A member sent me a picture of her hand art, and I thought I’d share it with everyone. Take a look at this…
See the faint lines in the background? That requires sketching skills. I’ve been writing about the importance of basic sketching skills because so many artists choose to neglect those foundation building activities.
You absolutely need to know how to sketch properly before you can create any kind of wonderful art. The right thing to do here is to be patient and hone your sketching skills before moving on to more advanced stuff like painting, decorating, or hand art.
I want to share this picture with everyone because I want to encourage all the members to start interacting on this site. Whether it’s just sending me some emails or leaving some comments on this site…just let us know what you think and perhaps we can get to know you a little better.
This is only beneficial for all parties. If I can understand you better, I can put out better free and paid reports that’ll suit your needs better.
So…let’s start by telling everyone what you think about this piece of hand art?
For the past few days, I’ve totally shut myself in to work on Vol.2 of the home study course. I’m not even half way through this volume and I’ve already filled over 40 pages.
I’ve expanded this volume from 10 chapters to 13 chapters. 10 chapters is just not enough given the amount of material that I’d like to include! So what’s new?
Let’s see…
First, I completely missed the chapter on Goucahe paints. I’ve already planned for this chapter but I didn’t remember it until I was taking photographs of the different types of paints.
The next new chapter is one that would come as a surprise. I’ve decided to include a chapter on oil painting as well. Now that’s A LOT to take on. I hope I don’t kill myself doing this…
Finally, I’m going to include a workshop style case study of working with mixed medias. I think this will give me the perfect opportunity to demostrate the application of the many different theories that I’ve included in this volume.
Other than adding a whole bunch of new chapters to burn myself out, I think the vol.2 is turning out pretty well. I’m pushing very hard to make sure that vol.2 launches in time (end Feb). That looks like a long time away, but given the demands of vol.2, I think it’s a reasonable time frame.
I want to thank you for being patient, and I promise you, it’s going to be worth the wait.
I better sign off soon…I’m doing the “night time” blogging thing again. So I better stop before I start typing gibberish. I think it’s starting soon…
Have a great week ahead!
Oh, before I go, I hopeeeeeee (cross fingers, cross toes, cross hair) that I’ll be able to leak some illustrations out in my next post, but no promises though.
And if there’s anything in particular you’d like me to elaborate on, now is the time to leave some comments!
I’ve had the chance to sit down and ponder over the contents that I want to include in Vol.2. Once I complete this volume, MyArtPassion Home Study Course would be one of the most complete drawing resource on the Internet.
And I’m not saying that to put a feather on my cap…I’m saying that because I’ve done my research and have seen the products out there there are being offered by other websites. They are practically screaming, “What is in it FOR ME?” What do I mean? Let me explain.
The goal of MyArtPassion Home Study Course has always been to build and strengthen the foundation of any aspiring artist. So the focus and emphasis will be on sound drawing techniques and principles that all artists can use in their drawings and paintings.
When I was developing Vol.1 of the course, that was exactly what I had in mind. I didn’t think about how much I’m going to charge for the course, or how much profit I’m going to make and all that nonsense. Those are valid business considerations to run a successful site but it’s not the right time to think about that when I’m developing products.
When product developers lose their focus and start thinking about their bottom line, the inevitable happens. Not enough value is created, and the product cost more than the actual value delivered. We see this happening all around us more often than we know.
Think about the last time you bought a crappy book or some substandard materials that you paid good money for. How did that made you feel? Not too good, I believe. So if you’re going to make any purchase, choose to buy from a vendor who cares about your goals, and understands the meaning of value. That’ll save you a ton of money.
On the other hand, how do you feel if you’ve purchased a product that’s worth every penny that you’ve spent? That vendor automatically becomes your trusted source for valuable information.
That’s the primary aim of MyArtPassion.com. That’s why I always immerse myself completely into the process when I’m developing a product. If I’m going to launch something, it has to be a killer product.
Having said that, I want to put my neck out on the chopping board, and just say that I want MyArtPassion Home Study Course Vol.2 to be EVEN BETTER than vol.1.
I carry with me the experience and the momentum from launching vol.1, and am definitely confident of doing a good job and delivering valuable and useful information.
For the past 2 weeks, I’ve taken some time in between my marketing activities to ponder over what I want to include in vol.2.
Most of the chapters you see below are a manifestation of the most challenging problems faced by artists like myself. Some ideas sprouted from my own research, and others just came from my own experience as an artist. So here they are…
Table of Contents for Vol.2: Drawing in Color
Chapter 1: Understanding Colors
This is the perfect chapter to start of vol.2. Without a deep understanding of the physical characteristics of colors, the artist will find it hard to express himself or herself well in a color drawing or painting.
Chapter 2: Coloring tools
Unlike vol.1, which teaches drawing in monochrome, vol.2 allows us to explore a wide range of options. It’s easy to get lost in the wide range of tools available in the market, so this chapter aims to provide some clear guiding principles when it comes to choosing which tools to work with.
Chapter 3: Planning and decision making
There are some key issues that the artist will have to take the bull by the horn and make some sound decisions. These decisions have a strong impact on the final outcome of the painting, so care and wisdom is required when considering these matters.
Chapter 4: Application of basic drawing techniques
This chapter displays the basic drawing techniques when using different drawing tools and coloring mediums.
Chapter 5: Key color challenges
This chapter will discuss some of the most common subjects that the artist will encounter when drawing in color. Key subjects include drawing skies, drawing foliages, painting portraits, painting metallic textures, and creating flesh tones.
Chapter 6: Working with color pencils
Chapter 7: Working with oil pastels
Chapter 8: Working with watercolors
From chapter 6 to 8, we’ll be examining each type of drawing medium in greater detail. These drawing tools have different characteristics and behave differently, so we’ll need to spend some time tackling those issues. In each chapter, we’ll explore how to use these drawing mediums to overcome challenges discussed in chapter 4.
So chapters 5-8 will be the highlights of this volume.
Chapter 9: Moods and atmosphere EXPANDED!
Vol.1 touched on the theoretical aspects of moods and atmosphere. It’s now time to put them into practice and see what comes out! This is going to be an interesting chapter.
Chapter 10: Finishing off with style
Finishing has always been an important stage in the drawing process. In this chapter, we’ll explore the different ways to finish up a painting with style.
Bonus chapter: What a colorful world
I’ll play the “secret” card for the bonus chapter and not reveal too much at this stage.
Workbook for Volume 2.
And yes, there’s a workbook for volume 2 as well. But my idea for this workbook is that it’ll not be as hands on as the one in vol.1. Instead, it’ll be a workbook filled with fun mental exercises that you can complete to sharpen your thinking skills. These activities will arm you with the appropriate knowledge to work (very) comfortably with colors. The answers will be at the end of the workbook.
Remember that the above is not something that’s cast in stone. In this early stage of development, anything can be changed.
So I welcome all IDEAS and COMMENTS that’ll help make this product into a killer product. Comments anyone?
All the juicy, never seen before news on the development of MyArtPassion Home Study Course Vol.1.
I’ve compiled it into a free report, and it contains some interesting lessons and entertaining stuff. Here’s the full scoop of what really happened behind the scenes that very few people know about…
I woke up today with a piece of good news and a piece of bad news. The bad news first.
I was doing affiliate recruitment on a well known webmaster forum to help promote this site, myartpassion.com. Apparently, the forum has some new rules that I didn’t know about.
The rules are meant to be in place to protect members from shady affiliate programs, and therefore require all affiliate programs to be posted openly in public, instead of taking it to the PMs (Private Messages).
However, I’m not comfortable announcing my affiliate program to the whole world just yet…for a few good reasons.
1) I can work closely with a few affiliates who message me through PM, and I can get to know them better.
2) I have more control over the promotion methods. e.g. PPC, social networks, etc.
3) I still have one more product I want to add to the site before making my affiliate program public.
4) Some traffic sources become saturated fast when opened to everyone (e.g. PPC bidding)
So I listed all the above reasons in the forum for the moderators to see. However, they weren’t the least bit interested in what I had to say…so I’ll have to play by their rules.
A couple of lessons learnt here:
1) Either be a moderator, or own your own forum so that you can promote your affiliate program without being hassled.
2) It helps to own your own group of affiliates.
So much for the bad news…I can live with that though. There are many other ways to recruit affiliates to help promote the site.
As for the good news, it doesn’t have much to do with art. My wife just sent me an email from work, saying that our flat application has been approved. Yipppeeee!
I’ve been looking forward to having our own little love nest for some time now…and it’s finally happening.
I know I’ve leaked news on the upcoming launch for MyArtPassion Home Study Course Vol.2-Drawing in Color. So it’s going to be a very busy 2-mth period for me.
If you’ve missed that email, you can join the development process by joining the email list here:
I just used Feedburner to burn the feed for this blog today. Feeds are a good way to distribute content. If you see at the footer of this blog, there’re a couple of links called “Entries (RSS)” and “Comments(RSS)”.
If subscribers subscribe to these feeds, they’ll be updated as and when new content is published on this blog. They can subscribe to these feeds by using an RSS reader. An RSS reader can be a piece of software that you install on your desktop or laptop, and aggregates all your feeds in one single location for easy reading. Or it can be a web-based reader that Google or Yahoo offers.
If you feel that’s a little too complicated, the best way to subscribe to a feed is through email. That’s why I use Feedburner to burn my feed. A burned feed allows me to offer the content on this blog who’s interested in receiving updates as and when new blog posts are being published. Also, Feedburner allows me to gather some simple stats on the subscribers of this blog.
So now only those who’re interested in my blog posts will receive my emails when I post a new entry. See the Subscribe box on the right hand side? Just enter your email if you want to be updated.
Blog posts will contain lots of interesting stuff on myartpassion.com. Stuff like production notes, product launches, even stuff that has nothing to with art. So subscribe if you keen on being the most in-tuned with this site.
