Imagining Form with Steven Zapata

Stephen Zapata, how's it going? — I'm good. You caught me taking my shirt off. — People usually have to pay extra for that on a live stream. — Yeah. No, that's on a different platform. — Different platform for that. — Yeah. Good morning everybody. Uh or evening and night for anyone who's out there in a part of the world where it is evening or night. Uh or watching in the VOD in the evening and night. I'm glad to have you. How are you doing? It's good to be here. Uh I'm excited to get to talk to you about this course that you have that you've taken so long to produce uh that you decided to put on Proco. We're lucky to have you, man. — Oh, thank you so much. I appreciate it. Yeah. And I'm always happy to talk about Form from Imagination. That's the course that we're talking about. Yeah, it's been it's been around for a bit, but it just launched on Proco but Thursday. It came out on Thursday, — so it's available there now. And yeah, I'm super excited to have it available to a broader audience. Pro is really awesome for that great platform for sharing with more people. — I appreciate it. Yes. If you guys don't know Stephen Sapata somehow uh you will have possibly heard about him uh some at some part on Proco in some video that we've put out some stream that we've done together or maybe you've seen Stephen speaking at TED X before. Stephen's a good speaker. Does a good job to I think succinctly communicate examples and ideas. So let's uh let's dig into it. What are we going to be talking about today, Stephen? — All right, so title of the stream is uh imagining forms. Hold up, give me one second. I want to open the stream chat on my computer on my screen as well. — Yeah, so far it's just people who are already in your courses saying that they love you and that you're the best. — So that is a good thing to look at. — You see, people are sweet. There's still good things on the internet. There is All right, there we go. I can see. Yeah, I see love. Hi everybody. — Thanks. Thanks for being here. [snorts] — Um, so form from imagination, um, is a course that I made to sort of do a deep dive on my favorite part of art and drawing, which is form, creating the illusion of form on paper. Um, I consider myself a formbbased artist. Um, not everybody sort of understands their practice in terms of what they're based on, but I think that if you look at different artists, people usually have a basis. So, some people are very line focused, some people are form color focused, you know, and for a lot of people that thing is the thing that got them interested in making art in the first place. Not always the case, but that's usually it. But for me, that was always it. You know, I everything else I could kind of take or leave, you know, lines, you know, I fall in love with them, I fall out of love with them again. Color maybe leave it for my whole life. You know, just the form I have found is like that's enough to satisfy me. If it's unified with color, that's great, too. But that's what we'll be talking about. And my um and my big thing my whole life was always, — can I do it from my head? I don't know why. I'm sure there's a lot of people who are in the chat who can relate that there is just something it adds an extra magic on top of the illusion to be able to just do it from your head and invent [clears throat] things that you know there's really no frame of reference for just something completely make it up. Yeah. — What about for someone like me who is almost exclusively lines and contour? Do you think I would enjoy this course? — Yes, I do. Okay. Uh so the so and this may be showing my bias a little bit but for me a solid foundation in form and the kind that I try to hand off in the course um is by my estimations like the most useful foundational skill. So what I mean by that is that if you grasp it in a very principled way, form will explain what you should be doing with lines and even color. I do think that the principles extend far out and I that I believe that's because you are always secretly even if you don't think you are trying to express form even with just lines and even with just color. So if you really focus in on form it

affects everything else I believe. So yeah. — And and I should say that I even think that doing the rendering heavy exercises, which this course is definitely focused on, I do think that would directly benefit even a contour-based artist because okay, that creates this mode of conceptual thinking in your mind where you really conceive of things as illusionistic 3D objects. And [clears throat] — by my estimations, the best contour drawings have managed to intimate that even with sh even without shading. So yeah, I think that it would definitely benefit you. — Yeah, I think getting people to think in like actual 3D like actual form. uh I think benefit them even if they do fall back on using line in the long term that would still inform some like intelligently using line weight to communicate something that you would otherwise do with the like a more rendered thing like we're going to talk about today. — Yeah. — Okay. — All right. Um I'm going to go ahead. I'm going to put the art back up. Do you want to us through some things? — Yeah, sure. So, what I have here is some sketches that I did them focusing mostly on just the line work. So, I have them pre-prepared. We've got a little bit of Easy Bake Oven going on here. And I've got a few of them. I've got some arms, which are my favorite subject matter. More of a tour. — What is it? What is it about arms that you like so much? — Okay. Do you have a doodle that you repeat over and over again when you're on the phone with people? Do you have just like a go-to doodle? Yeah, I think everybody does. — Mine has always been a muscular arm — since I was I don't know why. — I really Interesting. — Yeah. So, this is basically, you know, 25 years of extrapolation on my holding notebook doodle just like a crazy muscular arm. And in the intervening years, it's gotten much more monstrous and elaborated and things like that. But, um — certainly. — Yeah. I think that was like my gateway to like the initial fascination with anatomy and then I grew it out from there. — I see it. It it all sprang forth from an arm. — I really do think so. Yeah. I think when I was little an arm like imagine like a bodybuilder's arm. I think to me that was the part of the body that I looked at it and I was like that is anatomy. That's like to understand that you need to know what the muscles are doing. Whereas, I don't know. I guess when I saw the other parts of the body, that didn't click. I was just like, well, of course a head looks like that. Of course, a torso looks legs look like that. Yeah. The arm I was like, that makes no sense at all. So, I think that was the — that was the initial gateway. Yeah. — It's like this like limitless possibility thing, unconstrained by just the one form that it can be. — Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. And it looks so, you know, when you're naive to anatomy, an arm, a really crazy arm, like a bodybuilder's arm, it just looks like chaos. It's just that's not the tube that I have, you know. — Yeah. No, no one told me that the chain could look like that. Uh in the chat here, we've got some other people uh saying the thing that they do as a standard drawing. — Uh so, one person here said uh I think they said a skull — was the one that they do. — That's a good one. — Yeah. I like the skull. Good choice. A lot of people just do like abstract shapes like diamonds and things like that. — Interesting. M mine has always been this like one face. It's the same kind of expression and everything and it just gets rendered in different styles each time. — That's cool. That's a pretty advanced one, I would say. — I I'll take your praise, Stephen Zapata. Thank you. — I do think so. I think it's pretty rare for people to do faces for their holding doodle. I mean, — um so yeah, like uh so we've got these arms and you're going to be shading through these. — Yeah. And I'll and I'll try to explain a little bit like touch on some of the base principles that I cover in form from imagination and how it relates to these things. Um I could also show some examples of the assignments or a little more of the structure of the course if anybody's — interested in that. Um yeah, but just to give a foundation. So if you look at the course Oh, you don't mind. I'll pull up the proco page for it real quick. Let me see here. I think I have it here on my end, but I'll let you pull that up. — Yeah, that way I can just drive. — Uhhuh. — On it. — Hold on. — Uh Faloma in the chat saying, "I spam a side view face when talking on the mobile phone. " — Oh, you see — chaotic sushi. I draw a bunch of cartoon cats in a bunch of different poses. That's a fun one. very advanced. Again, advanced, I would say. I feel like most people they do abstracts or they go in on um like one part of something simpler. I think doing a full thing like a cat or something is pretty advanced for older.

— Okay. But you should still buy the course, Faloma. — Absolutely. You get the course as we say on my streams. You get the course. You — That's fair. — So, here's a page for from imagination. So, if you scroll down, I explain a lot of the like um learning outcomes that we're going for testimonials, but here if you look through the lessons, you can get a vibe for the curriculum. So, we start with I'm a pretty philosophical guy, so I start with like literally ground zero. You can see the first few videos are what is form and what is imagination. You know, we have a little philosophical discussion about that. Then, of course, we talk about materials. I explain how to do the exercises digitally. Even though the course is — honestly it doubles as a course for mastering pencil drawing. That's one of the main things I wanted to give my audience. That was one of the big things a lot of my audience and my students wanted to learn from me. So this course is about form and doubles as a course for mastering pencil drawing. Um nature of light. You know we get very foundational there. I'm super proud of these videos. They're like multimedia explorations of how light works and what it does to forms. But then once you actually get to rendering, I start you right from the basics. So we do spheres, front lit and back lit. We do the main geoformms, cube, cylinder. Then we add textures, textured sphere, textured cylinder, creative spheres, and then things get pretty crazy. You know, we do combined geometric forms, combined organic forms. We run people all the way through um still lives. That's like how we end the module on geoform. So I have you compose your own still lives. And these are all assignments. So the course has uh I believe it's 28 assignments uh are what I'm running you through here. And each principle builds sequentially on the previous ones. And one of the things that I wanted to do with this course that is a little different from other courses that teach things like um spheres is let me pull up the sphere demo here for example. [clears throat] — So this is a scan of the sphere demo. Here's a couple key things that I wanted to do here. One, there's a lot of courses out there that if they're going to teach you spheres, they want you to draw like a thousand spheres or a thousand cubes or something like that. And that is valuable. There is value in that. I've done that. I've drawn thousands of spheres, thousands of cubes, right? But I feel that what a lot of people are missing in the current era, uh, especially learning online is the ability to just burrow down and do one perfect one. Because I think that in the end, if you're trying to make your own super high-end creative work or if you're trying to um do finished paintings or something like that, that is kind of a separate skill that requires practice on its own. It's like when it's time for that final picture, you don't need to do 20 spheres, you need to do one perfect one, right? And I feel that a lot of people miss that bit of practice. So if you're going through it in pencil, I ask you to do one perfect sphere, one perfect cube, and really rehearse the full extent of your rendering ability with each one. And uh I have found that really makes people improve very quickly. You know, it takes away the fallbacks and it makes you focus on every little thing that you're doing to try to make it as good as possible. And it's just one, so you know, it's not super overwhelming. I like that idea because I think that there's a thing that comes up a lot when so for Proco we teach a lot of figure — and drawing is something like quick sketch or uh something that isn't taken to a full render — and — a lot of times students they get themselves to that spot where they don't have to necessarily complete something. So they understand the conceptual idea of what that practice is useful for. But then they also just let the skill of rendering or taking something to a final step like just kind of atrophy. They lose the idea of there being a goal for making something and they get lost in the idea of just practice. So I think rendering something fully I think that's a really good thing to instill in people. Keep that mode. — Yeah. And that's one of the that was a vital part of like the old academic tradition. You know, in the old academic tradition, we're talking if we're thinking like the French Academy, the cold debut arts, the there was very little, I mean, there was quick sketch, but I don't think it was nearly as emphasized as it is in education now. And there was much more emphasis on doing longterm figure drawings, which very rarely are done these days. We're talking poses that were held across multiple days. So the model would come in possibly for a month and you would draw one pose for a month to really

burrow down with as much precision as possible. Um I've only been able to do that once in my life, but uh it was a hugely educational experience. There's very few schools these days where you'll get one pose for longer than a day or two, you know. Yeah. — Yeah. No, I there was um I forget his name right now. I feel so bad. Uh there's an instructor that we shot a course with recently and what he was doing he was talking about the idea of what he was working on that was many hours of work as being like a quick sketch almost uh because in his frame of reference it is shorter. Uh and I'm kind of having to figure out how exactly to market that as a course for people who by and large um their attention span is somewhat shorter. Uh and they're used to getting very immediate results. So, I think it's useful. — It is. It It's essential. And you'll notice that on this demo, the sphere demo, I put the time at the bottom. And that was a big part of me as it for me as well. Uh if you get the course, you'll see that in the early demos, I'm always uh noting how long it took me in real time to actually do that demo drawing. So that sphere again I want to remind people I have done thousands of spheres in my life. I've fully rendered probably multiple dozens you know like the well — no honestly now that I think about it considering some of my foundation training it is in the hundreds of fully finished uh spheres. It still took me an hour and 42 minutes to do a solid render of one in pencil. So I want to note that so that students can realize that for the most part most students these days are way too impatient with their drawings. They are rushing things almost universally they're rushing. — So like I have a here's the cube demo. This one was also an hour and 45 minutes just to draw a simple cube, right? But — it's really, you know, and this one includes I also cover basic perspective constructions for something like the cube in the course. And th this isn't this is easy stuff to gloss over and think that you have it. Burrowing down and doing one really good cube where all of the important points are hit. That's really where the improvement happens. I believe you really got to sit down and finish on some of this stuff. And I think in the long run, doing a few of these very finished makes you improve quicker. Even though the drawings can feel long, it'll make you improve quicker than doing months and months of things that you just kind of understand instead of really understanding them. Yeah, I think it's a good point. — Yeah, I would say real quick like for anyone in the chat who's thinking uh like I take I do a short amount of practice and that's fine. That is also fine. But when was the last time that you shaded a cube like this and you saw it reflected light on that shadow side like you see here? Just want to have you like just pay a little attention to that. Feel free to take them to the next image. Just I want you to think about that guys. — Yeah, it those things have to be earned through time you know. So we throughout the course we elaborate you know this is um the still life assignment. Again this course is formed from imagination. So I am always encouraging people don't copy my demo. Like I think that you should go ahead and do something very creative of your own invention. I'm always encouraging people to branch out and to make sure that the assignments are very fun and exciting for them. Right? So still life, it's maybe a little difficult to imagine, but there's actually two still life assignments to really hammer that in on people. There's uh I ask people to do a geoform still life like this one. And then I also asked them to do a fun creative still life. So I hope that you can see the follow through from the last one. You know that book is a form of a cube, right? Obviously it's modulated. It has some material indication, but it still has a one, two, three read very much like the cube that we just looked at. You know, the weird decanter with the eyeball on it is a sphere with some cylinders coming off of it. — Coins are very short cylinders, right? So, I ask people for this assignment to pick a theme and to work within a genre that they actually like and to try to find something to do something that excites them because that that's another thing I wanted to address with the course. A lot of people bounce off of these foundational exercises because they feel trapped in a box that nobody ever put them in. No one ever put them in that box. You know, like you were always you told yourself it had to be a very strict geo form. The truth is that there's no art police coming and you could have done whatever it took to keep you interested in the assignment, right?

So, I try to hammer people over the head with that throughout the demonstrations. And, um, whenever people actually do that, uh, I'm always very pleased. Um, I can show more of these later, but just because we're talking about that, I'll show — just one student example. Give me a moment here. — Yeah. So, and there was a question here in the chat. Someone was asking uh what the time was. I don't know if they meant this one or the previous one. This one says 3 hours 20 minutes. — Yep. Yeah, that's why I always like to note that um note those times on there. — Hold on. — And we are stacking up a few questions that are going to come up in here. I think — Oh, that's great. — This would be nice. — So, here's a still life from a student named Dileia Wang. [snorts] So, this was for the creative still life. So, look how far — she took that, you know, and it's — it's got a theme. She wrote me about the theme, you know, they're sort of — these icons that have personal relevance to her, but she found ways to not be drawing things that bored her. You know, she had a musical instrument, this awesome diving helmet, you know, this asks you to do textures, but it's still asking for the clear geometric modeling factors that we focus on in this course. So, fible. — This is from imagination as well. — Yes. Yeah. I mean, she the assignment I do ask people like as much as you can't do it from imagination. Surely to this level, she had to go look at what a diving helmet looked like. — Yeah. Because it's like hammered the crisp on the egg. — Yes. There has she has to have gone and looked at it. But I covered that at the very beginning uh in the first video. How to use this course. I'm not like some um I'm not some zealot, you know, over here detached from you being like, "You better do it all from imagination the whole time or okay. " What I advise is if you're trying to learn, if it's a big learning point for you to work from imagination, do it as much as possible. And if you find you really want to look at reference, what I advise is look at as much reference as you want on your breaks. So draw with no distractions. Draw with all your screens off, just you and the paper for 30 minutes, 40 minutes. And then at lunch, stare at reference while you eat your sandwich. Just munch your sandwich and look at references. Look at those materials. Really look at them and then see if when you're done, put the references away and go back to working from imagination. — Okay. And I think that starts blending imagination with memory, which are certainly very closely linked, but I don't think they're exactly one and the same. Uh something that I also cover in the course. And um I think that helps build a bridge to fully imaginative work. [clears throat] — I had one question about this real quick. So, for this exact student assignment, — this is different than your pieces that you have shown so far in that I feel like — they chose to kind of crunch their value range. So, there's no like darkest darks and uh I guess there are some lightest lights in here, but this is a good piece that suits all of what you wanted inside of your assignment. So a stylistic approach like this is well within what you want from your students. — Oh yeah. And I mean I also I'm a pencil artist myself so I have a lot of sympathy for how compressed its value range is. Like [clears throat] — so I teach the modeling factors in what I think of as a relativistic way. So if I pull up — near the end of the course we talk about local value changes on forms. So this is the first assignment in that. So this is something I call the bean. This is my demo again. Um so this has a white area, a gray area and a black area and it transitions through shadows for each of them. And the whole form also has the appropriate modeling factors for such a beam. Right? So to get this to communicate clearly, there can't be there's a lot of things that need to be hit and that need to work, but you can't be rigid about it. Right? What matters is relative value relationships. So I focus on the modeling factors. So for me, I ask myself questions and when I evaluate what students do and things like that, I ask similar questions. I ask, is the core shadow actually darker than the reflected light? Is the ambient occlusion actually darker than the form than the core shadow? So relative assessments like that, I don't need absolute answers. I don't need the core shadow to be eight on the value scale. As long as it is uh darker than the reflected light and lighter than the ambient occlusion, I personally believe

the modeling factors will hold and they will produce the illusion of form. And then that relativism is what allows for you to render something convincingly whether it's for example clear and right in front of you or in 200 ft of atmospheric perspective or if there's smoke in the room. Right? That relativism gives you the room to compose with more freedom and to in introduce more visual effects while not losing the solidity of the form. — Heck yeah. No, well said. I think that it's all about contrast and like you said the relativist like the relationship between the things. I have one last question here about the course before we dig in to you actually rendering something. Uh a person with so many letters and numbers as their name seemingly no words uh is asking is the course suitable for those who work primarily in ink? — I have had a few students do the course in ink. Yes. Um, I don't have any examples right now that I can pull up. I'd have to dig for those, but I have had people do the assignments in ink. Um, if you're going to do it in Ink, just to be perfectly honest with anyone who's interested in that, you are going to have to do your own experimentation in finding techniques that will allow you to represent the value range necessary in ink. Now, what I can tell you is that is possible, right? Even though ink is ostensibly only black points, right? It's either white or it's black. If you've seen gray ink work from someone like um Nico Delort or Joseph Clement Cole, you will see that you can get the a full value range even out of just that white and black. But you're going to have to play around with different kinds of hatching. You might have to play around with stipling. You're going to have to understand halftone effects. You know, you might need to do a light plane on a cube with some very small bare like very distantly spaced dots, right? If you want to put anything at all instead of just leaving the one plane completely white. But it is possible. And certainly trying to hit this level of fidelity with form would really put your ink abilities through the paces. But again, the course focuses on principles. So — yeah, — if you understand what each of the modeling factors is doing, then in the end using your own creativity, you're going to be able to extend that to ink, to paint, to watercolor, to oil paint, to digital painting, anything, you know, anything where you're trying to represent form with the modeling factors, which is the norm. — Yeah. No, I think that makes perfect sense. If you can learn the concepts that you're uh that you're mentioning in the lessons, it's up to you how do you how you choose to use those with the tools that you have at the time. — Yeah. I just want to show here sort of, you know, obviously what are we going for with all these skills, you know, it's stuff like this. You know, this is the kind of stuff that I do, but doing rather complex things. This drawing of a knight is completely from imagination, right? So, this is one of the final two demos in the course. uh just creative demonstrations for what you can use these skills for. But uh obviously, yes, I've drawn a lot of monstrous arms in the past and I've drawn a lot of knights armor in the past, both with and without reference. But this demo, I did it completely without reference. I was just doing it from imagination/memory. And these are the kinds of skills that when I was a young artist, God, I coveted being able to do this. This is what I wanted to do. And now I really feel because of the principled education that I've had in these things, I feel I can do it. You know, I just have the confidence to be able to do these things. So this is what we're going for with these kinds of skills. — Will you do me a favor, Stephen? — Will you show the image that you used as the thumbnail for this course on Proco? — Sure. Yes. — I think that image you said that you haven't gotten to show that image off too much and I love that one and I would love for people to be able to see that and how that applies here. You got it. I am looking for it. Here it is. — Also, you found a way to have more than one arm in here. More than two arms in — Oh, yeah. And lots of hands. Love drawing hands. I love drawing hands. So, the for these final two demos, I did the night to show a little bit more of the texture and material indication side. And then this drawing which I just called meat bag is this is very clearly translating the formic conceptions that we explored in the course directly into a character. So I think when you look at this it's pretty clear what parts are spheres what parts are cylinders what parts maybe feel a little bit more cubic you know that would be happening on things like the hands and things like that but just

showing very directly how things translate. And this one was quicker. This one I this demo I did explicitly to show um how these ideas that okay at the beginning we're spending an hour and 40 minutes doing a sphere. But then this drawing I think was under an hour to do this sketch in air quotes but probably close to an hour but showing how these concepts can show up even when you're working much more quickly and on much more complicated things. — Awesome. Yeah, I just wanted people to get to see that one here kind of early on. Okay, let's uh dig into shading if you're feeling ready for it. — Oh yeah, I'm ready to draw. I'd like to draw for you a little bit today if you don't mind. — Despite all the cold over there that I'm sure you guys are already experiencing. — Oh yeah, I need to warm up. Get the hand warm. See, is that my feed? Yes. — Yep. Looks right here. So yeah, so we're going to go through some conceptions here and I will also explain um my materials which will be basically the same materials that I do the whole course in. I'm on the same paper right now that I did the course with. This is um Moleskin sketchbook paper. Uh it's not my number one favorite paper. paper is Strathmore 400 series bristle paper smooth. Um, but I Oh, I love that paper. That's my favorite paper for finished drawings. — Uh, I do prefer do using Moleskin paper when doing anything on camera just because it's a little yellow, which is a little easier on the eyes when you blast the paper with light for recording. So, but it's still excellent high quality paper. But this is Moleskin paper. I've got my number one favorite drawing tool of all time, just a 0. 5 mechanical pencil. The lead that's in there, there is the classic uh I think it's called Pentel super high polymer 0. 5 HB lead. It's just the standard stuff that comes in all Pentel pencils, anything you would get at an office supply store or anything like that. I've got a small collection of darker pencils, which really there's very little difference between any of them to me. I've got a Palamino Blackwing. I've got Oh, that one's not darker. I've got a 6B. What is this? This is a 6B Tombbo. And I've probably got a 12B FaberCastell somewhere around here. All right. Looks like today I've got the 6B FaberCastell matte pencils. But really, to me, they're all basically the same. What matters is that they're dark. They're really, really dark. They're the darkest pencils I can find. And I will do most of my drawings with just this my classic HB and then I'll use the darks for dark accents and for shadows. — Vis Vizer05 had asked earlier, what graphite does Stephen use to get that dark black background? All mine turn out gray. You say those tools there on the left then? — Yeah. Yeah, usually for backgrounds and definitely for those that are in the demo scans that I showed, you can get it with an HB actually if you're really if you understand your material well, you can get something that dark with an HB, but it takes an extremely long time. But just so you know, it is possible. Um, but usually, yeah, for something that dark, I'd use a 6B or even the a 12B. Um, just as dark as I can find and go slow and try not to etch the paper. Yeah. [snorts] — All right. You answered a couple questions in there. That was nice. Knock them down. — Happy to answer questions. Love it. And for blending, which I do a lot. I do use blending stumps a lot. I use blending stumps. I can't even tell you where this is from. Blending stumps are the cheapest tool you'll ever find. They shouldn't cost more than a couple pennies. They sell them in packs of a hundred, something like that. These were pennies in a big pack. I don't know who makes these. Uh, anything will do. The cheapest thing you can find will do. You can make your own even. And for erasers, I use the classic kneaded eraser. And I also have the I believe these are Tombos, the Tombbo Mono Zeros, which are these little click erasers with very sharp points for — It's a good eraser, too. — Yeah. And this kit, if I put these tools in a pencil case, I could probably do the rest of my pencil drawing career with this. I would have no problem being locked into this for the rest of my life, probably. It's fun to experiment with other things, but this is the core kit right here. And I feel I can get — basically any effect that I would want given enough time with these base tools. Heck yeah. All right. [clears throat] So, — I see you. There's one tool you didn't bring up here that you already have out.

— What was it? I missed it. — What's What's that uh copy paper there for? — Oh, this is to go under my hand so that I don't smudge the drawings underneath me. I will be honest though, a lot of people when they see me using the blending stump, um, one of the most common questions I get on stream is, "How do you not smudge the paper like crazy with your hand? " Um, it's pretty amazing, but once you start rubbing graphite into the grain of the paper with the blending stump, it kind of gets stuck in there and it's really not going anywhere. It actually stays pretty put. — So once I'm in the middle process, I start losing the paper and I just draw. I just move my hand freely over the paper and I rarely smudge it. Maybe I smudge it a little but not enough to be noticeable. That's another I also don't um for the most part I don't fix my drawings. I don't put spray fix on them. I leave them unfixed and [snorts] they don't smudge, you know? They really don't smudge. The whites stay white. I mean the I think if you're pressing hard enough using good contrast and Yeah. If you wind up doing some blending where you're pushing the graphite into the paper, it's going to stay put. Yeah, that's also the danger — for you guys out there. Uh so for when people watch someone like uh Elisa Ivanova do a demo and she'll whip out the uh a blending stump early on. — Mhm. — It's because she knows that she's already good to lock that thing in, put something else on top of that. — But if you go and lock that thing in, it's never going to erase to like paper white at that point. — Right. Yeah. It's pressing hard. Yeah. it's gonna get stuck in there pretty good. — But it also I do also encourage my students all the time, use the best paper you've got as much as you can because the big difference between cheap paper and good paper is that good paper stands up to an amazing amount of abuse. — Yeah. — So if you're the better and better paper you're on, the more you can erase and even in pretty shocking situations, you can get back to nearly paper white. Good paper is really good to work on. do it as you can. People, — you answered a question. Uh, the newest question that popped up here was Sapura asking, "So, you need good quality paper or whatever. " And then you answered it right there. — Yeah. Oh, my intuition is on point today. Yeah. I um So, um, so a lot of the times, you know, when I've had students who are trying to learn pencil drawing from me, I'll have them run through some basic exercises. And you know, even before I made this course, one of the first things I'd have people do is if you're really worried about your rendering, I want you to do a sphere. Like do just like I'd asked for in the course, I say, "Give me one perfect sphere. " And I tell them how to do it. And they go off. — And then they come back to me and they did it on sketchbook paper. Even if I told them, "Look, here's the paper that I'm using. " Right? And I've always told them, you tricked yourself into thinking that because it's just a sphere, it's just a study and so I can do it on crappy paper. — But [clears throat] what you need to remember is that when you're doing something like rendering a sphere, especially if you're learning, you are trying to rehearse the full quality of your rendering ability. And if you work on cheap paper to rehearse that, you're cutting off the top 20% of what's possible for you. And that means that you're not rehearsing it. You're not practicing it. So even for base studies, if what you're going for is practicing a finished quality, as far as I'm concerned, you should be doing that sphere, cube on the most expensive paper you have. I really believe that. I think you should go all the way with it because you don't want to go do your finished figure or your creative piece and be stuck at the level of practice that you've had on crappy sketchbook paper. You want to work on the best paper that — Yeah. Learn. — A lot of people don't like hearing that, but I think it makes a lot of sense when you think about it that way. — Yeah. I think it's a thing that you learn as you work more. Even at the be in the beginning of you learning something, if you kind of dismiss that wisdom and then you get to actually test that idea out, you see that it's valid. Like a lot of things that you learn in art. — Yep. So, what before I get to filling in some rendering here, I do have a little piece of tracing paper here showing just how I'm thinking of some of these things. And this kind of thinking is what I go through in form from imagination. So this arm I started it when I sketched it sketching freely. I always start there. You see here a geometric conception of that same art arm. Right? I do not advise that anybody actually begin by drawing this way that you see on the right. [clears throat] Start with emotion, with energy and with

excitement, with the gesture as people call it. Um, this is always the basis of any drawing truly. And this is where it should start end. In the middle, you add these kinds of diagnostic conceptions. So, I started here drawing freely. If we move away from rendering, I can go over some just raw sketching stuff for people if they're interested. And then once I had that, I laid this piece of tracing paper over. Again, for demonstration purposes, I don't lay separate pieces of paper over anymore, but you can if you're a beginner intermediate to get clear. But just to show that even these very finicky, very complicated things, they do have underlying basic form conceptions that make it much easier to imagine how they're going to be affected by light. And you can see that even in simple note takingaking like this, there's key moments where I'm putting in what's actually pretty detailed information. So you'll notice that I've simplified the tricep monster face into a sort of faceted block over here. And you'll see that I actually indicated how a cast shadow might come off of that from a light source in the top left and how that cast shadow is going to intersect with the form shadow that is to say terminator and core shadow of the ellipsoid form of the deltoid up here. So even in very simple um geometric conceptions, we're getting vital information that we're not going to try to copy that shape exactly when we render the arm because it's more complicated than this. But I want to get the spirit of that. I like to put little numbers when I do plans. So I'm saying that's the number one plane, that's the number two plane, this would be a shadow plane. And I could keep thinking like this in as much detail as I want until even a simple sketch like this could actually get quite complicated and quite specific off of this cylindrical shape. Anything that has a form shadow must be casting a shadow. That's an important principle. So I don't have one here. So I could put a cast shadow coming off of this. That's very that so the logic behind that is that if there is this rolloff shadow that's being shown on that form then by the very same logic that exists it is obscuring light from the thing that — Yeah. — Exactly. And that's something that a lot of people miss in their drawing. you know, they they will put form shadows everywhere. And those same forms will not then cast shadows, which the only time that would happen is if there's a perfect alignment of perspective and other obscuring forms to hide that cast shadow. But if you just follow the logic, logic of photons striking these forms, they're going to miss that form and they're going to go hit somewhere else and produce a cast shadow. So, um, an important principle to keep in mind. So, that's how I'm thinking. I'll put that off to the side in case I want to reference it. — I appreciate the breakdown. — Yeah, no problem. I just want people to know that I do have these kinds of basic forms in my mind, even if they're not down on the paper. — And now I'll go over my lines and start indicating shadow shapes. That's always my step one. I basically create — you're going to answer the question right now. You were already going straight into it. — Yeah. Well, I was going to say I create the basic power the basic power of the light and of the form by creating the light shape and the shadow shape. So, I sketch in the form shadow that leaves the light shape behind, of course. And right from this step, I'm trying to make it cool. try not to do any steps where I don't make the picture cooler. So that's another thing that students struggle with at the beginning. They think I make it cool later, right? And so they start sketching in their shadows and they're boring. And in their heads they know their shadows are boring, but again they're like later like no no cool from the beginning. Like just stack cool on top of cool. That'll be better for you in the long run if it's cool the whole time. — Absolutely. Yeah. It's the same principle as like when they try to like put cool clothes onto Mark Zuckerberg. He's still a loser Chud underneath. Like — that's right. — You got to make it cool from the start. — Yeah. No, we want no Zuckerberg underlays. No. — Yeah. — We want it cool the whole time. I'm trying to think of who's cool right now, but honestly, I'm too unc to know that. I'm fully out. I couldn't tell you who's cool. I have no idea — Uh, all right. So, we do have some questions here as you're kind of filling

in this with like a little bit of a flat. — Um, so I'm going to go from a little headier of one — before getting into just the fun stuff. — Sure. — All right. So, Hannah was asking, "How do you keep going with drawing from imagination? I'm spoiled with references and digital medium comforts. " Ah so for the for a question like that what I always ask people is do you actually want to draw from imagination or is it that you think you should be able to because it's very endemic in the current art world to just have a long list of all the things you think you're supposed to be able to do. I'm draw from imagination. like Kim Jong-i. I'm supposed to be able to do elaborate architectural draftsman style perspective layouts, right? And you just heard those things from people who were saying that that's a badass thing to be able to do. And you're like, I'm a badass. I should be able to do that. And you haven't asked, what kind of art do I actually want to make? What do I really want to do? There are tons of people with great careers who don't draw from imagination. Everything is from reference or from life and no one looks at their work and thinks anything is lacking. Right? So you have to ask yourself maybe that's okay for me. Maybe I would be happy just doing that. And trust me man that is hard enough. It is hard enough. It's okay to just focus on that. But if when you investigate that you find yourself saying, "Well, actually, it's very important to me to be able to depict these things that I have in mind that there's no reference for monsters, angels, demons, devils, other realms. I want to be able to do a comic book where I can go fast and tell stories quickly, things like that. " If you can say those things confidently, if you know you want them, then that you hold that close to the chest and you write it on a piece of paper, you tattoo it to the inside of your eyelids and you think about that every day and you don't lose the dream and you focus on that goal and you move towards it every day. And if you can keep the fire alive for that, it will practicing working from imagination. The number one devil in the current art world is not knowing what you want to do. — Lack of focus, being lost, just doing things because you think if you do them that means you're a badass. And that is screwing up so many people in the art world today. You need to know what kind of art you actually want to make and head towards that with a singular resolve. — Heck yeah. Absolutely. Uh here in the chat there was a person I think this was uh Chris Burns who brought something up that I want to make sure is clear. Um Chris Burns said in my opinion it's better to do it on shitty paper if that's all you have instead of waiting to do on a really nice paper. Doing something is better than nothing. Absolutely. Don't wait don't treat your sketchbook as precious. The idea of using nice tools is not saying don't use anything but nice tools. It's saying that at a certain point you can get more out of the tools that you have at your disposal and at that point you'd be prepared to be able to get the most out of those tools. You can buy super nice paper at the beginning of your career and use it and make just absolutely the worst drawings on it and if that is something that is with within your grasp, do it. But also, you can make something great on trash tools with trash tools when you are experienced. Don't stop. Don't wait. Don't treat something as precious. — Yeah. To be sure, I 100% agree that doing something is absolutely better than doing nothing. No, no. My story about telling students like you should have done this on good paper. I'm kind of assuming in that story that there was good paper in the house, and usually there is. It's that they're afraid to use it, right? I think we all — I think all of us as artists know what it's like to be sitting on a big pile of art supplies that you're like, I can't use them. I'm not ready. That's for the good stuff. You know, we all have that experience. I've got Oh my god. I at I've basically got an art store in my studio in all of my shelves and things like that. I r very rarely think of a material I'd like to play with that I don't have somewhere in this house. You know, I'm just we're all sitting on tons of stuff or that's a very common experience [clears throat] — for artists. So, yeah, that story definitely assumes there was good paper in the house. You just got too scared to use it. And that's what I'm trying to push back against there, you know. — Yeah. Uh there was also someone here in the chat who was mad that I used the word chud because they think it's like a terminally online word. — Uh [gasps] it's just a word that means

like a fool a dunce. Uh it sounds like they said what does chud mean in the first place? Because Twitter harassers use that word every time for people that disagreed with them. I don't know who you mean in that situation because Twitter is vastly different than Twitter was two years ago. Uh so who are the harassers? — Chud actually was also a um that phrase comes from an old sci-fi movie, right? It actually stands for like what is it? Cannibalistic humanbound dwellers. — Yeah. Good job. Hell yeah, man. — Oh, thank you. We don't know who's cool, but we know the movie from the 80s. — No. Now, now I'm in some sort of superp position. People are like, is he not? I don't know. — Uh, all right. So, here there was one question from visitor05 who asked, "How do you make shadow shapes appear cool? — Is it the complexity? Is it the sharpness? What what you got? " — Okay. Um, my I have a bit of a sound bite for this one. — Okay. Okay, I'm going to give you the full screen. — When it comes to shadow shapes, how you design them is completely to your own taste. Just make sure that your taste is for stuff that looks awesome. It's that simple, right? It's that simple and it's that complicated. Um, it can be anything, right? There is no such thing as objectively good shapes and objectively bad shapes. Right? Any kind of shape can be made good through the power of design. Right? So someone like Dave Finch is going to make every shadow shape on the figure basically the tooth on a saw blade. It's a razor sharp triangle. And often because of his hatching, it's a razor sharp triangle with more triangles coming off of it. So, it's saw blade on top of saw blade. And that looks awesome. And then if you go to someone like Claire Wendling, everything is soft. Everything is curved. Everything has a rounded edge. Very few saw blades, right? And the same for the shadow shapes, flowing, softened, softer edges, but they're unified. You know, they're cohesive in terms of design, right? They're not clashing with anything. And there is definitely if you look at Claire's soften shadow shapes, they're clearly more compelling, let's say, than someone who doesn't have as much experience using those shapes and in unifying them. So, first thing is ask yourself, who are you in your heart, right? Are you more of a Claire Wendling or Dave Finch or are you somewhere in between? Right? There's other areas on the map. You know, there's Doug Chang, for example, who, you know, does everything like a machinist. You know, it's either a circle or a cylinder or triangle. It's very, very geometric. And once you know what you're into, right, I know what I like. You guys have seen my drawings. I'm more towards a Dave Finch. I like aggressive. I like pointy. I like monstrous. Um, spend as much time as you can in that realm. And you will naturally find for your own hand, this is how I make those kinds of shapes look good. And it is all subjective. It's like you're going to do a thousand bad shapes and find one great one. And then you're going to start from that great shape for the next batch of a thousand. Then you'll find another one, and then hopefully 30 years from starting, you'll be Dave Finch, right? you've just stacked beautiful shape on top of beautiful shape and um and it'll all be cohesive and look good, right? Because Dave Finch has an aggressive shape that works for a nose, for hair, for a chest, for an ab, for fingers, for leather pouch on Batman's belt. It's like he has found an infinite variety of sawtooth shapes that he can mix and match into different positions to make any material or object that he needs. — and convincingly read as different materials. — Yeah. That is no small that's no small feat. That's a very tricky feat. So he has spent a lot of time making those triangles and that's what it takes. That is truly what it takes. — Uh Carlos Ru in the chat had asked how do you develop your taste and awesomeness? Is there a way uh to speedrun that process? I think you said a little bit there that kind of answers that one. It is just a process and it happens over time. — Yep. and the speedrun thing. No, there is no real way to speedrun it. And I know that speedrunning it seems appealing, but in the long run, it isn't. Not really. Um because any shortcut that you could take in drawing basically means that even if you found something exciting on the other side of

that shortcut and I'm not talking about like neat process tricks, right? I'm talking about like yeah, I'm going to swipe these shapes from another artist and just use those and I'm never going to draw a hand freely. I'm always going to have this other artist hand. I'm just going to copy that hand. things like that, you know, which to an extent is trying to speedrun getting to those good shapes, right? — It's not that copying isn't helpful. It is. I've done a lot of copying, but that can't be the end all beall. And it just means that I don't want to use the word that it cheapens the look of your work, but I said it. I did kind of use the word. So, there it is. It does kind of cheapen it. It means that it's right there for anybody else to do that thing. And so by definition, it is not differentiating you. And in the end, even though we all kind of get a little depressive every now and then, and we're like, you know, I don't even want to be special. different. If I could just draw exactly like this person, I would die happy. We've all been there. But that's a down that's from a depressive place in art. And in truth, the art spirit, and it's okay to be like this. It is maybe not in other parts of life, but it's okay in art. It's okay to want to be special. That's why you got into drawing, probably. It's okay to want your own style and your own look and to have something that communicates uniquely to other human beings. That's okay to want in art. And there can't be a shortcut to that because it it ha you have to manufacture the personal and individual aspect for every dang part of the art and that's going to take a long time. And in the long run that's what you want. That's what we all want. You know, we don't want to be a cog in a machine that's easily replaced or anything like that. [clears throat] You know, we want to be uniquely and utterly ourselves, all of us in the end. — Yeah. I think that the fact that you did point out the idea of something that is essentially master studies being something of a method to evoke the idea of speedrunning something. Uh it it's an easy temptation and it will get you a little bit of a springboard, but then from there you can only go so long draw like in junior high drawing Gokus in your school notebook, you know? — Yeah. — Like you learn what you can from there and then you move on. Well, some people never move on, but that's fair. That's fair, but damn, they can draw a good Super Saiyan 3 Goku. — Yeah, it's like you that's you know what stuff like that is okay if you know that's actually your end goal. If you can look if you can look me straight in the face and say all I want to do is draw Goku. [clears throat and laughter] Fair play, my friend. Don't do anything but draw Goku, you know? But most people want something broader than that. — Yeah. At least like expand a little bit. draw Krillin every once in a while, guys. — Every now and then, throw a piccolo in there. — Uhhuh. — Little Majin Buu in there. — Throw it in there. — About the drawing you're that you were that you're working on now. So, you had penciled in the greater mass of the shadow shape — uh up on the shoulder area and now you're going through into some darker shadow areas. — Yeah. It didn't seem like you went through and outlined that shadow shape in the same way that you had for the that lighter shadow for the these darker shadows. — Yeah. So, there's certain things that um so some of it is uh just natural variation of my hand, but there's key places where it isn't. So, let me zoom in here. — Look at that par focal lens over there, guys. — Oh, yeah. That's the way to go. So this moment here, you'll notice I have a darker triangle here and then a it's all shadow, but there's a lighter part here that I'm touching right now and then a darker part. And that was indicated in my geometric overlay. And this is indicating a very important principle that I talk about a lot in form from imagination which is generally speaking cast shadows are darker than form shadows and that's not [clears throat] always the case. There's pl in real life there's plenty of situations where bounce light will edit that but in a vacuum and generally cast shadows are darker than form shadows and that is a very effective way to quickly communicate to the eye of the viewer comp complex organic forms and the interactions of light with those forms. Just a little bit of modulation of your finger to say that's a shadow but this one's lighter, this one's darker. The eye very quickly reads that as that's a little cast shadow coming off of that bump, intersection. And that's a form shadow where the form is oluding itself from the light. Um it it's a technique that I go back to over and over again and it makes things look dimensional very

quickly. So you'll see this shape of shadow which is filled in. That's all form shadow and that's why that is darker than the sha slight I'm sorry lighter than the cast shadows that are coming off of the teeth over here to the left. So honestly I do it unconsciously now because I've been doing it for so many years but um it's a big thing for me conceptually now these down here are darker than this shape but that is not because of that. That is just — that's just natural v. Yeah, that's just natural variation in my hand. — If I were to render this for an hour, I would balance those things out and try to bring them more in line with the principles that I'm working on here. So here and here, definitely intentional here and here not. But when you see variations like that in the shadows, that's where I'm always starting. Core shadow verse cast shadow verse form shadow. Form shadow lighter cast shadow darker. Hm. [clears throat] Okay. Let's see what the other questions that we've got here. Uh, this is a good one you can answer whenever you want. Stephen, is there no free will in drawing? There is not. — No, there is. There isn't. Um, for anyone who has no idea where that's coming from, um, my YouTube channel is the craziest place you'll ever visit. in the drawing part of YouTube. My live streams, we barely talk about drawing these days. Everyone just wants to talk about philosophy and free will. I mean, it's — true. — It's crazy in there. It is crazy in there. Uh and I love it. I love them over there and it keeps me excited because considering the amount of streaming that I do, I can't talk about just drawing techniques over and over again all the time. But um yeah, pe people have really latched on to asking about that. But um you know at the risk of exposing myself as crazy on a platform like Proco, I personally do not believe in free will. Uh and so of course it can't show up in art either. Um let the raging debate that has gone on since the beginning of philosophy begin. That's fine. But um yeah it in terms of art I actually find that very beautiful because for me that means that and this is going to get kind of sound saccharine but it really means that there's no mistakes like every errant line every fleck every stray mark everything like that is only interpreted as something that could have been another way when in truth it was the necessary outcome of the state of the universe at that particular moment. And seen from that viewpoint, which I personally really do believe, it's really hard to get bent out of shape about your mistakes. If you really swallow the pill on that and you really feel that way, it's kind of hard to sit there beating up on yourself, you know, and instead I find I can come to accept my mistakes, not worry about them. In fact, usually when I'm drawing, my starting position is I try to integrate every single little wrinkle and stray mark and thing like that because in my heart I feel like they are actually coming from a more profound place. They're coming from an unconscious that I don't understand and they are influenced from by the entire universe. They really are coming from the entire universe. And uh I don't know about you, but for me that makes me feel more like sitting and drawing than being like, "God, I made another my dad's going to be so mad. " You know, just that's much less motivating for me. It doesn't really — the I haven't uh ever, you know, dug too deep on my ideas of whether there is free will or not. I think I'm one of those people that comes down on the idea of it's kind of immaterial to me whether there is or is not free will. Uh I'm enjoying the ride. — Yeah. Me too. Me too, baby. — Yeah. But yeah, know the idea of like uh something like uh quantum states and all of these things and the like just anything that goes behind that. I'll talk about that also for hours. I can't do it from the Proco account. — You see, I I've got leeway. I'm just a guest, you know, so you go crazy. — You dig in on it. I'm here just to bully people about it being okay to call people chuds. — That's where you draw the line. That's my realm. — Uh just real quick to go from the high-minded to the practical real quick. I am now taking my blending stump and I'm going to do a very light scrubbing pass out of the shadow. And that's for a couple reasons. one, it's going to unify the shadows

slightly so that I don't have to go in with the tip of my pencil and fill in every little white space. It's going to flatten it a bit, but it will also pass a soft gray tone over the light. A very soft gray tone that will allow me to pop in some speculars with my eraser a little bit later. Um, there's other things that I like about it. I mean, it gets a little graphite on the stump as well, which then lets me do little forms with the stump instead of with my pencil. So basically all I do to do that is I scrub around in the shadow a little bit very lightly and then I go from the shadow through the light and I lift and I stop. I try not to go back and forth too much. I always want to go from the dark to the light, light because that gives me a natural gradation as the stump leaves graphite on the paper. There was a question earlier someone had brought up before you started going in here and smoothing uh with the blending stump. They had commented that the marks that you were laying down were so smooth and that theirs were super scratchy and had so many holes in them. — Is there any kind of advice that you would give a person outside of smoothing? — Yes, I will give you the same advice that my roommate in college gave me that fixed this problem for me. Uh, let me just get a scrap piece of paper. So, credit where credit is due. My roommate at the time was an artist named Lindseay Laney and we were working on we had a class called Vizcom. Uh it was our first perspective class in college and the final very difficult was to draw a tank in perspective and it had to have a cast shadow on the ground of the tank that was vaguely accurate. Uh we hadn't the next class was shadow shapes doing cast shadows and things like that but um we had to give it a reasonable shadow. So, I kept having to, you know, I was putting down, say, whatever the cast shadow shape was of my tank. I kept putting it down and then like this person said, I would go and I'd be like, "All right, I got to fill this in. This is big. It's so scratchy. " And all that. And I was like really trying to like, "Oh, my hatches are just not going the right direction. " And then it wouldn't come out right. And I would come in trying to like fill in between [clears throat] — patches — and then it wouldn't look right and I just have to erase it and I was getting more and more stressed because I knew I was going to blow through the paper at some point so I was going to ruin my original and then oh my god I'm going to have to start over. So Lindsay comes into my room one day and she sees how stressed I am. I'm just like how are you doing it? Because I had seen hers and hers look great, right? And I'm telling her like, you know, I'm I've got it laid down and I'm doing the perspective lines back to the vanishing point and all that. She looks at me like I'm so stupid and she goes, "Why don't you just go really slow and get it right as you go and I can't No one had ever said that to me before. " And it like blew up my brain. It really for real So then I just instead of rushing and being stressed, I just put one stroke next to the other. The very controlled pace. That's slow. So, what you're saying is — you can see that looks much smoother than anything you're going to do fast. And then you've only got a couple little streaks that you need to poke at [snorts] to even it out. — Mhm. — Go slow. — You're saying do just do it right even if it takes time. — Yeah. I think that um someone on my Discord put it very pithily once. I don't know where they got this from, but it stuck with me when they wrote it. Um, slow is smooth and smooth is fast. And I think that really sums up a lot of my approach to tempo in drawing. — Yeah. It's like if you Yeah. If you rush and go quick, you're going to make a bunch of mistakes that you wouldn't have made if you had just taken your time, even a lot of time. And in the end, you're going to waste more time getting those mistakes out than you would have spent going slow in the first place. No, very well said. I hope that one helps you guys in the — Yeah, I forget who I wish I could

remember who in my Discord said that so I could give them credit. If they happen to be in here, go on and claim your glory. Say that it was from you. — You know, Stephen, I'm proud to say that was me in your Discord that day. — I should have known. I should have [snorts] I really should have known. So, what is the thing that you're moving on to now? What are you going to be — I was poking at I'm still going to keep uh with the stump. I'm just going to keep running this gray pass over. — The other question that did come up about uh lightness, darkness, um like smudging, anything was someone asking about how you would treat that darker variance that you had on the lower portion of the arm there. — [snorts] — Um, so if in the end, okay, so I should say in this particular case, it probably would not bother the eye optically if this form shadow was darker than this form shadow because it's also following the overall value progression of the whole tube of the arm. So if this was a 3D modeling program, it's quite likely that those form shadows would actually be the same value if it was a white form. You know, imagine marble or something like that. But optically speaking, the audience will accept that difference because in their head, they're sort of saying things up here are lighter and things down here are darker because it's rolling away. So [clears throat] probably in this case, I could leave it. And that is a benefit that I do take advantage of a lot in drawing. Um, if I did decide that I needed it to be lighter, well, first off, I actually have two options. I can either darken the form shadow that's too light, or I can lighten this one. Darkening is obvious. Usually, I will tend towards darkening because pencil drawings are not contrasty enough as a rule. So, I'll try to fix most things by darkening rather than by lightening. But, if I did need to lighten, I take a kneaded eraser and I make a point like this. And then I get a big cup of coffee and then I put on a TV show that I barely care about and I start poking like this. — Really? Like a more of like a stipple just to lift graphite more than — That's right. — Okay. — Yep. I do it just like this. This is something I learned from the academics. This is how the people who are spending two months on a cast drawing light in their shadows. Oh, the artist earlier is that person, the one that I mentioned, uh, the idea of spending two months on a cast drawing. It was Dan Thompson was the artist. — Dan Thompson. Oh, I know his work. Yes. Yeah. Excellent. Excellent work. Yeah. — Yeah. Time intensive. — Yeah. There's nothing wrong with taking your time, folks. I mean, obviously some people want to go into industries where um speed is at a premium, but that's not everybody, you know? Mhm. [clears throat] — It's like you've really got to you really have to reckon with the fact, do you want to have no career because you did a million mediocre drawings or do you want to have a great career because you made 14 masterpieces. And if you want to blow your mind, look up how many Da Vinci paintings there are. It's not a — It's not a lot. Look up how many Michelangelo paintings there are. It's not a lot. Yeah, — you know, volume doesn't mean much outside of particular industries and outside of something like social media, right? It is about quality. It's always going to be about quality in the end. So, yeah, just like that, I stiple. I just take the kneaded eraser, poke, poke. When it doesn't pick up anymore, I remake the point. And there you go. That lightens the shadow shape with the most control possible. All right. Uh, one other quick question while we're not talking about your rendering. Uh, again, the person with the numbers in the letters name, uh, asked, "Does the course cover multiple light sources or is it more focused on one strong light source? " That's a great question. It is focused on one strong light source because that is the foundation of understanding form. Um, if I was ever going to expand the course, I've always thought it would be with discussing multiple light sources. But just know that multiple light sources, it is just the math, geometry, and modeling factors of single light sources overlaid on each other — and that's it. It is like I said if I expanded the course I mean it would probably be one or two lessons to explain all the principles that you need to know there. That said I really do think for almost everybody practicing your forms with a single hard light source that is to say a small

light source is the best most direct way to learn how form works. I don't think it's I think it's even restrictively hard to try to learn how form works with a soft light source. I think that hides too much of the knowledge from people. I think if you're really trying to get your head around this stuff, one small light source, that's what teaches it most directly and you can if you understand that on a very principled level, you can think through it and it actually would be obvious what happens with a big one and what happens with multiple light sources. Yeah, there's a reason for anyone out there who is like any sort of um movie watcher who applies any sort of critical eye to what you see in movies and TV. There's a reason that you see so much soft lighting. You don't have to commit so hard and have as intentional of a plan with soft light. — Hard light makes you make decisions and do something with intentionality. And I think that's also at the core of why learning with hard light is so useful. — Yeah, it's not where everybody wants to go with their art. Like it's absolutely a little bit severe and things like that. And sure, it works better with some subject matters than others, right? Like most people don't want to draw beautiful women under hard light sources, even though there are artists who do it great. I've seen a lot of like really beautiful Malcolm Lipkkey paintings that are done under a hard light source. Um, but yeah, it just it forces a clear understanding of form and then from that you can branch off to just do soft light for the rest of your career if you want, but you'll do it with a you'll do it from a place where you understand what light is doing instead of just smearing a bunch of stuff around. Mhm. [clears throat] Uh Kyokus in the chat said, "It's hard to find single point hard light source ref packs for figures and whatnot. They're always dual lit or have too much going on. " Uh I fully understand that one. I think a lot of the different uh like the reference pack makers and the photographers out there who are doing a lot of those things, they have a reason to want to make something kind of like just look nice, you know? But uh for Proco for the reference packs that we ourselves shot, we did not do that. Uh we don't have something that is just um there some like idealized like it could go into John Wick or any modern film kind of like looking uh image. We shot images oursel that are that single light source or a very minimal uh additional light source in there. So, you can use those for free over at proco. com/timer. Uh, you can just load a bunch of reference packs uh that are some sample ones from us, from others, uh, entirely for free to do long studies with, short studies with. So, go check it out. — Yeah, it's very funny how artists tend to shoot reference and how photographers shoot that reference. Yeah, — it's wildly different. I shot a reference pack for somebody and I had to undo everything that I would normally do in photography for myself. — Yeah. Cuz I want like nice like background separation with like another like edge light or something. That's just not what the world is. It's also not the way that you reveal the intricacies of form in that kind of way. — Yep. You got it. — Uh I have other questions here. Would you like any of those? Stephen Sapatito, — dude. Hit me. All I'm doing right now on the drawing is um like I said, now that I have a little bit of gray soup over the light, I'm even indicating some forms with just the stump instead of with my pencil. And the reason for that is simple. Forms that are being hit directly by light in the main light shape are always going to be very low contrast, especially on an organic form. We have psychological associations with organic forms. So, we tend to exaggerate what those form changes are. But in truth, even something as even something like um someone's like ripped abs, we're like, "Oh my god, that person is so jacked. Their abs like look at that. There's valleys between them. " It's like it's actually a plane change of like a few degrees that you are psychologically overreacting to. And so when you draw them, you actually more want to honor the fact of the subtlety of those plane changes as opposed to your psychological overreaction. So all that to say, add in the light. I'm using the stump for a bit instead of my pencil. [clears throat] — There there's this quote there's um I forget exactly how he says it. It's a pretty common idea, but I think that there are some artists who when they're instructing others lean into it a little bit more is that um drawing is part what you see, part what you know, and what you wish you would see or

you could see — uh or what you wish you saw. And I think that's an incredibly handy thing to give yourself license to both adhere to the reference that you have, whether that's a live model or photos, uh, and then also to remind yourself that sometimes you depart from it. — Absolutely. — All right. So, — yeah, you said you had some questions. You can hit me with them. — I do. Uh, all right. So, uh, hello in the chat asked, "How do you work with angles? Do you use them in contrast to flowing forms? What I am trying to grasp in my work uh is how many sharp I'm going to stick to the first part. The second part fell apart. How do you work with angles? — Yes, definitely. Um you can see it in my geometric overlay of this drawing. Even if on the actual thing that I'm drawing, if you were to look at it, you might be like, "Oh, yeah. It's all fleshy, rounded forms, that's what goes down. " But the mental conception usually involves a variety of forms. And this does start happening automatically as you get more experience. But um you can also force this conceptually while you're trying to figure it out. But I see even a very organic form like that as made up of a very organic thing like this ellipsoid at the top and then also a very blocky thing like this tricep block over here and then the whole lower arm I'm thinking of in a very blocky way. That's basically an extruded cube. Right? So curves versus corners, blocky verse rounded. And in a design capacity, there's a tendency to hop back and forth between them. So you alternate. You try not to put perfectly round against perfectly round and perfectly blocky against perfectly blocky. You try to alternate, right? If you look at um the regular human arm in a very simplified state, you can think of the deltoid as an ellypoid with a cylinder coming out of it that meets a blockier joint. It's like a blocky elbow and then another cylinder and then a blocky hand. So there's this natural variation in organic forms of the underlying primary shape going curvier to blockier to more cylindrical. You generally just want to avoid repeating the same kind of shape over and over again. And as counterintuitive as that may seem to a beginner, in the long run, this variety makes those organic forms feel more authentic and more natural because that really is what's underlying them. They really are that way. — Is that something that you go over in the course? Any sort of like shape design and composition essentially? — Yeah. uh I cover a lot of it especially compositionally throughout the core assignments but then also one of the last modules in the course is tips for designing and there's a bunch of shorter videos in there where I cover tips like that yeah — okay what how do you go through examples from other people's work in any of those or is it more the conceptually — a little bit I'm trying to remember it's been a while since I watched those videos myself Um, there's some I can think of a few where I know I show some classical art examples, but most of it is me doing diagrams. Me doing diagrams to explain the concept. — Okay. Yeah. Uh, Brendan Brenda in the chat had asked, "I'm I recently started taking Proco's anatomy course. I'm finding it difficult to learn. Do you have any tips for beginners to learn anatomy? " Well, — uh, don't, first off, don't be hard on yourself. Anatomy is very complicated. It's very complicated. Um, so I don't know how you're going through it, but um, I think for a lot of students, they rush the beginning. You know, they have a they see all these videos that they have to get through. They're doing it on their own. So they don't have a teacher who's forcing them like I'm not going to talk about the next thing until next week. — So they rush the beginning and the beginning is draw the bones and know the names. Try to know the names of the muscles. Um I that I do think is the best foundation. Not for figure drawing which

I make a distinction between anatomy and figure drawing. I know Proco does too because there's a separate figure drawing course and a separate anatomy course. — Um, but for anatomy, I do think that's the best foundation, especially drawing the bones. — Um, I think that the biggest night and day difference in people's anatomy knowledge is whether they drew the bones or not. They're the bones are — actually extremely specifically shaped and every little fissure and fashcia on the bones has a name and you don't need to know all the names of those fissures and faucas and condiles, though it helps, right? But knowing just how specific all those forms are really matters. And um there's places on the body where the bony landmarks actually literally show up. And it's great to know the shapes of those bony landmarks where they do, but it's pretty amazing the effect that it has on your anatomy ability just knowing like so all the fissures and fashions on a bone are there because muscles are attaching to them. So if you've drawn them and you know where they are, it makes it much easier to learn the next step which is origins and insertions of muscles which is a hard skill check for a lot of people and that it's very like it's too abstract for a lot of people. knowing the bones, knowing their details, knowing the the ridges and fashcas. And as you learn them, you know, Stan covers it in his course, of course, if you watch the program ones, he's always covering it. You will have in the back of your mind that muscle comes from here. You know, the there's a tuberosity in the middle of the humorris because the deltoid actually attaches to that tuberosity in the middle of the humorris. And a lot of people make their deltoids way too short because they don't have that unconscious knowledge that the deltoid actually goes all the way halfway down the humorous, you know, and it's weird to kind of have the bravery to sketch it that way unless you have these anatomical hard points reminding you like that tuberosity is damn near halfway down the arm, the upper arm, and the tail end of the deltoid better look like it's going there, it's going to be off, you know. — Um, [clears throat] it really helps. All those things really help, I think. Um, if you actually don't rush that part, it does all stack and it makes it much easier to learn everything else later on. — That's how I learned it. Ray Butos was my anatomy teacher. If you can learn anatomy in a class, I do recommend it because — you can't you can't rush, right? your te the teacher is only going to have you do one thing a week and that's a huge benefit for something as complicated as anatomy and um yeah when Ray taught it he was obsessed with the bones we did um in our anatomy class we did echores but we they were all bone we did no muscles it was all bones so that was enough for him he was like I actually only need you to sculpt the bones I don't even muscles and that was actually already a huge boost on all of our um anatomical ability Mhm. Yeah. I really like the idea that you said there about working at the pace that it's intended, even though you have all of the materials right there in front of you. — Yeah. Yeah, — the chances are that whatever course you're following, whether that's something from a book that you're supposed to learn along with, whether that's a video series or inerson learning, there's a plan for you to take the time with the knowledge that you've been given, actually put those things into practice. Uh so you can more deeply ingrain that in how you work. So then it doesn't have to be this conscious recollection for the rest of time for you drawing. Um there's a thing that happens uh with the Proco courses because Proco courses if they're not somebody else's course um if we're putting out a course ourselves, we put the lessons out week to week instead of just having like the entire course just get released all in one go. — Yeah. And that's with intention at the idea of you're supposed to do — you're supposed to spend like a week with this, do your assignment, and then come back and give yourself some time for honest personal feedback. And when a after a course is already out, it's really hard to meter that for people like uh this person who's doing the anatomy lessons, the anatomy course has been finished for quite some time. So take some time with it. really spend a while going through it. Whether that's our courses or Stephven's course, which you can currently get for 15% off on proco. com right now, which might in the future if you really take your time going through those lessons one bit at a time

there's 12 hours and 45 minutes of lessons like spend your time with them. But if you take long enough to go through those lessons, maybe at the end of it, Steven will have added those two lessons on that he was talking about for the idea of multiple light sources. So you'll be rewarded for your patience. — Maybe. Baby. — So, um, do you want to talk about what it is that you're doing right now on the page? — Yeah. So, the I am just flatting in the shadow, but I do have some important things to say about this because this is an issue that comes up for people a lot. Hold on. Let me — You take my camera a little bit. Got a little dark. the lights changing out the window. Um, so one of the things that a geometric conception of the underlying forms gives you is it helps you stay honest, right? So, uh, I generally have the light coming from this direction and this lower arm down here. Uh, I picked the light direction and the direction of the arm very specifically when I drew this last night to show this problem. When you look at it geometrically, it's clear that the lower arm is basically pointing axially the exact same way that the light source is coming. Mhm. [clears throat] — And if you are just playing around without thinking things through formically and thinking about primary shape, the tendency at this point because we get so uncomfortable when we don't understand form and how to model it is to basically just invent a light source out of nowhere and blast something in to this side and start adding a bunch of light information and new shadow directions on that lower arm because we don't want to accept the simple truth that the whole damn thing should be in shadow. — It really should be. And that's a little gling. It definitely asks us to be more sensitive. But on the figure, this happens all the time. uh even in a very top light, usually I would say nine times out of 10 when doing a figure drawing, if the figure is under a top light, some part of one of the legs is going to suffer from this problem 100% directly. [clears throat] Either of the upper legs or especially the shin is just going to wind up pointing right at that light source and it should all be in shadow and you need to handle that uh with care and delicacy. So instead of inventing a bunch of things, I just flat it in. And that will help contribute to the feeling that it will act it actually does sit in the same space as the upper arm. And then I added this to show you one helpful little thing that you can do when the going gets really rough on that, which is you can pop out a muscle that if you follow this arrow, it can just catch the light on a little grace. Right? So you a little ellipse of light that you can pop out and then it's going to have a little soft gradation down into the rest of the shadow which I've indicated with these hatches right there at the bottom. And that's very authentic. That happens a lot too that especially on the shin. You'll get um a little bit of the soius or calf muscle, the gastromus popping out from one side of the shin or the other and it'll be catching just that little ellipse of light. So those are little things that come from memory from being in life drawing for years and years. And I will anytime I'm drawing a figure from uh imagination, I will just engineer that in because I know it's very authentic. And when the because it's such a specific detailed thing, I know it will help trigger the eye of the viewer to think that was drawn from reference. That's real. That's got to be real. Uh uh it's a lot of observation. — Yeah. — Or you could not be crazy and just look at a photo, I guess. Sure. — Who's to say which is better? Really? — there one of those forms here on this hand as well? — Agreed. Yeah, because the logic here is that if it happens up there, it must happen down there. — Yep. — Uh we had a question here from uh Ryden Shogun. They asked, "In your opinion, how many hours a day do we really need to draw to improve ourselves? " And then they asked what I think is a separate question. How many hours do you draw? [clears throat] — So, okay. So, I I'll do both parts, but um for the first part, I do think, and this might be heartbreaking for some people, it's more for some people and less for others. I w I wish I could say different, but if I'm

perfectly honest from my experience being an artist, knowing a lot of artists, growing up with like going to school with them and things like that, and also now being a teacher, my honest feeling is it really does vary. Um, so some people don't believe in talent, for example, right? That's like a thing that gets thrown around in um in the online art conversation a lot. I absolutely believe in talent. I do. Um, — so wait, the things we can take from today is that you believe in talent and not free will. — That's right. Yeah. Okay. I I also believe in basically I believe in a very blackpilled version of talent. Um, so all right. Now I'm on my talent spiel. So let me just let me give it to everybody straight. — Dig in. I do believe any level of quality in art is achievable for anybody, right? Given an even playing field, right? You know, let let's make a special cutout for people who have motor disabilities or something like that. That's a separate question, right? But let's say on an even playing field, which is also a debatable point. We live in a complicated world but um on an even playing field I do believe any level of quality is achievable for any person. I also believe that people have vastly different temperaments and life situations and tolerances for boredom and grittiness and discipline and different levels of interest in things. And yes, kind of like athletes, just a different acumen for certain mechanical skills. So, I believe that there are some people who will get as good, if not better, drawing for an hour a day than some people will drawing 12 hours a day. I do believe that I personally am a slow learner. I would say that I'm one of the people who needed the 12-ish hours a day to get a little better. I'm a very bad case. Uh I have no talent out of the box basically. But as far as I can estimate, — I was very freaking bad at drawing for a very long time. And I mean even when I was practicing my butt off very long time. I so I don't have talent and I'm a very slow learner. I have been doing this I have been for real obsessively drawing since I was five. And if you had asked me when I was five, would I be th this good? I said I better be way better than at 35 for sure. Uh I'm a very slow learner. Um, the trick I think is to just accept that that's the case. Because the truth is that if you don't accept that, I think life is going to abuse you every day, especially if you spend time on Instagram and things like that. You can tell yourself talent doesn't exist as much as you want. But I bet that you're going to waste a lot of time being angry at 16-year-olds who are way better than you at drawing. And if you think that a 16-year-old has spent more time doing gritty practice than you having done it for 20 years, you're fooling yourself. They do just have an intense interest, an acumen for that particular kind of art that they're doing. And if you just accept that, you can drop it and stop being jealous and stop being uh also like self-righteously like thinking of yourself as like I should be better than I am. It's like that's a delusional state to be in. You are as you are exactly as good as you're supposed to be at art. Right? Again, I don't believe in free will. So, there is no other option. There's no counterfactual there. Um, accepting that will let you let it go, will hopefully, and I do believe and hope this is the case for me, allow you to celebrate the intense talent of others without being noxiously self-reflective about it and let you get on with running your own race. And if you find yourself to be someone like me where I need to work twice as hard to get one quarter the improvement of people who are more talented than me, you can just shrug and say those are the cards I was dealt. Am I going to rage against existence and waste my time or am I going to play with the cards that I was dealt [clears throat] and do what I need to do? And for the people who have it easier, do I want other people's lives to be harder? Am I the devil? Who wants other people's lives to be harder? If — my art rivals, I hope that I'm in a state where if someone wheeled in a big red button that said, "Make your rival a thousand times better at art for free and with no effort, I'd slam the button

like that over. I'd try to hit the button as many times as I could before they wheeled the button away and just let them be better. That's just more beautiful art in the world. " And I'll tell you what, we need more of it. We do — The one thing I would remind people uh about this, taking zero stance on the idea of whether talent is real or not, is just the idea that just because you see someone doing something better than you and they improve quicker than you does that the top level of your talent is lower than theirs. Let's say the some someone out there like they're 16, you're 35, you know, whatever this thing uh and they have this like seemingly pternatural ability to just like decode forms and then render those with their hand. Uh that doesn't mean that when you're like 20 years in the future for both of you that they will have uh that you will not have had the capacity to eclipse the skill level that they have 20 years from now. You don't have to improve at the same rate as somebody. So, there's no reason to stop, you know, like you said, always play the hand that you're dealt. Never assume that you've lost. — That's right. — Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, I always think of it through um you can think of it I think of it as like a Mario Kart analogy because that that's where I first uh found this concept. But like if you're in Mario Kart and you're picking your racer, there's picker there's racers with higher acceleration and racers with higher top speed, right? It's like — in the moment you don't know what kind you are when you're comparing yourself to other people. — Another the person who you're driving yourself crazy comparing yourself to, they may be highest level of acceleration but a very low top speed. and you may have [clears throat] very slow acceleration but an extremely high top speed, right? And in Mario Kart, either one of those racers can win the race, right? It's just a different style of play. You need to run the race a different way to come out in first place. Mhm. — But either is viable. You know, — Stephen, this it's terribly embarrassing to say this, but I fully I agree 100% with the thing that you've said here. And the thing that taught me it was also cars. — Yeah, — it was Initial D. — Nice. — The anime where like they're going through the idea of someone else having some like superpowered car or whatever, but Takami driving well with what he's got. That'll get you there. — That'll do it. — Yeah, man. — That will do it. — All right, so let's see. — These are important lessons and we always seem to learn them. our lessons from anime or video games. — Dude, it's the reason that I like science fiction as an idea. The idea of learning uh a core life tenant through something that is separate from the idea of conceptualizing just the idea itself, — I think it's profoundly useful. Just getting Mr. into learning. — Hell yeah. I love science fiction, too. Big ideas. That's what I like. — Mhm. — I [clears throat] hope that's clear with people. I'm a big idea guy. Let's see. I think there might have been a couple different sk uh different questions that came up in here. — Uh Ben A Gio in the chat saying, "Learn learning how to learn effectively is a skill in itself. " Agreed. — Definitely. — Yeah. All right. There's one other big question in here that I think we haven't mentioned, but we've talked a lot around. Sunset Bound asked, "How do you choose good reference to draw from? " — Oh, — what makes good reference or what makes bad reference? — Well, [sighs and gasps] uh I think I've said this for a few things, but it does depend what kind of artist you are. So, for me, that's an easy answer because I know what kind of artist I am. I'm a form-based artist. So, when I look at reference, I'm not really paying that much attention to color unless I know I'm going to do a color piece for some reason. I'm not being pulled away by color. I'm not really um the silhouette or other things that I would translate into contour, things like that. I'm looking for form, clear form, and especially I'm looking for beautiful form. What I think of as like great moments in the history of form, just like a configuration of overlapping, intersecting shapes that I've never seen before, you know, [clears throat] that's what I'm looking for in reference when I use reference. — Um, and for me, it's that simple because I know what kind of artist I am and what I'm trying to draw. If I didn't know, I'd have to shrug, right? I have, you know, there's just every kind of photography out there to use as

reference or even if you're going to make your own, you could sculpt every kind of thing. Like it makes it quite difficult to focus down. Really, so much in art, it comes down to can you focus? Can you focus, you know? [snorts] — Okay. No, I like this idea. So, do — Yeah, — you first. — No, no. Please go ahead. I was just going to say, do you have any ask rather, videos about this kind of subject on your YouTube channel? [snorts] — Um, about [clears throat] reference. — Well, more about the idea of discovering what kind of artist you are. — Oh, yeah. I I talk about that a lot on my YouTube channel. Um the so my YouTube channel a big part of it is um a series of drawing meditations that I did on there back in um 2020 like early 2020. — Okay. Um, and those drawing meditations ask people to do a lot of automatic and unconscious drawing while paying attention to the momentto moment experience of making their drawings. And it pokes them to once they've done that for a while, look at what has emerged in the automatic drawing and analyze it. And the not to load the experience too much for anybody who might wind up doing it, but the hope is that if you allow the unconscious to come forward, it will reveal to you what is the most natural thing that it returns to over and over again. And I'm of the belief that natural unconscious thing is probably the core of your practice to some degree. Some people might debate me on that. Some people are much more inclined to um they don't care what their unconscious wants to do. They want to work for Riot or whatever and they're willing to just subjugate every impulse to does it match Riot, right? Different strokes for different folks, right? But for me, that matters to me. And I think that what comes out naturally is important. And that, you know, as far as I'm concerned, it's like you can deny it for as long as you want, but eventually you're going to come back to it. You're going to have to, right? Your — your unconscious is going to drag you back there. So, um, that that's sort of a very short-handed way of how I think people can figure out what kind of artist they are, right? like do a lot of very unstructured very free form not just drawing it's like just making art it can be you can be sculpting you can be painting whatever and see what comes out and take what comes out seriously instead of what people usually do which is they go that's nothing because I wasn't thinking right it's that's coming out for a reason like drawing is too weird and too difficult and too dextrous to just do nothing in the long run. I really think I think that if you open up that space very quickly, everything that comes out starts being intentional. I really do believe that and that's what I ask people to look at. — That's fair. Yeah, it's just naturally going to kind of route in that direction. — That's how I found out I was a formbased artist. — That's what did it for me. — Okay. No, this makes sense. Yeah. because you find yourself like spending time in something or enjoying the thing more. — Yeah. And the other thing is that when I worked unconsciously, I noticed a few things. One, even though there was no So you might think, all right, if I'm doing structural free form drawing, right? There's no rules. I can do anything. You probably come in with an assumption and those assumptions are going to be different for different people, right? I definitely came in with the assumption that like, well, they'll just be doing line drawings because that's easier, right? Because that's what people think is fun, right? People hate shading, don't know how to do it. Oh, you know, it's so hard to render, right? That was an assumption. When I did the unconscious drawing practice for a very long time, not once I started doing it with regularity, what I found is I wound up rendering every single time. I started doing this thing that people thought is difficult and hard and this is not something you would ever do unless you were finishing something and you were being very gritty, right? Every time I sat down, if I had no rules on me, I started flowing forms and light and doing shading and rendering and rubbing things. And I also found that I went abstract that I wasn't necessarily

connected intimately like in on an intuitive level with any particular content. Right? So through a lot of analysis and self-exloration that led me to the conclusion that wait a second is it possible that all I really care about is form — and I looked into that and it was true and it's borne out for years for many years now um and that's how I discovered it and I had to unwrap a lot of bad assumptions to get down to that conclusion that was not something that I always understood about myself. So, um yeah, I think that it's very difficult for me to get people to believe how important that exercise is because people already assume so much as soon as they hear it that they make it boring immediately. They think structureless art, I know what I would do. You know, squiggly lines, whatever. So, you have no idea what you would do if you actually moved past your assumptions. You have no if there was really no structure, no rules, you really don't know until you've tried what's naturally going to come out. And the people who do it, they blow their own minds. I mean, 100% of the time, they blow their own minds. For real. — I was getting pulled into the chat for a second there. But just based on the idea of how many hits you've had when you've been answering questions so far, I'm assuming that you said a good thing. But I'll be transparent. I did not listen. — Don't worry. I No, don't worry. I can assure you that what I said was excellent. — It was good. — Yeah. I give myself a 10 out of 10. I mean, really, how do I come up with this stuff? — Uh, at just before I had interrupted you to ask you that question, it seemed like you were going to say something about what you were doing on the page. Do you remember? — So, this big open dark area that I talked about, I explained why I made the whole thing dark, right? honoring that it's pointing right at the axis of the light. So really should be in shadow because everything is going to be getting grazed. So if you are trying to push a render more, how do you handle something that is completely in shadow like that? And the answer is you handle it with reflected light and reflected light is you know it can be reflected from all sorts of things. So it can be quite complicated but as a pocket rule reflected light we can always we were just talking about how bad assumptions are but a little drawing assumption we can always assume that there's a big there's a ground plane. So we imagine a ground plane down there that the light is bouncing off of. So photons are coming from this direction. They hit here and then they scatter back up. Right? This leads us to two important principles that this is how I do it. You don't have to do it, but the physics bear this out. Two important principles for how to render forms that are in big shadows. One, the light basically will come from the opposite direction of the main light source. So, it's coming down this way. It's going to come from beneath instead of from above. Right? And two, this requires a little knowledge of what I talk about early in the course and the types of light videos, but to shorthand it, small light sources make hard shadows. — Yes. — Large light sources make soft shadows. Look at the ground that the light is bouncing off of. Is that a small light source or a large light source? The ground is a large light source. And so all effects of form that are revealed by reflected light are going to look like they're happening under a diffuse light source even if the main light source is a hard sharp light source. And that adds to the beauty of the interplay of light and shadow. It's a very classic contrast that the light is sharp and crisp and then the effects that are going on in the shadow are happening from basically the opposite type of light source. It's all diffuse and soft. Can you explain the idea of why a large light source makes the soft shadow? — Sure. — Versus the small like a small light source because I think that was a thing that unlocks the reasoning for people when they really understand that core idea. — Yeah. So, uh we can show it with two spheres. So the left sphere, we'll put it under just a light bulb. It could be the sun, but uh let's say it's a light bulb. — Is that the actual physical size of the light bulb? There what we're going with? — Yes. Sure. Yeah. Okay. — Well, let's we can call it a point light source, right? So we can even forget

that the bulb has any body, right? It can just be an infinitely small point to make this um to make this point. The more important about a light source is its size, not its intensity. That's something that beginners get confused about. You can have a very small light source that is incredibly bright or incredibly dim. And you can have a very large light source that is either incredibly bright or incredibly dim. So intensity of the light is actually separate from the nature of the light. It's more important how big is it. And the reason for that is because that decides how photons are going to hit the form. So photons are what reveal form, right? They're what create the impression of light. It's a little bit of science. I'm looking for my ruler and I don't have one on my desk. That's all right. We'll freehand it. Um photons can only travel in straight lines. We like to forget that when we draw. We all know that from grade school science, but we really need to remember it when we draw. So that means that from this small light source, photons have to radiate out in straight lines. And you'll see, look at all that obscured area over there. — Look at that. Oo, — and you will see that it means that the photons are going to start striking the light source and being obscri form and being obscured by the form at very specific points and that is what creates hard shadows. So I freehanded this sphere so it's not perfectly even, right? But you can imagine — you can get a you could get a hit here. That's the tangent point of where photons are that's the last spot where photons are going to strike the form directly. And it's almost perfect. But so we could say that it would be that on the other side. And so here we get a classic local light. That is to say it's like a light source that's close to the form that we're looking at. we're getting a local light effect where the shadow has choked up on the sphere a little bit. So, this is going to be the shadow side of the sphere. And the main thing that we want to point out here is that it isn't ambiguous. There's very little ambiguity here because the light source is very small, just a point. It's a the terminator, which is the modeling factor that determines light is on one side, shadows on the other. In this situation, it's a razor sharp line, right? It's like I said, it's razor sharp. You're either on one side of it or the other and that's it. There's very little ambiguity. That is what creates hard, crisp shadows. My dogs are barking. Apologies if you're going to hear them. — It's so quiet. — Yeah, that's fine. And don't worry, I'll scold them as soon as the stream ends. I won't do this. — There's no free will. So I don't blame you for what you've done here. — But I have to punish you so you don't do it again. — Have to punish you. — So it's very precise where the terminator is in a small light source. And that also means by converse now I'm filling in the area outside of the sphere. Right? Remember shadows are actually volutric. They take up a three-dimensional space. Right? the photons can't reach anywhere within that volume. Right? That also means that the cast shadow now this isn't threedimen I didn't sketch this threedimensionally so it's just a straight line right but this heavy straight line here indicates the cast shadow of the sphere onto the tabletop. It is also extremely sharp. It starts and ends right there at those X's. There's no ambiguity. Right? ignoring the penumbra which is — we can add that on later but for all — for all intents and purposes there's no ambiguity we know exactly where the cast shadow begins and ends so this is what creates — large — so for a large source I just want to say one more thing about this though — this is why the sun also makes hard shadows on your face beginners get confused about this as well the sun is a huge light source isn't it — it is if you're next to it but to us here on Earth, it's actually about the viewing angle. If we get into the science, it's actually about the angle of view on a light source. And to us in the sky, the sun is tiny. It's like the size of the head of your thumb. So, it actually counts as a small light source even though it is a million times bigger than the Earth, right? — Yeah. Um and that produces other interesting effects like the sun's

rays are parallel which is produce a lot of interesting things and I cover that in detail in form from imagination but same basic effect as a point light source. Now, a large light source, which um we can imagine would be something like a skylight in your house, right? Or if you know what a photographer's softbox is. — Mhm. — You can think of a soft box, which is just a a big diffusing screen put over multiple lights. But just think of a skylight, right, without the sun going into it. So, imagine a skylight in your bathroom or something. You can't see the sun. It's just the nice soft light from the whole sky coming through this skylight, right? So, we have a general conception that well, photons only travel in straight lines, but we know that light is soft. Aren't the photons kind of going in every which way coming from here or there? Here's the best way to think about it mathematically. Every little point, now I can't draw an infinity of points, right? But you can imagine every point on the skylight is a small point light source. This is just a way to imagine, right? And each one of these little points is doing the same thing that the single light did over here. It's emitting all these rays. So each one emits They overlap. — Is there anything more relaxing than just drawing straight lines? I love it. — Nope. — It's the best. — It is the best. [snorts] — Yeah. So, like the idea here is that essentially it wraps around a thing. — Yeah. Like for all intents and purposes, it gets if the source the closer the source is to being larger than the form that it is revealing — uh through the light being cast on it, it is actually wrapping around that thing. — Yep. — By being large in that way. — That's right. And you can imagine if the skylight continued all the way out here — Uhhuh. — it's like that farthest point of the skylight can get damn all the damn near all the way under the sphere. So when you look at this, you have to ask yourself, where do I put the terminator? And the question is, the truth is that if you think of each point on the skylight as its own light source, — there's thousands of terminators on this sphere. They're all overlapping each other. And so it's totally ambiguated. There is no one place you could pick to say where it goes from light to shadow. And in aggregate that produces the beautiful soft diffuse effect of there being no shadows, no real clear shadows on the form. And then for the most part all we get is the ambient occlusion at the bottom. And that's a little different of a discussion. But that is what would anchor the sphere down there because that's the only part only way down here can really no part of the light source reach. And so that's where you're the only place where you're going to get your real dark darks. — So yeah, so the — if we go back to our arm here, — the top lit side of the arm is being affected by this kind of light situation. And you can see that it's quite clear where the terminators are, right? All my little jagged stabby shapes — are liber are literalizing the position of the terminator. So now my rendering is very exaggerated for educational effect, right? But you can see that I can pick out everywhere where my terminators are happening and they can be razor sharp, right? They you can really just say to the right of this line is shadow and to the left of this s this line is light and they can be similar but that's still that's half tone and that's form shadow/core shadow. — Mh. Whereas the bottom of this arm, which I haven't really got into doing all the rendering yet, but it is more under this effect with, let me zoom out a little more. Soft light. As we said, the ground is a large reflector is bouncing up and is affecting the forms the way that this sphere is being affected by a large light source. Mhm. — Guys, what I just said

— this is half the se secrets to beautiful form modeling. I mean, if you obsess about this for five years, you'll do great form. I mean it. I really mean it. — It could be honestly even more than half, honestly. Like, because it tumbles into all of the other ideas. It informs everything else that it's like it's not even separate from the other ideas at a certain point. It's so infinitely useful. Um, — we've been going for two hours and five minutes here. — I think we could possibly try to convince people that the thing that they need to make their life better is one to draw more and then two to do that with you and your brand new course over on proco. com/stephvenapata. — Thank you. Thank you, Stephen. — Yes, it's 15% off right now. Stephen has — Thanks for mentioning that because I keep forgetting to mention the sale. — that Yeah, that cost less right now. — Yeah. Yeah, that's there for, you know, not a short amount of time, but not a long amount of time either. Go get it, guys. — Uh, it's 12 hours and 45 minutes that you sunk. I think it was actual years of your life into making, right? — Oh, man. I've the core production for the course took um damn near a year. Damn near year of full work on it. And um you know on my website I have a version where I do um like a guaranteed feedback for people who want that as well. — Um — uh that ver that you can find on just form from imagination. com. Uh you can also find it by going to my website stephenzapata. com. — But um I've been doing that doing feedback on people's assignments continuously since launch. So, it's been four years of continuing to work on the course and helping people with it. Yeah. — Heck yeah. — Because it came out in 2022. Yeah. So, it's coming up on four years. — Nice. Yeah. So, there's the website there form4agmagination. com if you guys want to get that with the guaranteed feedback. Please do check that out over on Steven's website as well, stephvenata. com. There's no reason for you to have to buy something on Proco, but if you're already a person who's on Proco, I understand why you would want to pick it up there. So all your stuff is in one classroom for you. But oh yeah, guaranteed feedback is good. — Yeah. Well, one of the things I love about Proco is that now for the core version, that is to say, it's the full course, but there it doesn't have the guaranteed feedback. Now has you have access to the Proco community so that you get the peer review, people can share, people can make progress together, and you can bounce off of other people's assignments, which is that was not something that technologically I could offer for my course on my end. So, I'm very happy that um that people have access to the Proco community for that now. — Yeah. Heck yeah. You're selling the Proco community and I'm over here selling your website. — No, seeing — Yeah. energy. Yeah. — Yeah. So, I appreciate you taking the time. — If people Yeah. No, it's been my pleasure. If people want to follow you more and get some more free lessons, uh, they can follow you over on your YouTube channel here, youtube. comtephenzapata arts, or you can just type his name into YouTube, so you don't have to type any of the other things. It's fine. Uh, you can also follow Stephen, Steven_art on Instagram. You should. The man doesn't stop posting good drawings. Uh, and I think you're pretty free with offering wisdom when people ask questions in the comments. So, — Oh my god. And if you do want to ask a lot of questions, I stream a lot on my YouTube channel. Find me on a stream. I mean, my streams are very long. I try to answer as many questions as possible. Um, and we're a crazy bunch over there. So, if you're into the heady stuff and art, uh, we kind of can't shut up about it. So, it's always a good time over there. — Yeah. Go hang out. The, uh, have someone to draw with digitally. Draw alongside. I think that's infinitely useful. So, I recommend it. Yeah. Oh, yeah. If anyone's from the um I've had a lot of people who have ADHD tell me that they use me for someone correct me if I'm wrong, but body mirroring or body doubling. It's like Yeah. It's like a technique that people with ADHD use sort of help them settle into something that they need to get done and so they put me on and that helps them focus where otherwise it may be extremely difficult. And uh as far as I can help with something like that, I'm hugely gratified. You know, I just want more people to be able to draw out there in the world and to relax and enjoy it while they do it. — Yeah. Well said. So, yeah, go follow over there, guys. Have a good rest of your day. If you're in the area where Stephen is, where all this snow is happening, be safe. Go ahead and buy all of your cinnamon teas so you can drink warm, toasty beverages during all of it. Be safe. Uh, and have a good rest of your day. Thank you.