Working, studying and getting ready for an epic last third of the year
As usual, here I am posting a long update on how things are going.
I’d like to start this post mentioning early in June I went to b’Ars, an international VFX fair aimed for both professionals and students, with special focus on the artistic side of the film-making process and cloud VFX production. An event full of master classes, conferences, job-fair, etc. located in a beautiful Area of Barcelona. It’s funny how I always keep an eye on international events overseas and if it wasn’t because a friend of mine from Germany told me about this I would have probably never known about it. The list of guests was great and the conferences very interesting. Nikolai Lockertsen painting an environment piece on his iPad, Jonathan Opgenhaffen showing his Matte painting process at Double negative, Marco di Lucca and his self portrait, Nico Scapel from Framestore showing making of Gravity, Â Virginie Bourdin talking about successful creative decisions and many others. But there was one artist invited who I could easily say was the main reason I attended the event, and that was Ryan Church who came to first talk about design to previs with Daniel Gregoire and the next day about film design. He has been a big inspiration for me on environment design since first I saw his concepts for the Star Wars movies and then watched his GNOMON videos, it was very nice talking to him.
Since last update I’ve been busy with some freelance stuff, illustrations for card games and environment designs for a theme park, which was a very interesting experience giving for the first time a different use to my concept art. Unfortunately I can’t show any of that.
Another thing that kept me busy was a little personal project for N0DEWORLD, I started it as part of a challenge a friend of mine was running on concept art.org where you had to work on a personal project for 100 days posting every single day an update and with the goal of having 10 finished pieces at the end, but tight deadlines made me drop after a month there. I still want to continue working on this but might get a little bit more delayed.
Another challenge I have going on with some friends is, I think I already mentioned it before, to draw 100 line drawings. I’ve done 85 so far, very close to the goal, and while we try to keep it private for now because we might give them a very special use here are a few I already put in public for some reason.
Another habit I keep is the spit paints, it’s been over a year since I joined this group and I have over 260 done already, it’s a good daily reminder of things to improve or a challenge to paint thing otherwise I would never do.
LAst year on one of my blog updates I mentioned the project substrata, a dark fantasy art book including artworks from over 80 professional artists. The book has finally been released and I just got my copy a few days ago, I’m very happy to be included in such book with so many great artists, some of them friends.
Last thing but not less important, studies, some done for personal/professional pieces and some others done for this Facebook group called virtual plain air where you paint a study using google maps. It was really fun and learned a lot.
And not virtual but real plain air studies
And speaking of studies, in all this time I could only go to one more life drawing session with model, I miss it when I can’t go, but anyway here are the drawings.
To close this post, I have to mention once again the upcoming workshops in London and Troia, it’s less than a month left before I fly, it’s going to be very inspiring and fun. Between the workshops I’m going to Romania and after them I’m moving to Japan for 3 months to look for a job there.
Next blog update will probably be after the workshops, with lots of pictures as usually, until then, keep it up! Thanks for reading
Been a while, but still alive in England
It’s been a while since the last post. Â After that one I painted a few more things that some of you probably saw on facebook, but had a few weeks lacking motivation at home for some reasons.
But motivation is back! And the last few weeks I’ve been painting, sketching, studying, networking and so as much as I could in my free time (still working full time).
I started doing 30 minutes speed paints at work with my workmates and also joined a group with a few friends to do more speed paintings every day and also studies from life.
You can check the work of the other people here
http://spitpainting.tumblr.com/
http://hardonforstudies.tumblr.com/
I knew about substrata a bit too late and only had 2 days to work on my entry, fortunately they extended the deadline and now I will have time to rework on this or do something else
Bloodsports
Here’s some stuff done for the two last bloodsports. For those who don’t know bloodsports are challenges in the Crimson Daggers community and are a great exercise to improve, and feel part of the community, it’s totally worth and I recommend anyone to give it a try 🙂
http://crimsonbloodsports.blogspot.com
Bloodsport #13: Time travelers final piece, wip and sketches/studies
Bloodsport #14 Beastmasters Final piece, wips, sketches and studies
Meme, cars and crap sketches
I saw many people doing this but it wasn’t will the other day when Brent did it that I was motivated to redraw an old piece. I’m glad I did it, because here you can see all the days with lack of sleep, all the days saying my friends I preferred to stay at home working, my interest on learning from many different artists, the headaches those days struggling or my fights against distractions…THIS IS NOT TALENT, THIS IS HARD WORK.
I have to say I spent more time on the new one, but, last year was not a matter of time, I knew almost nothing about anatomy, light and color, design, etc.
I still have to improve a lot so, keep the hard work!!
A few car designs inspired by a sketch Scott Robertson posted the other day on Facebook.
A couple of sketches
3 weeks of death fail + other stuff
It’s been 3 weeks since I said I was going to start working on a personal project to reinforce my design skills, get ready for FZD and feel it like a real job in some way.
But I failed, I’d like to say now everything was right but it wasn’t, I have to learn from this failure and repeat it again in the future because is something I recommend to anybody.
I painted this illustration just as “teaser” of something that I hope gets bigger with time.
Now I can explain what was the idea, in the 3 weeks, I was goinn to work on a project with a script part written by me and part written by a friend who was going to act as a client. There were deadlines, revisions, etc. And the part of the script I wrote was to set up a story with elements I would not be comfortable with because of the lack of experience but I was interested in.
The point is I wanted it to be like a bloodsports challenge, something where I not only practice, but also study new stuff. So the first week was going to be full of study and the other 2 designing and doing a few more studies if required.
The first week was right, live streaming only 1 hour a day I had a lot of time to keep focused studying.
3 weeks of death
In less than a month I’m going to Singapore for the certificate courses at FZD school. To take more profit of the school I’d like to reinforce my design skills a bit more, that’s why I’m going to put myself working on a “fictitious project” to reinforce my design skills over the next 3 weeks.This project is under an NDA so I won’t be able to talk about it or show anything.
It’s an ambitious project so I will need a big amount of hours dedicated. Obviously the time live streaming will be considerably reduced, so I’m going to stream only for 1 hour everyday at my usual time, 9AM CET, and focused on the bloodsports, taking it as a little break.
My goals after this 3 weeks are:
– Have the work for this project done, and then and only then, show all the work done.
– Replace the pieces from last year still in my portfolio for stuff done this year since my work is different now.
– Start sketchbooks in sites like conceptart, cghub, etc. (now I only have one on the Crimson Daggers)
The deadline is June 11th 22:00 CET. The “fun” starts NOW.
Deathline 2.0 and other stuff
It’s been 3 months since I started my deathline and almost 4 months since I joined Crimson Daggers. I’d need a whole new post to explain how happy I am being part of this group, and how much it helped me and hopefully  I could help others. But I’m going to talk about the detahline this time because after 3 months a few things changed. For those who didn’t see it, here is my original deathline.
I’m glad to say I’ve been following the point 3 as planned and trust me, my body missed a lot doing some exercise, I feel much better now and I’ll keep doing.
On the other hand, the hard work related to the next other 2 points, made me have 3 times a couple of days sick in the last 5 weeks. The lack of sleep and an irregular diet made me feel very weak from time to time. And I totally hate being on bed because I want to keep being productive. I’m also going to have less coffee, it wasn’t working on me recently and I was feeling even more tired after having it.
About the 1st point, I had no idea what I was talking about with studies, so I was doing meaningless studies for two months, without applying them, so at the end, they didn’t help me to improve and I only got a nice gallery of well painted copies. In the last month there were days I didn’t do any study if not required, but all the studies I did (or most of them) were applied on speedies, illustrations, etc making me feel I improved more in this month than the previous two.
There’s another thing, at the beginning I related streaming to doing studies but not anymore. At some point someone suggested me to show also personal stuff, would make the channel more interesting and that’s what I’ve been doing. And I’ve been waiting every week till Sunday to compile all the studies in a “studies of the week” sheet, but from now I will post them as soon as I can.
About the livestream, I have to say I’m impressed how I’ve been able to stream every single day for several hours and how much I enjoyed it and helped me to keep working.
I’m going to slightly change the first point as:
1. Do studies every week, apply them and post them.
The second point is more complex, it’s about building the portfolio and getting a job and it will take time. It’s true though, so many people asked me if I work now. I’ve been for a year without a job, since I decided to take digital painting as a serious professional option. I didn’t even try to get one since I’m trying to get better and better because I compare my work to other professionals and it’s not good enough.
But there’s already a date when I will start looking for a job no matter my level: August. In one month I’m going to Singapore to study at FZD school for 6 weeks (Actually I was going to go on April, and I planned it on January, but a few issues made me re-schedule that journey) and after that all my savings will be gone, so money needed, job needed. Till then, keep working hard and try to get better, if something taught me the Crimson Daggers is you can do this by yourself if you work really hard.
In this 3 months I replaced 7 pieces in my portfolio with better works. By August and specially after been to FZD school my portfolio shouldn’t have any work from last year.
I’ll write another post like this in 3 months, still not sure how my trip to Singapore will affect the livestreams or blog updates (I want to keep doing them) but the hard work won’t change at all.
And after all this long text (sorry if it was boring) some studies I painted on my livestream and designs.
This last one requires an explanation. I was painting the study on my livestream when another Dagger (Chilingo) jumped in my channel and told me “I like it, but can you make it yours?” So I added a big pink monster.
Bloodsports #8 & #9 refined
I submitted my entries for those challenges but I wanted to spend a bit more time before including them in my portfolio. Now I’m done with them.
Bloodsports #8 – WIP 02
I forgot to upload these sketches here. I drew them on Tuesday, got a crit from Trevor and Kekai, and other Daggers, fellow artists and friends voted for their favs and gave me some feedback. Thanks everybody!! Now after two days not much productive (that happens) I’m working on the final concept for MAX MARNSTEN 2099!!! 🙂
BLOODSPORTS #8 – First sketches
This time I have no excuses, I have to submit something for the Bloodsports challenge. The environment design course’s over, and that was the main reason I wasn’t able to finish my entires for other previous bloodsports (hopefully I can someday finish my poster of Princess Mononoke which is the one I had in a more advanced point).
You have all the info related to the new challenge HERE
I’m going to work on the Sci-Fi IP, and this morning I was drawing the first sketches on my livestream session (I will do the study later tonight). I will draw more variations of the character but here are the first 8 (I drew 2 more but they were horrible).
Your favs? 😀
Studies Week #7 + Royal Fellas
Here are the studies of this week. I’m not very happy with the result of the latest ones, not sure if it was for the time spent, the pain in my hand or I was just tired. I’ll try to get better results next week. At least, 7 days = 7 studies 🙂
And here are the speedies from the last 2 Royal Fellas Challenges. Both painted in 2h30min.
Day 24th, topic: Sci-Fi Priest. Not bad at all
Wind creature – The Royal Fellas
I joined today the livestream of The Royal Fellas (MArius Bota, John Silva, Sycra Yasin and Cristian Chihaia “Sickbrush”) in which they proposed a subject to paint, this time an elemental creature. Each one chose a different element: fire, wind, water and earth. We were free to paint the element we wanted, and I tried to do something with wind.
The livestream was about 3 hours but I spent about 4h in total. I got some feedback showing my wips to the people on the chat that helped to improve my piece 🙂
DEATHLINE
I knew some Crimson Daggers were doing something called “Deathline” but I didn’t know what exactly it was till today, when I read the inspiring post on Dan Warren’s blog about the Deathline Challenge.
Since I came back from San Francisco I’ve been working harder than ever but still a bit disorganized. I even made a schedule a couple of weeks ago and, while things like livestreams started working better, others not.
I got some good advices in San Francisco to keep working on what I like and improve my work. But it’s like, while knowing what I want to do in the future, I didn’t define my goals very well for a concrete time.
Here’s where the Deathline challenge comes. My 3 goals for the next 365 days
1. At least an hour study every day. Maybe some days I paint more studies or spend more time on them, but that’s the minimun requeriment. I’ll try to record all my studies on livestream, but in case I can’t, I’ll upload them here later anyway.
2. Get a job related to what I’m doing and I like. Concept art, design or illustration. A graphic novel is another work I’m interested in, specially after getting some tips by Aleksi Briclot last year, but it maybe can wait a little more. This point involves having a professional portfolio, with impressive pieces in it.
3. Do some excercise, running a couple of days a week or whatever. I’m only 26 and my legs hurt as hell because I’m almost all the day sitting. I always feel like losing my time because I could be drawing in the time spent for excercise, but it’s healthy and refresh my mind, just have to be less lazy in that sense.
There are a lot of things I have to work on, but they could be included in the 2nd point. Let’s see next year, same day, taking a look at this post, if I was able to accomplish my goals, and see how I improved my self in “just” a year.
HUGE update
Some important notes before showing the new stuff from the last days.
I’m more motivated than ever but I feel like sometimes I get easily distracted or my time management is not as good as it could be so I finally made my schedule. The other day I wrote a post about my new livestream channel and now I stablished a time to do it everyday at the same time.
I will be ON for an hour on livestream everyday at 9AM CET starting at February 6th. The livestreams will be focused mostly for studies and they will be available on demand later.
Now you can follow me on twitter. I’ll try to keep my account active at least to notify updates and livestream sessions.
I also made a facebook page so you can “like” me and follow me there as well.
Now a look to my latest works. I continue taking part in CGHUB challenges but I noticed I need to be selective because I don’t have time for all of them. I could finish in time this Conan tribute for a Drawing Jam in a few hours but I couldn’t finish another work for the Anatomicae challenge. I’m going to finish the illustration I started as soon as possible anyway.
Livestream
I started a livestream channel in which I record my process of painting. There is no schedule yet (so I can’t say a specific time for the specific days) and the subjects go from challenges for sites like CGHUB or CRIMSON DAGGERS to studies of anything.
It helps me to not get distracted and to get feedback from other people. Maybe someone can find my streams helpful as well.
Hope you enjoy it 🙂
http://www.livestream.com/isrartistic
Life drawing + Wizard’s Familiar challenge
My entry for the CGHUB – Creature FORGE – Wizard’s Familiar
Jungle giant challenge + Fan arts
Two fan arts I made last week.
The first one for a contest, based on White Knight Chronicles II, a video game for PS3.
Smile Mr. Yeti
Another work for a CGHUB Challenge. This time the creature FORGE #51: Abominable Snowman
My first pin-up! (or kind of)
This is my entry for the Character FORGE #21: Pin-up Mermaid on CGHUB.
Isra Carrion 