Learning to Love the Process. (Novic's Art Blog)

[novic]

Update: I feel I may have shot myself in the foot calling this a blog. While it is an attempt to archive my thoughts, I don't want discourage discussion, feedback, or other comments.

Indeed, I welcome them. Feedback and critique in particular I would love to hear. The whole point of joining a community is to get involved with other artists on a regular basis and work to grow together. So bring it on!

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I've been messing around on the fringes of becoming a professional artist for a long time. Years in fact. I've drug my feet and doubted myself and my desire to become an artist and though I've worked semi-professionally on a few projects I've never really taken the plunge.

Now I'm starring down the barrel of a gun. My options are either do my very best to become an artist or find something else before it's too late. Despite the incredibly emotional struggle that my relationship with art has been I can't see myself doing anything else.

A couple weeks ago I decided that I didn't want to get to the point where I had no choice but to move away from art and feel like I hadn't done everything I could to avoid it. I decided that the best way to motivate myself was to take the plunge and start documenting my work everyday, and get involved in a community of other artists.

So here I am. Taking that step and determined to do everything I can to become a better artist so that even if that day when I have to walk away does come I'll be able to do so knowing that I gave it my all.

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Day 14

Continuing an artist study of concept art by Cedric Peyravernay as well as some original sketches.

[novic]

Day 15

Things are really starting to pick up. As I get used to drawing everyday again it's becoming easier and easier to just spend my free time drawing. This is something that I have consistently struggled with, though I've known the solution (draw every day) for years and even successfully implemented it at one point in the past. Just gotta keep pushing forward every day, no matter what.

Today I started with 30 minutes of gesture work using The Line of Action. Overall I'm pleased with it though I still am struggling to get proportions accurate as I do them quickly. Likewise, in my attempts to keep pace, the feeling of energy and movement can easily get lost.

Continueing my artist study of Dishonored 2 concept work by Cedric Peyravernay. Mostly just feeling my way along and getting used to the process of painting. I'm enjoying it a lot and am fairly pleased with the results.

Super quick paintover for the upcoming demo level of a small indiegame that I'm a part of. Really just a road map for future design work. I'm trying very hard to avoid zooming in more than 50% in order to just focus on the big shapes that people are going to see and hopefully avoid the tunnel-vision of focusing on details no one will notice. Not always successful in this

Finally, some original character work for a side project. Sketches almost done, going to do some paint practice next.

That's all for Day 15! More to come.

[novic]

Day 16

Today was a bit of a struggle. There were so many other demands on my time that I just didn't have much left to draw, but I did what I could with the time I had and this is the result.

Part of my weekly routine is to alternate between gesture drawing and hand studies. Gesture drawing is a natural warm-up and I always find that doing gestures for any decent period of time (a week or more) improves my poses-from-imagination by a significant degree.

But the hands studies are all about improving my understanding (and practical experience) of hand anatomy. Hands, as I'm sure you know, are just a challenge to draw well and when adding the extra complication of drawing them from imagination, well, if you don't really know what you're doing you're going to have a hard time of it.

So I'm trying to get as good as I possibly can. For the most part I'm following David Finch's Dynamic Figure Drawing Vol. 2 - Hands and Feet from the Gnomon Workshop. His technique for breaking down the hand is easily one of the best I've ever encountered and is helping me to understand how this complicated subject works in 3D space.

On top of that I do some studies from photographic reference in an attempt to apply what I'm learning (and copying) by watching the videos.

Didn't have a whole lot of time today and I had to jump straight into working on this demo level paintover.

I constantly struggle with the idea of sharing this because I'm so self-conscious about it. It's so rough, so sketchy, so unfinished, and the fact of the matter is that it will never be finished. That is not the point of the image. It's never going to be something that I will take and polish up and design in detail, it's always going to be a sketchy mess.

That makes me want to hide it away from the world.

But it's also not entirely true. This is a sketch. Its purpose is to be a sketch. The final render will be in game and it will be polished and fully designed. That's what I'm working toward and that's what I have to remember. Both for my own sanity, and for the benefit of the project as a whole.

So that's day 16 all wrapped up. Hopefully I'll find time to do more drawing tomorrow, but I'm looking at my calendar and it doesn't seem likely...but I'll do what I can.

[novic]

Day 17

The journey continues, mostly successfully.

Started the day with 30 minutes of gesture drawing. Felt pretty good about things today. The majority of my problems stemmed from the fact that I am trying aspect ratio for my canvas, given that I've started posting these online.

As usual there are some proportional issues, though mostly in the later, longer gestures. Something about having more time almost just means having more time to get in your own head and screw things up. I guess that's the point of gestures when you get right down to it. Don't think, react. Capture the moment as quickly and fluidly as possible and move on.

In truth I'm not even certain I want to share my incremental updates to this piece right now. Not that I'm ashamed of it, far from it. I know it's a long way from perfect but I'm actually quite pleased with the results. It's just that I'm at the point where everything I do to it will only create the tiniest of difference from day to day. Especially since most days I'm only spending about 30 minutes working on it.

However, at this stage I feel like I have a clear path moving forward with this study. I'm going to finish up the eyes (and immediate surrounding areas) and call it a study. I feel like I've learned a lot and the point of doing this was never to copy the original in every detail. Simply to learn what I could in a relatively short span of time. And it's time to move on. So once I finish the area around the eyes it will more than likely be back to doing a different quick study every day.

Once again I didn't find myself with a a lot of time today, but I did manage to sneak in some brush experimentation with this image. Just playing around with different techniques, specifically applying some of the ideas brought up by Marco Bucci. Specifically the idea of painting being a process of imposing, or perhaps designing, order on top of chaos. If you haven't ever seen his YouTube channel I highly recommend you check it out. His videos are some of the most interesting and informative I've ever seen.

This is not really what is intended for this image, it's just an experiment. I wanted to mess around with some of these techniques, but I didn't want to have to create something from scratch in order to do it. So probably the next time you see these they will be very different. Probably.

And that about wraps up day 17. Another one down and time to start all over again.

[novic]

Day 18

If you read my first post on this blog you're probably aware that my reason for doing this is two fold. First, as a record for myself, something I can look back on at the end of all this, regardless of the outcome, and be confident that I did the best I could. That I really tried and didn't just slip away into apathy. Second, I hope that other artists will be able to get something out of it. Each struggle is unique, but I hope that in sharing my own struggles others who are on a similar path will be able to find the courage and will to push forward even when it seems like they struggle for nothing.

To that end I feel I need to share something that happened today. After finishing up my drawing for the day I was browsing around the internet and stumbled upon a drawing. I won't go into too much detail here, but my immediate reaction upon seeing what I at first took to be a very detailed pencil drawing was "Why bother?"

I was shocked by the sentiment. It had come seemingly from nowhere, and for a few hours afterward I could think of almost nothing else. Were these my innermost thoughts, brought to the surface in a moment of vulnerability? Did this mean that I really didn't want to be an artist, that my time and energy would be better spent elsewhere. After a lot of tortured thought I was forced to come to one conclusion.

Maybe. But that doesn't matter.

I realized that, while there was a distinct possibility that it was true. That deep down in my soul, despite what I feel on a surface level, that art isn't for me. But that doesn't matter. I may not be able to say for certain what place art has in my life right now. What I can say for certain is this: if I give up now, it will be the same as if I gave in to apathy and never even tried. To me that is unacceptable. The ultimate conclusion of this experiment may well be the realization that art is not what I want to be doing. But I will not arrive at that conclusion without a fight, without trying everything I can to make it a reality.

So welcome to day 18 of my journey to become a better artist, and maybe discover something about myself in the process.

That was quite the dramatic intro for a series of ultimately mundane drawings. Today was hand studies, as you can see. Not much to report on these. Experimenting with some sketchy rendering styles as I do my studies. Moderately successful in my opinion, though not hugely. Otherwise, business as usual.

For those of you who are growing tired of seeing this image show up almost every day, you're in luck. this is as far as I'm going to take it. I don't know how much of a difference is visible between this and the previous iteration, but I really tried to work the area around the eyes as much as I felt I could. Now it's time to move on. Someday I may decide to come back to this and do a bit more work on it, but I feel like I learned a lot from this experience and will probably just do something else the next time I feel like doing a long-term study.

Finally these are a few more detailed versions of elements from the demo level paintover seen above. There's something of a soft-deadline coming up on the project and the team wants to have some in-game assets ready to show off when that comes. So for now I'm putting a hold on the paintover itself and moving on to polishing up the elements that we are confident will need to be there.

In truth I hesitate to call these "concepts" as I probably won't do too many variations. There just ins't time. Gotta make a decision and move forward. Though there are a few things that I may try out some different ideas on. The various patterns of this hanging wall (directly above) are something that I may take some time to play around with, just as an example.

So that about wraps up day 18. More to come.

[novic]

Day 19

So I've decided to alter my approach to things. I'm still in the midst of my artistic crisis (like an existential crisis, but centered around the pursuit of art) and questioning everything, but this blog is helping me maintain the focus necessary to push through it. Odds are this is just a passing thing like so many other artistic crises. I used to get them as regularly as once a week and, until late last year, had been blessed with a prolonged period of confidence that lasted almost two years. It was quite the shock going back into the realm of doubt and uncertainty, and that is part of what fueled the decision to start this blog in the first place.

So, as I said, I've decided to change my approach a bit. Life is busy and chaotic, and if I'm going to get through this artistic crisis then I feel like I need to be focusing as much as possible on the art that is important to me.

I used to say meaningless things like "I want to be the best artist ever." It's not going to happen. Probably. I mean, anything's possible, but I feel like in order to achieve a goal like that you have to be someone who loves art for art's sake. I don't. I love art because of what it can do. I love art as a medium for conveying ideas and telling stories. I'm getting to the point where I don't want to compare myself to other artists (a point I probably should have got to a long time ago) because it just makes me depressed about how far "behind" I am. And I put that in quotes for a reason. Yes, my artistic growth has probably been a good deal slower than would be idea, but that's not really important. It does me no good at all to compare myself to someone who's own experience I have no measure for. Maybe they've been drawing for half the time as me and are twice as good. Maybe they've been drawing for three times as long as me and are only twice as good. I don't know so comparing my work to theirs does nothing but give me a false sense of failure.

In an effort to give myself more time to work on the things that are important to me I'm going to change the way I study. Now, rather than doing gestures or a directed study followed by an artist study everyday (a process which on a good day takes a minimum of an hour and can take significantly longer than that if complications arise), I'm going to alternate between directed study and artist study making sure that the focus of each run parallel to each other. Then I'll take one day a week and do an hour of gesture and figure drawing, at least for the time being.

This should allow me to limit my study time to only an hour a day and hopefully free up time to work on those things that I really care about, while still learning and growing as an artist.

Hopefully.

This is part of my new approach. As I'm currently working on studying hands as thoroughly as possible I'm going to be doing my artist studies in such a way that line up with that goal. So each subject that I choose for the time being will now prominently feature hands in some way. This is "Bloodly Nest Keeper" (possibly a type there, but I couldn't say for certain) by Piotr Jablonski.

The goal as I see it is to draw as much of the original as possible, focusing on proportions, silhouette, and big shapes. Then fill in the details on the key area (in this case hands). Though you'll see here that I didn't get that far on this one before I ran out of time. "Aaron Bard" by Carlos Ruiz. To be continued.

Finally I finished up the day by working on refining a few of the concepts for the indie game I'm a part of. I actually did a lot more work than just what you see here, but it was all done in 3D and, at least for now, that's not what this blog is about. I love 3D, but I want to develop my 2D skills first.

So these are pretty straight forward with the main goal being to figure out some kind of patterns. This is something that I have almost no experience doing and it took me quite a while to get something decent down. I actually started with the image on the right and really didn't know what to do. A fact that I think is fairly obvious. But by the time I moved on to the second one I was determined to take a completely different approach and, by and large, feel pretty good about the results. They are by no means perfect, but considering that I'd never really done anything like this before I'm pretty happy with it.

So that wraps up day 19. Hopefully I'll be able to push through this crisis soon and get back to being my normal chipper self.

[novic]

Day 20

A good day. It's amazing how a day where you feel like things went well, even just well, can turn your perception completely around. For the moment my Artistic Crisis is gone and my confidence has returned. Beyond that, there's not much that I feel needs to be said that can't be said by simply showing.

Now I'm going to prove myself a liar and go ahead and talk at length about this.

It's clearly not finished, and I'm not just talking about the guy on the right. Though I do intend to paint both of them.

I don't do a whole lot of color work and even less color work without starting out in black+white first. But ever since I discovered the videos of Marco Bucci I've been wanting to try out some of the techniques and approaches that he talks about. Apply some of the concepts and mindsets that he explains. And this is the result of what I perceive as a failure to effectively apply those techniques.

Not being all that comfortable working in color from the beginning I was so focused on laying down the colors and didn't think at all about things like texture or value almost until I started laying in the detail. This meant that I ultimately lost a lot of the texture that I was hoping to achieve because I had to repaint over everything.

Even so, I feel really pleased with the results. I feel like I can learn from this and get better. And that means I can't wait to work on the next one.

And thus day 20 comes to a close. More to come.

[novic]

Day 21

They say (or so I've heard) that it takes 21 days to make a habit. Well, if that's true, this process is now officially a habit.

Today was a busy day and I didn't get to spend a whole lot of time drawing, but I did sit down for a few hours and work on those character portraits.

I spend a decent amount of time trying to refine that first one a bit, but I was getting frustrated because I've now moved past the excitement brought from finding some success with this approach and am now at the point where I can see all the mistakes that it's too late to do anything about without reworking a significant part of the image. Which, for these, I probably won't do. These were always supposed to be just experiments and, despite the many issues, I'm still very pleased with the results. It will be in future work that I really start to refine this process and, hopefully, have a better foundation to build on from the start.

So I moved on to the second one and this time I'm trying to be a lot more deliberate with my approach. I spent a good deal more time laying down texture, value, and color in an attempt to get them working all together before I moved forward. In truth I feel like I should have spent even more time doing that because I still ran into a few issues down the road.

Once I was satisfied with that step I began layering in detail on top of the texture, doing my best to preserve the texture as much as possible. My goal with this one is not to paint over every inch of the image, but only in those areas where I feel genuine definition is needed. Overall I'm happy, but I still feel like I can push this approach a lot farther than I am and I fully expect to be experimenting with it a lot in the near future.

Day 21 draws to a close. Three weeks. I can hardly believe it. Where will it go from here I wonder?

[novic]

Day 22

I may have said this already, but maybe I'm wrong. This is likely to be a busy week. I've got a pretty significant deadline coming up on the indie game and right now that's where all my time and energy is going. Since I don't plan on sharing any of my 3D work here, at least for now, that's going to mean fewer images to share each day. Nevertheless the journey continues!

Some very quick hand studies today. The morning was rife with distractions and I didn't get as far as I had hoped with these. I also feel that they're nowhere near my best, with a ton of proportional and anatomical issues present. Though I feel one ore two are okay.

These are so simple and straightforward I honestly almost didn't share them. If it weren't for the fact that the whole point of this is to create a record of everything I do to become a better artist I definitely would have just left these out.

Super quick sketches that are more about establishing the overall design language than establishing actual details. Literally nothing more than a blueprint for me to work from when creating the actual in game asset.

And that's it for day 22. The rest of my time today was spent working in 3D and that's going to continue to be the case throughout this week for sure. I don't expect to get time to do more than studies until probably next week. Still, every step is one that brings me closer to my goals.

More to come.

[novic]

Day 23

As I said, this week is going to be super. So hear I am just doing the minimum. Today's minimum: Artist Studies. Specifically of hands.

This is a study of "Aaron Bard" by Carlos Ruiz. Focusing on the hands, well, hand. though I did do a little bit with the eyes just because I like the simple but very effective shapes used here. I also like how simply the hand is expressed. There are almost no individual details of the fingers, just enough to give the impression of detail and everything else is accomplished with shape and light. Simple, stylized, effective.

Then I moved on to a study from one of my favorite artists (and favorite series) "Happy Halloween" (I don't think that's its actual title) by Paul Kidby.

Following with the theme I again focused solely on the hands. Quite the change in direction from the previous one with these being rendered almost realistically. There is some simplification and exaggeration going on, but not a whole lot. I found it particularly interesting to draw because of the one hand holding the teacup. Paul Kidby's work is so expressive, even the hands convey a sense of manic determination, and I know I didn't even come close to capturing that here.

So, that was day 23. Short and sweet, just business as usual.

More to come.

[novic]

Day 24

I'll keep it short and sweet today. If you've been keeping up with things you'll know that this week I pretty much just have time to do daily studies before I have to move on to other things.

The key difference today is that I took a break from studying hands and did some gesture and figure drawing.

Pretty straight forward. I feel like it mostly went well, though at times I seemed to completely forget what the hell I was doing. This is evidenced by the gestures that seem to be little more than a random collection of lines.

One minor breakthrough I did feel I had during this session was I finally felt like I was starting to see the gesture. I realized that what I had been thinking was the flow of the gesture (and I was successfully drawing) was in fact still very much a product of the contours. I was still too focused on the specific lines of the figure and it wasn't allowing me to really see the gesture. But at some point, maybe a little before the mid point, I started to see the broader gesture and focus on that.

Though I still struggled with my usual hangups like proportions, once I made that realization and started to apply it I felt like my gestures came together much much better. The last four (the bottom row) in particular I felt really turned out nicely, and that was primarily because I was able to focus on the gesture first, before adding in the more specific contours of the figure.

Hooray for learning!

More to come.

[novic]

Day 25

The main bulk of my hand study is drawing to a close. Maybe another week left, maybe be less. At that time I will spend a little time looking at other resources for drawing hands before moving on to a couple of extended studies both from life and reference. Finally, I hope to galvanize my new found knowledge by attempting to break it down and share it in what will be my first tutorial video... a daunting prospect, but nothing ventured nothing gained (to be as cliche as possible)

Today, once I completed the section of the video I was on, I decided to do something a little different. Rather than drawing (usually) one hand in as much detail as I could manage with the time I had, I would draw as many hands from reference as I could with that same time.

It was a good experience and one I think I'll do for a while longer. Or maybe I'll alternate between the two for a while. Obviously there are some issues with some of them and they lack a great deal of confidence but, as I have often said, that's the point of practicing.

Still feels like I'm getting some proportional issues. They tend to be either too long or too short. Hmm, gonna have to work on that.

So that's day 25. More to come.

[novic]

Day 26

This was one of the hardest days yet, if not the hardest (though that may quickly be overshadowed by tomorrow). The combination of a bad back and an oncoming cold made it really difficult to sit there and do even the minimum drawing. But I'm trying to change my mental attitude toward it and work to become someone who draws every day. Not for anyone else, but in my own perception. As a part of who I am. I am someone who draws every day. So I drew.

Today was artists studies, once again focusing on hands.

The left one is Zombie Sketch by Patrick Reilly. Which has a great dynamism and energy to it that I love. The second is one I've done before, Golden Prayer, by Georgi Gerogiev. The last time I did this one I was focused on the face and, as far as I recall, barely touched the hands. They were quite challenging to pull of as they are deceptively simple. But the complexity of even those simple interlocking forms took some doing to get right.

So that's it for day 26. I'll be back tomorrow one way or the other, I won't let this cold stop me! More to come.

[novic]

Day 27

Still pretty sick. Just trying to make sure that I'm doing some work and maintain the habit. Bleh.

Decided to start off with a few very quick nose studies. This was an attempt to fix some anatomy issues on my paintings.

A brief experiemnt with changing out the background. Pleased with the fact that it seems to read pretty well without any linework present. Some potential here, but just an experiment.

Working to fix some of the anatomy around the nose and the far eye. Realized that the problem wasn't the nose itself but the way it connected to the face. Still some work to do on this.

Yep, that was day 27. Back to being sick now. More to come.

[novic]

Day 28

This was such a short day that I'm not even going to bother uploading an actual image. I just did about 20 minutes worth of painting on the character portraits I've been working on and called it. This is the problem with being sick, or really allowing anything to disrupt and established routine. I had every intention of getting back to do at least a little more work today, but because the underlying structure of the day that I'm used to wasn't there it just never happened.

And I'm still sick. I plan to at least try to impose some structure on my day today, even if that structure is just marking time between rests. There has got to be a way to maintain structure even in times like this. It's just such a challenge.

Hopefully tomorrow will be better.

More to come.

[novic]

Day 29

Still sick, but I think things are starting to improve. Though it was difficult today I managed to do my normal minimum of of studies, though I didn't accomplish much beyond that.

It's getting there. I feel like I'm starting to draw hands with a great deal more confidence than I had previously. Still a ways to go, but I feel like I'm seeing some improvements.

Did a few difficult hand gestures today with one or two of them taking a good deal of time to get feeling even a little right. Then there's that one just to the lower right of the claw hand, which feels like the index finger is too short because I didn't use enough contrast when delineating the tip. And the less said about that bottom one, the better. Lots of room for improvement there .

So that's day 29 all wrapped up. Starting to feel better and hoping that will continue each day so I can get back to doing more than just the minimum each day.

More to come.

[novic]

Day 30

Woohoo! I can't believe it's been 30 days already and still going strong. The only significant setback so far is this damn cold that doesn't seem to want to go away completely. As I sit hear and type this I worry that it may be coming back. Particularly frustrating since I thought it was going away. Grr.

Today was artist study day. The left image is #47 by Igor Sid... I think.

If I'm wrong and you know the real artist, please tell me. I couldn't find the actual image anywhere specifically connected to any artist, but after some searching I managed to track down this individual who's name is at least connected to this piece and has a similar style with other similar images. Still, I could have missed something. Please let me know.

It gave me a great deal of trouble, unexpectedly. The left-most hand (her right) I made way to big to start with and had to back things off significantly. In the end I may have backed it off too much and made it too small. Nevertheless, I'm feeling pretty good about the hand gesture itself.

The study on the right is "Gonna Cut Ya" or "Another Sword Wielding Gentleman in a Bad Mood" by André Brown Mealha. Going far more stylized with this one with far simpler hands. For the most part I feel like it succeeded, though that left-most hand (his right) is far too tilted. It doesn't feel like he's actually gripping anything to me. I'll need to watch out for that in the future.

So that about wraps up day 30, now if I can muster the energy it's time for my weekly gesture and figure drawing!

More to come.

[novic]

Day 31

Today is gesture and figure study day! I nice change of pace mid-week. This time I decided to use a different resource for at least part of it. Croquis Cafe is a great YouTube channel that puts of life-drawing model videos once a week. They've got quite a large collection and it's a great resource if you don't have actual life drawing classes in your area. Though I did end up switching back to Line of Action for the last one. This was simply because I could set it up for a longer study.

In truth I really struggled with this today. I don't know if I just psyched myself out by using a different figure drawing resource or what, but for most of the time I was working I pretty much forgot my major breakthrough of a week ago. Though I can see it present in one or two of the early 1 minute figures it didn't really come back to me properly until the last one. Hopefully I'll be able to hang onto it for next week and really push forward and apply it more widely.

So that's day 31. I think I may finally be over my cold now (fingers crossed) so hopefully I'll be able to start carving out more time each day for drawing.

More to come.

[novic]

Day 32

Genuinely feeling better but still have very little extra time unfortunately. At the moment my extra time is being taken by putting together a demo level for the indie game. A slow but fun process.

Sitting here and thinking about it I have to acknowledge that there's at least a part of me that is grateful that I'm so busy because it's easy busy. Coming up with things to draw is hard and it always takes a lot of effort to get a project moving forward. Once I'm in, I'm in and I have no problems. But getting started requires real effort that is sometimes so hard to make.

This is why I have often been caught in the trap of just doing studies. Studies are easy. What you have to do is already laid out in front of you.

This means I need to make time soon to get back to doing some original work. The longer I let "I'm busy" remain an excuse the harder it will be to take that step.

So today was hand studies day. I've finally managed to finish the hands portion of that DVD. When I get back to this next week I plan to look into a few other sources and do a brief study there before moving on. Should be fun, and I already feel like I've learned a lot.

Of course, sometimes you just have one of those days where things just don't seem to go right. When I got to my own studies from reference this morning I struggled so much. The first one (upper left of the lower three) eh, okay. A struggle, and not really successful, but I kind of got there in the end. Originally I had drawing the fingers at too much of a slant when coming from the palm. But I think what's really screwing it up here is the thumb which is stil just wrong, despite my best efforts.

The second hand (upper right of the lower three) came out much better though there are still some issues. Mostly I think with the placement of the fingers as they attach to the palm.

The final hand just failed. I don't really know what happened. Looking at it now I can see that the proportions are a mess, It's too long, it doesn't have the depth it needs to accommodate the fingers being bunched into a fist, and I think the whole thing is just skewed. I added a little frowny face to reflect how I felt even at the time.

We live and learn.

More to come.

[novic]

Day 33

Ooof, this seems to be my week to just fall short. I mean, I guess it hasn't been that bad but it feels like virtually every day I've said something along the lines of "I really struggled with this one." And today is no exception.

I really love the works of Ludwig Deutsch. So naturally I decided to do a quick study of his painting "Palace Guard." I would say I should no better than to study the masters, but that kind of defeats the purpose. Of course they're at a level so far beyond me right now, that's what makes them masters. Studying them may be hard, but it's what helps us grow. Though that thought was small comfort when confronted with having to actually do it.

All in all it was probably a good struggle and I think I can say that I came out of it feeling like I learned something, but I also kind of came out of it feeling like I've got so far to go it's not even funny.

The second one was a bit easier on me. Nice stylized character design from "Jellybots" by Nicholas Kole.

All in all I'm quite pleased with this one. Getting the large shapes down was easy enough and it really gave me time to focus on the shapes themselves. That is, the shapes that make up the form.

This is probably my biggest lesson going on right now. How important it is to have good shape, not just the larger shapes that make up the silhouette or composition, but the shapes that describe the form as well. I think this is why so many of my old paintings were such a struggle for me. I was so focused on blending and creating smooth transitions between values that I was ignoring the shapes that described the form.

Hopefully that's a lesson I'll take to heart fairly quickly.

More to come.