Will Warburton's sketchbook

[EduardoGaray]

Hey mate, you are not alone really, thats exactly how i've been feeling lately too.
And i'm pretty sure there is a lot of people like that, only they dont like to talk about it.
I either cant talk much about this IRL

Even if i wanted to start the year in a good mood, it was impossible, some days i didnt had the energy to do anything. Even if i received positive comments and encouragement, that feeling of hopelessness wouldnt go away. I wondered why? to find a solution to a problem you first need to know whats causing that problem. So i asked myself, why am i feeling so down?

Just ask yourself, honestly, whats the source of your sadness, what do you want? what do you need? and go for it. There is no easy way in life, do you want travel and do excitings things?
Then start a plan, save money make preparations and go for it!

I dont want to sound rude or arrogant or anything like that, its just that i think i can relate to your situation and want to help. Also, comparing yourself to others is like a highway to depression.

Maybe what you need is just fresh air in your lungs, try disconnecting from your routine for a few days, do something different, something you have never done before.

It may sound silly, but if it worked for me, it may work for you.
Stay strong man, we are with you!

[Ursula Dorada]

I know the feeling man, really. I already moved out of my parents (hey, I have been married for 6 years now, but my husband is unemployed). So yeah, I want to travel and meet people and know the world.... but oh, money. Shit. Responsibilities.

One thing I can be sure about other people though - the situation is very different. Each case is a case, right? I have always blamed the fact I was progressing slow on the fact I had to provide for the house all this years, so it always came first. Now that I've quit and progressing will be my one and only duty, I am terrified I am not going to make it. Specially because my husband is still unemployed - so this HAVE to work, because I am going to sit here and look at my funds dwindling.

So uh.
I really hope I can do this.
Maybe you want to add me on skype and we can keep each other company? Being lonely sucks. Most of my real life peers thinks I am crazy for wanting more than I already have. Because I have a shitty job, why would I ever want more, eh?

Anyway, totally stealing your thread to rant, sorry about that.
You're not alone man, you have a friend here if you ever need, and your updates have been getting better all the time - so yeah, it's just a frustration bubble, hopefully it will be over soon!
This is also the times we make big life changing decisions, so it may be for good too :)

Hang in there and feel free to message me if you're feeling lonely again man

[ramalooke]

Heey mate. Hate that feeling when you hit a wall. When it's hard to find motivation and inspiration to paint. Been in that place many times, trust me. From my experience there's a bunch of reasons this is happening.
a) you might be overworked and in a routine. I usually take a step back, don't work for couple days and do something to break the routine. It might be changing my surroundings, go for a trip to new place or meet with my friends. Everyone needs to rest once a while
b) you're experiencing an artistic block. sycra had a good video on this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qb0g_gWrNf8
On a occasion I'm really stagnating with my art. And this can be a source of limitless frustration. Been there as well. What helps for me is trying something new. Whenever I feel my art stagnates I'm experimenting, playing with different brushes, techniques.

Ursula made a good point. It's always good idea to socialize with other artist. It makes pursuing art sooo much easier. Actually I follow your work since old conceptart.org days and I don't think we talked like people yet. So yeah. I join with Ursula and say hit me on skype whenever you feel like. It's always cool to meet new artist. We can crack joke or two.

Oh and update is simply killer. Your values improved a lot. And this hobbit study is simply awesome. Keep it up!

[BenFlores]

photobucket right about now

[JakeB]

And the moment you decide to stop paying them, your whole sketchbook is going to be gone like mine. They've basically got you by the balls lol.

Ahh, shit man. Definitely didn't think about that. Should probably come up with an alternative plan. Balls.

As for the other stuff. Totally know the feeling. I swing back and forth between thinking I might be missing out, and thinking I should be working more. Both feel shitty, and both probably aren't healthy. Sucks. It's all about finding a balance I guess, it's just hard to know where that is. :/ Hope you work it out soon, always good to see you posting. Big inspiration man.

The work you're putting out looks awesome anyway dude, self portrait especially looks great, really nice edges.

Have a good birthday btw :D

[Doolio]

Hey Will, great sketchbook:) I can't see the pre-photobucket screw up work but the stuff I see is epic:D

I thought I could join with the others in sharing the pain and advice lol:)

About hitting the wall AND about motivation, I think it's crucial that you talk to others, especially other artists, especially those that are somewhat on the similar level. Because, our brain always wants to come to a conclusion and leave no loose ends and it also has problems with delayed gratification. So, when we are alone or we don't "share" for some longer periods of time, we come to conclusions and explanations that reinforce our current state of mind, and those explanations sometimes can be nothing short of magical:) Because we don't get the feedback, we get into this spiral of thought which, when unchecked, can go wild:)
For example, you might rarely hit on girls or do it the wrong way or whatever, which results in you don't having a girlfriend for, say, five years. And when unchecked, your brain will eventually come to a conclusion like "I am not destined to have a girlfriend" or something like that:) And you don't find it ridiculous, because you came to that conclusion gradually. While you could, for example, talk to friends and they would tell you "dude, you don't bathe, that's why" or "you talked to six girls in five years, one was gay, two were married and other three simply didn't like you" or something banal like that.
Also, there are those things everybody thinks they are the only ones doing them:) I don't know, "oh, I was so absent minded yesterday, I threw the fork and knife into the garbage can, omg I'm demented".

Even more in this field of ours, those feelings and situations are quite often. You simply don't know how many plateaus and mini breakdowns some top level illustrator had, for example. You often don't know are you even practicing the right way (even if you actually know you do, if you are at a plateau, your brain will start to weave a story that complements that plateau, like "we practiced in vain all this time, this exercise sucks"). So, when you start to doubt things and create negative patterns, they tend to stick and remain unchecked.
So I really think that talking with fellow artists is the best therapy one could have. Because, more often than not - and we've seen it right here in this thread - you will find that others are having the exact same situations, issues, doubts and problems.

As for the plateau - I think the best recipe is to simply take for granted that you are going to get through it and try not to think about it at all. Because, you WILL get through if you continue to practice, it's inevitable. It is frustrating and yes, you start to doubt and lose motivation etc. but try not to feed those things. Simply try to soldier it through. And, of course, come and whine with all of us from time to time, I mean, I do it all the time, I should have named my sketchbook thread "Doolio's whine thread" :D And I'll probably whine more as time progresses, because I have yet to reach a month since I've opened a sketchbook here:)

Same goes for motivation. And I must again praise this community, as the mere fact that I have a public sketchbook that fellow artists browse through and that there are other such threads and they all get updated insanely often, is enough for me to practice hard. Also, there are absolute beginners here, there are people like me, people better than me, people WAY better than me... and that's great, I love browsing all the sketchbooks.
And, when someone "disappears" to move on to bigger stuff, that's very positive:) You look at someone better than you and you see he's better because he practiced more/harder/longer. And you know that, because you're both humans:), you'll reach that level one day. And then you look at someone who's just beginning and you see you are better than him, because you've progressed. Because the progress is relatively slow (I mean, you draw a naked man like thousand times and then you STILL go "duhhhh" when you need to bend the knee or whatever) people tend to see that progress as being in the same spot. That's why I think you should think years and maybe months for smaller chunks of measurable progress and not just trust your emotional feeling that tells you you are stagnating. Take a look at a piece you did a year ago and see if you are stagnating and you'll see a lot of progress has happened. Guaranteed (if you practiced during that year).

So, try not to get swayed to the "wallowing side" because such is the path of a developing artist:D


Oh, and about the comfort zone and "plunging into the unknown", that's totally true. EVERYTHING is like that:) I mean, you were probably terrified when you went to buy milk for the first time as a six year old:) But you were proud when you did it:) Not to mention that now you're probably killing it:D
The problems start when we pour too much self awareness into these things. And that's that dark-talk side of the brain and it needs to be cut down as soon as it presents itself. If you were to give in to it, you would never buy milk and you would never have sex and you would never, well, get past the plateau in the gym or in front of a tablet:)

[Warburton]

Woot woot, photobucket sorted my pics out! For now at least anyways, gonna stick to the attachment thing here instead for the time being even if it is slow.

I spent about 1 hour writing big responses to everyone for your awesome replies. I really appreciate them all so thank a lot! Sadly after I wrote them all I accidently clicked on the crimson dggaers header while uploading images and lost it ALLLLLLL :CC

So i'll get round to them later or in your own sketchbooks, I promise. Though like I said, I really appreciate them. I find it pretty amazing that you guys even take the time to read my ramblings, never mind spent the time writing such deep and helpful responses.

Anyways, heress some artzzz
studies






shit speedies
twisted tree at the soldiers graveyard


unborn



practice practice



GoT fan art im working on



played batman recently, twas awesome



aaaand something I don't do much. I went back and took what I thought to be a good sketch from Jan 2013



and re-did it in Jan 2014 to see my improvements. Roughly the same amount of time spent on both, maybe abit longer on this one.



much love daggers <3

[Archreux]

Hey man, I haven't visited your sketchbook in a while, and I've gotta say it's looking way better since I lasted visited.

I've been catching up on your posts and been reading the stuff you've been talking about. Stay strong, man. It's never easy battling that depressing feeling what shit doesn't feel optimum, but you know what you wanna do, travel, meet people, and you can do it! Whether or not you believe you are getting better will undoubtedly decide the amount of progress you make, regardless of this, from an outsider looking in on your work, there's definite improvement. It would seem everyone else here is in agreement with that as well. Nice pencils, again! Fuck. :Y

We all have our own unique situations that require careful attention, and there's a solution to every one of them. So keep going, man! If anything, take some time to figure stuff within yourself. There's no use doing art and feeling shitty. It's like running to the camper in an FPS, and constantly getting killed/pissed, haha.

We're all in this together, and we're never alone on this journey. Take care. :]

[JakeB]

Oh shiiiiiit, that game of thrones fan art is gonna be bonkers. Such a good scene, and the sketch looks awesome. Can't wait to see it finished dude. The revisited piece looks awesome as well, everything looks much more 'solid' you know? Like you have a better understanding of what you're painting. Good job!

Keep it coming man :)

[Adam Lina]

The surfaces on the armor in the elf chick re-do looks much more believable. Great job!

[Jaik]

Haha the blood elf re-do looks like she spent all the time raiding while you were improving at art :P
That lemon looks really cool too. Definitely getting there man. Keep up the good work!

[ramalooke]

Go Will goo!! Awesome update =D Love the life study you did, it could use a bit more contrast in my opinion but hey. Still looks good. Keep it up!

[pugsloth]

What an improvement on the blood elf picture man, great to see, very inspirational! Keep at it, can't wait to see the finished Game of Thrones piece!

[Lyraina]

Nice belf re-do, love those purples! The GoT piece looks cool too, nice composition.
If that "click somewhere, loose everything you typed" happens more often to you, there's a firefox addon called Lazarus which auto-saves your text so you can restore it later... saves me from my own clumsiness every now and then :P

I hope you'll get over your art-doubts soon ... many good replies so far, I'd just like to point out that this is part of the process for many people, I think. Not sure how often you have to struggle through this cycle, but it does pass.. even if it doesn't feel like it will when you are down there. Just... stay strong. You can do this. <3

Oh, and lovely lemon. Maybe soften some of the edges where the form is receding?

[Warburton]

Archreux - Thanks mate, I appreciate the kind words and encouragement. And I know that feeling of running into the camper haha, though there's nothing more satisfying than throwing a bag of semtex on one :p

Jake - Cheers dude, if I can make as many improvements as you in a year i'll consider myself successful haha. Hope I don't disappoint with the GoT piece either, I ran out of time and stream with it so didn't give it as much justice as it probably deserves. Though if you liked that, you'll love this - http://mccomseycomix.wordpress.com/2013/...age-comic/

Hypnagogic_Haze - Thanks man, I'm glad you think so!

Jaik - LOL yeah man, I hadn't really looked at it like that haha. Next year i'll beef her out with full pvp gear :p And thanks for the kind words too dude.

ramalooke - Cheeers mate. Yeah your right, dam I try to be shit hot on my contrast, still lifes are tough lol. Thanks again!

pugsloth - I'm glad you think so, thanks a lot! I plan on doing another GoT fan piece so hopefully it'll turn out better than this last one :/

Lyraina - thanks Lyraina! Yeah it's only happened to me the one time and It was because I was using the attachment manager instead of photobucket, and everytime you add an image it jumps to the top of the page which made me click it accidently lol. I'll look into that plugin you mentioned anyways, thanks a lot.
Yeah it always amazes me how awesome the daggers are here, I remember when I started my ca sketchbook I rarely got any comments for about a year lol. I think your right about the art bump process too, i'll get over it eventually :/ whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger! Nice tip on the lemon too, i'll bear that in mind for next time <3

It's been a while and ive taken some time off from dig painting. That being said I couldn't help myself and did some pencil stuff instead. So addictive once you start getting into them. There a ball ache to get here so ive only uploaded a few, hope you don't mind.






















Ive had the chance to do some life drawing a couple of hours a week recently too. Here's some sketches from that, between 10-30 each mins I think












and a couple of digs for good luck <3
shitty generic rabbit swamp guardian dude sketch



broken heart speedie



GoT, ran out of time and patience :/ Gonna do a new one soon though and i'll make it better I promise

[JakeB]

Dude, it came out sweet. I know what you mean about running out of steam, happens to me all the time, but I kinda like how loose areas of it are. Makes the Viper's head pop even more. His pose is super dynamic as well, gotta take notes from you on that. So bored of painting dudes standing still lol.

Wish I had something constructive to say, but just keep it up. Your pencil lines are hot shit btw, those pages look great :)

PS. Good call with that comic - so good. Makes me wish I had the balls to do some sequential stuff. One day maybe ;)

[Jaik]

Oh man I love that pencil work. Makes me want to get stuck balls deep into my sketchbook.

For the game of thrones one. Just something conceptual. If you were to do it aain, you may want to consider having the Viper face the camera, and the mountain facing away. I say this because the mountain only has a faceplate which means no emotion can be shown and it acts as a barrier to the viewer connecting with the image. Whereas if the viper faced camera, then you have a greater opportunity to use his face as a story point.

Just a suggestion though.
Keep up the good work regardless :)

[Flo]

Hey there,

I read your "ramblings" and man, that sounds harsh. I don't know what to tell you except that becoming great is supposed to be hard, if it wasn't everyone could do it. I know this isn't much and certainly I didn't invent that phrase, but I think they are true.

And also: travelling and learning about art doesn't have to contradict each other. I went to South East Asia for 2 month and I learned a ton.

I bought a tablet pc, took "the famous artist course" pdfs and a watercolor sketchbook with materials with me. Looking back I think I have grown more in that time, than when I stayed back home doing digital studies. To me it was super - important to unplug at that time and get some new input. Now I feel more confident with water colors and learned a lot from them and from the pdfs.

Other than that your pencils are great, really dig them. But your digital stuff could use some crisper edges. Especially the game of thrones piece. Maybe use the lasso or pen tool for your hard edges. I feel like the brush tool doesn't produce super - hard edges.

Cheers, and keep it up.

Flo

[Lyraina]

I never mind some lovely pencils like those <3
Just wondering, are those done on a3 paper or a4?

[Warburton]

Jake - Yeah mate, you should have a go a graphic novel stuff, it's super hard and time consuming but with your tasty brushwork and compositions I bet your style would really suit it. Gonna have a go at another GoT piece soon, but more unique. It'll probably flop but I want to get the idea down haha. P.s, I saw the season 4 trailer and the viper fight scene is in it. Fair to say I seems way lamer then what I had in mind from the book :p

Jaik - Go for it man, go get yourself balls deep in pencils! Lol xD
That's a good pointer too, cheers for that! And I think your totally right. I'm not happy with this GoT piece so gonna do a new one soon with Bran, hopefully it'll turn out more interesting :p

Flo - Hey man, cheers for the insight, your totally right of course. It just seems like something's different now which is changing my whole mentality though I cant put my figure on what it is. Maybe its an age thing, in 27 now so it might be something to do with that. I'll figure it out eventually though ;)
How did you go about travelling man? Did you solo it or go with friends and family? I would love to just bounce for a few months but the prospect of dieing of starvation or something doesn't float my boat haha. I literally know nothing about it though I'm always curious to know how others manage it. Thanks mate.

Lyraina - Hey hey, I'm glad you like, thanks a lot ^ ^ There all done on A4, I bought a huge pile of printing paper and just use that :p Thanks again for stopping by!

Quick update
I took my laptop and tablet to life drawing, first time doing digital life drawings was pretty cool. Learnt a ton. All super short though, only about 10-20 mins each >:/









got 40 mins on this one



study design, rendered from mind



mind farts