The 10000 Hour Rule - Art Edition - 7626/10,000

[SpectreX]

+1 Rep from me too! Awesome comment ^^

[Raedrob]

Many good points, Jake.
I've started to work much longer each day than I've used to (read: Noah's Art Camp)
and I find it difficult to extract the actual intel I'm getting from my studies.
Sometimes I just get really into the flow and work and work without stopping up to think about it.
I'll start to be more conscious of why I'm doing the studies I do and what I can use of it later.
For instance, I'm doing a study of a man with lots of flowy cloths and capes, but I tend to forget looking at the capes and gather how they occupy space, how they fold and how they're affected by light.

[JakeB]

Sickbrush - Thanks man, not a problem. I just got carried away typing that's all ;).

MrFrenik - Haha yeah, AJ is one of the guys that got me to start thinking about studying like this :). Glad it's working for you though dude. Haha, and it's not so much a work ethic, just a habit now lol. What else would I even do? ;)

Sula - Thank you :)

SpectreX - Cheers man

Raedrob - Ah, well working more's always a good thing. I've been there though, I know what you mean. Where you just look at the screen after a few hours and the study's finished, but you don't really remember doing it lol. Happens all the time. The thing that works best for me to avoid that is making notes. They don't have to be in depth by any means, but the act of writing something down, and having to actively put your thoughts into words is often enough to make the information stick (for me anyway). Personally, I use Evernote, just make a new note for each study, and tab across whenever I notice something. So if I was studying a cloak, maybe I write down "creases fall away from shoulders" or "creases make long triangular shapes". Might be worth a try? :). Oh, and apply the studies. If you go into a study knowing that you need to apply it afterwards, it forces you to concentrate, as you know you're going to have to pull it from memory shortly.

Dno if this will help, or just look like nonsense, but here's an example of some studying notes (from when I was studying king character designs last week). Super incoherent, but I think they help :)



Oh god, rambling again (sorry)



Now, I wouldn't normally reply on here without posting any work. But I want to reply to people's comments, and it seems like a fair few people are reading that post, so I wanted to throw out a little disclaimer lol.

I don't know shit. That post is just what's working for me, right now. It could change, I might have got a lot of things wrong, I just thought it might be nice to share it.

Feel free to pull from it, and I'm happy to talk about it (the whole field of learning in general is fascinating to me) and offer advice where I can, but I just don't want to mislead anyone. I'm still learning. :)

That being said, I hope it helps someone, and if it's useful to anyone, I'm glad :D.

[SpectreX]

Silly and maybe a 'stupid' question but anayway here goes.
From your point of view, do you think that studies of the basics should be done in this short style or more like the long studies?

Let me rephrase, if you started from 0 now with what you now about study methods, would you do the basics in these short studies or in the large ones?

The reason I ask is because this way of study seems more fun and useful, but on the other hand I'm still at the basics (mannequin shapes).

[Warburton]

Beautifully worded mate, cheers for sharing your insight Jake, i think it'll be useful for pros and beginners alike.

Great updates too, it's always a pleasure to drop by here and see how much hard work your doing.

[JakeB]

SpectreX - No way man, great question, and it did cros my mind while I was writing that post. Not totally sure what my answer is though. I think that in the beginning, when you're just starting out, the most important thing is learning to 'draw'. Becoming confident just putting lines down. Whether that means doing a load of studies, or drawing from imagination loads, is up to you. In my case, I waited way too long before working from imagination at all, so studies became a huge crutch for me. I'm not 100%, but to answer your question, I'd mix it up a bit. Keep doing long studies until your starting to get proficient at "copying the photo". And focus on accuracy. Whatever you're studying at this point (just draw something you like drawing) doesn't really matter, because you're not trying to learn about the object so much, as the act of pushing pixels or graphite or paint around, matching shapes and colours. Basically, just make sure you have a singular focus for each study. When I study walls and doors, with quick lines, I'm solely focused on the structure of the objects. When I spend a whole day doing a single portrait study. I'm solely focused on what makes an image look realistic (details, textures etc), not so much any of the anatomy or structure of the face. If I want to practice the proportions of the face, I'll do a lot of short studies, rather than one long one.
I hope that makes sense. In short, don't worry too much about "what" you're painting if your main concern is accuracy. And before each study, decide what your "focus" is, and use that to decide what kind of study do. Basically, think about the whole study before you start it. At what point will you have stopped working on the area you're focusing on? 10 mins? 1 hour? 3 hours? 60 seconds (gesture drawing). Just learn what you need from a study, then move on :).
I could keep typing, but I think I'll just end up rephrasing that a load of times. If it doesn't make sense, let me know and I'll try and rewrite it more concisely. Sorry for the essay dude.

Warburton - haha, thanks man, glad you think so. Feel like I'm surfing the line between helpful and pretentious pretty delicately with this lol. IHAVENOIDEAWHATIMDOING!!!

New work stuff though <3

Gestures


Think I've finished that guard piece - any last feedback would be cool though :)



And some process for it :)

[mindwrack]

awesome improvement lately! the work is definitely paying off :)
only thing i would say about this latest piece is to remember that clothes and armor doesnt wrap completely tightly, the cloak seems to be follow the same line as the shoulder plates rather than stick out a bit which looks a bit awkward , keep up the great work though

[SpectreX]

Thanks for the reply! It definitively makes sense. And it is a difficult line, between long and short studies at the start, to find. I'll keep trying to find it and keep it up.

Nice progress btw!

[Warburton]

hey dude, that wall is still bugging me, so i took 15 mins just to do a quick paintover, hope you don't mind.


near his head i tried to add abit of depth to show more space between the two layers of walls. Then i turned your image b+w and thought i could use that wall to push the comp abit more so I pretty much just upped to contrast, dark wall, light bricks, dark cape, light face, you get the idea. The contrast could probably be pushed even more, especially around that wooden door area to force the eye to the main focal point (the guard). The brick patch acts almost like a halo around the dude so it would be a crime not to brighten that to push the dark silhouette of the guard forward :p

I'm not even sure if this has helped, like you said before mate, i just make this shit up as i go along too lol.

keep those updates comin man <3

[JakeB]

Mindwrack - Ah cheers man, I've changed it up a little. Thanks :).

SpectreX - Nice one dude. Thank you.

Warburton - Damn right that helped. Thanks a ton dude. I applied some of your stuff. I couldn't quite get the contrast that high in a way I was comfortable with, but I'm much happier with the wall now. Making far left darker helps the composition a ton. Sort of vignettes the canvas. I can't thank you enough, your feedback's been so consistently helpful. Thanks man.

So, after posting that thing, and going on about how consistency is important, I've been pretty off the radar this week. What a hypocrite. All I can offer as an excuse is that it was my birthday earlier this week, and I've spent more time than usual "not working". But hey, I'm back now. Work time :)

Think I'm gonna call this done now, thanks everyone for all the feedback, really appreciate it.


And I started working on the 1st Bloodsport again. I attempted it when I first found the crimson daggers, and I'm coming up to 2000 hours now, so figured I'd reattempt it to see the improvement. No pressure ;)

So, studies for that.
Hunters (the posh kind)


Scifi design studies


Character Sketching


Character Development

[MrFrenik]

The last painting turned out really well, man; you should feel good about it. And we're all allowed some time to slack here and there, but now it's time to get back in there and work hard, like you've done with these studies. Keep it up!

[JakeB]

MrFrenik - Cheers dude, appreciate it. Yeah, time off isn't always a bad thing, it just got a little silly this time. Glad to get back to it anyway though :D
Hit 2000 hours here :D

dryulya - thank you :)

Yesterday's stuff

Helmet studies



Gun Studies


Gun silhouettes, working on standard shotguns, then changing them up, making them a bit more scifi



Gun development



And a little more character development

[JonHop]

Cool stuff Jake, it's always a pleasure to drop by and take a look at your progress, I enjoyed reading your insights into your study habits to :).

And happy belated birthday!

Keep up the great work dude.

[JakeB]

JonHop - Cheers dude, really appreciate the kind words.

New stuff

Dog Studies


Poses


Rough Lines


Colour Rough


Clean Lines


Gonna paint this up today :D

[JakeB]

New stuff,

Just a tree study


And some progress on this, first pass of shadows done

[JakeB]

New Stuff - beware, rambling text below

Quickish face study from last night



Finished this


Comparison to last time I tried it, 2000 hours ago.


As some people who see this may know, I started keeping track of the hours I work (on concept art/illustration stuff) a while ago. It started in March last year, while I was still at university, and I'd just been introduced to the "10,000 hour rule". The basic idea is that to be 'proficient' at any skill, you need to put in 10,000 hours of deliberate, focused practice.

So, mostly to motivate myself to work more consistently, I started noting down how many hours I was drawing for.

Fast forward to now, and I've just passed 2000 hours.

The reason for redoing this piece, is that it was the last thing I could find that I'd done from imagination before I started counting my hours. People often post comparisons with old work, months or years apart, and while they can be incredible and motivating, it's hard to gauge how much they were working over the time period. So, I thought I'd do this. Figure it's a reasonable representation of the improvement you can expect with 2000 hours work. Which can be as spread out, or as compressed as you like. These first 2000 hours took me over a year, gonna try and hit ~3000 a year from now on.

If you wanna take a look at any point so far, there's a dropdown menu on my blog where you can select the period of time (how many hours I'd completed)
http://blog.ohbullocks.com/

If you're interested in the whole 10,000 hours thing, check out this interview with Malcolm Gladwell. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHxf68nb_-o (I think that's a decent one, if not, just click around on YouTube, he's done plenty of talks on the subject)

Aaaaaand, if you think the whole thing is poppycock and I'm a moron, and that measuring something like this to the hour is stupid. You could well be right, but I've been doing it for too long to stop now. It's like I started doing something as a joke, but now it's actually a thing. I've gotta see it through.

So yeah, that's it. Enjoy .



Oh, and yes, mostly I did this as an ego boost. Ho hum.

[MrFrenik]

It's definitely a huge leap forward in terms of ability, Jake, so asspats for that. And I'm really digging the design and concept too. The only thing that could use some tweaking is that the foreground elements (grass and such) are too light in value and it doesn't help to put more depth into your painting. Other than that, it's fairly solid stuff. Just keep on studying hard and pushing your designs and values as much as you can with each painting/drawing.

[atrenr]

Woah, it's been awhile since I was here. Huge improvement, Jake! Keep pushing it man, you are gonna be insane by hour 10k.

[JakeB]

MrFrenik - thanks a ton man. Yeah I've had a couple people say that, won't happen again lol. Cheers for the feedback dude.

atrenr - Haha thanks man. Fingers crossed ;)

So, I kinda went AWOL for a bit. Whoops.

Had the London CA.org workshop last weekend. Such a good experience, met a ton of awesome people, saw a load of great art. All in all, I'm pumped to get to work. However, for the last week I've been kinda flat out with some graphic design freelance. Short deadline, so I haven't really been able to get a lot of other stuff done.

Sent that off yesterday though, so it's go time!! <3

Self portrait to get it kicked off, and remind myself how to paint


WIP I was working on before the workshop, not gonna take it any further though..


Sketches from the workshop + the past week or so. Lunch times and stuff..








OMG drawing with actual materials is so difficult D:










<3

[JakeB]

New Stuff
Portrait sketch/study thing.
Did a sketch, then used a couple of different references. One for the lighting, one for the form. Tried to apply one to the other, if that makes sense. Gonna try and do these daily. Feel like I learned some stuff lol.



Gestures


Composition studies. Not sure who the originals are :/ Just grabbed from the big folder on my HD. Bottom right is Karla Ortiz though


Enviro study. No idea what i'm doing


Quick colour roughs


Speed Painting


And thumbs for a new illustration