Project Educate Interview: Cedarseed

Today on this fine New Years Eve, we'll be interviewing Majnouna for Project Educate! She's a former volunteer for deviantART and has her own website: Cedarseed.com

She's responsible for these INCREDIBLY detailed tutorials:



Tell us a little bit about yourself!

Not much to say, I'm a Lebanese creative, trained as a graphic designer and self-taught as an illustrator. My day job consists in making digital games, and I was apprenticed to a calligraphy master so I do a lot of that as well. My personal love is comics, and my published works so far are Malaak: Angel of Peace and Driving in Lebanon.

How did you get into your chosen media?

Chance or fate, depending how you look at it! I never even heard of graphic design until a career orientation day at school, where I instantly knew that's what I needed to do (originally I was looking into veterinary studies); the calligrapher was one of our lecturers in uni and a few years later he called to ask if I'd like to be his assistant; the game company, made up of two people at the time, stumbled upon my work online and brought me on board. As for comics, however, I have always loved to draw and tell stories, so it's a very old passion that I got seriously back into a few years ago.

What was made you start writing tutorials?

Before I joined dA I was part of a mailing art group and one of the projects was to make a collaborative booklet with craft tips. My strength was drawing so I made a summarized anatomy guide. Once on dA, I rifled through my existing work for things to post as deviations. The tutorial looked like it could be useful, so I posted it, and lo! it got DD'ed. That was my breakthrough on the site, and as there was a demand for drawing guides, it got me on a roll. It took a while for my approach to reach full maturity though, so I have redone early ones and others are being revised now (slowly due to life demands.)

What do your tutorials provide information wise to a reader?

What makes my tutorials unique (or at least unusual) is that I'm not interested in telling anyone how to do something. In my experience as an artist, anyone who knows their tools, and know what they need to create, will find their own way of creating it (anyone who doesn't know their tools should get to know them before attempting anything else). The difficulty, I find, usually lies in knowing precisely what we're supposed to draw. If we can visualize it, half the work is done, otherwise we just stare at a blank page without knowing where to begin. And in order to visualize it, we need some info. What my tutorials do is provide this info: I gather a mass of relevant facts about a particular subject that is not usually treated in depth for illustrators, and present it in a visual way where the text explains the visual. When you set things up so that the reader understands, as opposed to them having to follow steps*, you empower them and then even if they're drawing from life, they have a new comprehension of what they're seeing that allows them to progress. Drawing from life is highly recommended, but it's even more useful if you have someone to point out important details of your subject for you – this is what my tutorials do. Which by the way means they transcend style, and are as useful to realism as they are to manga.

* Step-by-step instructions are essential when you're teaching a technique. People often get confused between technical skills and conceptual skills. Drawing, unlike draftsmanship, is NOT a technical skill, this is why step-by-step "drawing tutorials" are so frustrating for so many people.


What motivated you set up your tutorials in your particular format?

I have to credit Jack Hamm, whose books prefigured it: when I discovered them, at age 15, that format (abundant visuals with minimal text pointing out things about those visuals) changed everything for me. I made real and instant progress owing simply to the fact that his presentation of the info allowed me to understand how things fit together, and once you understand something, you don't forget it. When I started making tutorials 10 years later, I couldn't conceive of another way of presenting the material. It's also very space-efficient, which is always a consideration for me. Even if it's just to be seen on a screen, it should take as little space as it can. Most of my work ends up in print, though, and there you really want to minimize the number of pages so that it's less costly for the buyer.

Do your tutorials reflect how you create artwork as an artist?

Interesting question. Other than the fact there's always preliminary research, I'd have to say no. The tutorials serve more an aspect of my intellect that likes cataloguing things than they do my art process. Of course, I use them as references when I need to, but when I'm creating, especially nowadays, I try to do so with feeling and not think so much about it.

How do you feel about "copying a tutorial”?

Can anyone tell me what is the point of redoing a tutorial that already exists out there, unless you can make a much better job of it? It's childish attention-seeking nonsense, and someone who feels the need to "copy a tutorial" is almost certainly someone who should be working on their own skills and not making tutorials at all. The number of redundant or entirely useless tuts on dA is mindboggling. People shouldn't even think of making a tutorial if they don't have something of their own to contribute to the pool of knowledge. Someone who needs to copy another tutorial clearly does not have anything of their own to contribute. We can refer to each other, of course. I've had requests from people who were making tutorials quite distinct from mine and were asking if they could refer to specific points in my own. Of course! In this case they were doing their own thing and my work was part of their bibliography. That's the way it works. But I can think of many, many pieces that are an absolute waste of space and clearly a way of jumping on something I never knew was a bandwagon. Personally, I don't look into making a tutorial if there are others out there I know I can't top. I pick subjects for which I know I can make the ultimate guide – and not necessarily because I'm more skilled, purely because I'm willing to put more hours of research and work into it than anyone sane should.

Have you used tutorials yourself?

I have. Not as assiduously as some users, because I invest in books (I'm more interested in in-depth info), but tutorials have come in handy on a number of occasions to figure out how to achieve a specific effect, for instance. I have a few tutorials in my faves that I feel I can really learn from, but sadly I haven't properly tried to use them yet, as it's hard to stop your work flow to try a different method.

What do you hope people take from your tutorials?

I hope people find in my guides all the theory they need about a given object, so they only need them and personal observation to draw what they need. Even more importantly, I hope they influences their "artist sight" so that when they look at things in real life, they start automatically noticing all the little details that bring a drawing to life, the way I'm pointing them out in the tutorials. I heard more than once that drawing is 90% seeing, and I couldn't agree more: anybody can learn to control their hand, the real difference lies in how good they are at seeing and translating that on paper.
Finally, I hope they're lead to share my wonderment at how beautiful and diverse humans and animals are, because that's part of the reason why I make such exhaustive guides in the first place.

Do you think tutorials are a necessity to developing as an artist? Why or why not?

If you're in art school (of which I'm a proponent) and are getting live tutoring with teachers, then no. Although art school cannot possibly cover every little thing so I'm quite sure every professionally trained artist out there has found tutorials useful for specific things they've had to do post-graduating – the learning never ends. If you're not in art school, then how is that even a question? Yes, some people claim they can learn it all themselves and they don't need any help or tutorials. Sure, that's possible. It'll take you a lifetime of useless reinventing of the wheel that you could have spent doing art instead, but those people are clearly more into proving something to themselves than into art, so they're not really our concern. But back to the question: YES, it IS essential to learn from your betters, but don't rely solely on tutorials. I would go for serious art books, not necessarily tons of them, but you want serious and solid foundations by established authorities first. Otherwise how will you know if a tutorial is any good? Do you know how many anatomy tutorials I've spotted out there, that are completely wrong and hideously illustrated? Tutorials are best to fill the gaps that general art tutoring books can't cover. In order of priority, the best means of developing as an artist is a living teacher, proper books, and then tutorials. And personal observation is essential throughout.

What advice or words do you have for readers out there?

Be discriminating in the guidance you get. If you're just starting out, steer clear of manga-style tutorials – sorry for singling them out, but I got so many comments from people who started with that and then had to suffer a lot to break out of the style later and rebuild a stronger drawing foundation. Start with a good, general, style-less foundation, and then you can specialize in any style you want and not be fettered to any.