Hi Everyone,
I have a couple of topics I just briefly want to let you know about. First, I have two lots left for perspective mentorships so I’m having a flash sale, and second I have decided to use Twitch for streaming in a more regular fashion.
Perspective mentorships, 20% off!
For those of my deviantart friends who don’t know, I teach 1-to-1 online ‘mentorships’ focused on perspective drawing. About 1 and a half year ago I made major updates to how I go about it, which you can read about in my previous journal on it here.
or you can follow this link to my website: https://caconymdesign.com/tutoring
Today’s news is that I have two slots left on the five week bundle before the end of the year, and if you are interested in learning how to put perspective drawing theory into practice I would love to help you out!
Please send me an email to jensbeng@gmail.com and put Perspective in the title, and let me know you’re interested in the message and I will get back at you as soon as able. The offer will close in a week from now. I will continue teaching next year as well, but at my regular prices.
Twitch streams
Over the last six months I have used Twitch more and more for streaming. It’s turned out to be a habit that has a positive impact on my overall schedule (in other words, I’m having a lot of fun). I have scheduled streams on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and you can head over to twitch.tv/caconymdraws to check when I stream in your timezones.
I’m not looking to take the step from being an artist to an ‘artertainer’, but in these times of lockdowns and social distancing it’s been very rewarding to show, get questions of and explain my process and thoughts about art and design. So please consider subscribing and coming by sometimes, I’d love to chat with you!
Thanks for reading!
/Jens
Tutoring - Sketch in Perspective
This spring I have been working hard on updating and redesigning the way I tutor perspective drawing. I am so so excited to finally share it. In this journal I will describe in broad strokes how it will work from now on.
If you are interested in studying perspective drawing with me, please send me an email at jensbeng@gmail.com. Make sure to put "Perspective drawing" in the title so I don't miss it.
What is perspective drawing?
Perspective drawing is a fundamental idea in drawing. It is a mathematical model for how we see geometry around us in the world, and is used both to draw in perspective and to guess and evaluate proportions and angles in what we already see in perspective (reality, photos, other's perspective drawings). Perspective drawing is used for most kinds of drawing and painting - and even highly useful for 3d modelling and mechanical engineering.
Unfortunately despite its usefulness, learning perspective drawing can be a very abstract process. Sometimes, even if you do learn the model properly, it can be tough to understand how to apply this abstract model to drawings and sketches.
The perspective drawing model is highly useful, but also very abstract. To make it applicable in our sketchwork, we need to understand the model well enough to be able to strategize and take legitimate shortcuts.
How do I teach it?
I have decided to stick with calling my way of teaching online tutoring. In my mind, it sits somewhere in between taking online lessons and mentoring.
- The core of my tutoring is assignments and one-to-one feedback.
- My role as a tutor/mentor is to answer questions and concerns, and to help the student pick appropriate assignments and exercises.
The first month takes us from the very basics to the understanding of how to draw "perfect" cubes in 2-point perspective with any rotation - the basis for drawing any grid you would need. We will use this knowledge to explore how to draw in perspective using grids.
We will use grids to explore "The Abstract Garden", a location filled with blocky and abstract structures, trough drawing.
The second month picks up where the first left of, and we will both look at deepening our understanding of the perspective model and work towards breaking free of the grid and use grids in a more dynamic fashion.
Dynamic grids means that we try to plot the bare minimum of grid and guides needed. This greatly speeds up the process of sketching in perspective. Taking shortcuts requires a good understanding of the perspective drawing model as well as a lot of creativity and problem-solving ability.
The sidequests deal with developing additional skills and tricks such as strategies for drawing quick vegetation and detail surfaces, or small dives into the mathematics behind it all like grid coordinates or dividing and multiplying geometry.
In conclusion
If you have any questions about any of this or are interested in joining this tutoring, feel free to email me at jensbeng@gmail.com. If your question is very general, I will be reading the comments on this post and reply and/or update this journal.
Tutorial Suggestions
I will get right to the point. Over the last 6 years I have accumulated a lot of knowledge about drawing and design. But except for through my tutoring I don't share as much of this knowledge that I would like.
The main barrier for me is that once I learn something well enough, I tend to forget how useful that piece of knowledge really was (as I rush on to learn the next thing). Therefore, I'm open to suggestion about mini-tutorials and questions. Could be anything from how to draw horns to perspective tricks or my thoughts about some part of the design process. Really blue sky question, I will be happy for any feedback!
Thank you for reading, I wish you all an awesome day =]
Ask simple questions - How to improve #1
It’s almost (short of about two weeks) been six years now since I made the active decision to learn to draw and design. However, if you knew a little bit more about my life you might have objections to that statement.
Illustrations made 3 and 4 months after the decision of actively trying to learn - at this point in time I saw drastic changes from week to week and month to month.
People I grew up with will know that I was the kid who always drew on the margins of my notes in class. That I spent lots of my free time drawing on my own designs and characters for all my little projects I never ended up completing (I enjoyed the design phase little bit too much). That kid, I can imagine them saying, didn’t start to draw at age 22.
But that was the moment when I really started to set goals for myself and my drawings, and that was the time from when I started to see myself improve in leaps and bounds. So what did I do differently in my treatment of drawing from that point on? Well, a few things really, but the one I wanted to share today is that I started to ask simple questions:
When I was a teenager, getting better at drawing was important to me. My constant question was “How do I improve?” but I never found a satisfying answer and I didn’t improve much at drawing at all. At the same time I was doing quite well in school on almost every other subject. The questions I was asking for those subjects were very different. They were things like “What happens to the graph if I change this constant in the function?” (math) or “How can I do my homework differently to remember more vocabulary with less effort?” (languages). 
Some drawings from my life: from single digit age to age of 20 there wasn't all that much improvement...
In contrast “How do I improve?” is anything but a simple question. There’s just too much to answer. A simple question is a question that is specific enough to be easily answered, just like the ones I asked for everything else I studied at school. At age 22, I tossed the question of “how do I improve?” aside and replaced it with a long, never-ending series of simple questions (“if I do line weight like this, will it still read well in perspective or will it look too vague?”, “can I use this same principle of linear perspective to also do this part of the plotting faster?”, “how can I adapt this workflow to work with this kind of design instead?”).
I still can’t answer the question “How do I improve?” and I still get asked about it a lot, from students, stream viewers and draw-friends. Maybe it’s a very good question, but it sure isn’t a simple one and that is the point of this advice. If you are able to ask and answer lot of small questions every day, you will start to see huge changes appear in your work over time. If you try to find the answer to it all in one big, vague goal or question you might never even find half an answer.
Thank you for reading, I hope you found it interesting. Please follow more of my sketches, work and thoughts on Instagram and twitter:
So for those who might have missed it, I started studying at university about 7 weeks ago and as the workload picks up I have had less and less time between school and freelance to do personal works to post. In just a few weeks I will start to take additional courses and this will turn up the time school demands by another notch.
So I will just shortly outline what I have decided to do, but any feedback etc you might have is as usual welcome.
Bi-Weekly Journals - is really fun to write, but to be honest it also takes a lot of time. I have to research and make notes, find images or make new ones to help illustrate my points and then compile it into a working text. So I have decided to discontinue it for now. It's a really fun thing to do, but right now I think I'd rather spend that time on other projects.
Spirit Project - has been developed in the shadows. This is another reason for the lack of new designs and illustration posts since I have been spending many hours planning and sketching. The project is intended to produce a complete 'World Encyclopedia', presenting the characters and creatures along with the locations they inhabit. It'll be full of 3/4 view maps, building cut away's and small storytelling illustrations and written stories. I also hope to be able to set up a Patreon Campaign for this project - I don't intend to get filthy rich, but every hour I can economically justify to spend extra on this pet project of mine right now will make a huge difference =]
School - I love my new studies, as they continue to give valuable insight and knowledge that helps me get better as a designer and developer each and every day. Study time will not be decreased in any way or form, as this education is something I have been looking forward to participating in for over a year prior.
Sunday Funday- I will most likely try to take a few hours each week to myself to just draw or paint something, anything, with a very relaxed approach. I think this might be what will replace the bi-weekly Sunday journals. I will try to stream these sessions, feel free to follow me on Twitter @CaconymDraws for stream announcements. I would do it here on Deviantart, but unfortunately there doesn't seem to be any good ways to make brief announcements like that on here.
Thank you for your understanding! I know some of you have really been enjoying the bi-weekly content. You can still reach me on notes or in comments as usual =]
Have a great week!
/Jens