Flashback Friday #3 -'Out of Character'

Looking through my old folders, I find myself looking at 95% fantasy art. And then boom. Something like this:

lol, lol, lol.
This was a friday lunch-sketch challenge I'd done with some colleagues ( theme: Chocolate).

Anyone looking at my portfolio of work would think this highly out of character
 -- unless they've actually spoken to my silly self.

Falling upon this now reminds me that it's great to get out of your habits and muck about. Sometimes the result is something much more true to character :)

Glimmer Tree

So, I'm officially on maternity leave and the proud (tired) parent of a small creature who (albeit being wonderful) is an enormous drain on my time and energy... Who would have thought? (Only every mother who has ever existed)

I naively thought I would have a ton of free time while he slept, but, as can be discerned by my lack of posts, that's hardly the case. Don't get me wrong, this time is wonderful, magical (etc etc etc) and I'm enjoying it immensely... I'm just sad that I've lost the time for other things I love (like sleep. Oh I miss sleep...)

However--eureka!-- there's bee a small breakthrough in past days: I've discovered that I can wedge a nursing pillow into my computer chair and do a bit of loose sketching, while he snoozes away.

Just taking the time for little sketch exercises feels great (and is much more rewarding that binge-watching tv series on netflix).

Woo!

Process - Armageddon Angel

I was looking for something fun and brainless to work on during my lunches at work, and dug up some old thumbnails as a starting point.

After choosing one which I felt would allow me to play around with some bold color/contrast choices, I moved on to a grayscale sketch, checking my image flow and composition now and then to be sure I wouldn't have to rework something crucial.

From here there was a whole lot of fiddling with the pose in various sketches and getting feedback from friends and colleagues. If there is something I wish I would have spent more time on here, it would have been getting better references for the pose. A lesson to be applied on another day!

Color comp was easily the most fun part. I opted for orange/purple with high contrast.

After that it was just hacking away at the actual painting of the image. All the hard thinking was pretty much done (except for some outfit explorations).

 There's nothing too magical about the rendering phase. I work in layers, back-to-front, trying to get the 'boring' stuff out of the way early. Halfway through this part is where the doubts come in. Since the fun part, the figuring out, is already done, this is where I tend to drop an image and start another. Since I'd been doing some thinking on that lately, though, I was able to catch myself in the act and force myself to see it through (huzzah for introspection!).

Lately my main exercise is to force myself to stay loose, to keep some painterliness in the final. I failed that on the hair, where everything is rendered a bit tighter than I'd like (Poor choice of a rough brush at the midpoint required too much cleanup work), however the elbow and forearm came out, I think, quite well. Small victories :)

Much of the fantasy art that attracted me back in the day was simple, bold and almost graphic. I'm still playing around with how to integrate that into my own work, but I'm quite satisfied with the punchy-ness here. It's about as subtle as a shovel to the face, and that feels right.

Doodle!

This started out as an experiment with some of those soft feathery background brushes and ended up here... Been listening to a little too much psychobilly lately, I guess.

Beatrice Goodbrough

I had a small gap of time to fill one night this week, and went fishing through some older folders for inspiration. Some old moodboards did the trick, and I started idly doodling...

Process wasn't anything fancy here. Just a sketch and cleanup, followed by some flats, flat texture and finally some gradients and overlays. A nice break from the precise renders I usually lean towards. It's not really a fully polished piece, but fun nonetheless.

Ode to the Unfinished #1 - What makes it 'Done'?

Like every artist everywhere, I have my fair share of unfinished work.

In many cases, these images have been pushed to near-completion and lack only the finishing touches. I find myself flipping through the 'Unfinished' folder and thinking: "Why the hell don't I just... finish these?" In many cases, the ideas are pretty good, and they would make successful images (Trust me, there's another folder for the abject failures).

So what's stopping me?

Is it that I hate the final polish steps of illustration? (Because I do)
Is it because they are so old that I'd have to go back and fix so many things that I now know? (Because I would)

It's a little bit from column A, a little bit from column B, I suppose, but another realization hit me recently. I saw that whatever I was trying to accomplish and learn with a given image, whether it was how to make reflective materials, or how to set up a story within a scene, actually had been accomplished. Regardless of their level of polish, these images had given me what I was personally looking for. And ultimately, I draw and invent and create for my own knowledge and enjoyment first.

Sounds nice, right?

It is, in a way, but the flipside is that I also like to share what I do. I like interacting with others, seeing their reactions and absorbing them to improve myself. I'll be talking more of Input vs Output at a later date, but I feel there is something stagnant and stifling about creating only for yourself. You're missing out on what everyone around you can teach you through their own observations.

So what's the solution? There may be none. Perhaps it's only a matter of plowing through and finishing things before I get distracted by the next challenge. Perhaps being aware of my own subconscious intentions will change the way I work (ha.). Or perhaps I can simply share the unfinished, from time to time, and hope that the intent comes through.

In that light, here is a piece that has bee loitering in the Unfinished folder for a few years. It started as a sketch, then, after I did a few studies (of reflections on muscle cars) I started on a clean render. I got bored at some point after doing the face, and as often happens, started feeling it wasn't such a great image... something else soon caught my eye.

Is this successful? Is it done? Probably not on either count. But I did learn a few things, even if it was what to avoid in terms of design (High-heels on robots. And that abdomen. WTF). And while this would never count as show-worthy in another context, in my mind I can already see what it looks like complete, and it's as good as done.

Does that mean I shouldn't finish it? Nope.
But it does mean I've made peace with it, and the guilt that came every time I looked at that 'Unfinished' folder with a sigh. I'm over it.

Flashback Friday #2 - Search for Simplicity

I remember a time when the most intimidating thing about painting was simplicity. How to render a form or an idea with as few colors and brushstrokes as possible. It's still something I have to watch out for, and that I consciously apply in my current work:

More detail does not make the image better.

And yet even while knowing this, I'd still produce images like this one, full of photo-texture and background detail. Exhausting to work on, and with an end result that was, well... muddy. I'd be left vaguely uncertain as to whether I'd succeeded.

Almost simultaneously, I would be exploring exercises like those below, trying to force myself to do more with less. At the time, I felt them to be abysmal failures. Hardly worth a second glance. If you ask me which I prefer now... well. 

What makes these work is their readability and clear intent. It's something I've been missing the mark on during the broad explorations of style that have marked most of my work.

Perhaps only a handful of images I've created over the years (a small handful--like a two-year-old's hand) give me a level of satisfaction where I feel they really work. Or perhaps it's more fair to say: they feel like what I want to be making. None of this wishy-washy faded color high-texture stuff.

Simple, bold and legible. Images that have the guts to just be. Everything in its place because it belongs there, and nothing more.

Looking back on these old exercises, I know it's a realization I could have come to long ago, but that doesn't cause me any fuss. Every mishap and meander takes you to interesting places, and as long as you're moving ahead, it's all worth it.

Just take some time to look behind and remember where you've been :)