This might be a bit wordy, but I need to lay out the problems I am experiencing using Blender. First off, it might have something to do with my age…getting close to 76, but I don’t think I am losing that much of my retention abilities.
I was a professional illustrator and easel painter (oils, acrylics) for most of my life. I semi-retired when I hit 66 but continued to paint for a few galleries in Hawaii where I lived for over 45 years.
I used Blender for at least the last 20 or 25 years, but only to model basic objects that would use as reference for my paintings, such as whales or outrigger canoes that I could pose and crudely light within Blender. I loved using Blender for that. I found it to be an amazing tool. But that was as far as I took it. I never really hand-painted or textured anything and I never had to animate any of the objects I modeled. So I didn’t concern myself with topology or in-depth lighting, much less learning texture mapping and hand painting, rigging, animating, rendering, and compositing. So I never dove into the guts and details of the software.
I had a dream of digitally reproducing a model of the HMS Victory ship when I retired and kept that in the back of my mind for many years. Guys in my parents’ generation often retired and made wooden models of ships. ( Loved the period of the Age of Sail.) This, then, was my more modern version of that retirement hobby.
Long story short. I told a friend that I would do a 3D model of his favorite dog, who passed away in 2006, and use it in a small animation. Something that was a little above just another drawing or painting of the dog. I had done illustrations (pen and ink) of this dog, which he used in the branding of his company. This was in 1991. I thought that it would be a good project for me to learn more about Blender and sort of be a prerequisite course for then doing the Victory model, complete with figures of the officers and crew.
Even in retirement, life gets in the way, and what I thought would be endless hours of uninterrupted learning of Blender and all the aspects of it required to complete this model and animation of the dog turned out to be a few hours here and a few hours there, sometimes with days in-between.
I spent many hours on YouTube and purchased different Blender courses to help me through. The most helpful part of this was the help I got through this forum. Were it not for all the timely replies to all my posts on the problems I couldn’t resolve I doubt I would have gotten past stage one on the project.
I could probably publish a full book of nothing but the replies I’ve received over the past three or four years that I have been working on it.
I am at the stage now where I have textured (hand-painted) my model and rigged it and am now doing some rudimentary animation of walk cycles and such. Once again life got in the way and I had to put the project down for over a week to take care of a plumbing problem at the house and other things that could not be put off.
Today I was going to start tackling the problem of learning about corrective shape keys and drivers to fix small problems with the rigging, mostly facial rigging.
When I opened the last saved file (which I put into a new folder so it wouldn’t get lost in all the older versions of the file, whose many names tend to get confusing) my dog came up totally pink. I know that meant that the program couldn’t link to the texture or materials I had applied.
What was unnerving was that I couldn’t remember how to re-link the missing files even though I knew where that was under the File menu. So after fiddling with it for a half hour I finally got the textures back on the dog.
I didn’t want to make another post to the forum as I felt like I had asked far too many questions already and that maybe folks were getting a bit fed up with me. I have no reason to suspect that as everyone has been extremely helpful and no one has ever been sarcastic, telling me that only an idiot would have to ask such basic things. Every member who replied was gracious and informative.
So I decided to post to this forum, this thread, to ask if there are courses available for Blender for someone like myself either online (paid and or free) that go deeper into Blender than just beginner courses for the various aspects of Blender usage.
As I ask this question I realize how absurd it might be to assume such a course exists, or book…but I thought I would put it out there anyway.
As I progress from modeling, and sculpting to texturing to rigging and now to animating and such, my old mind seems to forget so much of the previous things I learned, which hotkeys to use, etc.
So anyhow, thanks for indulging me in this problem and taking the time to read this post. I don’t intend to give up regardless of how many times I have to go back over and re-learn things as I move along.
Again, thanks to everyone in this forum! It is by far the best forum I have ever been on in well over thirty years.
)
or after some suggestions: “i have seen this” 
… so people waste time on them…
-icon 
). Regarding this your participation in this forum is by far more worthwhile 
than of some users which would be a too long list to mention here.