Walent's sketchbook

[walent]

Thanks Nikt
Cheers GD

More from today:

[Heavenwill]

Good stuff in there mate, i really like the concept you made from the study

[walent]

thanks man, I'm most satisfied with that hover concept, I was thinking of putting one more hour into it

[walent]

One of those moments again, I though I've evolved enough to avoid them, but guess not. I think I'm just gonna take a break from doing art. Nothing works these days. I'm trying to paint a portrait and it's like I'm having two left hands. I can't even get a decent line sketch done. And I'm also out of money, badly. I'm really struggling here.
I'm so angry with myself right now, I feel I should just quit doing anything else, quit eating, quit sleeping and paint until I'm satisfied with my work. But unfortunately I just can't do that.

I'm having a lot of web/logo designs and vector illustrations requests so maybe I'll just go do those for a while... I don't know, it's been two years since I started doing digital art and still the only art projects I get are those without payment. That's very demoralizing... no one should EVER request that from an artist!

I see more and more 16-17 year old artists that have an incredibly awesome style and they clearly know which way to go, and I'm turning 26 soon and I'm not even satisfied with my painting style yet, I have a lot of doubts and I ask myself everyday if I should stick to environments or should I go into characters and vehicles too. I still don't have the answer to that.

Today I was 2 seconds away from being actually erased by a retarded taxi driver who chose to ignore the traffic signs and just speed through the intersection without even looking. I saw his face for 2 seconds, he didn't even turn his head, I just couldn't believe it.
That kind of stuff marks you for life...
Those kind of people shouldn't be allowed to live on this planet...

[walent]

I talked to a friend of mine the other day about getting a lot of logo and web design projects and that I don't want to accept them and I want to focus on my art instead and he said something like: "no no no, just do any project you can possibly get, raise a lot of money, do your art in your spare time and when you raised enough, just get the hell out of this country, you'll never make it here as an artist"
And damn, he's right...

So this is some personal stuff I did this weekend, between other shitty (more or less) work I had to do for money:

[Amit Dutta]

Hey dude, I feel for your recent state of mind. It is easy to get sucked into the "do anything just to get by and hope it works" out mentality.
I recently decided not to do any more freelance unless it satisfied 3 things:
It was work I would enjoy doing for the next 20 years if that is all I got,
it was work I could see going into my portfolio,
it was well paid.

After this decision I was so much happier. Granted I have a day job that I don't really enjoy, and I've been doing similar jobs for the last 7 years. That is my compromise, but I now get to do art only I want to do until I get good enough to get decent pro work and quit my slave labour. You are doing art full time, so you have to be more pragmatic on what you will accept doing, so doing vector stuff is a valid way of handling it. Just remember, I do 40 hours a week on something completely unrelated to art, at least you do get to exercise your skills even though logos aren't the most exciting thing to do. It's all about your perspective and finding the right balance of compromise that works for you.

About the opportunity thing, well I believe the internet has made things a little easier for us nowadays, so as long as your work is really good, and you promote yourself well, i think where you are physically becomes less important...as a freelancer of course.

For me, I focus on one thing and one thing only....getting better. I believe if your work is incredible...no one can argue with that and the jobs will start coming. It's a simple theory but I think it works, and keeps me motivated.

Hope you sort out your balance mate and Good luck!

[walent]

Hey monkeybread,

About that... I already decided a long time ago not to do anything unless it satisfied those 3 things, but guess what, I still get e-mail from certain developers asking for free work for some kind of no-budget game trying to clone a big name. Of course I'm gonna work for nothing because most of those games won't even make it and if they promise I'm going to be featured when they launch, then I've just worked for fun.

But what happened a lot of times, especially when I had to do character commissions, is I just hated the final result of my work, I wouldn't even put my name on it... and I just couldn't figure out why.

I took a 4 year break, trying to figure out what segment of art I want to approach, not doing anything else than painting all day long. No jobs, no money, no going out, no nothing. Mother was bothering me every single day, telling me I'm just wasting time and that I must get a job. This made me work even harder and by wishing to evolve faster I might jumped some elementary steps.

So right now I'm still struggling with the workflow, I just can't seem to prepare my canvas and think about every element, where is it going to be placed, how far, how close, and I can't put every element on a layer because it would be too much, so my work becomes clumsy, unreadable because sometimes not even I can tell what's going on in there, what's in the front, what's in the back. That's because I just paint what I see, and I improvise a lot. If I have an idea and suddenly I see something else between some shapes and textures, I just paint it over.

I totally agree with you, if you made it to a decent level where you can take out commissions and do decent work, then the projects will definitely start coming.
I don't think I'm there yet. Sometimes I get great work, sometimes I get crap that I don't even bother posting.

The point is I gotta get to that decent level and the only way I can do that is to figure out the steps of my work process.

Here's a concept done for that kind of company I was talking about, no money, no hopes for this game, but I still tried to do my best, taking it as a test, to see how well I would do on a real commission.
And although I like it, I still struggled with depth and contrast.

[RockOnGuy]

That last piece blew my mind... Amazing!

[walent]

Hey everyone,

It's been so long since last time I posted here. Can't believe I forgot about my thread here.

Last year I found out I really love anatomy. I find the human body absolutely amazing. So I thought character design could work for me.
BUT once I got into doing it, I realized I'm not particularly attracted by character design. Meaning I'm not obsessed with clothing, drapes, ornaments, armors and such. For me they're like some cool stuff, but I don't necessarily have the urge of designing it myself.
I've always tried to find that one or two things I just can't get enough of. Something that keeps me painting all day long and when I go to sleep I can't wait to get up in the morning to paint some more stuff.

That's what happened with the anatomy, but then I wanted to create something, rather than just study. And it's pretty hard to create something only with anatomy knowledge. Unless maybe you're into creatures, which I'm not. But I kinda like the humanoid monsters and hybrids.


So this is kind of where I am right now. Again, I'm opened for suggestions and critiques.

These are a lot of studies that I've been doing the last few months.
And btw, I still suck so much at portraits :(

[VoodooMama]

Hey! wow the improvement between your older characters to this latest ones is incredible.
It's very inspiring
Great use of shape, form and value. Creatures are looking cool too.
Sorry I really have no advice to give on what you're asking ^^u I hope you get to share more of your work.

[Amit Dutta]

Hey man, long time! Hope you've been well. Nice stuff; you've really taken to anatomy. Instead of thinking about creatures, characters blah blah, maybe you can think about going fully fine-art style figurative and finish some paintings rather than just study.
Seems like it would be fun for you, and there are some amazing figurative artists out there, Steven Assael, Jeremy Mann etc etc. You could be the digital equivalent?

[walent]

Thanks Voodoo, that's what I'm planning on, post as much as I can.

Hey Amit, long time indeed. Yep, I'm doing great, actually I don't know if I've ever been better. I did go far into the anatomy, but still need more practice until I can fully stop using references. Or at least not wasting so much time trying to find a leg in a certain position with a certain lighting setup.

Actually I did think about just going for figure drawing, but apparently I crave for design. I have to design something, otherwise I don't feel like there's any sense in all this effort. Yeah, I know you can say the human figure needs designing too, like knowing which pose works for each model and such, but having a design / architecture background myself isn't letting me stay away from designing something. I mean it really feels like I haven't offered all I have if I just do figure drawing.

Steve Houston is one of my favorite artists btw when talking about figure drawing.


Anyway, I've recently seen the process used by John Park for his mechs, and I thought it's brilliant.
Had to try it. Kept me awake. It's 5 a.m. I guess it's working.

Here are some studies/sketches




Some portraits





And here's a robot I've been working on. I'm pretty excited with this one. He's suppose to be a construction / engineer bot. Inspired by a telehandler.

[Zearthus]

Walent just one sentence: "Don't settle, keep going, keep experimenting" You will eventually find something that peeks your interest, just like you're doing now with the mech. Seeing you're having a lot of fun with it, buddy. Just keep going.

:)

[walent]

@Zearthus I'll do that. I think my problem is I need to change things from time to time because I tend to get really bored with doing one thing for too long.


some recent characters







a self portrait





and some more portrait sketches

[crackedskull]

Your stuff looks fresh and quite original, I gotta see more.

[smrr]

Your improvement has been incredible and its been a pleasure to go through your sketchbook

Moreeeee pls!

[Adam Lina]

Woah, those figures and portraits are beautiful! Really cool mech design too. Teach me your ways, sensei.

[walent]

Thanks guys

More stuff:

[walent]

More studies from this week

[Zearthus]

I'm kind of curious, but which source you're using for the human body. I'm really interested. Look forward to see more of your post. :)