Beard Clippings

[Patrick Gaumond]

@Artloader Hey! Thanks for the feedback :) I appreciate it. The warm/cool aspect was the main thing i changed in the last painting i posted; it really made a huge difference so definitely good advice 

As for my dad, he's technically OK but has developed complications related to medicine hes had to take after the surgery... the result is that his lungs are working at about 70% capacity and hes anemic now, so he has lost a lot of energy. But hes doing well otherwise, i suppose.



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As for me, I'm amazed that this community keeps on rolling :) it looks like i felt the same way the last time i dropped by but its still great to see some of the same people here as when i started comin here all those 6 years ago.

I've been treating this place a bit like a diary it seems, so here goes. Over the last year or so I've had some realizations about my work that have made me shift directions quite a bit. When I decided to focus on art, i went in with the expectation that I needed to do concept art, or illustration, or something like a 'job', and those seemed to be the ones to go for. I saw artists i like getting work with Magic or Applibot or what have you and thought "Hey! Thats I what i want to do!!!" and in hindsight i essentially forced myself to try to learn those things.... despite not really caring about those products, being involved with the community in any way, or even really caring about drawing Fantasy/Sci fi all that much, or designing for action movies that i dont care about etc.

It took me nearly 6 years to realize that it seems, and the worst part is that i also realized recently that when i initially started drawing back in high school, before i decided to 'learn' it or go to school for it, i was always drawing for myself first, and i never gravitated towards any of those things. 

So all that to say, I've more or less dropped pursuing art, particularly that kind of art, as a career. I've shifted my focus to making what I want to make, for me first, and not trying to impress anyone the way i used to. (Maybe it never came through here, but in the back of my mind i used to always be chasing likes, chasing what i thought people wanted, chasing what i thought would lead to a job.)

And i've never enjoyed it more. Not only the process of drawing, but the results. I looked through all my old files, all my studies and projects and challenges, and i remember exactly how i felt when i made almost every single one of them, and i distinctly remember hating a lot of it, or feeling inadequate, like i was wasting my time when i could have been studying something more important. 

But recently, even when something isn't great, maybe it doesn't meet my expectations or what my mind envisioned, but i find myself able to appreciate them nonetheless. I find myself able to let them go, too, and scrap things i've spent precious time on, let them live and die as they need, and its incredibly liberating.

I still love art. Drawing has become like meditation, almost. And i want to learn more about it, and expand into other areas like 3D more (maybe). Art will always be with me, but maybe it doesn't have to be my job, and thats ok :)




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Besides pontificating about life, in the last year I've done a few things:
- I spent about 3-4 months making a simple game in Unity with some basic 2d characters. It was a great learning experience (some of the art will be below). Theres not much there though, it was a fairly slow ordeal to get anything working and the art took quite a while honestly!

- I discovered I have an unhealthy obsession with clothing, not just costumes and 'characters' but actually clothing, as an art form in and of itself. It was probably triggered after seeing "The Phantom Thread" (a phenomenal movie in its own right, even if clothing isn't your jam) but I didn't realize it until the last year but a sizeable portion of the art books i have bought over the years are just about clothes. I watched a ton of documentaries on famous fashion designers, i even bought several of the September Edition Vogue magazines which im somewhat ashamed to admit but have no regrets whatsoever as theres some brilliant photography, and design, and artistry, within them.

- Along those lines, i picked up Marvelous Designer which is great fun. It gave me a completely different understanding of clothes and showed me how little i actually understood them when drawing them. I haven't had too much time in it yet, but even the bit of time so far has been insightful

- I spent about 1-1.5 months attempting to make a 3D portrait of a famous actress (will be below) who shall be nameless unless you can guess ;). The likeness isn't there, but I'm pretty content with the sculpt itself, and that too taught me a lot about faces, angles, and perspective that i still struggle with when drawing today.

- I spent another 3 months recently working on a 3d game in Unity again, this time focusing a lot more on the programming than the art, though I did some very basic stuff with the lighting and in Sketchup whenever i got stumped with programming. I really enjoy that, and would recommend anyone with a passing interest to check out programming for themselves, particularly if you can stick it on something you like, such as games!

- And just plain old drawing ! Which is what you're here for, naturally, so here's the last year or so of art. 

Probably not in chronological order, if it matters.

The 2D drawings i made for the Unity Game (the characters arent to scale with each other fwiw)




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Some drawings

























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2019 Things














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My annual foray into halloween and halloween-adjacent subject matter :)) Still my favorite subject each year







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Sculpting



Cheers :)