Joseph's shiny new sketchbook

[JosephCow]

I get this kind of "drowning in life" feeling, that's why my real life sketchbook has huge gaps.

Ateliers are great points of access to knowledge, but it sounds like they suck too. I got the same sensation from other artists in ateliers — it's no coincidence I called minor deviations from the reference transgressive, hah.

In any case, wonderful painting. You have a great sense of volumetric shadow (I'm sure there's a proper traditional name to them but dunno), it's inspiring. This kind of subtle, large occlusion-like form/cast shadow is a straightforward addition at the end in digital works, but I find them challenging in traditional media.

Yeah I mean it certainly doesn't hurt to be able to draw really well from life. I think that being in touch with how things around you actually look is pretty valuable. It just comes with a lot of other stuff as well that never really gets scrutinized. I think it's also pretty easy to get narrow minded and purist. You start to stick your nose up at art that doesn't seem to match the conventions you're accustomed to, which just happens to be almost all art. I've kind of realized going to museums, like hey most of this is really different to what I'm doing.

And thanks! Usually for this kind of painting the light and shadow is baked into the design. Like things are drawn first as a pattern of light and shadow shapes. And it kind of makes sense because it's much harder to just decide to alter the values on a whim, whereas in digital a lot of the time you can do things in stages, and the lighting is a lot more malleable.