Day 61

Aaaand... done!

Gonna take a break from working on my artistic weaknesses and play around with whatever I feel like painting in the upcoming days.

Day 60

More progress on the still life today. Did the light bulb, two tomatoes and refined some more of the cloth. I am surprised by how decent it's turning out to be technical-wise. 

Day 59

Made some progress on the apple and the pot. Overall happy with how it is going :)

Day 58

More eye-straining work today. Legit felt like I was turning color-blind at times. At times dizzy as well, but I think the work paid off as I made some progress.

Tomorrow will most likely be the last day where I try to find the correct colors unless my rested eye of tomorrow will find a lot of mistakes tomorrow. Getting close to the point where I leave behind the block-in phase and make time for refining, refining and refining.

Also did a quick caricature sketch

 Day 57

Was a bit scared and unfocused today, but managed to make a decent start to the color block-in phase.

Day 56

I've been reading some war of art and I am liking it so far.

Managed to find some creative energy for a refined still life painting. This is the underlying drawing I'll be using. The next step is finding the right colors (like I've been doing with the color studies) and lastly, a full refinement.

Day 55

Bit of a late post, my sleep schedule has been a bit messed up.

Anyhow, here is another color study. I really love to paint the red and yellow colors of the lemon. The first color study had it as well and I find it such a captivating combination.

 Day 54

Back on the grind :)

I noticed that I find it difficult to find the color of a gray, such as the light bulb and grey cloth.

 Day 53

Ahh... bad news.

I didn't draw nor paint today, which means that I broke the 52-day long art streak I had going on.

The idea that has been plaguing my mind is that the effort I've been putting into art... is just not paying off, despite improving a lot. I think I am tired of the small results and started craving big results, but art is not like that. I need to restructure my goals so that even managing to make small steps feel like a real accomplishment. 

Also ordered the war of art, maybe it will give me some perspective.

Anyhow, these are my small goals for now:

1. Finish all the quick color still life studies
2. Render one of the still lives, take at least a few days for it and put your ALL into it. It would be the first time that I painted from a rough color block into an actual fully rendered piece. I have done fully rendered still lives before, but not with a structured and repeatable work process. I am hoping that it will give me some confidence in my abilities and also learn a thing or two about the rendering process from rough to fine,
3. Do a few color block in of people, animal or anything that is organic and you would want to paint in the art you truly want to make.
4. Do one fully rendered portrait painting, be extremely picky with the reference.

(Wrote this yesterday as a draft, but forgot to upload this yesterday.)

 Day 52

Took a short break from the still lives since they were becoming a bit boring and tedious to do. I will still do them, but I think a short break will enable me to have the same focus that I had when I just started doing them.

 Day 51

The return of the elephant. I can feel it becoming easier and easier the more I do these :)

I am starting to think that I may be ready to move on to the next stage and fully render them. Gonna do just a few more though, I think I want to try using this block-in technique for a portrait as well. I can't believe I have never done this before, it's so much simpler to tackle on color issues beforehand. Being a self-taught artist is a lot trickier than it may seem.

Also caught myself being scared of starting another one for some reason. A blank canvas can be so scary at times. BUT... I am also starting to think that it might be a good idea to switch it up a bit. It can't be good to only do studies.

Also had to confront for how long I have been standing still artwise while my peers at the time have moved on, since I didn't do any art for like 3 years before starting this sketchbook. I know that I shouldn't feel guilty about it and it's not like I didn't grow a lot as a person in those years, but it still stings a bit.

I've also been asking myself if I have truly been improving in the last few weeks. Have I? When I look at my work of the past few weeks I can definitely say that I learned a lot of new tools, theories, pushed my boundaries and scraped off the rust. How come these self-critical questions still pop up? I think my impatience is starting to creep up again.

I do feel pretty good at the end of the day though. Just venting for a bit and I want this blog to be an honest portrayal of my art journey, despite it lacking a few of the most important beginning years.

 Day 50

Two more, and many more to come. I am definitely getting closer and closer to the colors of the reference, but it requires me to put in a lot of time and concentration, which is weird since the end result doesn't really reflect it and I am not used to that. 

It has been valuable practice so far and good for my confidence in color. BUT... There is this fear inside me that I won't retain any information since I am just judging by eye and not by theory. This does mean that I am training my eye for color, but turning it into repeatable theory is how I am used to learning. I manage to find minor conclusions here and there about color, but is that really enough? Is it supposed to be like this? It's all so vague.

I don't know how am I supposed to feel about all this yet, but gonna stick with it since I don't feel like I am wasting my art time and am trusting in the advice of better artists that often recommend painting still lifes. I think I also simply enjoy painting them and a curiosity has grown inside of me. I am starting to wonder how my paintings will look after doing a bunch of these. 

I also put 0 pressure on myself while doing these and it's relieving after working on illustrations so intensely before this. It's kinda like an art break to me, despite doing art, as weird as it sounds.

Oh, it's day 50 already. Dang, time flies!

Day 49

I did a couple of messy still lives, with a focus on capturing the right color. Many more to come :)

Be sure to check out the videos of ctrl paint, the guy is such a great teacher.

 Day 48

Laid in the flats of the illustration

But... I think I am going to put this illustration on hold. I am just not enjoying it at all, I've been a lot less productive and I don't think that I will be learning anything from the painting phase at the same time, except for building the discipline to push through uninteresting things. The drawing phase was very valuable however, I gained confidence in my ability to draw characters from tricky perspectives and also how to fix scale issues.

I feel like I won't learn much from painting it because I don't know enough about how colors work and don't have the required references to learn by eye and trial and error. With values, I can work from imagination decently and have a sense of direction, but with colors, I will just end up doing random stuff and I am not really the type of person that likes to learn that way. I like to work based on theories and those theories either come from experts or through my own experiments and reflections.

I do love to experiment, but to combine that with an illustration that is already complex in itself is exhausting. When I experiment, I like to do quick paintings instead. Sometimes, that is only a few brushstrokes and if I want to learn by experimentation, that is the way to go for me.

Such as today! 

After coming to the realization that I really need to work on my color fundamentals, I purchased a color video series from Ctrl+paint and ended up testing out the relationships between value, hue and saturation. It's been eye-opening and will be posting a few of the findings soon. (nothing new, it's been told in the videos as well, but information sticks better when you test things out yourself and come to the same conclusion)

I will probably be doing still-lifes in the upcoming days to work on my eye for color and its relationship with value and saturation. I feel like... I will be able to learn this stuff quickly. It's probably naive of me, but oh well, not going to talk myself out of being confident in my ability to learn ;)

Day 47

Didn't do that much today, just added the figure.  All the linework is done now and it's time to start painting.

 Day 46

Didn't do anything today, just a few scribles in my sketchbook for the sake of keeping up the art habit.

 Day 45

Not really a productive day for the illustration as I was busy for a school project, but at least I could get some drawing in as I rapidly drew and animated a 3-minute long film (very sketchy, nothing too impressive) during the day. I can't upload the full thing on here and it's not that interesting artistic-wise (the main purpose of this blog), but here's a snippet.

As mentioned earlier, only worked on the illustration for a bit.

Day 44

I hate venting on here, I dislike venting in general (which is unhealthy of me), but I had another crappy day and I didn't have the energy to work. This was the only thing I managed to do, finalize the color thumbnail and a rough figure. This painting is going to end up looking absolutely terrible, but I am hoping that it will at least be a valuable learning experience.

 Day 43

Had a terrible day because of non-art-related things in my life, so I didn't really feel like working on art today. The only thing that motivated me to do a bit of work was that I don't want to break my habit of working on art daily. I've got to say, it's really difficult to work on art when you have other things on your mind.

I mostly did color studies and made two color thumbnails of the illustration. One with some contrasting warm light and the the other fully embracing a blueish analogous color scheme.

The color studies:

The color thumbnails:

I still have some time left before heading to bed, I usually fill it with painting, but because of my depressive mood, I will do some art reading instead. 

Day 42

I worked on the thumbnails of the illustration today.  I mostly paid attention to the tonal values and how to lead the eye, which explains the painting frame, hockey stick and fallen off blanket. Am overall happy with those aspects of the piece now. The next steps of what I'd like to call the "sketch" phase from now on,  will probably be a color thumbnail and making a choice of how much I want to show of the person in the frame and where the person should be compositionally speaking, but also for the story's sake. That aspect feels a bit off, as it's just a head right now.

I am also tempted to already think about all the objects in the room, but I will not do that yet because I have often heard about the advice of adding details later and getting the bigger picture right first. It does make sense and I do believe the saying, but I have to keep myself in check as adding details can be fun.

I also laid out the first perspective grid. The vertical perspective was a bit too extreme at the start, so I lessened it a bit in the second one.

Also did a little bit of thinking about how you can create contrast. Tested none of them out with studies, just thinking out loud. These are the ones I could come up with:

1. Value contrast (Lights will pop more in a dark setting, the producers of S2E1 of Witcher did this wonderfully throughout the episode)
2. Color contrast (The classic blue vs orange)
3. Saturation contrast (Vibrant colors will pop more if everything is greyed out around it)
4. Conceptual contrast (If the whole scene is set in a medieval setting, but a character wears sci-fi armor, the fella will stand out)
5. Directional contrast (If pretty much everything goes toward one direction, the lines that go into the opposite direction should create a little contrast)
6. Scale contrast (If pretty much everything is small, the large parts will probably stand out)
7. Shape contrast (If pretty much everything is round, the sharper parts will probably stand out)

 Day 41

Designed the character of the illustration I will be working on in the upcomming days. Pretty happy with how he looks. In the illustration's pose, he will be very twisted and about a head taller than your regular door. I have a pretty clear idea with the elements of the piece, but still have to do a couple of composition thumbnails that I'll be posting as well.

 

Day 40

I mostly wrote and sketched out my ideas in my sketchbook for a horror illustration I want to work on today. I didn't take any photos of it and it's very messy, but I might upload it when the piece is finished since I find it fun and helpful to see my process in a clear way.

I did do some painting in order to keep up the daily art habit, so I did a rough painting from imagination with a focus on lightning.

I also did a study in order to see how the proportion of the body changes when somebody is taller than your regular joe. My conclusion boils down to the legs becoming significantly longer.

 Day 39

More figure and rendering practice. Overall, pretty happy! The figures started out very sloppy, but I eventually found my footing and even found the confidence to render one fully. The rendering went pretty good as well, but of course, there are always things that could be improved upon:

• I don't think the big shadow shape at his tummy reads well. Is it a big wound? A cast shadow? It's hard to tell, right?
• I was unsure of how the anatomy works at the hips
• I should've had a clearer terminator throughout the figure. It only reads well at the arm.
• The cast shadow of the whole figure was done so... lazily.
• There is supposed to be a bit of rim light at the back of the torso. but it isn't very clear to see.

 Day 38

Applied dynamic lighting to a couple of figures. I am pretty happy with my ability in applying light now when I have a clear idea of the form, but I feel like my anatomy knowledge is quite bad right now and the skin looks too metallic. I am not sure if it looks metallic because I applied the lightning so heavily (thus indicating that the material is quite reflective) or because I didn't pay any attention to the tonal range of skin (don't know much about it and am just approaching it without a clear direction).

I should probably work on my anatomy knowledge and keep doing value studies. Maybe actually color the skin in, that's probably the reason why it looks so metallic in hindsight >.<

Day 37

Bit of an off-day and didn't do a lot. I just didn't feel like putting in any effort today for some reason. I did play around a bit with dynamic lightning and it's pretty insane how quickly you can get results from it. 

 Day 36

Colored in the fella, it was fun to use bright colors for once. Also found it cool to learn about the contrast that a difference in saturation creates. Little specks of color can also do wonders when it's a big piece. Gained some confidence in working with unnatural color light sources.

For my next piece I want to implement these new ideas. A low saturated object, with strong and colored lighting. I watched a couple of videos about how the blending modes color dodge and linear dodge can help in achieving that dynamic lighting and I want to train my ability in it.

Will probably also not do fanart in the same style as a different artist for a while, it feels... wrong? Maybe it feels wrong because I am not calling it a study and I feel like some kind of imposter. I feel a lot better once I call it a study instead of a painting.

 Day 35

Wew... Almost forgot to upload today.

I did a study of the art used in hades and applied it to a couple of paintings. I'll colour in the boxer in tomorrow's post. These were SO fun to do.