consider people like David J. Malan and Andrew Ng for Computer Science education?

Hello.

That's what I'm really trying to find out as well.

With things other than creativity, it's easy to benchmark progress. I'm not versed enough technically with art to know what those benchmark points are to assess myself honestly.

Hello.

I think that it's interesting that a lot of people talk about clay specifically.

I like to think that I was actually quite good at pottery, after my half-year long art credit in high school which was spent in a pottery class.

Maybe because the tactile nature of clay creations, and my obsession with geometric symmetry and "perfection" let me visualize exactly every step that I needed to get there.

Hello.

Thanks for those suggestions.

I'll check those out.

Hello.

Thank you for that anecdote. I appreciate it.

An artist friend, or maybe it was something that I read about art, said that you have to make more or less 100,000 bad drawings before you get a "good" one. Now even if it's a couple orders of magnitude more or less, I was interested in finding structure, because it's hard for me to benchmark progress even incrementally outside of "does it look exactly like how I want it to look" or something akin to that.

Being cold and scientific may be against the concept of art, but I'd like to figure out ways to benchmark myself, because I don't have that "assignment" equivalent with trying to learn from scratch.

Hello.

Thank you for the suggestion. I will look into it.

Hello. Thanks for the book recommendation. I'll look into that book.

I was also recommended Charles Bargue's "Drawing Course" and Harold Speed's "The Practice & Science of Drawing". Do you have any particular thoughts on those?

Are there anyways to optimize that methodical, technical process? I would ideally like to practice in a "structured" way in regards to building up skills as opposed to the more organic way of practicing everything until it looks nicer.

Are there any particular recommendations as well regarding equipment? There's a lot of stuff out there, and I'm willing to invest in better quality products.

Also, if I want to take advantage of my iPad and Apple Pencil, with an app like Procreate or something similar, do I focus on digital drawing, or is pen and paper still far better to build fundamentals from?

Thanks.