Walent's sketchbook

[walent]

Hey Amit, thanks!
You guys have a point, the conclusion is I have to push myself to spend more time on my work.

What I realized is I'm lacking motivation. Today I had a hard time getting out of bed because I didn't actually have anything I wanted to do. Basically I don't know what to draw.

Maybe because I have 3 areas of interest that I keep bouncing between: scenery/buildings/structures, characters and storytelling. And it's so frustrating because I decide to pursue one area, make plans, what to study, what to train on, I do it for a few days and then suddenly I flip in the opposite direction and I feel an urge to do one of the other 2 things.

I'm starting to think it happens because I stumble upon something that's hard for me and my mind says "ok, this is not for me, go back" instead of pushing through.

Normally I would say you have to be so passionate about one particular thing that your brain retains information even when you look at something related. And that happens to me with the mechanical, sci-fi part. I just have to close my eyes and I start seeing stuff, panels, wires, shapes, cutouts, maybe parts of a building, maybe spaceship details. And it's not necessarily something I've seen before, it's new, I don't even know where it's from.

That sometimes happens with characters, but never happens with illustrations. I look at some amazing illustrators out there and I realize I would have never thought about that particular pose, composition or expression on the characters' faces. That means I need to add a lot more to my visual library, right?

Then, sometimes when I paint, usually when I get a good result, I have an incredible sensation of accomplishment. That happens often when I paint anatomy. Sometimes when I get a cool shape design.




I think the last character design project I had was early 2015, if I exclude my regular clients.
And I think it was for Fragged Empire, and I did finish 3 or 4 characters, 2 of them I really liked.


Maybe that's another reason, I try to push them but they turn out bad, and I lose confidence, go back to sketching.

I didn't actually think about going back to traditional because I know how happy I was when I found out that I can work digitally, no more supplies, no more charcoal smudging and no more mess.
I even tried airbrush once, and it was an absolute pain, I had to use some templates for the edges, otherwise every edge would turn out blurry, it was just like working with a very soft brush in PS. Then cleaning took 10 minutes. And I had to clean it every time when I needed to use another color. After a month I just threw it away.
Never used oils though.

But I did think about going full figure drawing. I took one of Steve Huston's workshops and I decided to push a figure to a full render. And I just got so bored that I eventually gave up. I don't know... I really liked the pose, the light and the model, so I have no idea what happened.

When I do figures, I always feel like I miss the design part of it. Also, there are a lot of references where I like a certain part, but the rest is weird, or the light is bad.

I noticed a lot of illustrators shoot their own poses, some even have the models wear costumes. And that sounds incredibly easy. Then just make a study of your own picture.
But then it would feel like you haven't created anything. At least that's how I would feel.

Instead, I try to invent poses and costumes and all that. Poses that you can't actually shoot with a camera. Something like Frazetta.

So here's me trying to push stuff: