So I heard about this Barcelona paso a paso PDF thing floating around forums, supposed to teach legit techniques. Grabbed the file thinking it’d be straightforward – famous last words, right?
The Disaster Unpacking Phase
First shocker: the whole PDF’s in Spanish. My high school Spanish vanished like last month’s paycheck. Pulled up Google Translate side-by-side, sweating as I pasted paragraph after paragraph. Took me two whole nights just to grasp chapter one. Felt like decoding alien hieroglyphs.
Second curveball: the “step-by-step” actually meant ninja-level prerequisites. Example diagrams showed insane pen pressure variations I couldn’t replicate. My attempts looked like toddler scribbles. Dug out my cheapest sketchpad to practice strokes without crying over ruined expensive paper.
Guerilla Learning Tactics
Adapted by:
- Screen-recording my failed attempts then replaying at 0.25x speed
- Rewriting translations in red ink on printed worksheets
- Using bathroom breaks to drill basic shapes (“my sink is now a sphere!”)
Week three: accidentally discovered the shading method was upside down for my left-handed grip. Flipped the reference images digitally – suddenly the hatches started aligning. Felt like cracking a CIA code.
Reality Check Wins
After six weeks of nightly 2-hour sessions:
- Could finally render textures without wanting to smash my tablet
- Made peace with the 78% failure rate on shadow gradients
- Realized “expert methods” really means “brutal trial-and-error marathon”
Latest sketch still has proportions slightly off, but hey – at least my wine bottles look like alcohol containers now instead of grenades. Worth the struggle? Maybe. Still debating whether to burn that PDF or frame it.