Day 41

This is probably going to be my last daily post for a while. It just takes up too much time each day, time that could be spent doing more drawing. I may get back to it at some point, maybe I'll find a way to do things more efficiently, but at least for now I'm going to scale things back. So for at least the next few weeks I will be doing once a week posts instead.

For now I will continue doing daily vlogs, which you can find here. Though even those may at some point have to be scaled back somewhat. We'll see.

So for today's quick sketching I decided to do some free-hand constructive drawing. Been a while since I did any of this and it's not feeling hugely successful to me, but I guess it's not terrible.

Though I must say that this cleaner, one line (or at least attempted one line) approach isn't as conducive to exploratory sketching as the scribble method seems to be. Maybe it's just a lack of experience and the more I do it the easier it will become, but right now it doesn't really feel like it. Still, I'll keep trying, though I may eventually decide to use the scribble method for exploration and the one line method when I actually have a specific idea in mind.

Struggling a bit with this one. Changed the face, again, and I'm willing to bet money (anyone care to take me up on this?) that I'm going to change at least one more time. Also tring to fix that right art (his right). It's just off. It was too long, now I think it may be a little to short. The pose is too stiff, and the less said about that hand gesture the better. I'll figure it out though. One way or another.

So that's it for day 41. I didn't get a lot of extra time to draw. It was a busier day than I had anticipated, though I can only blame so much on that. A good part of the reason for my lack of extra drawing comes down to me being super distracted by every little thing for about 2.5 hours before I finally got myself under control. I hate weekends so much right now. They just complicate things. One of these days I'm going to figure out how to be consistently productive with my time on the weekends without the structure of the week. Someday.

More to come.

Week 7, Day 48

Well, it's been an interesting week. So far I would call it mostly successful since I've still managed to draw every day and put up my vlogs, and have definitely had a lot more time to work with. I'm thinking about changing the format even more, but I'm still not certain about that. It may just end up complicating things again and right now I'm feeling very much that if it's not broke, don't fix it.

This has been a week of self discovery as an artist. I have done 0 studies and feel pretty good for it. Oh, I fully intend to return to my studies starting this week, though with a slightly different daily approach. Right now I feel like there are two really important things I need to be doing in order to grow as an artist. The first is to find regular time to study, both the fundamentals as well as other artists. The second is to draw for myself. To explore who I am as an artist without worrying about turning things into a project or making a pretty picture. So for the foreseeable future, those two things will be my primary focus.

This is the culmination of my daily quick sketching this week. This is drawing for myself and it has been an exciting and enlightening experience. I've always struggled to draw without a plan. So much so that it's been my philosophy for years that I don't draw without have a specific idea about what I'm going to draw, having done research, and gathered at least thematic reference if not specific reference.

But I've always wanted to be able to just sit down and draw and end up with something that I was happy with. This week is the first time in my life that I have ever been able to do that.

Strictly speaking it's not like I didn't have an idea going in. All of these characters (with the exception of the old man and the knight at the top) are from the same story. But I did no research, didn't look up any reference. Just started drawing. What I found was that not only was I capable of producing flawed but interesting work that I was nevertheless pleased with, but it also pushed me to experiment with things that I may not have done had I prepared in more detail. After the first few faces I started to mess around with things like facial expressions and more dynamic angles. Admittedly with varying degrees of success, but at no point did I feel like I failed or like I couldn't do it. At worst I felt like I just needed a bit more information.

The most significant example of this can be seen in the lower left where I attempted to draw the face from a more elevated angle. There are so many issues here it's not even funny. The most significant being that the little simplified version that I used to "correct" my earlier issues was itself incredibly flawed. A fact which I didn't notice until I reviewed my footage this morning. The end result is that the face is really skewed in perspective and it just looks weird. But we live an learn, and that's the point. I'm going to be doing a lot more of these in the coming weeks and I couldn't be happier.

Wow, in truth I forgot that I even worked on this character this week. This must have been done first thing last week and then I never touched it again. Struggling with his right arm quite a bit. I just can't seem to find a good pose for it. And, as I'm sure you can see, once again I've completely redone the face. Getting closer to what I want, but still not their yet. I may shift my focus back to him this week when I have time. This one's been around for a long time and I really want to finish it.

This final image is an experiment. A natural evolution of my quick sketching, if you will. The whole idea here was to choose a topic/theme and just draw. No reference, no planning, but more than the quick sketches that I have been doing.

I also really wanted to try to build up from gesture, through constructive forms, and into the illustration itself. A very simple and not particularly technical variation of the process, but one that I've found incredibly helpful and instructive so far.

Though I struggled early on. If you watch the video you'll see that I screwed up the initial constructive block in on that left character it it was really screwing me up for a long time. There are still some significant issues with it, but I think I've resolved the worst of them and the pose and proportions feel at least a little more natural now.

I hope to continue this at some point, though maybe not right away. And I hope to make a project like this a regular thing on the weekends when I have the time to devote to it.

All in all an exciting week of art, and there's plenty more to come.

Week 8, Day 55

This week has been a real roller-coaster of emotions. Last week I was flying high with confidence after one of the best weeks I've ever had, at least mentally. But a seed of doubt crept in immediately following and I've been fighting against it ever since.

Part of that was stoked by the fact that I attempted to make some significant changes to my process this week. Specifically I attempted to switch from a pencil tool to an inking pen tool in Sketchbook Pro. This is similar in nature to Painter's Scratchboard Tool. It's a brush that I've seen many artists do amazing things with, but it's execution requires a level of confidence that I still lack. Possibly because I don't use it that often, but possibly for other reasons as well.

And I know that there's at least some truth to the idea that if I had simply said "I'm going to work with this until I get it," and acknowledged that my work would probably really suck for a while, I would be willing to bet that within a few weeks (maybe even less) I would be drawing with the inking pen like it was nothing.

But doubt had crept in, my confidence was shattered, and the trials of the inking pen were the straw that broke the camels back. It was too much and early on in the week I was plunged into one of the deepest times of depression and doubt that I've had in a long time. Even though I didn't really notice it until later. I think on more than one occasion I said something along the lines of "Yeah, I'm struggling, but I've had worse." And while that's probably true, looking back I realize just how hard it really way.

My confidence still hasn't fully returned. Doubt still sits, unshakable, in my mind. There are important questions that I need answers to. But I had a major, yet perhaps somewhat obvious, revelation a few days ago. It's about will, not about skill.

I will probably never be a great artist. I can only hope to be good enough. But the issues I'm struggling with are not issues of "I can't do it." because I totally can. The issues I face are ultimately "Do I want to do it?" The fact of the matter is that I have never pursued art for art's sake. This is something that I realized a couple of years ago. Art for me is a means to an end. Don't get me wrong, I love art. I love virtually all aspects of it. Even the parts that I really dislike I still actually kind of like. But if you take away everything else and just leave behind art, I probably wouldn't actually want to do it.

For me it's about stories. I'm a visual thinking and a storyteller. So it has always felt like the two should go hand in hand. But I don't know anymore.

So the question is this: is art the medium through which I can happily explore the stories I want to tell? Or is there something else that I would be better suited to exploring.

So with it's ups and downs this week I struggled to get a lot of art actually done. One of them is that I only managed a couple of artist studies. The failed attempt with the inking tool is "Sister of Gold" by Manda Schank. It's followed by "Raul Moreno 05" (I couldn't find any other title) by Raul Moreno, and "Illustrations by Ricardo Bessa" (again couldn't find an actual title) by Ricardo Bessa.

Aside from that first one I felt like the other two went pretty well. In particular the boxer by Raul Moreno, an image which I've been looking at for probably a couple of years, and seem to have seen for the first time while studying it. It's all the more impressive to me now.

Continueing with my Bridgmen studies, still working on hands. Interestingly these actually seemed to turn out mostly okay with the inking tool. My own study from reference (top right) not so much.

Quick sketches this week. Lots of ups and downs. Struggled a lot even after switching back to my pencil tool. But had one or two good days. Also, I'm working hard to actually get back to the spirit of the "quick" sketch. At times I get so wrapped up in these that I spend the whole 30 minutes on one image and that's not the point.

I think pushing myself to work faster in this is actually a good thing. It forces me to make decisions on the fly and move on and gets me out of that head space where everything has to be "perfect."

Finally, I took one day to do some gesture work. Trying a different technique and attempting to stay using the same brush the whole time. Moderate success, though I need to get a little better about thinking through things as I go. The speed pressure in this case makes me just want to desperately make lines at random and hope for he best, but that virtually never works out. Gotta take even a few seconds and try to think about what I'm doing before I do it. I think they'll be better for it.

It's not about skill. I may not ever be the greatest, but I know I can learn. I'm a fast learner and the more I apply myself the faster I'll get better. But there's a lot I have to work through that has nothing to do with technical ability. Fortunately I've got this nice theraputic blog to dump all my thoughts and insecurities into each week so they don't get all bottled up inside.

I know I'll figure things out.

More to come.

Week 9, Day 62

This has been a week of upheaval. Not artistically. In terms of art my mental state is actually pretty solid. But in the direction my day to day life has been going for at least two and a half years, maybe more, there's been just about as big a change as is possible. There are a few things that could be bigger, stopping art altogether being one of them, but not many.

I guess I'll just have to see where life takes me from here, because right now I don't have any idea.

But, as I said, art is pretty solid. I feel pretty good about what I've been able to accomplish this week.

This weeks gesture work is kind of a mess. Maybe a little better than last weeks, but still struggling. The loose, confident lines that I'm trying to move towards are so far eluding me when it comes to gesture, though I feel certain that it's only a matter of time. I aslo feel like I started to get the hang of it, at least a little bit, with some of the last ones I did. Though they were a minimum of two minutes each and five minutes for the final one.

Really gotta work on cutting out everything that isn't necessary to express the gesture.

Contrary to my continued study of hands, this weeks artist studies emphasized eyes and noses. Mostly eyes. This is because I've always felt like my eyes were too flat. Like I just stamped them on the surface of the face and they have no depth to them. So I really tried to emphasize looking at how various artists simplify the details of the eye while maintaining a degree of three-dimensional form. While I've still got a ways to go I feel like I'm already seeing improvement in my work.

Starting at the top left and working your way across and down the images are C o z y by Angel Ganev, Golden Prayer by Georgi Georgiev, Dishonored 2: Aramis Stilton by Sergey Kolesov, and Lord Lawson by Joseph Weston.

One item of note. As you can see on the first three my hatcing is very simple. I'm thinking about light and dark only. But with the final image, Lord Lawson, I started trying to think about the form as I applied my hatching. Though it's fairly simple at the moment, I really feel like it's a major improvement and intend to keep attempting that from here on out.

Still studying Bridgman for hands. Feeling pretty good about most of these. Though I stopped a bit prematurely on my final render there. Ironic because I actually put more time into it than I may have otherwise done.

Finally, my quick sketching for the week. Still mostly just drawing character portraits and broadly trying to move away from neutral expressions. Still not using any reference or really doing any planning.

My intent here is all about making myself think about what I'm trying to achieve. So often in the past I've just wanted to sit down and draw without planning, but I tend to mistake a lack of planning with a lack of intent or specific thought while drawing. I seemed to have this expectation that images I liked could just flow from my pencil (or what have you) and onto the page. Thinking about specific characters, who they are, what they may be feeling, what I want the audience to see, is all helping me really explore my ideas visually.

It's also turning out to be quite fun to just sit and noodle around with details and try to figure out how to make something work even when I don't really know what it looks like. This is no replacement for reference if I'm trying to capture something specific that I don't actually know how to draw, but it's a fun exercise when I'm just sketching.

So that's it for this update. The big life changes may mean a big change in the way I approach art. I don't know what things are going to look like moving forward, all I can say is that there's more to come.