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.
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.
Mononoke Illustration + Studies week #13
The bloodsports challenge #5 was about redesign one of the top miyazaki films. I started working on an illustration based on Princess Mononoke (one of my favs) but didn’t have much time so I didn’t finish it.
After a while I got back to it and with a few days working on it I finally finished it.
I don’t usually paint fan-art, but this was for the bloodsports challenge, it’s a good way to get exposure and…..yes, I like this movie so much XD
As for any other bloodsports challenge I made an image with the making of.
And these are the studies from the previous week, only a few this time, pretty bad. The thing is that now I try to relate the studies to the paintings I work on, but last week was mostly refining old pieces. These studies were for the creatures designs.
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.
Character speedies and studies
Another two character speedies, one painted in my livestream and the other one quite unfinished (I maybe work more in the future in it) and the studies from last week.
Notice that I changed a bit the way I do the studies one. At the beginning and as described in the deathline I was going to do a study painting everyday in my livestream, but after almost 2 months I noticed I was not applying those random studies so they were a bit meaningless and people asked me to stream other things to make my streams more interesting. That’s why now I keep studying everyday but somethings are comp studies that I don’t include in the compilations of “studies of the week”, or like the master studies week, and now I also stream different things like these character speedies. The deathline’s not broken, just changed it a bit :p
Bloodsports #9 and Livestream character speedies
Bloodsports #9 is over and I learned a lot but again at the end I wasn’t able to finish the illustration, but I’ll continue working on it in the future.
And a couple of character sketches from last night and this morning’s livestreams
Studies week 10 + Royal Fellas
Last week was Master Studies Week so I spent my daily study time in these two master studies (I finished the Bouguereau study this morning though). Different kind of studies but still learning new things 🙂
Photoshop CS3 : 10 hours
Photoshop CS3: 15-16 hours
Last Saturday we had another session of The Royal Fellas with the special guest Trevor Claxton, and later Kekai Kotaki and Daniel Warren jumped into the conversation too. The topic was a dragon child……but I designed a dragon warrior XD
Bloodsports #8 is over
Bloodsports #8 is over. I submitted it last night but I didn’t post the final illustration yet because I want to refine it a bit more. I wanted to show some of the material I did for the process though.
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
Painting for Japan + This week’s studies
Today I was painting for 14 hours on livestream for Japan as I said yesterday. Well, actually I said 12 hours but I painted for 2 more because I had some issues with my internet connection.
I painted this illustration in the 14 hours, from the very first sketches, to the final result, looking for references and talking with my viewers.
At first I thought about an illustration showing the disaster occurred in Japan last year, but I looked at some pictures of those places now and they look calm, so I worked on a different idea. Here you can see a woman with her children, building their new house (the father died) and she’s begging the sea and the radioactivity (represented by those monsters) to stay calmed down.
Studies on livestream Week #4
After today’s Livestream and dinner, I wanted to finish an illustration I’m working on before posting this and other stuff. But I only slept 1 hour in the last 42 hours so….I’m almost dead and I’ve been for two hours in front of the computer without painting that much…..so I’m going to finish it tomorrow…..I’m human after all
There are onlu 5 studies but I worked on the medieval bag in two different days and same thing for the princess.
And now, time to sleep
The Royal Fellas – Dwarf yourself
Today’s topic was taking ourselves as reference and draw a dwarf. Here’s mine, done in photoshop in 3 hours. The design is pretty common, and it doesn’t really look like me, but, anyway, good exercise so far. Hope you like it 🙂
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.
Studies on livestream Week #2
Here is the compilation of the studies from this week. This time I spent a bit more time in some of the studies. Some require more time to do a decent study because of the difficulty of the picture used as reference.
Remember that I usually stream at 9AM CET everyday but some days I can’t stream at that time and I do it later. Those times I notify my delay by twitter and facebook.
You can find all the videos in my livestream channel
Hope you like it.
Studies on livestream Week #1
Here is the result of the first week doing livestreams everyday. Some of the studies are not as finished as others because I spent a bit time on the chat with my viewers….I should use the mic but it’s difficult to talk at 9AM in the morning. Well, in fact, for me is difficult to talk to a mic at any time XD
Remember you can see the painting progress on my Livestream Channel
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.
Isra Carrion 