Been a while, but still alive in England
It’s been a while since the last post. 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
First post from England
It’s already been more than 3 weeks since I moved to England to work at Rare. Thing are going pretty well so far but focusing on my job and with some time spent on some things you usually do when you start a new job in other country I haven’t had much time for personal stuff. So basically I´ve just been sketching (with the exception of a few studies), mostly digital and sometimes on paper with pen when going outside.
I keep updated my facebook page as soon as I finish something so probably some people already saw these images, but I compiled most of the work done in England (everything personal of course, job is confidential) so far.
Back to the last assignment
Last weekend I got back to the last assignment I did for FZD. Some of you maybe remember how I tried to polish a bit more the work with values on my livestream after the class and how I posted that result here. But I thought was a piece worth to put in the portfolio so I added color and refined a bit more. Hope you like it
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
Another vehicle study
I’ll keep doing these till I feel fast and good enough to jump to my own designs
Last update from Singapore
The courses at FZD are over, today I had the last class and only 4 days left in this country. So sad, but already thinking on my next movements over the next weeks, basically, work on my portfolio….
Another week here
Almost 4 weeks here, soon I’ll have to leave and I didn’t even start doing sightseeing over the city……so sad 😦
The references for the rendering studies are from the Gnomon DVDs of Scott Robertson.
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.
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
Studies and a livestream speedy.
Painted in 1h in PS CS3 while watching Awesome Horse Studios livestream demo.
Study of piccadilly circus painted on my livestream
And the speedy painted on the livestream too.
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.
Creature design from Livestream
A couple of creature designs painted in my livestream.
Decahorse – 4 hours
Lava sucker – 3 hours
Cathedral design
I re-started working on an old environment design and took the opportunity to practice some architecture. I did the studies you could see in the previous post and this is my own design applying what I learnt.
It’s all done with Photoshop CS3, no 3D or other tool used.
Almost all the process was recorded in my livestream channel.
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
