MEGATHREAD: My Art Challenges

where i do 30 day challenges to learn and practice visual art

Challenge 1] - 30 days of fundamentals!

I painted one study a day, for 30 days, to learn how to draw

Most drawings were attempts to recreate reference photos and learn how light works

Day 1

The first of many still life drawings to come. I found a nice reference online and tried my best to recreate the shading.

They start to get much more interesting around halfway through :p

Day 2

Took a picture of a pencil and drew it. Its a very simple object so I was able to make it look fairly real with minimal effort

Day 3

Messing around with different edges, you can see the bottom edge of the sphere is lost into the shadow

Day 4

2 Point perspective - horizontal lines converge to vanishing points on horizon

Day 5

3 point perspective - vertical lines now also converge towards vanishing point

Day 6

more 3PP

Day 7

Duplicating shapes in perspective

Day 8

Construction for rotating shapes in perspective

Day 9

Another still life block study. Still not quite nailing the values and proportions.

Day 10

A city in perspective. This one has atmospheric perspective too. (colour approaches the sky colour, and detail fades as objects get farther away)

Day 11

Photographed a soccer ball on my patio and tried to draw it. Shadow angle is off but I got some effective shading on some parts of the ball.

Day 12

I watched this video and tried to follow along and create an apple.

Day 13

Came up with a simple landscape. I would like to do more landscapes in the future theyre so cool. you can get so much depth its crazy.

Day 14

Found a cool lighthouse reference and drew it. I liked the composition and contrast

Day 15

Started editing my photos so the blacks were properly dark. Did a fun drawing of an eerie streetlight

Day 16

Super fun image, i found a reference with a cliff jutting in front of the moon and I made it my own and stuck a sword on top :p. I love this pic

Day 17

Found a reference of an interestingly hung cloth. I think this piece was one of my first really effective recreations.

Day 18

This rose didn't turn out as good as I hoped, but in retrospect its a very complex subject; was a bit ahead of my abilities at the time.

Day 19

PROKO IS A GOD
I followed this video by proko (hes one of the most informative art channels on youtube)


BOOM What a great eye

Day 20

Followed another proko vid, this time on a nose.


The value changes on the side of the nose proved especially challenging on this piece. Its ok but I wasn't satisfied with it.

Day 21

MORE PROKO:


this time some nice juicy lips.
They turned out a bit flat but im very happy with the results.

Following these videos really helped me watch a master's technique and learn from his workflow

Day 22

you guessed it its proko


I really went all out on this one and studied his video as meticulously as possible. It's a bit sharp but I'm stoked with how well the form reads in this image. Very dimensional and it all comes from the values.

Day 23

Back to copying from photos and you can see the difference it makes. I'm much sloppier without an expert guiding my decision making.

This cloth was far more complex than the previous one, and was a bit too hard for me, but I didn't do TOO bad a job

Day 24

Found some rock references online and tried to modify them slightly to make my own rock formation

it uh... went ok

Day 25

I was super burnt out I remember and did something suuuuper easy and chill. Gesture Drawings.

Looked up some yoga poses and tried to capture their essence with gesture lines. some turned out ok

Day 26

I found this BOLD picture of a little railing with its shadow bending up the stairs.

I captured its essence fairly well, though my perspective is a bit wonky

Day 27

good god damn this turned out way better than I could have ever hoped.

I was super inspired to paint metal from the previous day and I pretty much knocked this shit out of the park.

Part of why it looks so good is i colour corrected only the knife and not the paper

Day 28

I was feeling super confident off the success of my previous piece and tried something I wouldn't have dared do before. A HAND

I found a graceful gesture of someone holding a cigarette and did my best to capture the form and pose.
very happy with this piece too

Day 29

I found the PERFECT reference of a canoe with very strong foreshortening (where it gets bigger towards the camera)

sketched it out and then did some editing to try and make it look like it was busting off the page or someshit idk.

Turned out really cool

Day 30

YES YES YES 30 DAYS IN A ROW WOOOOOO WE MADE IT

I painstakingly measured and drew this skull and it took foreeeeeever

You can see I'm getting extreme with the digital editing here.

My next 30 day challenge is #paintvember where i start learning digital painting!!!