May 1, 2012

Finding Balance

So, I know exactly what you’re all wondering. How did that getting up at 5AM every morning go? Well, let’s see. Pros and cons.

Pros: I got a lot of extra drawing time in. I figure 45+ hours on figure drawing alone. That’s some good stuff. And it got me a whole lot more comfortable with figure drawing. For example, here’s some one-minute poses from the first of the month and another page of them from the 30th:

 

 

You can see there’s a lot less sketchyness and a lot more bulk and mass. Most of figure drawing is knowing the figure so well you can just whip it out with a lot of confidence, and therefore get your own expression and opinion out there without getting tangled up in proportions and limbs. To do so, you just have to draw it over and over and over and over again. I’ve been using Posemaniac’s app for my gestures (which really needs improvement, but the iPad is great to draw from) and though the figures are low on realistic accuracy and detail, they come in hundreds of variations from all different angles. Throughout the month I interspersed some longer poses with the short ones, working from photographs of figure models, and now and then Sweet Bart. Sweet Bart proved very challenging. Not only is he, well, articulated, but he doesn’t stand “naturally” and I’m looking rather down on him most of the time, too. So he tends not to have a very realistic nature in a true drawing of him, though he is fabulous for planning realistic lighting. Anyway, at the first of the month I could hardly handle him, but by the last I kind of got him down:

(Yes, I write notes to myself – like “BAD” there – on my sketches all the time.)

Those stolen hours also gave me time to work on my current master-copy of Caravaggio’s The Conversion of Saint Paul on the Road to Damascus, which I finally finished last week. I used a 6B pencil throughout and really missed the sharpness of my mechanical, even though it covered faster. I’ll probably go back to the mechanical next time around, but also probably choose a picture with a lot less shadow! I’m thinking about a certain lady’s portrait, but I have to look up the details. Anyway, here is Saint Paul:

 

 

I also used the time to do that really difficult drawing stuff for commission work. I got one painting done (drawing early and then painting later on) and two drawings set up to be finished in the coming weeks:

 

 

 

The first of those, that lovely lady in the chair, will be a full painting. The second is going to be colored lineart, which is why it looks so sketchy now, as I have to do the lineart thing with it.

I *really* wanted to get some long-term projects done in April, too, but that’s where the drawbacks of getting up at 5AM come in. Those first two and a half hours were fantastic, and I would take a short walk after and be all ready for the day. And then I would get tired. Not just tired, but *exhausted* tired. Like I just want to close my eyes and sleep right now right here tired. I was getting to bed by 11 most nights but that simply wouldn’t do. As the weeks went by I started falling asleep while drawing at 6 or 6:30AM. I would totally lose concentration in the afternoon. And even after a nap, I was so tired in the evening one night I stuck my finger in an immersion blender while cleaning it and turned it on.

THAT hurt.

Cooking is a major hobby of mine and I spend a lot of time around sharp things. I don’t usually mutilate my digits, ever. (It’s okay now, but was a very *scary* and traumatic injury.) Although it was kind of therapeutic to be drowsy all the time – I was *very* relaxed – the loss of focus in the afternoon hours was honestly a little debilitating. The two pieces I’ve been working on I got closer to finished, but not quite. So you all will just have to wait a little longer for Snow White and the Zombie. ;)

Anyway, I got up at 5AM for more or less thirty days. There were two days over the past weekend I slept in because I was feeling sick, and maybe two or three where I went back to bed around 6 and slept for an hour. But most days I was up and going. And I did learn that I really *am* a morning person, like I’ve always wanted to be. That’s a great thing that I definitely want to keep up. Once I got it sorted out, my schedule worked really well. I loved getting done with work early and having time in the evening to exercise and relax and cook and stuff. So getting up and scheduling = good things. Sleep deprivation, not so good.

So this month I’m pushing wake-up time to 6AM, trying to keep a steady sleep-time at 11PM, and working more with scheduling and todo lists to keep myself using the time I have the best I can. Lifehacker has some great advice for productivity, much of it not as extreme as getting up at 5AM. Hopefully I can put two and two together and do even MORE.

MOAR.

 

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April 2, 2012

Stealing Hours

I’m going to have WordPress post this on Monday for me though I’m writing it on Sunday, because it’s not an April Fool’s Day joke. REALLY. It’s not!

I’ve decided to start getting up at 5AM.

WHAT???

March passed by way too fast for me.  And my schedule, which had been working for months, fell apart. Partly because I had work I really wanted to get done and I made the decision to just work on it and get it done. For anyone who follows me on various social networks, you probably noticed the decline of daily posts of portraits and so forth. It was all sacrificed for progress, really!

OR WAS IT??

Well, I did this pastel, another doggie for the same client as Seamus. I’m really getting to enjoy pastels again – they are so much like painting, but without all the hassle of paint.

 

That brindle coat was a little difficult to do with pastels, but came through allright in the end!  Also, I absolutely love paws.

The other piece I finished was another World of Warcraft fanart commission. I keep pushing these more and more because I’d like to use them to build my portfolio.  This one was insanely detailed, but it was fun to stretch my still-life object-rendering skills.

 

 

 

I have no idea how many hours went into that, and that’s part of the problem!  My workflow has gotten seriously disjointed and drawn out lately.  I think it’s something just about every creative person working in their home has to deal with: there’s so many distractions, it’s so easy to “cheat”; and even when you have something you really want to focus on your brain just seems fried by simply pushing it to focus so consistently through all the distractions.

I had the house to myself a few days last week, so I took the opportunity for a little mini-retreat productivity-analysis time. With the daily routine thrown out the window, I first totally relaxed and wound down, realizing how stressed out I had gotten from my rigid schedule. No matter how well-meaning a schedule is, if you’re totally worn out its not going to help much. I can set aside a specific three hours to work on a specific project, but it still could mean looking at lolcats every five minutes. And that doesn’t get much of anything done!

So I ended up spending a day studying productivity at various websites. The two big things I learned? Do what’s best for yourself, and be bold experimenting with what might end up being best for yourself. But you have to try. You have to do things, change things – sometimes drastically – in order to get the results needed for personal success. It doesn’t matter if you’re learning to be an artist or trying to live healthier or just want to be more relaxed and have less stress in your life. You have to be brazen, and you have to try.

In my notes, I wrote down “BRAZEN” in big capital letters. I like that word. It feels like it could kick some ass.

Sometimes you need a little ass-kicking.

I have always had a reputation for being a late-sleeping night owl. When I was younger I’d regularly stay up until 3, and 4 was sometimes a possibility. I did a lot of writing and drawing late at night, or just relaxing and watching TV or movies or playing video games. And I’d sleep until 9 or 10, if I could. I definitely would on the weekends! School, of course, always put a crimp in my style, and once I really started working – especially painting and needing daylight to paint in – I gradually pushed my wake-up time back farther and farther. I’ve been strict with myself since November or so and have been rising at 7:30 throughout the week. It’s helped me get a ton more done, but not quite enough.

My saving grace is an odd old memory I have going back to when I was in middle school. I can’t quite pinpoint the age or the year, but it was around the time “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” was a top 10 hit. Oh, come on now, let’s all sing along:

 

 

I remember so well waking up to this song piping out of my little alarm clock at 6AM. Either “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” or Kylie Minogue’s “The Loco-Motion”. Looking at Wikipedia, it must’ve been 1988 or 1989. So I was… ten. Wow.

That probably explains why I have such positive memories of waking up in the cold dark morning to these silly songs. Maybe I was excited about fifth grade. Maybe I’d just gotten an alarm clock of my own. Maybe I just liked the songs (I still love pop songs!) But that positive memory comes back to me now and then, and I’ve always wondered if it’s possible to enjoy the early morning hours like I once did.

Well, I could set an alarm for 5AM with some of my favorite music. Which I did.

And then I stole two and a half hours out of the night.

I get up at five, get a cup of tea and a bowl of yogurt and granola, and sit down and start to draw. My brain is apparently okay with this, and, in fact, in my past two days of testing has thought it a pretty great idea. It loves listening to my favorite songs and drawing. The rest of me just follows along. And it’s so perfectly quiet and still and isolated, and my only distraction is the two cats who are convinced my being awake must mean food is due momentarily. I’m sure after a while they’ll calm down about that. I hope.

These precious two and a half hours are being sanctioned for DIFFICULT work. Every artist has a different process, but I find there’s two stages to any drawing or painting: Stage One, the composition and drawing and rough draft, and Stage Two, the rendering and polishing. Stage One can be insanely difficult. I want to kill people who interrupt me when I’m doing Stage One work. But once that rough draft is down, I’m happy to pick at it off and on throughout the day and get it done in sections.

5AM is Stage One time. It’s also learning and studying and practice drawing and painting time. It’s not for the tedious finishing work, but the difficult starting work. And it’s such a perfect time for it. My brain just keeps telling me “Thank you.” And I think in that mindset I will take roughs farther which will make finishing less tedious and more straightforward.

Getting that done, I can take the rest of the day much more easily, working on finishing a picture throughout the rest of the day while still having time to do other things without feeling totally bound to a rigid schedule. I do have to take a nap and have set aside time for that, the same mid-afternoon hours that I usually feel sleepy during anyway. So when I’m tired, I sleep. Then I wake up and do some more.

I have no idea if it will continue to work and totally revolutionize my process and productivity. I know the getting up early thing has worked for a large number of creative types and really does make a lot of sense. Putting tasks down on my calendar this week, I was blown away by what seemed possible. We’ll see how it works, for better or for worse. At least it’s trying something new instead of continuing to wear myself down with what I was doing!

It’s not always practical to steal hours from the night, but they are there for the taking. And there really is something… sanctified about those hours before dawn. Something so still and close and isolated. I think I had missed them, in a way, and certainly, being designated “not a morning person” for so long I never thought I could steal them back.

Things can always change.

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March 1, 2012

One Springtime, ASAP

Before I get into anything else, I want to announce I HAVE A TUMBLR. Like all the cool kids! I’ll be updating it daily with in-progress work and sketches and ideas and art stuff and things, so if you want to follow along with things, come check it out!

You know a month has passed quickly when you have to look up in your files what you did in the past 30 days. Or 29 as the case may be. February was kind of a tough month around here.  Around the second week I finally succumbed to a gathering sinus infection and spent the rest of the month on antibiotics and slowly getting better. It wasn’t much fun.

Working on art while in a fog of sickness and side-effects is always interesting. I always look back and wonder what the work would have been like if I had felt differently at the time; same goes for drawings or paintings where I’m emotionally upset or distracted. But because every day is so vital to getting stuff done, I can’t take a week off or anything, so it gets created as it gets created. I’d like to think that’s what makes art unique and special, anyway, the state of the artist at the time of its creation. It’s all such a human act.

I was mostly at the easel throughout February (or at the wall, as the easel wasn’t big enough!) I got to do a pet-portrait commission, which is always refreshing and fun for me.  This is Seamus, who ended up being drawn in pastels.

 

Every time I passed this drawing I would say, “Awww, puppy!” to it.  I really enjoyed working with the pastels, too. I’ll have to try a cat sometime. I’ve been planning to painting my cat Bruce for some time, and even prepped a canvas for it, but the pastels are very tempting!

The other big drawing I did was the last in a long set of commissions for a personal trainer’s gym.  He had first mentioned the idea to me in October, of a Christ-like figure except fitting in with the fitness/exercise theme, and at first I was really stumped how it would ever actually come together.  Though his ideas and reference photos, though, and through a lot of anatomy and pose-studies of my own, we finally got together a drawing I’m very proud of. It’s actually the biggest drawing I’ve ever done, the paper measuring something like 42″x48″, and the figure itself 3 feet tall. I had to work on it taped to the wall, and did the top half standing up, the middle seated, and the bottom kneeling on the floor!

 

I was especially happy with how the head/portrait came out. Being that I was drawing this while really pretty sick, it was one place where I could lose myself and step away from feeling miserable. That out-of-body sense you get while drawing is real relief sometimes. I think that kind of came through in the  head especially.

 

 

Along with those two big projects, I did a whole lot of “little” drawings and sketches and things throughout the month.  One was my second master-copy of the year, of Vermeer’s The Milkmaid. I love Vermeer, but his little details got to me a little working on an 8″x10″ pencil drawing.

 

 

I also kept up with my idea last month of doing a 30-minute portrait every day, and I’ve done 28 by now. It’s been a really great learning experience, though I’m STILL not where I want to be with it!  I’ve been adjusting so many different things, from how much I shade to my line work, to what details I choose to draw, to trying to get better likenesses.  In the silent way that drawing every day effects you, I *have* found myself drawing faster and more accurately, even if I’m not totally satisfied with my portrait drawing yet.  I’m not even sure if anyone else can tell a difference between Day 14 and Day 23, though I can certainly feel a difference in how I approach each drawing and how it feels to complete it.

 

 

Another thing that took up a lot of art time in February was this 30-day drawing challenge I decided to take part in. I usually find these kinds of things rather silly, but while I was sick and lethargic it really helped to have a prompt just to get me to do something. It ended up giving me even more sketching practice and some really good digital painting practice, too.  It was also pretty exhausting.  I happened across a new one today and thought about it, but then was like, Oh heck no, Di, you got way too much other stuff to do!

I was really happy with a few of the simple little pictures I did, though.

 

 

 

March has brought me back to the computer, with a lineup of digital painting commissions to get to. Some are World of Warcraft fanart, some are original, one is actually Disney-inspired, which is a whole new thing for me! I sometimes feel odd about how varied my artwork is – doing big figurative charcoals one day then digital game art the next – but at the same time the variation allows for a lot of fresh takes on things. It’s sort of like how right now I’m sick of winter and can’t wait for spring, and in August or September I’ll be sick of summer and can’t wait for winter. I don’t ever get “sick of” working in any medium, but it really is refreshing to step from one to another (and eventually get *all* the charcoal dust cleaned off the floor and furniture!)

As far as exercises go in March, I’ll be doing a master copy of Caravaggio’s The Conversion of Saint Paul which is one of my all-time favorite paintings. Beautiful figures, beautiful lighting, and a HORSE (and art, I have heard, is paintings of horses.) I’m going to keep up the daily 30-minute portraits, but I’m also adding in some cast drawing from life, as there’s nothing like drawing light and shadow from life. I’m also hoping to get some neat little figure models for reference soon, which I’ll probably work into my kind-of-neglected Loomis studies or possibly just do them on their own.

All that stuff, and in-progress work and finished stuff, will be posted on my Tumblr as I do it, so feel free to watch along. Tumblr also updates to my Twitter and my Facebook page so I’m all super-networked now!  I’ve also been keeping my DeviantArt pretty updated (people seem to like the 30-minute portraits) but G+ has been getting neglected. I wish Google would get on the bandwagon with the others so I could just update EVERYTHING from Tumblr. Oh! The networking! The stuff!

What I really hope for in the next month or two, actually, is to get enough really good digital paintings and things together to have a solid portfolio to share at some of the more professional artists’ sites. That, and I’d really like to lose about 10 more pounds.

And see green grass again. Green grass! Please!

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February 1, 2012

Milestones

The nice thing about milestones is that they don’t indicate any kind of ending, but rather a mark along the way to a destination.  So nothing here is finished, but simply one state has passed on to another.

A while back I saw this (taken with a grain of salt humorous) graph made up about what it’s like to be an artist.

 

 

I couldn’t appreciate stage 1-3 because I started out working with realism and not cartoons, but the gist of it I can understand quite well.  Especially the constant cycle of studying, assimilating, producing, and becoming dissatisfied. That frustration and dissatisfaction can be intense. I hit that mid-January with the Star Wars-themed fanart commission “Lucida”.

 

 

I was really excited about this piece as I worked on it.  The perspective, the composition, the figure, everything.  But when it finally came together at the end, I felt let down. I couldn’t put my finger on why, exactly. It was all “good”.  I asked for feedback here and there and the tweaks were minor. It just wasn’t where I wanted it to be or exactly what I wanted it to be. I’m still not sure why, though I think it’s a successful and very cool piece nevertheless.

I went into my next fanart commission with this intense desire to get right what I didn’t quite get in the last one. I wasn’t even sure what those things were. Maybe I just thought a little more, or got lucky, or something finally clicked into place. At any rate, I was FINALLY happy with a total picture.  Well, 98% happy. I wasn’t happy with her head. But everything else – the colors, the setting, the lighting – I was just thrilled with. And that doesn’t happen for me very often at all.

 

So I went from total frustration to total elation within about a week and a half. It was a milestone. And a huge burst in confidence, just to know that at least once – just once! – I was able to get a character in an environment and make it feel “real”.  Now the mark is that high – and beyond – for every subsequent piece I create.

Very refreshing after two intensive digital paintings, I finished part 3 of my current drawing commission and remodeled da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man for a personal trainer. I don’t know about anyone else, but even approaching copying a da Vinci is incredibly intimidating for me. I spent one whole day just figuring out the geometry of the proportions until I really understood it.  And I did so many studies that I think I finally know what a leg is shaped like now, thank goodness.  Four legs every time!  What was Leo thinking??

As much as I liked how this turned out (especially using the pastel dust from my pencils on the edges) I was unhappy with his head, too!

 

 

I followed through on one of my new year’s plans and got my first master-copy finished, of Pierre-Paul Prud’hon’s gorgeous Empress Josephine.  The actual painting is one of those huge, wall-covering things, so taming it down to an 8″x10″ or so, and rendering it in pencil, was a bit of a challenge. I ended up working on it over 18 sessions, usually between 30 and 50 minutes at a time, carefully drawing it out then filling it in with my tiny .05mm lead.  It took 12 hours all together, which doesn’t seem very long now that I think about it.

 

 

I really enjoyed it and already have the next one picked out and taped up to start tomorrow – Vermeer’s “The Milkmaid.”   I chose something a little simpler because February is a short month!

Josephine’s head gave me a little trouble, too (sense a theme here?) so I’ve added another exercise to my daily stuff (still working on Loomis, though it’s tedious) drawing a random portrait in 30 minutes every day. It took me 4 or 5 to figure out how much time I needed to get a good block-in, and how much time I should limit myself to in order to get an expressive finish.  I’m hoping by repeating the same steps with different faces every day I’ll get a handle on the basic planes that make everyone’s face, and also the relationship of the head to the neck and the neck to the body. I’ve had trouble attaching heads to bodies for years, and I’m tired of it!

I’d love to work in another exercise drawing standing figures to help with some issues I’m having regarding balance and weight of said figures, but the schedule is getting a little full, and I do have work to do!

This month I’ll be starting a new private commission that’s very unique (more info to come) as well as drawing THE LARGEST DRAWING I HAVE EVER DRAWN. I’m not even sure how big it will be yet. But it will be very, very big.

Also! That standing desk thing has gone very well. I got used to working at the computer with it without much trouble, and I tend to move around A LOT. So it’s not just standing there while my feet get sore.  I’ve got a folded-up yoga mat to stand on for that, but I’ve found most of the time I’m moving enough my slippers keep my feet pretty happy.  If I really need to concentrate and hone in on something with great care, I’ll sit on a stool. The stool also comes in handy for evenings playing WoW or Star Wars: TOR, especially when I get sleepy. The only drawback I’ve found is that I can’t flop down to play PC games when I’m headachy or really tired because it’s just too unpleasant to stand or sit on the stool. Not a bad thing, really, as it’s more helpful for the headache to watch a movie or something.

The BONUS has been that I’ve dropped 5 pounds in January without too much struggle, which is fantastic for me. I’m exercising and watching what I eat, too, but it’s never quite been so easy!  Hopefully it’ll all keep up for the next month!

STAY TUNED.

 

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January 2, 2012

Unresolved

I learned a couple years ago that New Year’s resolutions don’t work for me. I have a tendency to “think big.”  While thinking big and having extraordinary ideas is very motivating in the *long term* (as in unending measures of time, constantly hypothesizing what could be and working towards it,) thinking big is not necessarily something you want to plan your life around.

What works for me instead is simply taking New Year’s as an opportunity to subtly shift some behavior or process into new territory. Like last year, I took my website – which I’d had for a while – and redid the whole thing. Sadly all that worked ended up trashed when I redid it this summer, but sometimes that’s how it goes!  This year I grasped three opportunities for some positive change and gave myself the January 2nd deadline on which to begin them (because we all know the 1st is a holiday.)

This Christmas I got two fantastic books as gifts, one from my mother – a massive book of all the paintings in the Louvre – and another as a gift to myself – a reprint of Andrew Loomis’ fabulous Figure Drawing for All It’s Worth. When I saw the Loomis book on Amazon I made happy little noises and jumped around a little.  When I actually held it in my hands I could have cried.  I had been gradually printing up the PDF in low-quality grayscale (and doing my Structure of Man drawings on the back,) so to page through every illustration and essay was just a beautiful thing.

The Louvre book spent a couple hours in my lap on Christmas morning. I only wish the pictures were bigger. But there are so many, and each one so inspiring.

I finished up my second Structure of Man course before the holidays, so these books ushered in the chance to do something new. I’ve been meaning to do some master copies for a while, so the book of Louvre paintings is going to supply some masters’ work for me. I’m going to split my daily practice time between copying masterworks (in pencil, to start) and spending time reading and drawing along with Mister Loomis. Both will test and develop my figure drawing skill as it stands, and hopefully guide me further in both technique  and polishing my own style.

The third thing is the biggest change and the most intimidating.  The night before New Year’s Eve someone on Facebook mentioned having ordered a GeekDesk adjustable-height desk, and it got me to thinking about it myself again. As anyone with a job that ties them to a desk or computer can relate, it can get pretty frustrating (not to mention painful!) being tied to a chair all day.  Not that long ago, too, that study came out that said even if you exercise daily, if you’re sitting for more than 4 hours a day or so you’re still screwed.  This didn’t come as good news to me.  I’ve been trying desperately to stay in decent shape for years now, and reading that, and knowing how long I have to be seated at a desk in order to get a drawing or painting done, I thought I was pretty much DOOMED.

But the there’s the idea of the standing desk. I don’t have the funds for something new, but I did recall that my old drawing table (a gift from my dad on my 16h birthday, long ago) could be fixed at that height. So I spent New Year’s Eve moving furniture around.  I took out my current computer desk and went from this:

To this:

 

I felt very lucky I was actually able to arrange everything in new places (even found an old shelf for my beer-bottle collection!) and as usual tried to make sense of the mangle of wires that inevitably come to inhabit the backsides of desks. (The wires are covered with the paper screen to prevent my cat from nomming them as if they were a delicious buffet.) I made the mat to stand on from some laminate-flooring underlayment I’d saved, but I hope to get a proper anti-fatigue mat soon. The keyboard and tablet have to be moved to use one or the other, but it’s really not a big deal to switch their places.

The first night I had it together I STOOD and played Star Wars: The Old Republic for about three hours.  Three hours during which I moved around, danced a little, stood on my tip-toes, and so forth – three hours I would have spent sitting in a chair.  It’s one thing to be tied to a chair for work, but quite another when your main hobby also ties you to a chair.  I haven’t added up all the hours sitting I’ll be trading in for standing, but it has gotta be… quite a lot.

Yes, my feet got sore.  Yes, my legs were sore when I got up the next day. But hey, that shows it’s WORKING.

The even bigger benefit is that I prefer to draw and paint standing up.  I love to work at an easel, and always imagined having a big Cintiq on some kind of wall-mount that would replicate that. Of course I probably won’t be getting a wall-mounted Cintiq any time soon, but this will definitely be a step towards that. Drawing standing up, it’s easier to step back and see work from another viewpoint (I always like to step back about four or five feet and tilt my head upside-down) and it’s also easier to draw from the shoulder for more expression and looser block-ins. I haven’t tried drawing or painting at the desk yet, but I’ve got something lined up to start tomorrow and I’m very curious how it will work out.

Despite the sore feet.

So those are my unresolved plans for 2012.  I have no idea where they will take me. If I lose 5 lbs. standing at the desk I will be happy.  If my art gets closer to where I want it with Loomis and some master-copies, I’ll be even happier. The important thing is simply moving forward, a little better than before.

Many wishes for happy new years, little changes, and small triumphs for everyone out there.

 

 

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December 28, 2011

Why I Love Private Commissions

When you’re an artist, there’s really only three motivations for producing art:  You can create for yourself, drawing and painting the pictures you want to see, or those you want to apply to a personal project either of your own or shared with friends; you can create for a larger purpose, whether a business or an IP or an idea shared by many; and you can create what someone else would like drawn or painted, someone else’s idea that they can’t realize the way you can, so they ask you to do it for them.

Every piece of art has its own purpose and is loved for that alone, but there’s something that really gets to me about that last sort, private commissions. The excitement that comes through the initial request, the challenge of creating something to someone else’s standards, and then the often amazing gratitude expressed at the final product. It’s a very personal exchange, to be entrusted with someone else’s vision, and I never quite get over that dash of humility and “Aw, gee, shucks,” at being able to create a picture for someone. I guess it’s something I too often take for granted myself.

 

 

I’ve been asked to draw children and pets, cars, houses, aircraft, sailing vessels, flowers, birds, and once nothing more than a large red rose. Lately I’ve been doing a lot of fan-art commissions for World of Warcraft, and now for the new Star Wars: The Old Republic massively-multiplayer games. When I was young I played Dungeons & Dragons with my brother and tried to draw my Cavalier. It all comes from the same place, a highly imaginary realm constantly being manipulated and adapted in a thousand different forms by people all over the world. It’s such a rich place to draw from, with every idea that comes to me arriving with its own unique needs and challanges.  And there’s five reasons why I’m simply loving it.

1.) Things I Never Thought I’d Draw
It’s often said there’s nothing new under the sun and all things are derivative, and that could very well be true.  But I’m constantly amazed by the unique combinations and subtleties in each commission idea. I may have a mess of characters in my own mind, but none of them are like the characters in *yours*. Distinct looks, ethnicities, races, clothing, equipment, environments, little details – personalities – each one is different and fascinating, and brings me to look into things I’ve never thought of drawing before.

 

 

2.) The Challenge
Drawing for someone else is always a challenge in itself. I never know if my vision will line up with the client’s, and sometimes adjustments need to be made. Beyond that basic challenge, however, lies all this new stuff I need to learn how to draw. The experience built into every commission is like an entire drawing and painting class in itself. Even if I have drawn and painted most of it before, there is always some difference in lighting or presentation – or simply finding a new perspective and composition – that challenges me to develop new techniques and approaches.

3.) Practice, Practice, Practice
One of the keys to developing as an artist is to draw every day – and it sure helps to have something waiting on the drawing board to work on. Every commission I consider not only someone else’s hard-earned piece of artwork (for which they are paying me), but also a potential portfolio piece for myself.  The hours spent completing a private commission are hours spent with a pencil or stylus or brush in my hand, and every minute of that goes towards that oft-spoken-of “10,000 hours for Mastery.”  I don’t believe there’s ever such a thing as total mastery in art, but I do find my skills just a little sharper with every piece of artwork I create.

 

 

4.) The Best Motivation
The business end of a commission deal, for me, is based on trust. I always request either a large downpayment or full payment before I start to work, mostly because I’ve been burned and used too many times in the past. But as soon as someone hands me their money, I immediately feel I OWE THEM. They gave me their money; I owe them the very best piece of artwork I can produce. Every day I wake up with commissions to work on I feel that sense of debt driving me onwards. Nothing else makes me work harder, personally, than knowing someone is expecting something from me on the other end. That may be my own psychosis, but it sure works as terrific motivation!

5.) Giving a Gift
I get so excited when it comes time to show a client their finished piece. Excited, very anxious, very hopeful. Because I usually work with people along the way, I generally have a feeling they’ll be satisfied, but I never quite know how much. It utterly kills me – smites me down into a gibbering, grinning mess – when people tell me “I love it! Thank you!”

You gave me *your* idea.

You gave me *your* money.

All I did was make you a picture.

I’m well aware that not everyone has the motivation or time to learn to draw and paint (though I certainly believe they could!) I’m also well aware of the time and effort it has taken me to get the skills I have, and the further time it takes to develop a painting from beginning to end. I know these things, and yet I’m still floored by the “Thank you”.  I admit I love to make things for people and give people gifts – it’s always been a source of joy for me – but to have that become a part of my everyday work, part of my career, is amazingly fulfilling.

As much as I hope to one day work for companies and have my artwork published in books and gaming cards and so forth, I don’t think I could ever completely stop doing private commissions. It’s too personal, too practical, and too rewarding.  Help me here, Google Translate…

Mi pincel es su pincel.

My paintbrush is your paintbrush.

 

 

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November 16, 2011

Finished Commissions

If you’re not in the mood or the place to look at buff shirtless guys, skip this post until you are!

It always feels good to get a big project behind you. I’ve had a little bit of Mountain Road up on the site here before, but a bit over a week ago I finally finished. I’ve never done a picture before that took so much planning and studying. So many flowers. So many train parts.

It is a cacophony of flora. I was so pleased to see it come together as it did in the end.

 

I got another interesting commission while I was painting Mountain Road, which gave me something to work on while the paint was drying.  After seeing some of my academic charcoals up on eBay, I was contacted about doing some larger charcoals from various photo references.  There was some changing up of heads and faces and adjustment with lighting, but it was great fun to apply classic charcoal techniques to such modern models. Continue reading →

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November 10, 2011

The Structure of Man

I’ve got some projects finished (or nearly so) that I’ll be posting soon, but I want to talk about this first.

Yesterday I finished up the first two courses – 54 hours – of Riven Phoenix’s The Structure of Man figure drawing course.  If you are at all interested in drawing realistic figures – human or creature – get ye to his website, try out some of the preview lessons, and see if you’re not hooked.  This course is exactly what I’ve been searching for all my artistic life.

I’ve talked before about the difficulty I’ve had being an observational artist. I’ve spent thousands of dollars on figure drawing courses and resources, but in the end they always came down to simply copying another object in front of me or photograph or image. Over the years I’ve gotten very, very good at this copying, but it does me very little good when I want to draw a scene out of my head with no references.

No matter how many mannequins, proportion systems and little stick figures I learned, none of them helped me *really* put a figure together. Because every time I learned one, I was simply copying it out of another book or from another website. It wasn’t something I understood in my mind, so the moment I had to manipulate it, the entire thing would lose cohesion and I’d end up faltering, messing up, and eventually giving up on every drawing I tried.

It was tremendously limiting because I couldn’t just sit down and doodle the way I wanted to. I always had to have a photo reference. I always had to be looking at a picture to get the kind of quality and realism I so desired from my artwork. I envied cartoonists and those who could whip out characters from formulas. I tried to figure out a formula for a realistic human figure on my own, but it was so far beyond me.

Then one day, reading a discussion on a blog about figure drawing, someone linked Riven Phoenix’s site. I tried out the sample tutorials. I was immediately hooked. Since the end of September I’ve spent a portion of almost every day working through a handful of the 189 lessons in his first two groups of tutorials. Yesterday, when I finished, I was just amazed. I did some “after” drawings with a few old (and very rare, since I was always dissatisfied and tossing them out) drawings I’d done with no references. I’ll post them in a bit, I just want to go through what this course did first.

From the beginning, the program breaks the human figure down into basic parts and then gradually adds complexity. The trick is, you draw along with the videos. There’s nothing to copy; you draw what Riven draws as he draws it. The production is incredibly simple: a piece of paper, a hand with a pencil, and a man’s voice. No graphics, no Photoshop, no music, no distractions. You sit and you listen and you watch and you draw, working from a basic stick figure up to a fully-muscled human being.

Continue reading →

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October 14, 2011

More Mountain Road

With all the flowers painted in, Mountain Road is finally coming together.  It’s taken a lot of patience to get it here, lots of tiny dots of paint!  What’s left is a lot of detail in the greenery, some grass and little flowers spread here and there, and a few touchups and detailing I’ve left for the end. Continue reading →

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September 29, 2011

Progress on the Mountain Road

I finally got over the hump painting the locomotive for Mountain Road and figured it was due for an update here. The stone tunnel was tedious but not terribly difficult; it was organic, and colors were allowed to shift a bit, and I could be pretty loose with the stones since most of it will be covered in ivy and wisteria anyway. The locomotive, however, was a different story! Continue reading →

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