Walent's sketchbook

[Artloader]

Walent, I was sorry to hear about your troubles these last 6 months, I really hope you overcome them and that this Patreon thing takes off for you dude.

There's a stream of thought that I've found really helpful recently and I will share it here just in case it helps you:

"Follow your passion" is bad advice.  Instead, follow what you are good at and the passion will come.

This is an idea from a guy called Cal Newport and he talks about it here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIMu1PGbG-0

From where I'm sitting, you may not feel passionate about your art but trust me dude, you are good at it.

Hope that helps, if not please do ignore.

Take care my friend.

[gibbon]

@ Walent - I found everything you said in your last post really relatable. 

If money weren't a concern, I probably would not do art. Most likely I wouldn't develop any skill - and I think that would kill me more than any shitty day job might. Since I have to make money, looks like it's art, because I can list a thousand things I'd be miserable doing, and only a handful of things I'd be okay with. Seems like a poor motivation to do art, but it's mine and I just want to keep pushing because it feels good to make things.

"Yeah, well the conclusion is I'm either too low on energy to enjoy doing something, or I just can't find what I am suppose to do."

I feel this too. Most of the time I have "brain fog" or plain old lethargy. It intensifies the feeling of indecision on which direction in art I'm supposed to be going. Part of this is because I neglect exercise the other part of it I realize is an excuse to stay comfortably stagnate.

I enjoy looking through your stuff Walent. You definitely have a really cool voice.

[walent]

Thank you so much for your replies guys, I really appreciate taking your time to write here and help out.
I came to the conclusion that I'm really pushing myself too hard without being opened to the possibilities.
I'm definitely an emotional person, so I often share stuff while under a certain state of mind, later on thinking I should've probably restrained from saying that.

It's true, I needed some time out, some "going for a walk" time, mindset is the most important thing for an artist. You can have all the skill in the world, but if you're not willing to sit down and start painting, it's useless.

Enter the void, for me, is more about that transcendence, leaving the body, stuff like that, but maybe also about being alone. Another thing that fascinates me (and I believe the movie captured it) is the nighttime, night life, walking on the street at night, looking at all the lights, kinda makes me forget stuff and helps me get into that first level of meditation (I believe it's called the alpha state), where your mind stops thinking and you just observe, hear the sounds, feel the wind, maybe slightly chilly, and suddenly everything feels brighter and more clear, like I'm suddenly putting on some ultra HD glasses.


I have to agree that once you're good at doing something, it definitely feels good when you do it. So obviously, you keep at it and become even better. That's me with figure drawing.
But the problem is instead of going further each time, expanding, I just sat there and kept drawing in that comfort zone.
Since I've done so many characters and studied so much, it wouldn't make any sense to try something completely different. So, instead, I wanna try incorporate some design elements bit by bit, just enough so it wouldn't become a pain. Having that as a goal, I imagine at some point I'll be able to create an illustration that is good enough to get me hired by Paizo or a similar company.

Unfortunately, I decided that the Patreon has to wait a while longer.

[walent]

Heeey everyone

Been a while since my last post here. But I just noticed I created this thread 7 years ago. That's crazy!
Also remember that last time I was struggling a lot with my mindset, feeling super low on energy and such. I should probably reread all the posts, since this is sort of my journal and I can probably get some insight, but right now I'm doing so good that I really don't care. Might use the time to do other things.

To cut it short, I started some personal development classes on Mindvalley, dunno if anyone heard about them. They helped a lot, I basically needed a small push so I can get my priorities straight and I now have a vision of where I want to be. I've spent a lot of time observing my deep down feelings about everything that I did so far.

I stopped judging people based on surface aspects. I try to be a more positive person as I continue to learn to develop compassion for others, even if I don't agree with their actions or vision. I'm learning to be thankful of the things around me and to forgive others. The practice of forgiveness is by far the best exercise I ever did for personal development. Anger and stress can easily be present in every day of our lives and can quickly bring us down. Being immune to that is a powerful thing to have.

This year I got my first successful gig, after about 3 or 4 projects that went terribly wrong last year. Also, I'm about to start designing my own dream apartment in a few months, will see how that goes.

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So I'm here at Artloader's suggestion to resume posting and I thought why not. From all the people that browse this thread, if I can get at least 5 of them motivated to push themselves to work more and stop procrastinating, then I'm happy. I know I needed that myself at some point. This might also motivate me to post more, thus work more, now that I know what I want to focus on, which is design and simplified shapes. I can't believe how much I missed in the last few years by not paying attention to my shapes.

I'll end this post by dumping some of the stuff I've done lately, some are posted on my social media, some aren't posted anywhere.

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I've also decided to offer 1on1 sessions to anyone who is stuck with some particular subject or having trouble evolving. I feel like I could share a lot of my experiences and maybe help others pass difficult moments in their careers. If you want more details, you can just drop me a line here or on social media, I should be easy to find.

[bluehabit]

Hey Vlad, I am a huge fan of your work! I have an inspiration folder full of artists that I admire and you are definitely in it. I had no idea you had a crimson daggers sketchbook its amazing to see how far you have improved. I love how your paintings and sketches have a emphasis on form, its like you carved out your subject in clay.

[Gliger]

love the antlers guy

[Fedodika]

fuck yea dude, positivity is the real shit; I have some of your stuff in "good anatomy" folders, like feet and hands so youre on the money on a lot of it. You gotta have relentless positivity to be an artist long term, its impossible without it.

I think you have a slick sense of design, but i dont want you to think you've plateud by any means. There are so many things you can also explore with the skillset you have now like traditional art and painting, or 3d or animation. Dont just limit yourself; and i know its scary to dip into those things but you gotta fight through it because the rewards are immense.

Post when the urge strikes you homie, theres a never ending energy to this forum, a dimly lit candle burns dimly but it still burns

[darktiste]

I really could learn a thing or two on pastel palette in here.I encourage you to play with color theory.

[Artloader]

Hey Walent! Woo-hoo! Welcome back dude!

Sounds like you've been places while you've been away and are getting your stuff in order, good to hear man. Loving your work more than ever!

[JosephCow]

your sketches are wonderful! great work.

[walent]

Hey Vlad, I am a huge fan of your work! I have an inspiration folder full of artists that I admire and you are definitely in it. I had no idea you had a crimson daggers sketchbook its amazing to see how far you have improved. I love how your paintings and sketches have a emphasis on form, its like you carved out your subject in clay.

Hey! Thanks, always glad to hear something like this!

love the antlers guy

Thanks! Yeah, it's one of my best I'd say

fuck yea dude, positivity is the real shit; I have some of your stuff in "good anatomy" folders, like feet and hands so youre on the money on a lot of it. You gotta have relentless positivity to be an artist long term, its impossible without it.

I think you have a slick sense of design, but i dont want you to think you've plateud by any means. There are so many things you can also explore with the skillset you have now like traditional art and painting, or 3d or animation. Dont just limit yourself; and i know its scary to dip into those things but you gotta fight through it because the rewards are immense.

Post when the urge strikes you homie, theres a never ending energy to this forum, a dimly lit candle burns dimly but it still burns

Thanks dude! I definitely need to focus on armor and clothing. If you see some character design that looks decent in here, it's usually a happy accident. Gotta change that soon.

I really could learn a thing or two on pastel palette in here.I encourage you to play with color theory.

I will, at some point. Right now, I consider I'm doing decent enough with colors, my priorities are character posing and design.

Hey Walent!  Woo-hoo!  Welcome back dude!

Sounds like you've been places while you've been away and are getting your stuff in order, good to hear man.  Loving your work more than ever!

Thanks, man!
Yeah, I'm in such a good mood, I don't have enough hours in the day to do as much stuff as I want to.

your sketches are wonderful! great work.

Thanks!

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Will continue to focus on armor/clothing and posing.
I found out I kinda dislike full plate armor and I'll avoid that for now. Seems too clunky, too many similar details, no variation.
So I'll keep hanging around medium/light armor, my main subjects will be celtic, scythian, nordic/viking and mongol.
Then I wanna get deep into tribal/ancient like maybe maori.
So far I'm having a lot of fun with these.


Will also start a big personal project soon. This one is for real. Will post what I can.

[Artloader]

Your colours always blow me away man, even with your sketches, if I squint I could mistake them for photo!

Question for you on inventing poses: If you had your mind set on a pose but couldn't find a reference photo for that exact pose, how would you go about inventing that pose?

[Peter]

Fuck didn't realise you started posting again. Awesome work as always :) Especially your figures, I always use them a reference for how I want my figure drawings to look.

[walent]

Question for you on inventing poses:  If you had your mind set on a pose but couldn't find a reference photo for that exact pose, how would you go about inventing that pose?

It happens quite often and one thing I do is constantly practice the poses I THINK I'LL USE at some point, not just random poses. Then I try various things like drawing the poses using basic figure drawing knowledge, meaning actually break it down to boxes and cylinders, using gesture, rhythms and shape arrangements (even going abstract), then add basic anatomy; if it really doesn't work I try to take that pose myself, see how it feels and find what's not working. I then imagine the camera angle and try to figure out which parts of the body are closer and which are further away. Adjust either the camera or the pose until it feels dynamic enough, I never want everything on the same depth level, because it creates stiff and flat poses.
Another thing would be to actually get someone to pose, but that's not always easy
I also constantly gather tons of refs and eventually combine them to get the pose I need.

Fuck didn't realise you started posting again. Awesome work as always :) Especially your figures, I always use them a reference for how I want my figure drawings to look.

Thanks, Peter!


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[Fedodika]

ooh i like the pile of girlies... and moulin rouge!

[walent]

Thanks Fedo!

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[Artloader]

Your colours and values are always fantastic man, how do you get them to be so good?

[walent]

Your colours and values are always fantastic man, how do you get them to be so good?

Needless to say, it's a lot of practice but most importantly it's studying the right reference, or even a lot of old masters.
Here's an example of a good value photo depicting our all-time favorite artist Iain McCaig - basically, if you can bring everything down to just 3 values, it's a good practice, at least for my goals.




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I've been very busy lately, not much time for personal stuff.

[Gliger]

great stuff as usual, idk if you take critiques but, something I keep seeing in your work is that you leave the hair as a gestural-ish block-in, it never feels defined and conscious (even in your more finished images), which... gestural hair is great and I love it, but it's so much better when the design of that gesture adds to the rest of the figure; when you add the highlights on it, it always feels like you are missing on a great chance to frame the face, or lead into it (or oppose it!). Other times you leave it as a structural block-in, like a sculpture study, but in those cases the structure isn't very powerful, the softs-hards don't make it pop, the overlaps aren't there or aren't accentuated, the hierarchies of rhythm and form aren't really there like they would be in idk, a bernini sculpture.

Maybe you just aren't posting the good examples of how you handle hair, but in case it's something you've been ignoring, referencing someone like ingres or leyendecker (if you want it to be more graphic), maybe paxton, or something like boldini's drawings or tarbell if you want it to be looser and more gestural, could make your figures more solid and impactful. Stronger silhouette, stronger rhythms, more compositionally confident highlights...

I'm trash at hair, maybe the only reason I'm saying all of this is because I've been thinking about being more conscious about how I do hair myself lately.

[Pubic Enemy]

I can see what Gliger is saying about hair. I don't think there's an imminent need for you to work on it though, because it seems (correct me if I'm wrong) that humans are just not your favorite subject matter, though you are very good at drawing them. Your drawings of mechanical things and of environments are excellent and show a lot of enthusiasm. Don't feel bad about focusing on only the things you care about most; many of the most widely loved artists are practically one trick ponies.

But I could be completely wrong. Given your skill level, I think you will do well no matter what.