" Judge each day not by the harvest you reap but by the seeds you plant." -Robert Louis Stevenson
I have horrible grasp on clean crisp lines, my tasteless colors comes from instinct and untrained eyes and my general approach to my paintings was all learned from mistakes. Happy mistakes. And I finally thought, that if I make more mistakes, more than what I usually do, then I can learn faster. So this means I have to bear in sucking up in art everyday, and this is the horrible truth of it.
I never remember anything from winning from competitions, it was more from losing. Perhaps it was the frustration that kept me going. That negative energy made me push harder every time. I'm not saying that I have great art, but I pursue it. My art is not as good as I want it to be, I am way far, but I am surprised that despite the frustration, and the agony of laboring countless hours in perfecting and learning the craft, I am actually moving.
This is my third year now as an artist, both practicing and commercial. I never really learned anything concrete with my art school(graphic arts[advertising]), perhaps because it was far from what I'm practicing now. So everyday while I work, I also practice to fill the learning gaps. I taught myself because there's no other way.
On a regular day for a regular freelancer like me, juggling practice and work is really hard. It takes some serious gut training to get over it, in fact I am still struggling over it now. So now that I made up my mind to make as much possible time to catch up, I finally agreed with myself that I am going an all out on a training spree until 2013. It is a choice I made.
While I worked months ago on my first full time work for a gaming company, I specifically marked my weaknesses, things that I do not understand, and things that I want to improve and learn while I was still there. Basically, I revisited what I can do, the limits of my ability, my comfort zones and my weak parts. I wanted to improve, but I cannot do that while I use the same methodology I doubt. Perhaps it works for others, but it doesn't to me, not any longer. I suffered the consequences of not dissecting the method, not fully understanding the theories that makes a piece a good art. It felt everything was forced, I was dragging myself, and no matter how much I put effort in my work, something vital was missing, it felt that there's just something terribly wrong with it. It was because I never taught myself to look at things technically. I critique my work but that's about it. Along the way of creating art, I never knew that developing an eye for technicality was as essential as creating one.
I never intended to say any of this, but I figured that, I am only lying to myself. And the only way to break free, is to admit it. I don't have many readers reading this, so I feel quite safe. And besides I intend to record this as part of my artistic struggles. I am surprised that I am receiving quite a number of job offers from different companies I never even applied, I appreciate that a lot, knowing that they trust me and the quality of work I produce, but I had to decline and proceed with what I planned because I know what must be done. I want to give it the best I can, and by diving in, I think it will benefit not only me but my future clients and the people who appreciate my art as well. I do not want to disappoint anyone with my art. Working in doubt feels living next to mediocrity.
I had set a program which I intend to follow to cover up everything(or at least what I know) that I need to learn/enhance. It's hard to teach something one doesn't understand, and this is where my collection of books come into play. I will not be posting everything I do, but some of them for the purposes of recording will be available here. So day #1 goes by
motivating myself through impaling negative energy to the heart to attain DISCIPLINE. I figured that there's just no other way but to see the harsh truth in the industries I intend to be part of:
I am way behind.
reference used was the baby grape picture above...
So after my first three hours, I felt I sucked even more. I felt disgusted of my skill, and I felt ashamed of the product. I was already exhausted, and I fucking felt sleepy. I asked myself: is this it? Frustration grew inside, then it hit me to look at things objectively not on the art alone, but how I executed it. I remembered how I observed, and drew it. I figured a lot of errors already. I was aiming to relatively get things accurate as possible which made it even worse as I have bad pen control. So keeping that in mind I unknowingly took three cups of coffee and proceeded with a good sense of energy chanting *FUCK x3* every once in a while with a well respected tone.
The aim this time is to get likeness and behavior of light and color (without color-picker), while observing how light bounce of from one grape to another. Just like the basics.
On the fourth hour the darker hues which gave every grape a sense of boldness was placed to boost my confidence to proceed.
When confidence came in, speed followed. Four-and-a-half-hours later, highlights were intensified, light bounce and how color disperse from various angles and surfaces were taken care of based from reference and technical consideration.
Finally, to wrap things up, selective focus was applied. Also,observing that these grapes have the capability to reflect minor reflection while being semi-translucent for light to pass through and travel to another and create additional color bounce. And of course, making certain parts of it wet looking.
Comparison
(A) reference(random search from google images), (B) personal study
This thing is fucking boring, but it sure does help. Studies, as far as I remember, were not meant for
FULL-ACCURACY, it was focused more of getting to understand how things work visually. I can go further but I will miss the point of the study. I might have missed a lot of things, but today I learned to look at myself as an artist in third person, I never did that until today, and it proved to be helpful. I'm sure it will be crucial in the future as I further dissect the errors of my method, and learn new ways to refine and improve my craft. I don't know how far I can go with my list, but one thing is for sure, I will fucking do this until my hand breaks its useless bones. Godbless to me.
Some notes for starting artists
People who don't practice art, won't understand the painful process of re-interpreting the world anew. It's fucking easy. It just takes literally, millions of hours to get a good grip, and a lifelong practice to be very good at it. It does not have a single solution. Every piece is a new problem, and the solution comes from that countless hours of practice, of understanding how the visual world behaves. So no matter how I look at it, I really do not understand why people see this as some CHEAP LABOR and being not-so-technical at all. Well I can't blame people who don't practice them to understand. But if you are a thriving artist like me, you must understand that it is the beauty that people see and experience that make them spend money. Good art, as my friend would put it, is as milking cow. So invest time in your art.
AHHHHHHHHHHHH!!! FUCK!!
-Jazz
2. Research culture and timeline.
This makes design difficult, and fun at the same time. Learn and research the places and timeline that mainly influenced the fantasy genre, what they wore, how they behaved, how they look, and what makes them unique from the others. While it is nice to incorporate and mixing designs, remember that the design must represent what kind of timeline the character belongs to. Mix but be careful.
3. Establish personality and character.
One small extra line in the the shape of the mouth can totally change/alter the look of the character. So it's very important to know what kind of personality your character has. Whatever you put on the head or anything on the face, or any sort of expression will be attributed to your character. Here are a few samples, same attitude (serious knight) but remains different because of some elements used.
I realized that in the span of time we artists burn hours and hours in drawing, we turn on autopilot, and I think, this is when we are most vulnerable to mistakes. So it's important to plan ahead to have a strong sense of direction.
These three simple steps, will help you establish a systematic approach for your designs. Hopefully, it will help you, as it helped me, conserve time, be aware(research!) of design elements all around, and get a better output. While there are many other advanced design tips out there, I hope that these simple steps will help you along the way.
Happy drawing!
-Jazz Siy
