Practice Makes Perfect ✎ improving together

✎ WHAT IS THIS?

So a long time ago, I was talking with a few people, and brought up the idea of a thread where we all post mini art "assignments" for one another. These assignments would focus on improving fundamentals, and would be anything from "Do 100 30-second figure sketches" to "Paint a still life" to "Design a character that combines the themes of steampunk, strawberries, and business casual."

Anyone can suggest assignments, anyone can finish assignments, and this is a 100% on your own time do whatever you want and you don't even need to show anyone kind of deal.

✎ SOUNDS FUN. HOW DO I JOIN?

Honestly, you don't need to do anything special. You can post or complete assignments whenever. If you'd like to be added to the progress tracking doc, though, contact me or anyone else on the doc with your gmail so we can add you.

✎ I'M INTERESTED BUT I SUCK AT ART

I don't think there's a single artist out there who hasn't thought, "Man I suck at art." But in any case, we're open to artists of all skill levels, and will include assignments for beginners who want to learn but don't know where to start. Check the "Basics and Fundamentals" category, that section's for you.

✎ ISN'T IT EASY TO CHEAT?

Well, but why would you? This is entirely an honor system thing, but more than that, it's a personal challenge. If you put an honest effort into completing assignments, you benefit from the practice and improve. If you don't, then you get nothing out of it and no one cares.

✎ WHAT AM I ALLOWED TO POST IN THIS THREAD?

Assignments, art, comments, random conversation relating to this project. Anything goes. The only thing I ask is that if you're posting an assignment, put it in its own post (though posting it with other assignments is okay) just because I'm going to be linking to these posts and I don't want people to have to scroll through paragraphs of conversation before getting to the actual assignment description.

✎ HOW DOES THIS WORK?

Let me or anyone else on this doc know your gmail so we can add you. After that, I'll keep this doc updated with assignment names. When you complete an assignment, you can mark it as complete in this doc by copypasting that gold star in the corner there. Or you can use your own tracking symbols or color code. It's really up to you. Just stay in your own column so you don't mess anyone else up, okay?

✎ IS THERE A REWARD FOR COMPLETING ASSIGNMENTS?

Improvement is its own reward. That said, if we as a group want to give each other prizes for hitting certain goals we can maybe make an effort to, I dunno, draw gifts for each other or something.

✎ CREATING ASSIGNMENTS

Use the following template when posting assignments, just to keep everything organized between us. Please post assignments in their own post, but you can do multiple assignments per post. The reason for this is because I'll be using your post URL to link to it in the assignments list.

NAME ✎ Assignment name goes here

TYPE ✎ Type of assignment, e.g. "Anatomy practice" or "Creative exercise." You can pick one off the existing list of assignments or make up your own and I'll just add a new category to the list.

DESCRIPTION ✎ What does the artist need to do to complete this assignment?

RESOURCES ✎ If you have any reference photos, tutorials, relevant articles or websites, add 'em here.

✎ LIST OF ASSIGNMENTS BY CATEGORY

✎ Basics and Fundamentals Straight Lines Are Actually Really Hard Drawn From Memory Hatching Eggs ✎ Anatomy Practice 100 30-Second Figures Give Me A Hand I Really Wanted to Call this one "Give Me Head" and was Almost Mature Enough not to Suspect Lineup ✎ Background/Landscape Practice Human-Background Interfaces ✎ Creative Exercises Take Five Chimaera ✎ Miscellaneous Track Your Progress

NAME ✎ Track Your Progress

TYPE ✎ Miscellaneous

DESCRIPTION ✎ This one's a freebie. Get yourself added to the progress tracker doc by giving your gmail to Kiyoko or to anyone else on the doc. Then give yourself a gold star for doing the assignment properly. Good job! For the most part, this is kind of just an example assignment.

RESOURCES ✎ Link to the doc

Okay you guys can all post now I'm done setting up.

I see you all on this doc.

yaaaaay!!!! I am very excited to work with everyone on this <3

And I guess I'll assignment dump here!

NAME ✎ 100 30-Second Figures

TYPE ✎ Anatomy Practice

DESCRIPTION ✎ Yup, do 100 30-second figure drawings. Don't do it all at once, it's going to take you 50 minutes total, not counting the setup time. Or well, do it all at once if you really want to but.

RESOURCES ✎ Some links to pose reference sites.
http://www.quickposes.com/
http://reference.sketchdaily.net/
http://www.posemaniacs.com/
http://artists.pixelovely.com/

NAME ✎ Straight Lines Are Actually Really Hard

TYPE ✎ Basics and Fundamentals

DESCRIPTION ✎ Take a piece of paper or a blank canvas, depending on whether you work digitally or traditionally. Draw about 20 dots or so, just randomly. Like stars, yeah? Don't put them too close together, though.

Okay now draw straight lines between all of these dots and make a bunch of arbitrary triangles. When you're done it should look like this:



If you're working traditionally, no rulers allowed. If you're working digitally, no line tool. You're freehanding this shit.

RESOURCES ✎ None!

NAME ✎ Give Me A Hand

TYPE ✎ Anatomy Practice

DESCRIPTION ✎ Draw like... 20 hands. 20 sounds about right. Make sure they're all in different poses, and maybe from different perspectives.

RESOURCES ✎
Tutorial on how to draw hands
The SketchDaily Reference Site (go to the "Body Parts" section")
Collection of stock photo hand references
Or google "Hand references" or something.

I'm pulling a lot of these from SketchDaily. If you've already done them for SketchDaily, tough luck, do them all over again.

NAME ✎ I Really Wanted to Call this one "Give Me Head" and was Almost Mature Enough not to

TYPE ✎ Anatomy Practice

DESCRIPTION ✎ This is an exercise for drawing the human head/face from different angles. Pick a person/character (I'd love to see your original characters if you do this!) and do head or bust shots from at least 6 different angles. Check the resources below for some helpful refs.

RESOURCES ✎ Head angle master post

NAME ✎ Drawn From Memory

TYPE ✎ Basics and Fundamentals

DESCRIPTION ✎ Pick an animal. Preferably an obscure one. Something that you kind of know what they look like but you don't really see them everyday. Like, I dunno. A gazelle or a komodo dragon or something. You're going to do three drawings.

1. Draw this animal from memory with no references whatsoever.

2. Look up a photo of this animal. Draw using the photo as reference.

3. Put the reference and everything else away, get a new sheet of paper or blank canvas, draw the animal from memory again, using your new and improved refreshed memory.

RESOURCES ✎ Your brain and google images.

NAME ✎ Suspect Lineup

TYPE ✎ Anatomy Practice

DESCRIPTION ✎ Do police mugshots for four or more people. You only need to do each face from one angle, but bonus points for two. The goal here is to make everyone look distinct instead of going full anime and giving them all the same face. These can be fictional people or OCs.

You know, do something like this:



RESOURCES ✎ Facial diversity masterpost

NAME ✎ Human-Background Interfaces

TYPE ✎ Background/Landscape Practice

DESCRIPTION ✎ No more excuses. This is something multiple people have requested. Here are the rules.

1. The person must be full-body. No cutting them off at the torso and drawing a background behind them. You don't have to show the full body (you can hide an arm behind them or something) but no cheating and having them stand behind a fence or some shit unless you can see their whole body through the fence.

2. The figure must be fully integrated into the background. None of this floating shit.

3. The background must have at least four distinct elements. You are allowed to include the sky as one and the ground as another, but you still need two more after that.

4. Bonus points for foreground objects, but they don't count towards your four required background objects.

RESOURCES ✎ Nobody can help you now.

NAME ✎ Take Five

TYPE ✎ Creative Exercises

DESCRIPTION ✎Create a portrait of an individual or fictional character using a starting palette containing only 5 colours.

Hard mode: if you're going full digital on this, don't use blending tools or any sort of opacity to "make" more colours than what you're allowed to use.

RESOURCES ✎ Kiyoko linked to me this awesome palette generator. I'll dig around for resources, since I don't have many on hand.

lmao, some of these lines are straighter than others. I started from the inside and went outwards and you can tell my hand started to get tired around the edges.

NAME ✎ Chimaera

TYPE ✎ Creative Exercises

DESCRIPTION ✎Take two animals. Fuse them together into an unholy abomination. Think gryphon or hippocampus or something. Only weirder.

RESOURCES ✎ If you're having trouble coming up with ideas, go to this random animal generator, set quantity to 2, and generate.

/casually spams this thread

I wasn't going to post these but they look a lot better all together than they do individually so.

NAME ✎ Hatching Eggs

TYPE ✎ Basics and Fundamentals

DESCRIPTION ✎I found this cool site that demonstrates six different kinds of hatching/crosshatching techniques (linked below), so for the sake of letting me make an assignment title pun, draw six different egg shapes and shade them with each of the six different kinds of hatching.

RESOURCES ✎ This thing. This is the thing.

yaaay I did the mug shots!

art!: