One Year to Competency

If I’m ever gonna do comics, I’d best get started on learning to draw properly. So, by next Christmas I will be a competent artist. Perhaps not a spectacular one, but good enough. I will be able to draw anything, and it will look right. I will then have the rest of my life to develop a unique style and become a legend in the industry.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ll try to spend at least an hour each day working through various books on drawing various things in various ways. Right now it’s foundational, how-to-draw stuff, then I’ll start working on fancy techniques and styles.

To inaugurate the process, here is some of my first output from Figure Drawing for All It’s Worth by Andrew Loomis:

So,

I’ve had a lot to consider lately.

I’ve suffered (and inflicted upon myself) quite a string of setbacks. My teenage years were an endless frustration, with myself, mostly. My lack of direction in community college was far from helpful. My move up north lasted only a year, and I accomplished none of my goals. And I’ve only just recently made any progress at all concerning the objectives I had in mind when moving back down to the Valley.

Every disappointment imaginable has shouldered it’s way into my life and made itself quite at home, thank you for asking, and I seem — after a fashion — to be back where I started. And yet only after a fashion.

I have recently begun what can only be described as a personal initiative to stop being stupid, the character of which is described in the preceding post. I will soon get back on track with school (and what’s more I’ve finally settled on a major as well as a definite educational goal). I’ve even been going to the gym, which is, seriously, an event akin to the upthrust of R’lyeh out of the deep and the final destruction of all life on earth by the power of the Great Old Ones. Or the onset of the Dagor Dagorath and the return of Morgoth. Whichever seems more momentous to you.

I would also like to add, that for the first time in my life, I’m actually looking forward to a presidential election. Yes, I am only 22, but still. I’m voting for Obama, and, what’s more, I actually want to. He’s not the lesser of 2 evils, or the best I have to choose from. I actually want him to be president. I’ve never been very politically minded, so all of this is surprising to me.

I would like to link to a couple things:

• A post on a blog I like featuring a presentation by the founder Creative Commons. It’s well thought out and lucid.
• Another post on another blog I like, about Lewis’ sermon “Learning in War-Time”. I needed this. Life isn’t easy right now, but it never has been and never will be. I can’t just keep waiting until things are convenient to start doing all the things I want to do.