I was in the same place you are not too long ago. I enjoyed drawing a lot, but what I really wanted was to feel the satisfaction of being a good artist. I wanted to feel proud to have my friends and family marvel at my drawings.
I dreamed of one day being good enough that people would pay me to do what I love. I wanted to be able to talk with and meet other successful artists around the world. And lastly, the rebel in me wanted to show everyone that ever said anything negative about my art that you can make a wildly successful career as an artist.
Unfortunately, even with all those aspirations, I grew up in a tiny Canadian farming village of just 643 people where the school was naturally very small and there wasn’t even a formal art class! But, I didn’t let that stop me from drawing because I enjoyed it so much. When I was younger I was not the best artist in my class – not even close! I was jealous of the "natural talent" that some other kids seemed to have.
So not only was I born without with this "God-given artistic ability" (which is a myth and I will show you why later), but my school didn’t even offer an art class – talk about discouraging!
Despite the fact that the art world seemed to be against me at every turn, I eventually met a teacher from another town who taught at a different school and was offering evening art classes.
At one point in the class she asked us to draw a face. She wasn’t very impressed with my drawing, but like any good teacher, she pointed me in the right direction and sent me home that night with a book about human proportions.
Almost overnight my drawings went from amateur to pretty amazing after I applied the lessons in the book. I’m not trying to exaggerate here – the difference of the before and after drawings were really that amazing.
That was the day I realized that being a "naturally gifted artist" was nothing more than a myth! It was then that I realized that literally anyone can learn how to draw if they’re given a formula and shown how to apply it properly.
That same art teacher, Mrs. G as we came to call her, was even kind enough to arrange for a trip for her night time art students to travel Europe to examine a lot of the historical art and architecture there.
In the 3 weeks touring Europe I saw many amazing and inspiring things, but the thing that absolutely floored me was seeing the portrait and caricature artists in both Florence, Italy and Paris, France. Being from a small village, I had never seen anything like these street artists. They would have a huge crowd of people watching them draw the faces of their customers. It was totally amazing, and I was hooked! I began to dream about how cool it would be draw portraits on the street.
Imagine how proud they must have felt having all those people stand around, watching them do what they love, and getting paid to do it at the same time!
Seeing them work so effortlessly doubled my passion for drawing faces and inspired me to study even harder. I bought, read and studied even more books on figure drawing and by the time I reached University to do a Fine Arts degree, the poor young artist that I used to be was literally drawing circles around the other people in my classes.
While I was still in University studying Fine Arts I was even able to start working on special effects for Hollywood movies! I was fortunate enough to be part of the teams that put together some of the most exciting moments in movies like X-Men 2, Scooby Doo 2, and Superman Returns.
Finally, I had proven once and for all that you can make a very successful career by following your passion, staying focused, and becoming a successful artist, even when the odds are stacked so high against you from the beginning.
So I started a website called DrawingCoach.com. It was a lot more successful than I could have ever dreamed, and it generated so much email that I simply wasn’t able to answer them all. There are only so many hours in the day an unfortunately after spending all day at the computer for work, it’s a bit hard to sit and answer emails about drawing techniques sometimes. I love teaching people on the Internet, but it is a whole other level of commitment to be personally available like that.
While I wasn’t able to answer all that email, I did certainly read it, and do you know what request came up more often than all the others combined? People wanted to know the same step-by-step system that lets anyone, regardless of natural talent, become a great caricature artist.
While I love giving back and helping new artists get started, I also knew that to address this topic in a way that anyone regardless of age or skill level can learn to draw human faces and caricatures, would involve a lot of work, time and money to put it all together.
There are so many things in life that I love to do and the thought of spending another few hundred hours putting together a course was a tough decision for me to make. Life is short, and I’ve just moved to California where the beach is about 10 minutes bike ride away! If you had to choose between beach and computer, which would you choose?
I knew that by creating a step-by-step study course that’s NEVER been done before that I could be opening a huge can of worms on myself – creating a lot of interest and even more demands on my time. But, in the end I realized… Read more…