Ubem's Deliberate Practice

[ubem]

@Fedodika Thanks! Yea looking back, I think actual classes or a school would have saved so much time, but there's a thrill in being completely self-taught.

@Badbadcat Thanks for the encouragement and feedback, totally agree! I still consider myself a beginner, even though I'm technically a 'professional' with some understanding of the fundamentals because I hope to one day reach the levels of my favorite artists (like Ruan Jia, Jaime Jones, Theo Prins, Tadema, Jeff Simpson, etc.) and my skills are still years if not decades away from that. Making finished pieces takes me weeks, which I've realized I could be using that time and energy to be investing in working on my weaknesses instead of building on a portfolio. But hopefully by the end of this year I'll start finishing again.

@Darktiste You're right, I've been giving up on pieces very early because I see weaknesses and then decide to devote my time to studying and improving those areas. Then I make another sketch to see where I'm week at again, it's an endless cycle haha. Love those helpful posts you wrote!

-

Sorry if it sounds like I am being negative of myself and my skill. In reality I am so happy and thrilled to be critical of my own work and abilities and then to improve them. So much so that it is more fun for me to improve than to actually make art! I was even thinking of moving to Mexico or living in a van with solar panels to lower my cost of living to have more time to devote to improving. This is because I don't care much for money or having a family, I care most deeply about creating good art and sharing it with the world. I'm also deeply at peace and happy with life, things couldn't be better :)

I haven't been actively posting in a while mostly due to not having any finished art to share. Also, I'm able to see my weaknesses more clearly without much feedback, so I've been busy working on honing my skills self-directedly. But I do want to share what's going on with my life because I miss being part of a community and don't have friends due to my obsession with art lol.

Back in august I went to LA, California to attend a lecture by Vance Kovacs with my cousin. In LA, I got a lot of in person feedback from Art Center, Laguna College of Art and Design, Concept Design Academy, and from Scott Flanders who's a concept artist at Riot games. All of the feedback was so invaluable, most of which was to work on perspective, do more design iterations, and hone in my personal voice. Since then, I've been working on all of the above, mostly through traditional drawing.

I also got my first "big" freelance job thanks to a genuine friendship I made at the ICON convention in Detroit, MI. Doing actual concept sketches and renderings taught me about the value and convenience of 3D, photos, and speed for professional work. I did theme park design and environments for them, which was a great break from the characters I usually do. Those small character commissions, which were all from Reddit, paid for all that traveling and were so fun to do.

Sorry for the long stories, it's been a while!
Here's paintings done in a day to practice design.





Character commissions



Example of client work, literally just an over painting of a photo lol

Closest thing to anything finished, done last year:

Her arm is way high and she is missing her latissimus dorsi. Was done just for fun so I'm too lazy to fix and finish it lol.

I also did some long master studies but I got a virus on my computer and had to delete everything. Highly recommend to save anything valuable to a cloud service. After I solidify my understanding of perspective and work on more design, I'll do more detailed master studies to strengthen my personal voice. Thanks for checking out my sketchbook. Time to go back to studying!