Uncomfortable

Hi there - I'm Irshad, or perhaps you know me as Uncomfortable. In August of 2014, I started the subreddit /r/ArtFundamentals, so I could share the bits and pieces of knowledge I'd learned by quitting my job as a game programmer and moving across North America to study drawing and entertainment design at Concept Design Academy in Pasadena, California. I had the opportunity to study under amazing instructors like Peter Han, Kevin Chen, James Paick, and John Park, and what I learned there fundamentally changed how I looked at drawing. It took me, a person with aphantasia who'd assumed he'd have no chance of making in an art-focused field, and helped me accept the fact that drawing, design, and even creativity are all skills that can be developed. None of this is easy, of course - but the fact that it's possible makes a real difference. In 2015, I took the sloppy hand-written rememberings of what I'd learned and formalized them into written lessons, and Drawabox.com was born. Today, we're a far cry from our humble one-man beginnings, with a team composed of trained teaching assistants critiquing students' homework under my supervision, as well as illustrators and video editors continually striving to improve the lesson content in both text and video form to help convey the material as effectively as possible - all completely for free. On top of the free lessons, we also strive to provide reliable, trustworthy feedback for students' work at as low a price as possible - so low that we actually charge students less than what we pay our teaching assistants for their corresponding work. We're able to do this while remaining viable as a business because of our credit-based pricing structure. Those who subscribe here through Patreon at any of the student tiers receive "credits" when they are charged, and those credits expire two months after their receipt. Those who can afford to allow some (and even all) of their credits to expire, allowing their contribution to go towards subsidizing the overall price for others, whereas those who have tighter budgets can maintain control by subscribing, cancelling, and re-subscribing as needed. This approach has allowed us to compensate our teaching assistants fairly for their work, and have also allowed me to focus on Drawabox full time since August 2020. I still handle the majority of the homework submissions myself, but we are working to gradually offload that work onto teaching assistants, allowing me to focus more on producing new content and updating older material. Along with the critiques we offer, and our smaller supporter-tier patrons, Drawabox is funded by: Display advertisements on the website, which are disabled for those at any of the Student tiers (being logged into the website is required)Importing and selling fineliner pens - this is primarily to provide the community with access to good quality fineliners at a far cheaper price (though we're only able to offer them with free shipping in the continental United States, so they're not necessarily as good of a deal internationally)Affiliate link recommendations through Amazon, as well as courses on Proko.com, Skillshare and Udemy, where we earn a small commission for any sales that use our linksCourse sales of additional non-fundamental content through proko.com (currently we have one course, "The Science of Deciding What You Should Draw") If you're unable to support us through Patreon, consider disabling adblock on our website, shopping through our affiliate links, or purchasing our pens.