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

[JakeB]

Study


Study


Imagination


Imagination

[atrenr]

Huge strides recently, Jake! Can't wait to see hour 5k

[JakeB]

atrenr - thanks dude, been kinda hitting a wall recently, so that means a lot :)

Started a new piece :) Having fun with this

Thumbs


WIP - so many books!!

[Warburton]

atrenr - thanks dude, been kinda hitting a wall recently, so that means a lot :)

You would never have know it from the amount your putting out and progressing mate. Just try and remember that walls and obstacles are good, because they separate the people who kinda want it from those who REALLY want it ;)

Awesome to hear you've started to get work too! If you don't mind me asking where have you got it? Ive had a few private clients but aiming for the companies is something i'm still pretty clueless about. In this community its relatively easy to get help or advice on anything art related but as far as business and money are concerned, ive found it's a unanimous closed topic.

can't wait to see more dude.

[MrFrenik]

this last WIP looks very promising, Jake. It definitely leads the eye upward. I'm interested to see where you take it for the finish!

[Ursula Dorada]

Whoa, love the book case piece.

Just a nitpick - don't force the perspective too much on her feet. For the angle there to sit more naturally, I think you would have the floor plane almost parallel to the camera - and so her feet would be almost parallel to each other from the camera point of view. Right now I am reading it as an inclined plane coming towards the camera.

But yay, thats going to be such a great piece. Awesome sense of scale in it!

[Craig Paton]

Hey Jake, cheers for your comment on my sketchbook. Appreciated.

I must confess, that when I said was seeing other artists making dramatic improvement in their work, I had your good self in mind. The clear and continual improvement in your work is both enviable and inspiring. Each piece is better than the last. I'm looking forward to seeing where your 10,000 hour journey takes you.

[JakeB]

Warburton - Cheers man, I think it was just a case of not knowing what to paint. I abandoned a few illustrations in a row, don't think that helped.

MrFrenik - Cheers, gonna try and work on it a little bit each day :)

Ursula - Oh yeah, good catch. I hadn't noticed that, but I'll try and fix it before I post again. Thank you :)

Craig - Ah, well thanks man, means a lot. :D Still a long way to go, but yeah, we'll see :)

Hey, so I've not updated in a little while, I got some client work that I can't show, so I've been kinda AWOL. However, I can show the studies, so I'm gonna keep posting those, and any sketches I get a chance to do. If anyone's wondering, I'm at around 2400-2500 hours now, so that's how long it took to start getting a little bit of work, from where I started. :)

Anyway, here's some stuff.
Studies








Rubbish sketches, I was trying to work fast, and that means I was skipping steps, and not painting properly. If I want to work fast, I need to come up with a better process for it. Until then, more crappy sketches each day :).









And a tiny bit of progress on this

[MrFrenik]

I'm really liking the library painting you've got going on. The books do seem to go on forever. Don't worry too much about working fast - worry about working efficiently. I think that always works out for the best in the end.

[mateusrocha]

Yo!

Man, that library girl turned out very nice! I really liked the reflex light of the books/wood on her clothes!

As for the "work fast" thing, I found out that I was doing that too: trying to work fast, and thus neglecting working smart and properly doing things, skipping important parts and such.

I decided to take a lil' break from digital and do some pencil stuff, to come back to digital and spend more time in my paintings with the acquired knowledge of the pencil studies. What made me take that decision was a post by Darren Yeow on fb, if you don't mind I'll copy-paste it here so you can take a look if you want:

Freelance Tip: Get more work

There are two major reasons why you're not getting enough freelance gigs:

1. Your portfolio isn't good enough / appropriate to the jobs you're going for.

No one likes to hear this, but it IS the foundation of your freelance career - without strong art, spending a lot of time marketing is premature and most likely going to end in frustration. How strong do you need it to be depends on which field you're targeting and objectively comparing how your art sits in direction comparison with the luminaries of the chosen field. If you're lacking, forget marketing for the time being, make your product offering stronger.

If your art is good, then it's important that the stuff you're presenting is in context - meaning that if you're going for cartoony cel-shaded gigs, then submitting highly rendered dark fantasy is going to be next to useless. But the art director should be able to SEE my skill! Sorry pal, but it doesn't work that way. If you have no comparable art, it's in your interest to get some mock ups done to submit and show that you can pull off the work.

Showing your portfolio is all about risk mitigation for a client, if you can't show the type of work they expect to receive, then it's perceived as a very big risk and there is a long line of other artists who can provide that assurance with their portfolios.

The onus is on YOU to make sure that your portfolio communicates that you can do the job well - it is not the job of the art director to "see the potential"

2. You aren't marketing your services adequately.

Assuming your art is good, marketing tends to be the downfall of many would-be freelancers. It has to happen regularly and without fail.

Many freelancers shoot off a bunch of emails sporadically in one spectacular money shot and hope to land a gig, then they sit back and wait to hear replies. There is no system and there is no ongoing consistency. Chances are, if you only carry out your marketing every now and then, you won't get in front of the right people at the right time to get gigs.

CRM or Customer Relationship Management is the name given to a system of following up on clients, recording important information (like when they will be hiring freelancers, or what they said the last time you emailed) and reminding you to do your marketing regularly. The CRM can either be a simple one that you record in Excel or there are programs specially created to carry out this function - Base CRM on iPhone, Android, Windows and OSX is one example of a relatively simple system that is fully functional up to 100 clients.

Another thing to think about is that if you are only hitting one particular segment of the market that requires your skillset and aren't meeting with a great deal of success, there is nothing stopping you from looking at alternative industries. It pays to keep in mind that different segments of the economy will be going through their boom-bust business cycles at different times, so if the industry you are hitting is doing it tough, look to greener alternative pastures for a while.

How often you market is up to you - when I started my freelance business 4 years ago, I spent around 30 hours a week marketing my skills - these days it is a lot less than that and I am always stacked with client work, but I couldn't have gotten to this stage without hustling like a mofo early on.

Hustle on art fiends.

Keep going man, It's really nice to come by your sketchbook (:

[BenFlores]

that last illustration is soo awesome <3 just an idea but you can make the lighting from the windows a bit more dramatic. i was watching blade runner for a bit earlier and it reminded me of this. great work man!

[JakeB]

Passed 2500 Hours Here

Mr Frenik - Yeah man for sure, efficiency is key. I'm going to focus on just making my process super clear and efficient. Gonna step away from speedpainting for a bit. Focus on it properly in the future some time. Cheers.

Mateus - Cheers man, ah yeah I saw that post, really interesting thoughts on it. I'm gonna chill out on the working fast thing. Just focus on doing good work, efficiently. It's more fun that way anyway ;).

Ben - Oh sweet. I really need to actually watch blade runner lol. Feel like it's silly that I still haven't seen it. Gonna abandon that piece for now, but I might try and use that window thing in the future, cheers dude :)

Thumb for some short story fan art - The Dust Assassin by Ian Mcdonald


Rockwell Portrait Study - Love those planes :)


And I'm gonna call this done


Feel like I didn't really improve it since the last update, but I want to move on. I'm just too lazy to render all those books properly I guess ;). The next piece will make up for it :).

[Warburton]

hey dude, I know it's a pain in the ass to go back into a piece once you've called it but I recon you should spend an extra half hour or so just tweaking it up because it's a sweet piece and close to being a good portfolio piece.

I think the main issue in this latest version compared to the previous is you've lost the focal points and blurred everything together too much. I did another quick paint over because I see the same problem as ive seen previously in your earlier stuff in that your values become very mid tone and you loose contrast, especially in your focal points.



It's actually taken me longer to write this and upload the image than it did to paint it lol. My point is that these problems are not major issues and can be easily and quickly addressed.

I took a window out because together they were pulling attention up and away from the focal point (the chick). With having just one it helps lead the eye to her.

Those pillars on either side of her are sweet too, great way to frame her so I pulled them out slightly and then just ran a dodge over some books near her and over her head and shoulders to push the contrast and make her pop. You could probably do more but I just wanted to point this out. I don't know if you do this already but do you ever have a black layer set to colour while you do a piece? I do it all the time and it's a great way to see how your values are working. That's why ive left that b and w version above just to help show what I mean.

Again maybe abit blunt but I know you can handle it ;p hope this helps mate.

oh and gratz on 2500 hours. Crazy how fast that's passed, keep it up!

[JakeB]

Warburton - cheers dude, awesome crit, and just what I needed to go back to the piece. I dunno, I feel like it has potential, I just got super lazy at some point, and gave up. I think I'm goign to take it back to a rough stage, do some real linework, and give it another shot, keeping your crit in mind. Regarding the black layer, I tend to make one, I just always forget to check it. Not ideal lol. And it's so helpful when I remember!! Ahh, gotta do that more. Cheers again dude, helps a ton :).


Not a ton to show, hopefully I can show client work soonish though. I'll be done with one project soon, so I can start on personal work again at least :)

Mead Schaeffer study


Abandoned house for the "spitpainting" group on facebook

[ramalooke]

Great sketchbook you have here. I really like your fast sketches and studies ;) Plus your personal paintings are getting better and better. I digg that <3 Give us moar :OOO

[JakeB]

Passed 2600 Hours here :)

ramalooke- cheers dude, More coming soon. I'm just about done with most of the client work I've got on, so I'm gonna try and get a bit more of a balance going forward :D


More things for the spitpainting fb group, 30 mins each

girl ghost from the lake


Lizard necromancer


Unbalanced


Bloody hands - pretty happy with how this one came out, gonna play around with that method a bit more I think


And I'm back on it with this piece after a solid crit from Warburton, taking it back a few steps, gonna push it so I'm happy with it :).


<3

[Tygerson]

Love that library piece--the sheer height of the books lends some overwhelming-ness to the wall of knowledge.

Really great portraits from imagination, wow.

I'm keeping track of hours, too. (Thanks Malcolm Gladwell.) Started with an estimate of about 1500 based on how many hours per week I'd spent previously, and am now at 1800. I'm guessing you are much farther along than you think towards 10,000, since your first portrait posted can't possibly be the first thing you've ever drawn!

[MrFrenik]

It's all looking good, Jake. And I really enjoy that library. Looks like an interesting establishing shot for a graphic novel or film. Would love to see some client work when you get the chance to post it. Which leads me to ask - how do you go about getting client work, in general? I'm actually quite new to doing any "professional" work, so I'd appreciate any tip/secrets/sacrificial rituals you can offer.

[JakeB]

Tygerson - thank you :) Yeah, that was the kind of feeling I was going for. Glad you like it :) Ah cool, I find it really helped me to get motivated initially, and now it's a great way of keeping on track. Hope it helps :). And I think you're probably right about my start point, I just hadn't really been taking it seriously until then, and wasn't sure how to estimate it. Oh well ;) Maybe I'll reevaluate it when I get nearer to 10,000.

MrFrenik - Cheers dude. Haha, yeah me too. It got kinda busy this month, but apart from that I haven't got a lot of experience with it. Posting on the 'looking for work' sections of the forums seems to generate a bit of interest, and I got one job through elance, not sure if you're tried there? Sorry I can't be more help, when I've got a bit more of a handle on it/I'm getting work more consistently, maybe I can be more useful lol. Yeah, I'll post up the client work when I can, few bits I'm pretty excited to show :)


So, few more quick things

Build the wall


Night landing


And old study I never posted.


Doorhandle studies lol.


And a rough/lines for a new piece


Finished off the library piece :D much happier with it this time :)

[Egbu]

Those spitpaintings and studies are looking sweet ( encouraged me to join the fb group ) plus your personal work is getting more and more solid, keeep it up :D