Knight's sketchbook

[Dominicque]

@VitorCardoso Thank you!

I've got a bunch of other sculptures already, but they need a final pass or hair. I'm working on a way to make hair easier to setup because it's a nightmare, easily taking over half the time spent on a bust and doing a vague sculpted mass + strands on top of it like in the first doesn't look good. This is time I want to spend on art, not pixel-pushing.

Oh, how I wish I could do great pencil work like you! Are these from imagination or reference/studies? How long do they take on average? Your sculpts look nice and 'painterly', too.

@Dominicque I'm so happy the sculpts look painterly because sometimes I chisel a lot of planes that shouldn't really there to capture that painterly energy through the light. I'm glad it's coming across!

Most are studies, but it's better to call them from reference for reasons expanded below. Each portrait takes 20-50min on the average, usually on the upper bracket. However, when larger or darker they easily take up to 2 hours. I don't keep track of time, I only set a time by which I need to put the pencil down and start my day because getting anxious about my sluggishness won't make me more efficient. I'm not slow because I'm getting lost on details or something, I need every one of these seconds.

Sometimes I can't believe how far my pencil work got and will leaf through my sketchbook to convince myself, haha. A couple of years ago I had accepted this skill was beyond my reach, period. That was something for good, real deal artists, not my inefficient lazy ass.

~~ Long rant about art improvement and motivation strategies ~~

I'll babble now but I hope it helps! You sound like me these years back, and I saw you also struggle with speed and expectations.

What turned it around for me and made my art objectively improve was figuring how to make it comfy and pleasant. Years berating myself for not being as good as I'm supposed to be did nothing for my skills. There's being disciplined, and there's pointless punishment. Being constantly disappointed in yourself falls into latter; It won't make you a better artist, it just makes you miserable. So I accepted that while there are aspects in which I might never be good at, I can still enjoy the ride. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The cool thing is that chasing this enjoyment counts as practice, whether you meant to practice or not. Practice which brings improvement, whether you're looking for it or not. Leveling up happens as if by black magic, all by itself. And all you need is reframe and be kind to yourself. This kindness is not only about going out of your way to shut down your brain weasels when they're acting up ("You're too slow! You can't get the values right! It looks nothing like the ref!"), but finding what makes a drawing personally satisfying. You'll have to identify your own happy places. As an example, mine are:

- Faces. I just love them. They don't need to come with a body attached, because that's costly and turns a happy thing into a stressful thing. So if it looks like a person, not necessarily the person I was drawing, I'm already happy.
- Rendering. Making the end result pleasant-looking makes me happy. Sometimes it means value-crunching or deviating from the reference, and that's an acceptable loss to me if that keeps my spirits high and momentum going.

They're the key for me coming out from a drawing happy even if I fail at whatever I was studying, so I place them higher in my priority list than the study. It's my secret to avoid burn outs. "True, I couldn't capture the forehead plane like I wanted, but it looks cool!"

I found a time slot to draw that works for me, as I down my morning coffee, and now I draw every day. It's okay to do a shitty drawing when you have the sure opportunity to do something better tomorrow, plus a bad drawing among many okay ones just fade into the background.

I budget my stress carefully, making the point of picking no more than two things to study a day. Any aspect that stresses me out also counts as a study subject: Larger drawings, full bodies, darker shading, likeness, and such. I don't take them for granted or mandatory, I make room for them in my energy budget. Rather than trying to not overrun in time, it's important to not overrun my stress budget. If it's a bad day, I can simply not consciously study anything at all. Whenever you spot a fish, that's a day I just wanted to chill. ^^'

I also follow my whims. I don't need to devise rigid study subject schedule because the brain weasels constantly whisper where I failed and how I failed. I can simply approach one of these points of failure when I feel ready, or when I feel like it. Some weeks I might try noses, others larger drawings, others I don't focus on a subject at all. Following your whims is fun, thus also mood-improving.

All this emphasis on not overworking myself is because I already have a day job in which I often do things I don't feel exactly like doing. There's plenty of things on my life to stress about. I don't need to turn my study time into another source of anguish. If anything, it's counterproductive.

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To compensate for that wall of text here's a small style exploration.

It went surprisingly smoothly, and though at first it didn't felt like "me", throwing it into an abandoned WIP showed it works. The knowledge and confidence gained from all these pencil portraits is starting to bleed into my color work.




Oh, and rocks tests!

Yep, I do struggle with speed and expectations. Was I super obvious lol? Yeah, I do tend to beat myself up and surrounding myself with constantly negativity is just burning me out. If I don't get things down how I want from my head within the first 10 minutes I start thinking I'm a failure and can't do it. Trying not to see how long something is taking me as a 'value judgement' on myself. 

'The cool thing is that chasing this enjoyment counts as practice, whether you meant to practice or not.'
I need to remember this and drill it in my head. I don't just need to bang out 'studies' all day every day. If I'm enjoying it I AM improving. 'Finding happy place',  I need to let myself have a 'comfort zone'. Fanart right now and conceptual illustration is what making me want to draw right now.  I get really bored with rending and when it doesn't go right, like doubt bug starts to creep back in. I would really love to have a rendering style like yours Wes Burt, Miles Johnson or Tran Nguyen. Any tips for how to render pencils like you?
I've been watching videos on starting an illustration career, especially from: The Illustrator's Guide - YouTube and it's actually been helping a lot. I'm been in that negative headspace of always comparing my art to others, especially fantastical realism, super rendered art that thrives on the internet, that zooming out and looking at the sort of illustration that gets hired for example editorial or book design makes me aware there is a market for art that doesn't fit in though genres, like super flat vectors. There are loads of commercial illustrators whose work is off it terms of anatomy, perspective, etc, but it honestly doesn't matter, because the idea is still good and it fits with their style. 
Even though that sort of art doesn't appeal to me, if that art is fine, my current art can still be good enough for commissions/professional work, whilst I work on having a style I really enjoy. I'm actively trying to find illustrators IRL I can vibe with.

I often feel mentally exhausted, and I feel the anxiety comes from the feeling of always feeling like I wasted time, so I don't want to 'waste' any more. I have an idea of something I want to draw, but then I think I need to know anatomy, perceptive, hands, feet, compositions before I even start, so I don't want to. Which is counterintuitive. Like, on here I feel I need to post work in order to comment, even if I haven't or work isn't finished. It's taking me awhile. 

Don't worry about the wall of text, it's welcomed, especially on these topics lol.

Those rock studies are great btw. Did you overlay with photos, or is it just painted?
Great sword designs!