Eric's 365 Day Art Workout Regimen

I've decided to create an art regimen to bring my illustration skills up to a more professional standard by this time next year, so I've made this blog to catalog my progress. I also really needed a place to post my work outside deviantArt, since its networking functions are a bit limited. So this is kind of a casual placeholder until I get a standalone website up and running later this year.

Anyway, the exercise, as implied, will stretch from today's date (08/19/10) to this date next year.
Some basic areas that will be the focus of my improvement:

• The female form
• Human anatomy in general
• Animal anatomy
• Indoor and outdoor environments, both natural and man-made
• Digital drawing and painting skills
• Color theory

Career goals for the next year:

• Set up an online gallery and website
• Assemble a portfolio that demonstrates my abilities as an illustrator
• Pursue more freelance work

The regimen itself:

• DRAW. EVERY. DAY
• At least one example of the following must be done on a weekly basis:

1. Outdoor and indoor environment studies. Photo-references may be used, but life studies should be done regularly, weather permitting. Furthermore, imagined environments may satisfy this, but the first few weeks should include at least some actual environments.
2. Human studies. These should include both clothed and nude models, as well as anatomical studies. Any one of the above will meet this requirement, but all should be done regularly. At least one subject must be female.
3. Animal studies. Due to lack of a local zoo, photo-references may be used, but some life drawing would be worth commuting for every once in awhile. Pet stores and animal shelters may also be useful resources.
4. Digitally colored illustrations, such as pen and pencil. This is mostly to force myself to continue to sharpen my skills with traditional media alongside my digital media skills.
5. Fully digital images. These should explore different methods of digital painting, as well as experiment with various combinations of light and color.

• Any single image may satisfy one or all of the above requirements, so long as it takes a sufficient amount of time and effort to produce.

Every week (probably on Saturdays) I'll be posting my progress here, including all the drawings I've done over the past week, in the order listed above. Expect to see me occasionally pop things up here during the week as well, as I go along.

Okay so words! Almost done.

Ideally the finale for this whole exercise would be for me to rent an artist's table at a con next summer, because I feel like that would be a lot of fun and a fantastic way to network. Gen Con in Indianapolis would be the closest and therefore probably best bet. Finances will probably be pretty tenuous around this time next year, so there aren't any guarantees. But the goal will be to at least get my work polished enough that getting a table would be worth my time and money.

Uhhhhhhh that's it! More drawing and fewer words are pretty much guaranteed from here on out.