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

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.

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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.

Day 17

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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.

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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.

Day 18

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.

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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.

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.

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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.

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.

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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.

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.

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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?

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.

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.