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You are dedicated to your craft. You have spent countless hours honing your skills. You have a boundless curiosity for the underlying theories and structure of communicating ideas. You are the artist who finds the connections between your medium and other communications media. You are the artist who relishes in a setback; after all, it's a new opportunity to learn and grow. Inspiration is more than a haphazard mode of thought requiring constant nurturing: it is your natural state of mind.

Lean Into Art is where you go when you're ready to push yourself as an artist in new ways. As a place to learn communication arts online it combines an art-journaling approach, the best of live and time-shifted classes, and a recognition system that encourages students to finish projects, give feedback, even participate in teaching.

It's a big art challenge - that's why we put the enticing warning in the name. You have to lean into it.

Tuesday
Dec062011

FTAM! Creating Sound in Adobe Illustrator Workshop

Registration is now open for a multi-session workshop series where you'll learn how to use Adobe Illustrator to create sound elements for your comic!

In this series, amounting to 6 hours of instructional material led by Jerzy Drozd, you'll learn how to select fonts, design word balloons from scratch, create alternate voices for your characters, design unique sound effects, and integrate them into your comics art.

The live sessions will be held on January 7, 11, and 14, but you can also participate in a time-shifted manner and learn at your convenience.

Check out the class page for more details and a video preview of the workshop.

Friday
Dec022011

LIA Cast 13 - Critical of the Force

 

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In this audio-only episode of the LIA Cast, Rob and Jerzy discuss the idea of critical thinking, where it’s incredibly useful and when it can be a barrier to creative pursuits and learning.

Along the way we visit StarWars, Burger King, Western Philosophy, the Industrial Revolution and being self taught learners. We do battle with tricks and logical traps including the false dichotomy of artistic mastery creative chaos vs. being a very intentional and critical thinking focused machine.

Topics: Critical Thinking, Being Self Taught

Links Mentioned

Social Networking

Upcoming Workshops for December 2011

Note: Yoda image from starwars.wikia.com. Jean Claude Van Damme image from http://www.flickr.com/photos/37195519@N02/ and copyright their respective owners.

 

LIA Cast 13 - Critical of the Force

Friday
Nov252011

LIA Cast 12 - Coloring with Light

 

Jerzy Drozd's mercenariesThis week Rob and Jerzy discuss some of the techniques they like to use to color in Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator. While demonstrating the techniques they discuss the return on diving into the nitty gritty of what an illustration tool has to offer, and how just putting in the time doesn't guarantee that you'll get any better at the work. You have to lean into it, but in the spirit of play!

Links mentioned in this episode:

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Tuesday
Nov152011

LIA Cast 11 - Dare to Compare

 

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It's an audio-only episode of the LIA Cast, but Rob and Jerzy make up for it with a thorough discussion on our topic for the week.

This episode starts out with a review of one of the labs from Lean Into Art's 30 Classes in 30 Days, where Jerzy led an improvisational story building activity using emotional anchors from our pasts as a point of inspiration.

The conversation then turns to the advantages and dangers of comparing one's career, art style, and accomplishments to those of others. In an age of rampant sharing and "self-cheerleading", one might feel a little beleagured by the exuberant exclamations made by others over their accomplishments. How does one avoid the inevitable feeling of coming up short? Jerzy and Rob take a stroll around the idea and try to pick at the psychology behind this trap, and offer some of their own experiences in dealing with it.

Links mentioned this episode:

 

LIA Cast 11 - Dare to Compare

Tuesday
Nov082011

LIA Cast 10 - Stylin'

 

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This time we take a walk around the notion of evolving styles, using Jerzy's recent experiences (and subsequent existential crisis) with re-designing his characters from The Front: Rebirth in a new art style.

If one's art style is destined to evolve, how does one approach it's evolution in the context of creative works? Should the pacing of the evolution be restricted on a project-by-project basis? How does a drastic shift in art style affect reader expectations? Does publishing on the web change the way we approach our artistic development?

Links mentioned in this episode:

And there's still time to sign up for 30 Classes in 30 Days!

 

 

LIA Cast 10 - Stylin'