11/1/2023

Finished the sketch and laid out some colors and effects to get a feel for what exactly I'm working up to in this piece. Doing so isn't exactly productive, but I had the urge and followed it.
I think between the sword swipe and blood effects I'm achieving the dynamic composition that I was aiming for. I'm considering adding the bodies of some low-level enemies in the background and perhaps deep in the foreground to add to that even further.
While I haven't moved onto lineart, I did try to limit how many lines I put down in the sketch. Admittedly, the loop of stopping to think quickly grew old and I devolved to old habits. But I think I did well to limit how many times I went over the same idea with a line more than usual at the very least. I feel like using a plain hard brush helped with that as well as opposed to one with opacity. A lesson I'm re-learning after an experiment I did some months back. It may be some small way to account for my use of digital tools and force me to think more before laying down lines. Before I lose patience, of course.
I ended up dropping extreme perspective entirely due to the thumbnail I ended up developing, so that's something I'll have to work on another time.
As far as colors go, this almost feel like cheating. Risk of Rain is such an overwhelmingly blue game. It's pretty easy to throw in a contrasting color, any contrasting color, and create a decent color comp. Still, it's more visually interesting than practically anything I've made in years, so I'll take it. I should definitely exercise this skill in a more challenging environment going forward.
Otherwise, yeah. To me at least, this is turning out pretty badass.
So, uh. It seems like I'm no the right track at least.

Time will tell.

11/2/2023

Mixed it up with twenty thirty-second poses to focus on capturing the pose and nothing else. I want to study the gesture drawing method from Michael Hampton's Figure Drawing and Invention, but I need more time before I implement it. For now. Stick figures. Keeping it up.

11/3/2023

My partner is still getting accustomed to figure drawing and capturing gesture, so they wanted to slow it down today with 5 3 min. poses. I had more time to think as I worked, but as I got to the third pose I started trying harder to keep my cylinders consistent to certain subsections. Specifically letting them take up the space between the joints. I'll have to start keeping it in mind as I do more of these.

I had a friend prompt me for a character design. Just the first thing to come to mind as something to try and develop. I took the opportunity to force myself not to focus on details too much like I often would in an attempt to start thinking more in simple shapes. I could push that idea further in the future, but I feel like it's a good start at least. I want to clean up and refine this idea and develop it into a full illustration. Figured if I want to be an illustrator I may as well start acting like it. Pray for me.

Keeping to the iterative design sketches, my partner came up with a new Pathfinder character that I'm helping her develop. More will certainly come over the weekend as I work on her, but so far I'm digging her idea.

11/6/203
Kept up some practice over the weekend.

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Additionally, I'm continuing my strides towards making actual illustrations with my partner's goblin character for pathfinder.

My goal with this piece is to capture the same sort of feeling you'd get looking at official Pathfinder art. Some examples:

A Complicated Plan by Brian Valezap

Hold My Beer by Hai Hoang

Striking Thirteen by Ksenia Kozhevnikova

In Truth's Light by Roena Rosenberger
I quickly realized that doing that would mean switching to a landscape orientation, which I did. What's more, however, is I'll have to really push myself to populate the background with contrasting shapes. In this case, I'm thinking a shelf full of bottles should more or less suffice for the composition we ended up settling on. The foreground will be it's own issue entirely, but there will be plenty of time to figure that out.
Moreover, though, as I get further into this piece I want to be sure to pay close attention to shape. Specifically large, medium, and small shapes; a theory that I'm aware of and have rarely attempted to put into practice other than as an after thought.
That's a large part of what I'm doing lately, I suppose. Trying to hold myself to thinking harder before jumping into pieces so that I end with a better result and internalize better habits.
Either way, under normal circumstances I'd have burnt out by now. But I feel like I'm better able to control my artistic drive now that I've been practicing consistently. It could be placebo, but whatever. I feel good and motivated and that's what's important.

More to come...

11/7/2023
Did some new stuff today.

Started the day with the typical warmups. I think some of my issues with my proportions are slowly being repaired with these, though I still tend to mes up with leg proportions. Also, I didn't commit to getting the pose down entirely before working on forms, so that's something that I'll have to make sure I stay consistent with going forward.

After that, though, I did some figure studies without a time limit transposing poses onto my character Noggs. I feel like it was a decent challenge for myself since I so often accidentally get too focused on the body's contours when looking at a model. I can't do that if I have to focus on putting Noggs body on the pose since they've got such a smaller proportioned body.
I honestly really miss drawing Noggs. I'll have to do it more in my free time.

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Continuing my adventures with my partner's goblin character for Pathfinder, I finished the sketch for the full scene. I tragically realized after lying down values that I hadn't really considered lines that draw the eye to the main subject, so admittedly I'm kind of planning to just bet on her bright blue color palette to contrast the warm oranges and yellows of the rest of the scene. Still, it's something I'll have to pay attention to in later pieces. I don't want to keep allowing my pieces to be "good enough". I need to push myself to improve.

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Bouncing between youtube videos and books, I've noticed that I'm kind of working on improving a lot of concepts at once instead of lasering in on one. I'm well aware that focusing on one concept at a time helps your mind focus and improvement will come faster, but I honestly find it very difficult to get myself to decide on a single aspect of my work. Working on form is awesome, perspective practice is helping a lot, the gestures and figure studies are tangibly improving my work day by day, and I'm slowly integrating more pen control into my process. I don't know. I guess it'd be healthier to slow down. But I'm hungry. Hungrier for progress than I've been in a long time. I don't want to slow down.