I’m VERY eager to work along with the new live lesson set. I personally think Pen and Ink is the heart of finding the shapes of things and a little bit about value. No worries about color, just the contour without warping and proportion twisting mistakes.
Pen and Ink breaks value down to different density of shading methods so finding 4 or 5 separate values is a good way to start instead of “Which shade of brown is closest both the hue and value of that brown”
So it’s currently my favorite medium, as a raw beginner with no art history and not so good eye hand coordination and no eye for value. I use those little pixabay card sets to figure out which value things are, after adding a red or green filter if the image is color. (Green if subject contains red, but red if subject contains green and red is better overall at making something monotone)
Even before figuring out the values, I just need to get the lines correct to match, you can see some of my sad entries in the various threads of people doing the Pen and Ink course.
I started in July with “line and wash”, pen and ink then filled with watercolor. Followed a ton of tutorials but they didn’t really hit home. Then I found “Getting Sketchy” and learned a ton binging on every single TVI video on YouTube for a few months, then I signed up here.
I suppose if you’re already good at drawing by eye and getting contours correct, Pen and Ink might seem a boring sidetrack, but for me, it’s the most bare bones" way of learning line/form/value bits of art with no clutter of colors or expensive brushes/pastels/pencils/(insert any art material here for expensive stuff, as in high 2 or low to mid 3 digit price tag to get going with the suggested materials).
I got lucky and inherited/was given a couple tubs of stuff brand new which is what got me started in July, but now it has cost me way more than that initial collection of stuff was worth, by maybe 10x… But - I have Art Stix! I can actually do that module, they’re just woodless colored pencils, while the NuPastel are a softer version of those but not as soft as soft pastels, kind of in between.
youre doing great! Keep ot up!