Padawan listens to Yoda and the Force gets strong!

        Or for those of you allergic to Starwars analogies: I did what Glenn told me to do re: stop drawing it all with the same value and putting flat colours on it, and it works!

        Remember last week? flat, not readable – a depressing but quite exact critic of my work (go to last week if you dont remember, not after lunch, preferably for you).

        So I’ve decided to change weapon indeed: pencil! but not on paper, I am afraid when working on paper: ruining it all, pressing too hard etc, I abandoned photoshop for once and used sketchbook pro’s charcoal tool (could have done it in photoshop but I wanted a change of scenery.

        Result: infinitely much better says Glenn! the mad guy is ok as is, perhaps one of the galaxies could benefit being more turned to the side. As for the dragon book thing it doesn’t use all the values it could, also the hair of the girl going across the top of the page doesn’t read, and the dragon could be used to show the depth of the scene more.
        Here are the two things:

        What do you think?
        The morale of the story as I see it is: (outside that Glenn keeps being right lol) you have to actively make a mistake to learn something – of course it helps a lot when someone points you in the right direction.
        As I wrote to an dear” friend who is just begining the journey at vilppuacademy.com:
        “you are going to go through a hell created by yourself, and that will teach you a bunch of things that you need to experience yourself to understand. Never mind the drawing resulting of your effort, it’s the process that matter. Glenn Vilppu, armed with his years of experience not only in teaching but in painting, animating, comics, storyboard you name it, will give you the next direction to work on in his video critic of your drawing, but remember: you have to walk your way to the summit, going there by helicopter wont make you a wise samurai (I watch too many Toshiro Mifune movies :-D) there are mistakes you need to make, mud zones filled with zombies you need to go through, and only thus will you progress in wisdom and the way of the sword/pen.”
        ‘The problem most people have is that they get out of mud zone number 1 and don’t know where to go next and go around in circles until they quite – and that was me when I studied alone, and that is everybody in the same situation. No point in losing time: let Glenn show you the direction of the next challenge you have to go through, and you’ll get to the top of the mountain without loosing your way!
        And always remember one thing: it may be painful at time, be lots of work, a headache sometimes, but most of all….. it’s fun! Because it always works, keep that in mind while you are in one of those unpleasant moments when you feel like you dont know how to draw anymore – it’s an illusion created by your brain that needs to integrate new stuff. Keep on drawing, feeling you are in the pits is great: it mean you are about to make a big progress.”
        In short: the comfort zone is the ennemi, and when you feel you have “lost it” don’t give up, cause you are about to make one big step forward!
        There is no learning while feeling comfortable and safe!
        More next week: pencils, dragons, and lots and lots of violence for some unexplainable reason!