Crackbook

[Ninjerk]

Gettin downright nerdy on that boot \o/

[crackedskull]

D3:8.5h


Thanks guys :D


Heres some shape construction for fun.

[crackedskull]

D4:5h

2.5h behind schedule

[crackedskull]

D5:8.75h

1.75h behind

[crackedskull]

D6:6.15h

3.5h behind

 

[crackedskull]

D7:9h
2.5h behind

[Ambiguity]

Dayum, you've got structure in spades dude :D. I really like this painting btw, the value shifts are really subtle and yet it still feels so dimensional, I never understand how people do this:
http://crimsondaggers.com/forum/attachme...?aid=82741

I was quickly scrolling through the amazing amounts of work in here and and had to stop to stare at that piece, so you must have done something right lol ^_^.

[crackedskull]

D8:8.5h

2h behind

Thank you Ambiguity, I liked working on that fella :D

[OtherMuzz]

Solid page man :D! Keep going.

[crackedskull]

D9:9.5h

0.5h behind


Thanks Murry :D

[crackedskull]

D10:8.5h


Goal finished.

[crackedskull]

Gotta commit to a new goal so here:
Starting tomorrow,
80 hours of art in 10 days.
Also 1h of learning.


* No internet aside from music/reference/hangouts while working.
* 1 nap per day
* 2h for unproductive activities
* No phone in bed
* No more buying energy drinks
If an accident happens I will postphone the goal.

Reward: a day off
Punishments: month without internet

finished the hard part, now to add some wear and tear.

[crackedskull]

D1:3H

5h behind

I feel like I have fallen out of the habit of working, today it seems I was in my lowest point in weeks. Its not that the work I did felt particularly hard or frustrating, it was just lazyness. Im not sure what the main cause was, perhaps my different sleep schedule, perhaps taking 2 days off instead of 1. Maybe even the fact that the end of may is nearing and I always seem to take a long break during this time. I suppose its brought on by the summer vacation from school being ingrained in my mind.
If it wasnt for past experiences I would have lied that I was sick.
I have felt regret over my actions many times, even today I regretted taking additional day off and breaking a few rules I set myself. But I know that If I were to lie and go to a longer vacation I would lose the remainder of my discipline and a lot of faith in myself. Another thing I would lose is time, a week of it at, maybe even a month(by this I mean I would still do art, but only 1-2hrs a day), before I grew frustrated at myself and got back to a serious amount of work.

I wont work on this version of the crucible, since it looks really bad, the colorwork and the way its composed and balanced is atrocious.



When adding colours and values and intensity to hues in a painting, you have to achieve a harmony. Too much of one and it is ruined. It is not just making the colors look realistic, but making every color/shape/value etc work with eachother. When I looked for this harmony I saw that some digital works by proffessionals, albeit well done are lacking this harmony.
I gained a lot more appreciation for some artworks of masters today, that seemed to strike a good balance, I even tried to use them as a base, for at first I saw a nice color scheme, but quickly messed up the balance and by extension the composition.
I started another sketch after another and came to a method where I glaze the colors in carefully, starting out from tinted grays. Though it is easier to control, I feel like this method hides the mistakes in sublety.

[crackedskull]

D2:2.5h
D3:2h
D4:0h

Too many hours behind.

I've lost all motivation to produce art. Just feeling like shit and it keeps getting worse by the day, starting to get bitter and resentful thoughts aswell and not just about me anymore, but random ppl on the street. Were the goals I set for myself for nothing? I did get some art done, but in terms of self growth I feel like I'm back in square one. Maybe I've approached this the wrong way, posting here, sharing art to gain validation, using the goals and hangouts as a crutch to get me through the goals. No wonder I havent gained any discipline, as soon as I am on my own, I fail, because I'm weak.
This really bothers me since I dont have anything to fall back on, putting in the hours and sharing it created a sense of fulfillment, without that I feel worthless as a person.
Maybe I picked the wrong proffession to reach mastery on...Whenever I read about or interact with artists that I aspire to be, they seem to be so far away from me in terms of their passion towards art.
As for the punishment, Im looking forvard to it, I will try and get things back on track. A part of me even wants to delete this sketchbook and just stop posting art. Just so I could do art for its own sake, not to gain praise.

I've never felt this frustrated in face of failure before though, I think it was because I was finally getting somewhere, I felt myself improving as a person, gaining discipline, It started helping me in other areas of life aswell. And now its all gone.

[Adam Lina]

You dont have to keep it updated but DONT erase your SB. You'll regret it later. Maybe you should go talk to more people instead of making assumptions. I find when I talk to people even if its a quick "hi, how are you?" I feel less resentful toward them. Most people are thinking the same bullshit thoughts and it just takes a casual ice breaker to feel a connection.

[walent]

Hey man,

I gotta tell you something about how I got where I am.
I lost 5 years of my life playing games and hanging out in bars and pubs, playing pool and drinking my parents' money.

I had no idea what the hell I wanted to do and I never had anything that I really liked. I only did things because I thought I was suppose to. That's how I ended up doing architecture.

I then started drawing a bit more, tried to get into artschool and failed 2 years in a row. I needed money, so I started learning web design. I guess I was pretty good at it because I learned fast and got a decent job in 6 months, earning more than my parents. And that put and end to their pressure on me getting a job.

I got sick and tired of doing websites after 6 more months, and started drawing more and more. But, of course, I was failing big time.
And I thought: well, I got so much money from web design, and nothing from art, why should I continue doing art?

So I went back to finding web design jobs and I got to a company where the CEO was a  former schoolmate, I barely recognized him, but to put it short, he saw what I was drawing, he remembered I was constantly drawing at school and I was very talented and that I shouldn't waste it on web design. So I took his advice and pushed harder.

Of course I had ups and downs and I kept going back to web design and kept quitting art.
Until one day, when after two months of no drawing at all, I suddenly felt I missed drawing. I missed how a pencil felt in my hand, and how I could leave traces of graphite on paper, create lines and shapes.

And that's when I knew I would never quit art again.

And I didn't.

But then I got to the next question: what is it that I want to paint? I started doing environments because I went to architecture and it was pretty easy for me. I was afraid of doing portraits and drawing people, because I never actually did it in a serious way.
But I always thought that I should always fight my fears so I started learning anatomy, and drawing heads and stuff. And it felt good. It felt so good that I could draw for hours and not get bored. And I usually get bored very fast.

So if you don't feel that spark when you draw, then it's not the thing for you, I can tell you that.


IF you do, keep going. You'll have good days and bad days, I noticed that when I have a bad day I just have to push through it. If I can't get anything right and all my characters look like shit, I keep drawing and at some point I'll get over that and the day turns into a good one.

But then it's possible that you do feel it, but you're lazy. Just like me. I had days when I would barely convince myself to start drawing but once I did, I couldn't stop. That's lazy.


So my advice to you is ask yourself questions, all the time. Every time you look at something and you like it, find out why.

I'm the kind of guy that needs to do one or two things and be the best at that. So I had to find out exactly what I love drawing, and that took 5 years for me. 5 years of constantly looking around and asking myself questions, being aware of how I feel about certain things.

And here's another cool thing. Once you master something, it's incredibly easy to master anything else, provided you love doing it, because you already know the steps.

My parent bought me LEGO when I was a kid, and I played a lot with it, building a lot of crappy things. Duh, I was a kid. A few months ago, I thought "how about I build an amazing model from LEGO Technic, so amazing that it would blow everyone's mind at LEGO"
So I took a lot of pictures of my favorite vehicle and started working on it. I can't tell you how frustrating it was, because nothing looked good and since I have a design background I know all about shapes and rhythms and curves and I wanted it perfect.
And then one day it hit me "hey, how did I do it in art? I started studying, right? Great! So I'm gonna go ahead and look at the other LEGO models out there, and start building parts that I like." Building your library, right?

Then I started building things I liked, but at some point it got very complicated and I didn't know how to go on. So I though, well, what do I do when my painting becomes too complicated? I go back to the sketches and thumbnails and start doing it again. But this time I have all the things I previously solved, like maybe perspective and composition are great but my values are all over the place.

So I just put the model aside and build a new and better one. It worked like a charm, but unfortunately I'm not that attracted to building LEGO as I am to drawing, so it's gonna be a wip for a long time.

Now the next time you start drawing and get frustrated about something, ask yourself what's the problem, find out, and go fix it.
From what I can see here you're trying to solve too many things at once, and that's hard, even for masters.

So solve them one at a time, don't start calculating perspective and adding textures on a painting where you haven't yet solved composition. You'll lose a lot of time and energy and get a lot of frustration. I know it because I've been there.
Try doing it in easy steps. Solve composition, do thumbnails, 2 values sketches, very very simple. Work with shapes, even go abstract. You can find a ton of beautiful shapes in nature, you just need to know where to look. Find nice contrasts. Study old masters compositions - as in 2 or 3 value study.
Then, when you have a few thumbnails you think are worth developing, you can start a linework, or add more to it, get to the next step, like maybe solve perspective, or add more value range (but keep close to the main values you already established)
Then maybe you wanna study the poses of your characters, or your architecture details, get into details, add colors, but again, don't mess up the values.


Thumbnails are a charm for me, because that's the only way I can generate ideas, through abstract shapes. I can't see anything if my canvas is blank.

Here's a quick example:




Hope this helps, mainly with realizing what exactly you want to pursue.

And don't post in your sketchbook just to get everyone's approval or shit like that, post like you would write in your journal. That's how I do it, and 1 year from now I'll still be able to check my progress, thoughts, and stuff. If what I post in there motivates others, even better.
You gave me the link with van Gogh's story and you're still trying to post stuff just to prove something to someone? No, just have fun doing it.

[crackedskull]

Maybe writing all that crap out got it out of my system somehow, because today I feel normal. I am more inclined to think that me feeling allright is actually because I stopped relating my self worth to the amount of art I make. It is not necessarily a bad thing to relate ones worth to how productive one is(it does motivate you quite a bit), but after experiencing the downside multiple times, I am more inclined to not do that anymore.

Adam - Well usually its when Im riding a bike and someone just gets infront of me or when theres a person occupying a spot I sketch at. None of those things are bad and the people arent doing anything wrong. I was in a real slump yesterday and couldnt help myself from being bitter. Thanks for the good advice.

Walent - I am very grateful for your lengthy reply. I quess I gotta ask myself more questions and try out more stuff aswell. And I will admit the last couple of days I did get overwhelmed since I tried to do everything at once for a piece and that had a part in me losing my way. The odd part was that I knew that I should start with something easy or something I really like to get me in the zone, but a part of me wanted to just go to the hard stuff and push through, instead it burned me out. Well heres hoping that failures like this serve to make me respect the ways that work more in the future and not be overconfident in pushing myself too far.
As for seeking approval I do have the knowledge, yet at times I struggle with it. I quess I gotta form a habit to not seek approval and the next month without internet will help with that.
It was good to hear your story :)

[Abnormal]

whoa I've seen all your sketchbook , it's amazing that you 're planning to give up after all that work, it's frustrating but analyzes what is the problem and focus your energy on that. I think you should simplify the perspective applied to the human figure , with only the basic principles is enough.
Do not give up.

[crackedskull]

Abnormal - all of it? Damn thats a lot of stuff to wade through. Im not planning on giving up, its just that when I get really frustrated I start questioning my actions, since they were mainly the cause that got me there.
With the simplified perspective, do you mean I should construct boxxy figures? Ive done a few and it does help, should do more of them. More figures in general(with perspective and all). Thanks for the help.

Another thing Ive noticed is that I do a shoddy job in the first lay in of the figure, gotta work on that aswell. Do more basic lay ins that are accurate, and not go into details.

Been playing around with colors too, the 1st and 3rd environment turned out better than expected, might do a piece based on that color scheme in the future.

[Piotr Jasielski]

I've also been in a art frustration/depression cycle lately. It's coming once in a while. The only way to go through is to take a step back and start to chill doing art. We often put too much pressure and expectations on ourselves and it often has an opposite effect we want. We loose all the fun, painting becomes a chore we hate.

Focus on fundamentals, do just studies on a chillout mode. No pressure, just fun. Once you get your engine going again you can jump into more demanding stuff.