Vornag's Happy-Go-Funtime Turbo Ultra Resurrected Hopefully Trainwreck
I need to work on a couple things. Number one is painting and number two is being productive.

Shit, like 13.20 hr / 10k? Idunno. I really need to be more serious about this.






Scream at what I'm doing wrong in my sketchbook
it helps a lot
Reply
Hey, about your producivity issue. If counting hours doesn't help, maybe set concrete tasks?
And than I don't mean, study light for so many hours. But more like do 1 or 2 masterstudies a week with the focus on light. You even can use half a day planning the goals for the next week and gathering references/resources you are going to study.

This way to focus lies on completing tasks instead of making hours. I have noticed that for me that works a lot better, since you have a concrete goal.

Good luck and keep fighting!

Reply
I agree with @Eyliana. Set some goals. For instance, I'm planning to finish a piece in a week (since it is hard for me to do :D) Your proportions seems a bit off in the piece where there is a man with a hat and a pipe. Before starting to paint I think you should hone the drawing. Take your time, drawing is more important than painting. Try to stay motivated eventually you will get where you are hoping to be   Thumbs_up

Reply
Hey! I just thought I'd stop by
Your figure studies are coming along nice man. Real nice environments your making too. I feel your pain with your productivity goals and stuff. For me, counting hours worked - I didn't quite do it in relation to 10k though. I printed a chart with columsn for the 7 days of the week, and 24 rows, for each hour of the day, and each hour I would write down what I did that hour, and colour the box in blue if that hour was an art hour. So I got the satisfaction of completing daily goals: reaching 4h a day, 5h a day, then 6h a day, up and up. Seeing 13/10,000 might discourage you somewhat. But, OTOH that would be pretty amazing to have an actual count of how many hours you have. Also, just remember that this 10k idea is very new. Its just a guide. 10k of bad training won't help, etc.
Imo you might get some motivation back if you finish some pieces. These last characters are really cool. Maybe try finishing one, working on it directly to make it look nice - basic steps, 3 values and simple hue choices for each clothing element for example, and one light source.
I say that cos having an endless stream of studies can make us forget the whole reason we get into art in the first place, to make awesome stuff we enjoy... so sometimes we need to work on making nice pieces. You can make real nice art even if your level isn't where it has to be - there is nice art that can be made at every stage, with simplified colouring and lighting for example.

anyway i hope the rant is useful. i think you can also increase your productivity by remembering what it is you enjoy about painting, and focus on enjoying your study and not making it a huge battle

keep up the good fight!

"If you want liberation in this life, there is no area that you do not watch. Watch the breathing, watch the posture, watch the flow of energy, watch the texture of the mind, watch the response to objects." - Namgyal Rinpoche
Reply
oh boy oh boy it's been a while.

It's been almost half a year of absence. I've occasionally posted some stuff on DA but that's about it when it comes to any form of online art-related activity from me.

So, to keep it short, the main reasons of my absence can all sort of be tied to a single reason: a lack of motivation. I've spoken about a lack of motivation to do art in a bunch of posts in the past but it extends beyond art. It's been difficult to find motivation to do anything at all. I've spent a bunch of my days just lying in bed and wallowing in my own tears.

The reason for my lack of motivation (depression, call it as you will, I just don't like that term) is tangible. I know what it is and how to fix it (I think) and it's actively being worked on to greater or lesser extents.

TLDR Shit's going on and I'm fixing it. It's not fixed yet and I doubt it'll ever be "fixed" but I'm getting there kinda.

I'd promise more activity but I'd just be setting myself up for failure. Any goal or motivation I set myself just doesn't help at all so if I go dark for another couple months again, I can at least say I didn't fail anyone.

That being said, biiiiiig thank you to everyone that commented on my dead-for-almost-half-a-year sketchbook with tips to stay motivated. I'll try to keep my outlook on art all sunshine and rainbows and hey, it's been getting a lot better as of late and I'm managing to stay productive for longer.

You should see a lot of changes coming from me in the coming months (granted I manage to update the sketchbook) as I try to restructure my life and just in general just become a better and happier person.

With that, it's not like I haven't been drawing at all. There's a lot of stuff I did in my sketchbook and I'm actually working on a webcomic which should hopefully be live by the end of the year. Alongside that I'm doing a bunch of worldbuilding stuff that I usually do, some game dev stuff, and a lot of stuff that never gets and never will be posted here. I've been meaning to update the sketcbook for a long time now but I wanted something to show after being absent for so long. So months turned into half a year and here we are.

I'll be posting the digital stuff in hopefully chronological order. Whatever isn't up here is either too old or not relevant enough to be posted. Everything is as I left it, WIP/unfinished and all. I'll get the sketchbook stuff up at some point in the future.



























(so hyped for Pyre oh my god I love supergiant)

















A lot of the more rendered stuff can be found on my DA in not-terrible quality. If it's not there it's probably WIP and I'll get to it eventually.

So yeah! That's what I've been doing for the past half year, digital-wise at least. Traditional works should be getting posted within the century I hope.

Here's to me actually doing more art in the future. Finding new music really motivates me to draw for some reason. 

Again, thank you to everyone that has ever stopped by and commented on the sketchbook. Your kind words and criticism are greatly appreciated.

Scream at what I'm doing wrong in my sketchbook
it helps a lot
Reply
Derk Sers.

Some DS fanart has been a long time coming. I adore every aspect of the game and it's an absolute masterpiece. It manages to weave in all the themes of desperation and depression into a game that's still simultaneously fun to play and experience.

If you haven't played/finished it yet I can't recommend it enough.



Scream at what I'm doing wrong in my sketchbook
it helps a lot
Reply
Inspiration is a strange beast.

One day I can't get myself to lift a finger and the next I spend the entire day staring at the screen and taking not even a single break.

This surely isn't healthy, but the urge to create is too strong to deny.

The truth is I lost track of why I do art and that's a really scary thing for me.

Since I could remember I always adored drawing. Creating something out of nothing is something I found to be the coolest shit ever and I totally wanted to do it. Often times the something I created was absolutely garbage because I never seriously practiced art, duh.

But as time went on and I started to take this remotely seriously I had a clear goal in mind, and that pushed me forward to be better.

Worldbuilding is my favourite thing ever, it's what made me turn to art. I had an idea, I wanted to visualise it. The concept of idea to paper is what got me interested in concept art. The act of figuing out how something looks, how it acts, etc, is something that motivated me so immensely.

The reason I got into art was a purely practical one- to visualise my ideas. The very notion of "Art" (not just drawing or painting) made me cringe as I believed that art had nothing but practical value. The reward of art is the finished product, not the act of creation, the personal catharsis or the idea you're attempting to convey.

Art, for me, was a practical craft. Like making a chair. A chair cannot make you cry and it cannot make you feel emotion.

It's a chair.

But recently something in my brain clicked. And by recently I mean over the course of years. I started to actually care about the world around me. I started to actually care about people.

I used to be a brick that showed absolutely no emotion. I'd say I hated myself for that but I couldn't mind a whole lot. I was a complete shut-in that wanted absolutely no contact from anyone. The way I lived was almost self-destructive and entirely impractical for today's society. I just went about every day with a constant sense of monotony and brainlessly did the operations I was meant to do. To a degree I'm still the same, just that now I have the ability to look at myself with a judgemental eye.

And by shifting my understanding the world came the shift of understanding myself, what I do and why.

For art, the result became meaningless. I don't care for what I create, I care that I am creating.

My motivation waxed and waned, like I mentioned earlier, where sometimes I feel absolutely nothing and other times I can't with good conscience do any other activity.

And with that shift in mentality I started looking at art differently. Not just my own, but also that of others. Art is no longer practical. It's something that moves you, that stirs emotion and motivates introspection.

So when I started the post I said I have no idea why I do art. That's a lie. I know exactly why, but that reason isn't concrete. It's not something I can reliably point to. It's random, it's organic and I can't control it. I can't make myself be motivated when I'd rather just lie down on the floor and wither away.

So if the my motivation behind art is something that's random, how am I supposed to push myself to become better? I still look over my past works and question why they didn't come out they way I wanted them to, but I absolutely cannot get myself to sit down and thoroughly study something. And that's what scares me. Sure, improvement will spring from simply repeating an activity, but I could be a lot better at art by now.

So in conclusion, I have no idea what I'm doing and why I'm doing it. My overarching goal has shifted to introspection and encouraging other people to do the same. I want to be a better person and I want to make the world a better place, but that's obviously no small task. I've always felt this motivation to some degree but now it's coming up more than ever. I'm starting to question the foundations of my own psyche and what I want to do in life.

it's a bunch of existential shit nobody ever wants to deal with, but getting this down somewhere is cathartic to me, and that's really the motivation behind my existence right now. Most every day is filled with existential dread. When I don't feel it I start to worry as to why it isn't there. I'm plagued by an overarching issue I can't fix for good, and I suppose this applies to every person in the world, no matter how radiant they may be.

The worst part about it is when I finish drawing and I make my piece of the day. I'm unwilling to start a new one, so I'm just left hollow and questioning what I should do with my life now. Not even the people that mean the world to me can break me out of that state of misery.

life's just a box of chocolates and I'm just determined to draw coffee every single fucking time. And when it's all out of coffee I start to panic about what I did wrong.

o ya have the picture



Scream at what I'm doing wrong in my sketchbook
it helps a lot
Reply


Forum Jump:


Users browsing this thread: 14 Guest(s)