Thank you AJ! UI and Data Design for Film with Ash Thorp:įrom Ash’s podcast and just looking at his work spaces you can see he’s a person who values clarity of mind and focus. 80/20 rule – you can get the majority of what you need from your painting in 15-20 minutes (At master level – you can just focus on the idea) Bad habits are preventing you from refining your painting – instead you spend all your time fixing your painting – profound idea there – you wrestle with problems instead of being able to focus on expressing ideas. Also being confident about his own work and saying things like “I have something good going” or “I have a pretty successful painting here” A lot of people undervalue their art, AJ has a much more positive attitude ?Įfficiency – spending time in the trenches and working on the basics to earn the privilege to communicate the higher level ideas you may have. One thing I find in many of his Gumroad vids as well – being fascinated and appreciative of what he finds beautiful in paintings and praising it. Do consistent studies and accumulate the small insights to get cumulative, huge results over time.
ĭon’t go for big answers – Small epiphanies as AJ calls them. To not passively look at information, but to engage and actively form conclusions which can then be transferred to solving other problems. Patterns – observing information and forming theories or patterns based on hypothesis – a requirement for scientific exploration. It becomes an exercise of accuracy and measurement – fundamental skills, but once you’ve gotten them under your belt it’s time to unlearn copy mode and become an art explorer or scientist.
Copying, once mastered, does not give you knowledge of underlying form or principles you could apply to your work. Painting Fundamentals with Anthony Jones:īeing a conscious student, not a copy machine.
Update March 2016 – Notes on Term 2 can be found here. I’ll also post some of the work I’ve done for the courses I will be updating this post weekly as new lectures become available. I will be posting my notes and insights from the lessons here, trying to share with you not necessarily just what’s covered in the lectures, but what principles or underlying themes I can find that the instructors cover.
I also have to say that I’m in no way affiliated and apart from annoying these people on Facebook to thank them for their work – we’ve never even spoken. They have saved me months in learning time and I am extremely grateful for all of their work. I have learned a tremendous amount from these guys, their Gumroads have been invaluable to me and Ash’s podcast has been a platform where I’ve gotten to hear about the mindsets of some of the best artists and their journeys. So for those of you who are wondering about the courses – not sure if they’re right for them or maybe are not sure which one to take, or maybe just can’t afford it at the moment – these notes will hopefully serve to give you some insight into the work, techniques and thinking of some of the best in the industry. Put together by some of the biggest names in the concept art industry – Anthony Jones, Maciej Kuciara, Jama Jurabaev and Ash Thorp – I jumped at the opportunity to learn from these guys immediately.
There are probably a lot of people out there wondering about the Learn Squared courses.