Post: #41

Hi all. After a brief period of lack of motivation and procrastination I am back and ready to go 100% to making this blog a success. My latest blog post is another character from Ice Age. Thank's again to Kimberly for suggesting I do a series of characters.

How to Draw Sid From Ice Age

As always your honest feedback whether positive or negative is very helpful.

Post: #42

bamboo by Matt Leyva, on Flickr

Okay so I finally did what I have should have done a few months ago. I bought a Bamboo tablet. I think this will help me make even better content and make the whole site look for professional.

The Bamboo tablet takes some getting used to. I might not have a tutorial up for a few days while I figure out how to draw well with it and also learn to use the software. Right now I am not sure if I should use Sketchbook Pro or Adobe Illustrator for my main software. I will try out both and decide what I like best.

As always I will be keeping all of you up to date on my progress.

Post: #43

How to Draw Diego From Ice Age


So I finally finished my first tutorial using my Bamboo tabelet. I"m pretty happy with how this turned out. I think this is one of my best final drawings yet for my site.

Getting used to drawing on the tablet didn't take long at all. I was using a program called Sketchbook Pro for Windows. I'm using a free trial for now but will probably buy the full version. I was considering getting Photohop or Illustrator but I'm not sure if that's necessary. Sketchbook Pro seems to do everything I need.

Learning to color took some work but I think it turned out pretty good for my first attempt. There is definitely room for improvement though.

In my final article I decided not to make all the images link to larger versions of themselves like I have in other articles.

Now that I have the ability to add color to my drawings I have decided to make each line drawn in each step red. The previously drawn lines are turned blue. It's kind of hard to explain but just check out the article and you will see what I mean.

My only problem with this is that I did not break it up into more steps. I think I should have gone through drawing his face more slowly than I did. Drawing the face is just one step in the article but I probably should have made it two or three.

Nevermind that last part! I went back and was able to make all the changes to make the steps more clear. I just realized I now have the ability to make changes here and there even after I have finished the tutorial. When i did everything in pencil I would have to redraw the entire article again to make a correction. Now it's so simple just to go back and quickly change what I don't like. This is awesome!

I have to say I love my Bamboo tablet. It's a Bamboo Capture with multi-touch controls. These are very handy when you want to zoom in or out and pan around the picture. I wish I had bought one of these years ago.

Since I am still learning to use my tablet and painting software I am open to any suggestions or comments. If you have any feedback or can point me in the direction of resources that will help me to improve it would be much appreciated.

Post: #44

Ouch. Nearly a month since my last update. Sorry guys. I have been working on my site though.

The good news is that I have come up with a new domain name for my site. it's YourDrawingLessons.com. Thank you Kimberly for suggesting DrawingLessonsForYour.com. I just modified the suggestion a little to come up with the current domain.

Another big change is that I have decided to use the SiteBuildIt program to continue building my business. SiteBuildIt provides webhosting, training, and site creation for a single fee.

The training that I have come across so far is fantastic and has surely saved me many hours of searching for the same content from the million other blogging sites. There is an immense amount of training to watch and read. I'm glad I have a 1 year subscription because it will probably take me that long to actually read and implement all of it.

For the past few weeks I have been going through the beginning stages of the program. It was mostly about choosing a niche and also decided what type of content you will provide to your audience. It was somewhat pointless for me since I already knew that I want to have a site dedicated to drawing or nothing at all. I'm sure these beginning lessons would be valuable to people who are not sure what niche to select.

I just finished moving all of my articles to my SBI site. I'll be transferring my old domain there eventually too. Here is a preview of what I want my final site to look like. It's far from finished so far and I plan on adding a blog to it eventually. I'm going to get back into content creation later this week so look forward to new articles.

Post: #45

(09-05-2012 12:53 PM)Matt Wrote:  The good news is that I have come up with a new domain name for my site. it's YourDrawingLessons.com.

[...]

Another big change is that I have decided to use the SiteBuildIt program to continue building my business.

[...]
Here is a preview of what I want my final site to look like.

That's a really good name for the site!

Excuse me if my question will sound a bit too indiscreet but are you currently investing money in the site without it providing any profits? Isn't this a huge hole in your pocket? The only reason for which I'm asking this is because I've always thought that building a site, getting traffic etc. and eventually make a living out of it are really difficult things to achieve.

I love the banner With the colorful stars, it goes really well with the white - they balance each other.

"You were born an original, don't die a copy." ~ John Mason | You can check my blog here

Post: #46

Hi, Lina. I completely understand your question and it's something I struggled with myself. I see it more as an investment in my goal which I will earn back. I think the program is relatively cheap compared to other program blogging and online business courses. It's $300 dollars total. I only consider it to be $200 though since even if I stuck with my current plan I would still need to pay $100 for hosting. I wanted the program so I could follow a clear plan past just content creation and low level traffic building. And yes building a business is online is very difficult. I chose to get the program thought because I believe it will help me reach my goal faster and will more than pay for the initial investment.

Post: #47

(09-06-2012 10:53 AM)Matt Wrote:  I think the program is relatively cheap compared to other program blogging and online business courses. It's $300 dollars total. I only consider it to be $200 though since even if I stuck with my current plan I would still need to pay $100 for hosting. [...] I chose to get the program thought because I believe it will help me reach my goal faster and will more than pay for the initial investment.

I see. Thanks for answering I wish you best of luck with the whole project! May all the investments return to you tenfold, not only in terms of money but also in terms of contentment and the joy provided by following your passion

"You were born an original, don't die a copy." ~ John Mason | You can check my blog here