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

[Cruptic]

It's so amazing just klicking through the pages here and watching you improve so much over the time of like what? 2 years?! This is so inspiring like Craig said, I really hope you reach the 10.000 hours so keep on pushing this is great :)

[JakeB]

Passed 4800 Hours Here

Kaffer - Cheers man, I was having a lot of fun with that stuff. I'll have to get back into it.

Craig - Haha, I hadn't done for a while. But when you mentioned it I had a flick through. I have done some truly awful paintings lol. Cheers though, means a lot :) Just gotta keep going now I guess :)

Cruptic - Cheers man, I appreciate it. I'd have to double check, but I've been working on this stuff for a few years now, been doing it full time (after dropping out of uni to pursue illustration on my own) for nearly two years, yeah :) Haha, I hope so too. It's a little while off yet, but I think I'll make it. Can't give up now :).

It's been way too long. Time management has gone out of the window. Got swamped with client work, then totally failed to get motivated about personal work, then life got in the way a bit. Hopefully back to some sort of normality now. Fingers crossed :)

So here's the mediocre amount I've squeezed in over the last 300 hours of working.

Sketches












I studied an egg. That's a low point lol


Study


And Apply


More soon hopefully :)

[JakeB]

Recent stuff

sketches


Planet thing, could do better. Will do next time :)


Sketches


New WIP. Pumped for this one :)

[JakeB]

Passed 4900 Hours Here

Gonna abandon this piece here, not happy with it


Study


WIP

[Warburton]

Welcome back man, good to see you updating again! Although its perhaps a bit annoying that you lost track with life and work stuff, but on the other hand getting swamped in work is a pretty good sign. Shows that your moving in the right direction and that your improving ;)

On the other hand you know its time to sort your life out when your rendering out eggs xD
Shame you abandoned the cliff piece too, the comp looks pretty cool and it has potential. Should be cool seeing whatever you choose to do instead though so its all good.

Good to see your updates again man, all the best.

[JakeB]

Warburton - Sup! ;) I'm gonna try and stick around this time. Maybe... Hopefully lol. Yeah, I kinda liked the comp, but wasn't that happy with where it was going, so figured I'd bail and play around with other stuff while I can. Hopefully I'll have an idea worth finishing soon lol ;) Oh my god, the egg was such a dark point. I'd completely forgotten how to paint, I swear. I'm on the road to recovery now though ;).


New stuff. Feel like I should do something interesting for 5000 hours, but I'm kind of drawing a blank. Any ideas for me to attempt and bail on, would be much appreciated ;)

Painted the astronaut, had a lot of fun with this one :)


Studies


Studies


Abandoned thing


Self portrait attempt. Oops


Quick studies


Quick sketches
.jpg[/IMG]

[Lionsketch]

Awesome stuff! You got really good improvement through out your sketchbook!

[JakeB]

Lionsketch - Cheers, glad you think so :)

New stuff

Confetti Cannon


Study


A mer-dragon. Some friends made me draw this.. I can only apologise


Balloon orc, doodling this evening :)

[JakeB]

New Stuff

Hobbit thing that I abandoned


I just thought a mirror store in transylvania was a funny idea. Didn't seem that funny after I spent all morning doing this lol. Ah well ;)


Quick still life


And a study of Disney's Paperman - Really enjoying the block shadow, flat colours look. And they do it best :)

[JakeB]

New Stuff
Sketches
















Spy Dude


Studies

[JakeB]

Passed 5000 Hours Here



A few years ago, shortly after reading “Outliers” and hearing about the 10000 hour rule, I started taking art a bit more seriously. I kept track of the hours that I worked just because I thought it might be interesting, and it was a good way of staying motivated. Plus there was the bonus of one day (maybe) seeing what 10,000 hours of work looked like.

Recently there have been a few articles floating around online about a study suggesting that practice is a small part of the puzzle, and that other factors are more important.

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/201...-your-time

http://www.businessinsider.com/new-study...ule-2014-7

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news...10/?no-ist

That makes sense. To me the “10000 hour rule” always seemed more like a rule of thumb anyway. It would be ridiculous to think that you get to a certain number and qualify as “good”. But it’s a nice round number, and it makes a nice long term goal.

I don’t have a strong opinion about the theory one way or the other, but I just passed 5000 hours. Halfway there :)


And here's some recent work :)
Sketches








Shitty quick studies


Digital Life drawing - so fun


And an environment thingy. Went to "industry workshops" in London this past weekend and got super pumped about more "concept art" style work. It's not something I've really explored in the past, most of my stuff has been illustration. But I'm going to give it a shot. Textures, photos, environments, iterations. All that fun stuff :)
So yeah, this is kind of an experiment. Learned a ton, pushing forward now :)

[JakeB]

Mead Schaeffer Study


Sketch


And a new illustration, wanted to try a book cover type thing. Any feedback would be much appreciated :)

[Suira]

Cool stuff you got going on here mate! Pretty interesting tracking the hours you've been working on getting better, wish I had thought of it, although I'm unsure if it would motivate me or discourage me haha.

Anyway, your latest post are showing some seriously sick improvement. I don't know how, but suddenly you seem to be able to grasp values, edge control and color in a very simple and efficient way, really awesome and inspiring my friend. The enviros are particularly strong and some of the portraits are really neat too.

On the book cover thingie I have a crit though. It's technically ok but it lacks storytelling left and right. I mean, it's just a dude standing there, in a rather stiff pose , in a pretty much blank environment, there's literally nothing going on. Plus everything is way too clean, it looks like a boat that just came out of the factory. For a book cover you'd need something that interests the potential buyers of the novel on what's going on in it. Even if it was a simple book about pirates that talked about it in a documentary like fashion, your client would want some fascinating cover to sell more books. I'd recommend a brief research on the topic you're going for. Like what did pirates do that hasn't been portrayed so much? We've all seen pirates drinking rum, killing people, and enjoying the spoils, but there are tons of historical facts that haven't been depicted regarding piracy. Maybe find out one that you find original or interesting and try to show a scene of that very thing that tells it in an appealing, way, doing tons of rough thumbnails to chose the best composition,etc.

While technical skills are a must, the most important part of illustration is the story-telling, and the one I'd recommend you hone the most, since there's some really great craftsmen out there, story tellers? not so many.

Still I really like your SB man, and I always like to see them hours growing with eveyr post, so keep up the very inspiring work ;)

[smrr]

Congrats on hitting the 1/2 way point of your goal, Jake!

Loving the updates, keep rocking it :)

[JakeB]

Suira - Haha, it does a bit of both, depends what kind of mood I'm in that week lol. On the book cover, I totally agree. It was off the back of that Mead Schaeffer study, and I was working on process more than anything else. That's a fairly crappy excuse, but I'll push for a more interesting illustration next time. :) The feedback's really useful anyway, some awesome tips in there :) Thank you!!

Smrrfette - Cheers, much appreciated :)

Trying some character concept art
Silhouettes


Sketches


Line Variations


Laying in textures and stuff

[Kaffer]

Congrats to switching to side "B"! :) Thumbnails are fun, can't wait to see where your character goes..

[Suira]

Cool stuff man. Iteration is key to good design so you're in the right track. Kinda curious to see what you'd do with the CHOW, have you thought of giving it a go? :)

[JakeB]

Passed 5100 Hours Here

Kaffer - Assuming 'side B' is concept art.. Yeah, it's fun. Makes a bit of a change anyway. :)

Suira - Haha, that was the idea. Not super happy how it turned out but oh well. Onto the next thing. Ah yeah, totally forgot about the CHoW. I'll have to try and get in on one soon :)

So, first a bit of news. I am now in Vietnam. I figured that this art thing is pretty portable, and sitting in my bedroom was a little dull. So now I'm in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Doing some travelling, some drawing, all that jazz. Only been here a couple of days so far, but it's fun :). We'll see how it goes... Planning to stay out here for 3 months, and maybe travel more next year. Depends how much it ends up costing, etc. etc.

Right, art.

Here's where I abandoned that sniper guy


Here's what I did next
Thumbs


Sketches


And final(ish?) I'd love any feedback on this before I call it quits and post it around :D


And here's something I've just started - A pilot character design. Pretty simple, but I'm working on a "concept art workflow". Just focusing on process atm.

[pnate]

Congrats on reaching 5000! You've come a loooong way man :O Hope you don't mind, did a quick paintover of that ghost piece. The position of the sword seemed a little parallel to the rope and at an odd place crossing that pole so I moved it, and his left hand seemed a little large to me, so I shrank it a bit. If you want to reinforce that distance between the pole and the ghost, you could extend one of his vapor trails to go behind the pole and that way, you won't lose the overlap. You've probably already tried that angle with the sword, so hope it isn't too redundant :/


PS: Durian is the nastiest fruit to have ever been born of this Earth. Enjoy Vietnam! :)

[JakeB]

Passed 5200 Hours Here

pnate - not at all man, thank you. :) I'm sorta redoing my portfolio atm, so if that one makes the cut, I'll revisit it. The paintover's disappeared off photobucket now though (I saw it when you first commented). If you see this, any chance you could send it to me? Much appreciated :) Haha, I'll keep that in mind, cheers dude. :)

Still in Vietnam (Hoi An now). Travelling and working is pretty sweet so far, even if I don't do quite as much work as before, and I don't do quite as much "travelling" as some other people. This seems like a pretty good compromise. Only one little hiccup so far... I've been working on a Cintiq Companion and it's been amazing. And it was being amazing right up until the point it stopped charging. In a coffee shop. In Vietnam. Massive hassle getting it to Singapore to have it repaired, but long story short, I had about 10 days without a machine. Luckily I hadn't taken on much client stuff (didn't want too much pressure while I test the water on this travelling thing) so not a total disaster.. But still, pretty annoying. Anyway, it's fixed now, but that should explain all the sketchbook stuff in this post :).

Sketchbook stuff first. Sorry for the shitty photos. Couldn't fit a scanner in the backpack ;)


























































Concept art stuff

Finished that Pilot


Process


City Environment


And just started this tank. I kinda like how it looks now, but I should probably paint this lines out and clean it up a bit.


Illustration Stuff
Studies I never posted


Internal Illustration type thing. I dunno.


And playing around with layout


Bonus photos of some of the places I've been working (more actual work being done in some places than others). I don't want to clog my sketchbook up with this stuff, so this is just a few. Feel free to follow me on Instagram if you wanna see more of that kind of stuff :)

http://instagram.com/ohbullocks

Coffee shop


On the floor in a different coffee shop


Airport, waiting for check in


Beach - not a lot of work going on here, if I'm honest ;)