New deathline and other stuff
Hi everyone, it’s been a while since last post I properly wrote, so beware of long text and chances of boredom.
I’d like to start this post explaining my current situation, but for that, I need to get back to 3 months ago when I started working on a few designs for my portfolio, initially to compensate some lack of design before applying for studios as a concept artist. The thing is, when I started the job hunt early this year, those designs became my own project, my own world, IP, call it what you want, so after much thinking decided to focus on my project for a little bit more, first for myself, second to show it as experience once I apply to some studios I have in mind, and third because, well, maybe I make something else of it.
I have so many ideas for Space Lotus, but there’s just a few I’m working on before I show more stuff. I was trying to finish it as soon as possible but had to slow down a bit to keep a good quality in it.
In the meanwhile a did some other stuff you can see at the bottom of this post. And now I’m also working on a piece of fan art for Danny Luvisi’s LMS. The book will be reprinted later this year and I’m very happy that my artwork will be included in the book, it’s a honor for me, and a lot of my buddies will be in it too. As you know it’s very very rare that I paint fan art, but this is special because it’s for someone I know and admire. Similar to what happened with the contest Anthony Jones organized (you can see my entry below).
I’m also considering to paint a couple of illustrations and push them because all my mates working at Applibot make me so jelaous with the awesome stuff they do there.
All this plan can change if I receive a good offer of course.
Last year around this date, I wrote here a post called DEATHLINE (http://isrartistic.com/2012/02/19/deathline/) where I set for myself 3 goals for the 365 days after.
I don’t know if the 1st goal was a success or not, it’s sure I only kept the daily painting studies for 2-3 months livestreaming them but that doesn’t mean I didn’t study anything else after that because I think I did just in different ways, if not painting, drawing, learning fundamentals, reading…
I kinda failed in my second goal too, I didn’t get the job I wanted, but to be honest, I didn’t even try to apply for it because I kept practicing trying to get better, and that’s sure, in one year I have a whole new portfolio with much better quality work in it.
At least the 3rd goal, the exercise was a success, running for half an hour twice every week, (only missed 3 sessions and was in Singapore) worked extremely well, now I don’t feel as “dead” and staying a bit healthier helped me in my work.
So it’s about time to start a new deathline. I had several things in mind, as to add another day of exercise to my routine or learn a new language, but at the end this is what I came up with:
1. 1 hour of reading every day. It’s hard to explain, but I feel like I waste my time reading because I’m not drawing. I read, but only when it’s related to a design I’m working on, but I want to do it as daily basis, and include novels, because everything I read now is about culture, architecture, science etc, but I want to read more novels.
2. 2 hours of sketching or studies everyday. One of my mistakes with the way I took the studies last year was spending too much time on them, limiting my time for personal stuff. So I prefer this time to take it as quicker but smarter studies. Also, when I work on something and focus so much on it I barely sketch something unrelated to it, I want to change that to keep my creativity and variety fresh.
3. Again, I’m going to set as one of the goals keep working on improvement, to work as a concept artist as my first choice, and illustrator as second, and to never forget that I want to keep creating exciting worlds for me, and for other people.
Obviously if eventually I’m under very tight deadlines I will give priority to work but while working on personal points 1 and 2 were something I want to add to my routine.
That’s all for now, apologies if the text was too painful to read, hopefully it was interesting enough for some people.
And here are some paintings, sketches, designs from the last few weeks.
Works from the last few days
Rachel, character design
Daskildor, creature design
Study of a picture I took in Japan
Architecture study using a Sickbrush‘s drawing as reference
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.
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
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
Studies on livestream Week #6
Here’s the compilations of all the studies from the last week. I couldn’t post them yesterday because as some of you already know, I was busy refining my last environment illustration for 20 hours (I’ll post it in the next few days) ending up at 7AM…..I’m glad last week I could, again, do 7 different studies for the 7 days.
Someone asked me to upload my studies with a bigger resolution, this doesn’t mean I’m going to do it every week because the files are heavy, but for this week, here you have it 🙂
Remember to check my livestream channel if you want to see the process of painting 🙂
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
Studies on livestream Week #3 + Life drawing
Here are the studies of this week. I continue doing the studies every day but there are only 5 because 2 of them (the city and the bike) took me two days. The bike was specially complex since I drew it with lines trying to practice the perspective and understan the shapes.
Remember you can watch all the studies on my livestream channel on demand.
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.
Isra Carrion 