Follow a 1 Hour Daily Routine to Master Illustration in 8 Weeks by gene Li

Stuck in stop-and-start self-study? This 8-week class from illustrator gene Li gives you a simple 1-hour daily routine that connects figure drawing to value and color without burnout. You get 28 bite-size lessons, 7 small studies, and all the checklists to keep your hand moving every day.

🎯 What you’ll learn

• Build a sustainable 1-hour-a-day illustration routine you can keep with a day job
• Draw solid figures with 1:1 proportions, head structure, and muscles as masses
• Find your croquis style with gesture, silhouette, and bean-shape simplification
• Fix washed-out art with value keying, grouping, distribution, and grayscale master copies
• Control mood with color hierarchy, contrast types, and color change studies
• Draw convincing clothing wrinkles from memory and add shading by value
• Analyze composition with 16 types and create your own small studies

✅ Requirements

• Skills: No prior experience required, basic familiarity with drawing is helpful
• Tools: Adobe Photoshop 2026 (any drawing software works), drawing tablet
• Hardware: Computer capable of running Photoshop

📝 Description

This isn’t a “watch 12 hours and hope” class. It’s a repeatable system. gene Li built it from running 7LAYER, a study group with 100+ beginners per session, for people who kept quitting around day three. You work in short blocks — croquis, two-tone conversion, grayscale master copy — so you get a small win every day instead of one big unfinished piece.

Weeks 1-3 fix drawing. You stop guessing anatomy and learn the 1:1 upper-to-lower body ratio, ideal head proportions, and muscles as simple masses and silhouettes. Then you simplify. Figure simplification and facial plane analysis give you shapes you can actually memorize and reuse, not details you forget tomorrow.

Weeks 4-6 fix that muddy look. If your color feels washed out, it’s usually value first. You’ll practice keying and grouping, do Threshold two-tone studies, and copy masters in grayscale to see light, midtone, and dark clearly. Then light and color theory click into place: main light vs reflected light, dawn to evening setups, hierarchy of value / saturation / hue, and color change studies to repaint the same art in different moods.

Weeks 7-8 make it usable. Clothing wrinkles get broken into a memorization formula by fabric and garment, with shading added by value logic. Composition gets demystified with 16 practical types you analyze from photos. You also get PSDs, proportion sheets, croquis checklists, error logs, and theory summaries, plus a self-assessment chart and book list so you can build your own small studies after the 8 weeks end.

🧑‍🎓 Who this course is for

• Beginners stuck in self-comparison and perfectionism who can’t start
• Self-learners with shaky fundamentals who don’t know what to study next
• Hobbyists picking drawing back up after a long break who need a low-pressure routine

🧑‍🏫 About the Author

Hi, I’m illustrator gene Li. I hold a B.F.A. in Painting from Tama Art University in Tokyo and spent 2 years and 8 months as an art instructor working with students of all ages. Right now I work as a freelance illustrator on web novel cover commissions like After All and My Ex-Husband Is Back, show in Korea and Japan, and run 7LAYER, my beginner study group.

My thing isn’t fancy tricks. It’s helping people who feel overwhelmed figure out what to practice, in what order, and keep showing up. That’s what this class is — the exact routine framework I use with my students to turn 30 to 60 minutes a day into steady, visible progress.

🏁 Final Result

• A complete 8-week routine system with 7 finished small studies — figure sheets, croquis sets, value and grayscale copies, shading tests, color change versions, wrinkle studies, and composition analysis — plus your own personalized daily practice plan you can reuse for future pieces.

📢 Guys, this is a Group Buy campaign, check the GBC forum thread to get access

You can find the course preview in the download section below.