My First Material Study

In my open inquiry project I’d like to take a hobby of mine I’ve been working on since August of last year and see if I can find some educational value in it.

Since the summer of 2018, I’ve been slowly working on learning to draw. At first, it started with paper drawings, but very quickly I moved toward digital. (Who doesn’t love an undo button, am I right?) Mostly with the very patient guidance of an artist friend of mine, I’ve been able to develop my skills at a pace that was much more rapid than I had anticipated. This really goes to show how mentorship can drastically effect the strengthening of skill sets, because at several points of my life I have tried to learn how to draw without any support from a more experienced artist.

Over the last 13+ months, I’ve worked mostly with a style called neo-traditional—most commonly used for contemporary tattoo art—but I have drawn some cartoons, and done some material studies as well. I’d like to learn how I could possibly use any art style to convey messages through comic strips or other graphic mediums, rather than lecture and text example. We discuss multi-modality a lot in our courses so far this semester, and I’d like to experiment with that further.

More Recent Material Study

You can watch a time-lapse video of the full sketch here. I intend to post process photos and videos as I continue to develop my inquiry. This is technology based, as I am using the Procreate app, and iPad Pro and Apple Pencil to draw. However, I’d like to do my tech inquiry on something more collaborative. I’m excited to see how this goes!