When I think of SVS, starting with its founders and extending to the entire community, a line from a Tennessee Williams play comes to mind: “I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.”

I won’t detail my predicament here, but it’s contained in the post that begins “HELP! I committed to a logo” (my new mantra is “Just Say No to logos”). Coming from traditional graphite/watercolor experience with no design skill and digital limited to Photoshop touchups and Procreate pencil sketching, I knew I shouldn’t have agreed to do this favor for a friend.

When I turned to the SVS community for help, I was overwhelmed by the support, the suggestions, references, draw-overs, ideas for communicating with difficult (non-paying!) clients and technical education offered. @animatosoor got me going in the right direction to simplify and sparked contributions from those with solid graphic design experience like @Erin.Cortese, @ClCanadyArts, @Adriana-Bergstrom , @NessIllustration, @hannahmccaffery , @StudioLooong, @Braden-Hallett & @Nyrryl-Cadiz.

They got me from here

to here, where I was struggling to get the dog head in vector format from my procreate drawing

A very special thank you to @Erin-Cortese for vectorizing this head to make it sync with my vector “baby steps” on the body and scale. She also educated me about the need for all lines to be “expandable” to print proportionally when scaling up & down. I was getting wonky results when downscaling. This is yet another example of the value of a graphic designer’s expertise for logo design.

As a person seriously intimidated by my CS5 version of Adobe Illustrator, I am also grateful to @Adriana-Bergstrom for enlightening me about Affinity Designer for iPad. At least I could learn enough to understand some of the issues of vector design and complete most of the logo elements in vector. But the head was way above my skill level, so I am beyond appreciative of Erin’s help.

I usually don’t comment on the forums because I don’t know enough to offer constructive help like I received, but the people who do are always generous and kind in their feedback. This is such a wonderful community!

@Jellen said in OCTOBER CONTEST: The experiment worked! Penny was so relieved to have her dog back from the dead.:

The experiment worked! Penny was so relieved to have her dog back from the dead. She had never dabbled in necromancy, but her grandmother had a great recipe.

great job!

“Life is a lot like jazz...it’s best when you improvise.” -George Gershwin

‘’Life is a lot like jazz...it’s best when you improvise.” -George Gershwin

@Braden-Hallett accountability posting daily practice

Long lines the most difficult, especially curves—still working out what will be my daily practice to fill one piece of paper.

@alexthoffman I pre-ordered from amazon June 12 and kept getting delayed shipment emails from them. I wrote chronicle and asked them about the release status and this was their reply on nov 23:
"The release has been put on hold indefinitely until the artists in question come to an agreement. Did you pre-order it through us directly? If not, I recommend asking for a refund from wherever you pre-ordered the book from."

Mine was delivered today--surely chronicle knew this Nov 23. I am very disappointed in chronicle's failure to support @Jake-Parker. I am glad I did not cancel my order, as I do not see it currently on amazon as available to order.

I have only glanced through it, but accusations that the drawings are not in Jake's style are ludicrous.
Looking forward to starting off 2021 with this book as a guide. I hope it will be available to everyone soon!

No concept or story, but decided on a whim to go back to scribbling, something that spontaneously occurred during inktober 2017 and was surprisingly freeing. I forgot about it until I discovered scribble-hatching is actually a “technique” by participating in the inking class with @Braden-Hallett & friends. My challenge was to work digitally in procreate (technical pen), complete each scribble as quickly as possible and (gulp) go public on instagram.

After posting my late-to-the-party #inktober5k scribble on instagram, @clcanadyarts referred me to a very interesting Ted talk by artist Phil Hansen who was advised by a neurologist to “embrace the shakes” after suffering permanent nerve damage (from single-minded pursuit of pointillism). https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=anujFqvCJsk. For those of us stuck on preoccupation with outcomes/products, the concept of destruction is thought-provoking as well.

Daily-sortof-accountability

@Bricz-Art I emailed Chronicle to express my disappointment with their lack of support to @Jake-Parker and failure to communicate the status of the book to advance purchasers. I also shared my opinion that charges of plagiarism are baseless, after reviewing my copy (having viewed Mr. Dunn's video in August). I had to email twice to get a reply. Here is their reply:

"We have paused the publication of Inktober until further notice. Last week, Amazon inadvertently shipped a small amount of copies to customers that had pre-ordered the book earlier this year. They have since placed all books back on hold and returning remaining copies to us. We apologize for the confusion."

I feel very fortunate to have received a copy and hope this will be resolved soon, no thanks to Chronicle btw.

I’ve been checking the SVS home page daily through December in anticipation of the new foundation Perspective & Light and Shadow courses. I want to revise both perspective and lighting on my Christmas card and thought I could revise lighting on the existing watercolor before doing a redraw of the perspective. When I saw this graphic around minute 2 of the intro, my heart stopped as I thought “that looks a lot like math” Imagine my relief when @Lee-White said “instructors tend to over-complicate this stuff” and “we’re NOT going to be tracking shadow lines back to the horizon point...I think I can do it in a lot simpler way...does it look believable?” Yay!

I’m only on lesson 1 “Local Tone” and I can already see how my final painting tones don’t match my initial idea of the local tones when I change the painting to greyscale (and problems with the initial values drawing). I’m especially looking forward to the shadows lessons. This is going to be such a helpful class Thanks!
Initial value sketch:

Final painting in greyscale:

@Bricz-Art I emailed Chronicle to express my disappointment with their lack of support to @Jake-Parker and failure to communicate the status of the book to advance purchasers. I also shared my opinion that charges of plagiarism are baseless, after reviewing my copy (having viewed Mr. Dunn's video in August). I had to email twice to get a reply. Here is their reply:

"We have paused the publication of Inktober until further notice. Last week, Amazon inadvertently shipped a small amount of copies to customers that had pre-ordered the book earlier this year. They have since placed all books back on hold and returning remaining copies to us. We apologize for the confusion."

I feel very fortunate to have received a copy and hope this will be resolved soon, no thanks to Chronicle btw.

@alexthoffman I pre-ordered from amazon June 12 and kept getting delayed shipment emails from them. I wrote chronicle and asked them about the release status and this was their reply on nov 23:
"The release has been put on hold indefinitely until the artists in question come to an agreement. Did you pre-order it through us directly? If not, I recommend asking for a refund from wherever you pre-ordered the book from."

Mine was delivered today--surely chronicle knew this Nov 23. I am very disappointed in chronicle's failure to support @Jake-Parker. I am glad I did not cancel my order, as I do not see it currently on amazon as available to order.

I have only glanced through it, but accusations that the drawings are not in Jake's style are ludicrous.
Looking forward to starting off 2021 with this book as a guide. I hope it will be available to everyone soon!

@K-Flagg I have a valid tracking number too, arriving Wednesday, but when I click on "buy again" on amazon, the book does not appear. Strange.

@Coreyartus yes, posting my cry for help with a logo in that category yielded incredibly useful replies!

@chrisaakins I skimmed through the replies and so many resonated with me. I think most of us not at a pro level do not feel confident that any criticism we offer will be as helpful as what I find from so many others on this forum (I don't want to leave anyone out, but @TessaW @Nyrryl-Cadiz @NessIllustration @Braden-Hallett come to mind immediately).

I have viewed you as a pro because of your background and I only offer positives (or informational) to pros. I have not been on the board recently because of a family situation, but I remember seeing this piece and thinking I thought the boy looked old (I gave Will one of my "old kid" drawings to use in a critique, so I recognize that ). Unlike the pros, I couldn't say how I would "fix" it.

I think people like me should probably look at requests for criticism by pros as a kind of dream portfolio exercise, trying to identify more specifically what we like about a piece instead of just posting "like it". Maybe then it wouldn't feel so intimidating (like "who do you think you are" commenting on this? kind of feeling).

I have to add that when I posted a cry for help with a logo (just-say-no-to-logos btw) under serious critique wanted, the response was incredibly helpful. I never would have been able to complete that ill-conceived commitment without this group!

I was blown away by your inktober mice concepts compositions, especially in awe of your perspective! Have you thought about (and maybe you did it but I missed it) going back to some of those so that it's just the digital painting you're working on?

@Coley love how this turned out 🥰

@Coley adorable

@Olga-Herrera I'm in love with that doggie-with-attitude watched your progression on IG and the final version is terrific!!

@sarahlash This is lovely! Congratulations on such a beautiful first entry

@TessaW so great!