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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.