͏ ‌     ­ ͏ ‌     ­ ͏ ‌     ­ ͏ ‌     ­ ͏ ‌     ­ ͏ ‌     ­ ͏ ‌     ­ ͏ ‌     ­ This newsletter is about drawing. It goes out every Wednesday. Want to draw? Then check out my free Morning Sketches APP, 3D models, and workbook!

Prepare Your Workspace So That It Is Easy To Start Drawing The Next Day

Practice Drawing This Draw-along.

have a desk where I draw. There’s a sketchbook, a pen, a file with magazine cutouts for reference, and an Ipad with YouTube to turn on in the background.

I make coffee, sit at the desk and start drawing. I take a reference image and draw it several times, once from observation to understand it, and then several times in a more cartoon style as I start to own it.

No more fussing about finding and clearing a space, finding a sketchbook, finding what to draw with, searching for references, and figuring out what to do. It’s all there, prepared for me by my past self.

More recently, I developed my Morning Sketches APP. I can open a web page on my mobile, and I’m greeted with an image to use for drawing reference.

The new improved stretch and squeeze box. The new lighting really shines (pun intended) on round forms. Notice the secondary lighting.

This Week

We started the Artists’ Mastermind on Discord, and my goal for this month was to put more effort into promoting Practice Drawing This.

I immediately got feedback on that idea in the form of several gentle nudges and suggestions that the design of the website was not ready for that yet. That it might be off-putting to some.

For which, thank you!

That launched me into a frenzy to improve the site. I had a professional designer help me with it, picking the low-hanging fruit, so to speak. It’s a lot better now, but we’re not there yet.

I also conducted a poll to see what people would like to see more of on the website. You were given ‘money’ to spend on features. 3D was a popular feature, no surprise really, but people also commented that rather than more 3D models, they wanted the 3D model viewer to be expanded. Lighting and shadows were mentioned a lot.

Another thing you spent ‘money’ on was improved user experience.

I decided to add a controls panel for power-users.

The new controls panel in action.

In the 3D views for the variable models, a “Controls” button is now available, which expands the controls panel. For almost all variable models, there are now custom controls to control the parameters. I should have done that sooner! The models were parametrized in such a way that they could easily be randomized; there was a range of valid values for each to facilitate randomization. The code would then take care of possible constraints. But that also means you can create slider controls for artists to control these values themselves! It’s convenient. I’m not always happy with the randomization, so I end up hitting the dice button several times. But now I can go into the controls panel and change it to my liking myself.

Lighting

I am delighted to announce that you can now also enable lighting and shading!

The new lighting and shading in action.

I decided to keep it as minimal as possible.

The lighting setup was designed with the following in mind: the old masters often drew or painted in studios, with a light source positioned to illuminate the subject. That was the primary light. Also, that light reflected from the environment into the subject from other angles. That is the secondary light source. I simulate that with a very soft dim source at the opposite side of the primary light source.

The old masters would also soften shadows, making them less dark in favor of being able to suggest form. I simulated that here by adding a soft ambient light.

I did add color, which was not strictly necessary because it’s about tone revealing underlying form. But I did so minimally. You get to choose from a few colors. Adding full-color pickers just meant you’d have to adjust the colors so that they finally reveal the underlying form. A few handy presets felt more useful to me.

The 3D modeler now also responds to dark mode.

The stretch and squeeze models were improved. They now feel like actual volumes being stretched and squeezed.

That’s it for the week.

Yours sincerely,

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