Jam's DIY Art Degree! (Patreon)

Hi everyone! As I alluded to in the round-up, I have two big projects that I want to focus on this year, and this is the first one!

jam what are you on about

Like everyone else, as the calendar ticked down to the big flip-over I started thinking about what I've done with my life and what I still want to do. I haven't had a Big Ambitious Goal in awhile and I was feeling a bit down about that. After giving it some thought I had two big realizations:

1) I think my poor understanding of colour is holding me back as an artist

2) I've never actually had a period of time in my life where I focused on improving my art. 

The second one might sound strange... I've been an artist online for over a decade! But since leaving High School, art has been something that I always managed at the side of my desk. I've never tried to focus *just* on getting better for any length of time. 

And right now... while my career is in a good stable place and I'm not trying to make any major changes in my life... seems like a good time to try and tackle it!

Is it an actual degree though?

No, it's totally DIY and self-directed :) I just think it's a useful way to convey that I want to study art as intensely as if I was going to (night)school for it for a period of time. A credentialed art degree is a very specific thing and I don't think it's the right thing for me.

I was inspired by others like this guy who did a self-directed MIT "degree"   or this other guy who created a DIY "grad degree (mba). People teach themselves programming. Being a self-taught artist isn't rare at all, even among industry professionals, so it doesn't seem like an out-to-lunch idea at all in terms of difficulty. 

There are lots of different things to study, but at the end of the day all I want to make are good comics, so most of my studies will be focused through that lens.

My Goal - To Improve at Colour. 

Why colour? I've always thought of myself as a writer first, and I've leaned on that. I think I'm decent at drawing, and I can *always* improve but for now I can manage well enough to do what I'm trying to do. 

But colour... intimidates me. I think everything I'm trying to do would be a lot better if I had a better grasp on how to choose and organize colours in a piece.

Wasted Talent was in colour, of course, and that was alright. For some reason I don't get as intimidated when it's natural media. As soon as I transitioned to digital most of that went out the window. It went from this

to this:

What do I do with that! It's like infinite colours? Try as I might this thing is just baffling to me, and I don't seem to know enough about colour in general to be able to correct my pieces when something is going wrong. 

So I'm setting out to fix that!

Ok well what is that going to look like

I'm going to study very hard! I'm going to paint a lot and read books on colour and watch tutorial videos and try to get feedback from experts and practice practice practice. Every month I'm going to report back with what I've learned!

Here's the first month to give you an idea of what these posts will look like:

Monthly Accountability

Monthly Header: Benchmark Piece

Each month I'm going to make the best illustration I can in a single colour. You may remember this piece I posted at the round-up for December:

I will do one of these every month to benchmark my progress:

Painting Speed-Studies (I try to do one per day, 15-20 minutes) 

Study Work of the Month 

I'm going to be experimenting a lot to find out what methods work best for me, but it might be additional studies, notes, experiments or additional practice pieces. Here's a recap of what I've done last month:

I also did a bit in this colourwheel workbook with gouache, but the cats keep stepping in it.

Midterm Exam: Good Bones

My whole goal is to get better at making comics so in 6 months I'm going to have a colour comic, doggonne it!!!

Final Exam: Pitch Deck

At the end of the year, my "final exam" will be to put together a pitch deck for a new project. I want to focus my learnings towards a certain concrete goal, and I've decided that that goal will be to have everything ready to start in on a big project next year. 

What am I "pitching"?? Stay tuned... (later this month!) :)

I'll be writing more about how I intend to tackle this learning project (and what I've learned so far) at the Lab Tech level later this month. Thanks everyone, I'm so excited to wear my fingers down to nubs trying to decode colour!!!!