Many face

Reflecting and progressing

You can do something a thousand times and never get better at it if you don't understand how to get better.

Whenever I have 'improved' upon something it has been by listening to my feelings / intuitions and acting upon them. Relax and 'feel' whatever it is you are doing. This has worked for me in anything, getting better at sports, learning to play instruments, writing music, learning to socialise.

I've just spent about twenty minutes going over this blog looking at all the old stuff I've done. In a way it as nice. I had forgotten about most of the things I have done and it was a pleasant reminder of the brief journey I have been on thus far. All the pain / frustration / impatience is still a memory in the pictures I have placed, and there is not so much memory for the things I have learned or improved upon.

So I realise in part I am focusing on the wrong things emotionally. I'm literally holding onto all the negative things - so much that I don't have any mental space left to remember what is I have learned or how I have improved. I know that since I started I have improved - I just don't know how.

But in my head I have devised a plan anyway. My modus operandi for art here on out is thus:

1. Spend more time on things.
2. Slow down painting, take your time and enjoy it.
3. Compare your efforts to the subject. What worked? What didn't?
4. Compare your efforts to people you admire. How did they do it? How would they do it?

I think number four will be quite a controversial item for some - the big thing in self-improvement is to be beat yourself, not the other guy. It doesn't matter where other people are at - just that you are getting better. This is obviously brilliant advice, you can't compete with people that have been doing something much longer than you have, you can only compete with what you did yesterday.

The point of number four is to study approach however. And I'd like to demonstrate how below:

There is a great subreddit where people post photographs of themselves called Reddit Gets Drawn. Artists then draw / paint / sculpt / whatever these photographs in their own interpretation, ranging in talent from beginners to seasoned pros.

I dabble every now and then and here is a recent piece.

Photo by mmmmpork

My quick interpretation

Art by user 'Sweetstreetmeat'.

The latter image is my favourite interpretation by another artist in RedditGetsDrawn, user 'Sweetstreetmeat'. As you can see their image is just phenomenal. It's what I thought my image looked like when I closed photoshop (really) - after going back and comparing the two I can't believe I left it where I did.

What don't I like about my interpretation? The colours feels cold, flat and there is no real cohesion. Rendering is minimal, and it is more paint by colours then paint by painting. On the other hand Sweetstreetmeat has terrific colour, volume and value. 

Biggest problems, rushed and didn't take my time. As a consequence the image is sloppy and doesn't hold up against something like 'Sweetstreetmeat''s image. I'm not going to study this image or mine in any further practical sense - but I'm going to keep these things in mind for my next venture. 

Skinned

Shark doodle

Focusing on skin this week, harder than I remember. 

Oh

Cowboy Sketch

Armour study

Cars

"Delivery truck" concept

Done with cars for now and focusing on armour.

Cars

Vehicle design sketch

Colour Study - 2 hours

Studying cars as it's an area that I neglect heavily. Learning vehicle perspective and the like. 

Studies ad infinitum

"Chigurh"

"Rogue" WIP

Studeez

Poor traits

Still working on this one a bit, but here's what it looks like so far. 

Stuff!

day of the dead illustration wip

gemstone pete doodle

potrait 1

portrait 2 

Komodo Dragon

Sketches

"Film Noir"

"Favourite Holiday"

Christmas Lemur

 Alternative colour scheme:

Done for an art exchange, trying out some more illustration styles. 

Random Speed Paints

100 Hands In A Week

This week I did one hundred hand studies. You can see the whole collection in full resolution here.

The Dogman

The Dogman from 'The Shining'. He is described differently in the book, but the film version looks freaky enough.

Geisha

HM

Stuff today

"insects"

"giant elemental colossus" character design challenge, early sketch:

lava study for eventual painting of above character:

More lava studies to come. And more lava skeleton thing. 

Random Stuff

theme: negative space

random owl sketch.

"Illustrate a scene from a book"

Arya underneath the red keep, from the first book in game of  thrones. This scene always stood out to me, because of how alive the castle seems. Very quick sketch, may come back to this idea. Reference used.

Thrift Shop

Trying out a new style, a thrift shop from another world.

Pan's Labyrinth Sketch

Study from a screen. Vid here

"EXPLORERS APPROACH LARGE ALIEN BUILDING SURROUNDED BY DEAD FOREST

Random topic generator.

Based off a photograph.

Zombie CHOW WIP

So the character of the week challenge this week is 'Zombie Pop Culture', basically just to take popular characters from film/tv/whatever and turn them into zombies.

I went with Daft Punk (if not obvious), not really sure if it's coming together or not at the moment.