Day 32

A lot of progress today! Still a lot of rendering to do, at least most of the base values are there and I think the image still reads well. It's not going to turn out amazing, but that's fine. I mostly look forward to reflecting upon the piece once it's done.

A few thoughts about myself as an artist popped up during painting. Before my long art break, I think I focussed too much on the traditional studies of figure drawing and did not do enough exploring into the actual art I want to create. I always felt like I wasn't ready, that you have to go through 10.000 hours of studies before you can get to the fun part. 

Guess what? I am still not ready for that "perfect" piece, far from it - But that doesn't mean that you should not do illustrations until you reach that master technical level. You also learn from illustrations themselves, all the fundamentals that you can hammer with studies are still a part of an illustration. You are not wasting study time.

If you only do studies, such as painting and drawing individual objects and animals, you miss out on so many art skills that I have only now realized existed. There is scale, lightning, mood, composition, design, an actual story and so much more. I would never even think of painting the steel you come across in concrete (I don't know what it is called in English) if it wasn't for working on this piece, for instance. 

The illustrations are also a great guide to see what you need and WANT to study.

Even IF going through mundane studies (I do enjoy them most of the time though, my comfort zone is boring studies >.<) is the quickest way to reach that masterly level of skill. Is it really that bad to take... Let's say an extra 1000 hours, for the sake of having some fun along the way?

Ahh... I wish I could go back and time and tell myself all this.