Shading Exercise
I’m feeling rusty, rusty, rusty. Exercise, shading practice, based on a Woman on a Couch by Anthony Ryder.
Ink Journal
Two of my favourites from a little travel journal I carry around; mostly I just doodle things I see or keep my mind occupied with a pencil and a paper in the hand (like waiting in a car), but sometimes, things come out prettier than a set of squiggly lines.
Art Tumblr Import
Over the next few hours (or days) I will be importing all my ‘art’ Tumblr posts back to here. It may break the site a little as I might fiddle with settings and the theme, as I always do and always break it (and then spend three days trying to fix it!).
But, at least, I am back to Randomly Mad, after a very long break and only occasional maintenance.
Tumblr…is an odd universe.
I’ve spent more than a year over there by now and still can’t decide whether I like it or not. It has some good tools for self-promoting, once you are capable of building up a bit of a follower base, similar to Instagram; but the pitfalls come nearly immediately, as you ought to communicate with that follower base, and allowing messaging and anonymous asks can be pretty tiresome – because the more people know about your blog, the more trolls and ugliness you’re likely to attract. Even the most resilient people can get tired of the random, uncalled-for hate, time to time – and I think I had just about enough.
Expressing opinion on Tumblr, one that doesn’t conform to ‘allowed mild and shallow’ category, is like stepping in a mine-field. The Tumblr community tends to be often very self-absorbed, and insanely self-centered…which is probably normal, since it’s a blog platform, after all. And blogs are mostly personal. (Also, like it or not, it’s extremely US-centric, both population-wise and opinion-wise.) The obsession of labeling one’s self is something I will never fathom, and will always consider rather weird. I understand the need to belong, but building up identities around certain boxes and labels? That’s pretty restrictive and unimaginative, if you ask me. You are who you are, not your hand-pickled labels, sorry.
Nonetheless, for all its bad corners, I owe Tumblr the very fact I made a comeback to drawing, after many, many years of artistic silence. The reception of my doodles and art-attempts became frustratingly low once I have moved out of the popular fandom territory, but I’d like to continue to grow, and for that, I have to remove myself from the platform. I started to depend on notes, comparing them to the quality of work, and became blue once I realized that the moment the drawings do not include half naked popular gaming characters, any pretense of support will drop, and only a handful of people will remain, faithfully so, returning to my art journey and supporting me with their presence. (For which I am very thankful, you gals know who you are.)
So here I go, back to where I started ten years ago. (Can you believe it? I hardly can!)
Day 72 – Progress on Axonometric City
I’d like for this to go as a wall mural for our bedroom in Kheiran. Of course, it remains to be seen whether I can even finish it – at the moment it seems I might’ve bitten more than I can eat. The canvas is 600 dpi 14000px wide, and I can literally draw enough detail to get chairs showing in the windows of the houses…
Day 71 – WIP
Isometric City project.
Day 70 – Laso instead of brush
Just playing around with PS tools. Used laso and bucket tool only…still kind of waiting for some motivation boost. Been dragging in the block for a week now.
Art
The principle of true art is not to portray but to evoke.
— Jerzy Kosinski (born on this day in 1933)
Day 61 – Value study
This was supposed to be a warm up sketch before I draw Cullen but I suppose she wanted to be finished :)
How to Start (Arting)
Art wants you for the long haul. Pace yourself. An athlete is old at thirty-four. Artists are catching their stride at sixty.
There’s a famous anecdote about Anders Zorn. It may be apocryphal. Zorn went to art school eight hours a day, so the story goes. Not enough for this prodigious talent, so he went home and painted for four more. Twelve hours a day: that’s how much dedication Zorn put into his craft.
Good for him, and good for you if you can do it. And you may be the type that can. But, if you’re not …
You’ll try it for a week—fail miserably. You’ll give up your dream, convinced you never had it, whatever it is.
Just as there’s an art to drawing a beautiful figure, there’s also an art to reinventing yourself. Both need a process to build on.
• I want to be a fine artist.
• I want to be an animator.
• I want a hobby other than surfing the Internet.
• I want to draw my grandchild or grandparent and be proud enough to frame it.
Whatever your dream is, try this: Draw for five minutes a day. Draw a tube. Draw a figure. Draw the eye of a figure or whatever you can draw in five minutes. Do that for two weeks and only that. If you miss a day or two, forgive yourself and start again.When you’ve accomplished those, make it ten minutes a day. Do that for another week.The strange and wondrous thing about the human condition is each of us needs to motivate ourselves to become the person we really want to be. Motivate! It’s usually about forming good habits and building on countless little improvements: improvements in craft, in work habits, in cutting ourselves a break every once in a while. So …
• five minutes
• ten minutes
• fifteen minutes
Eventually, you’ll find a good habit has formed, and you no longer have to fool yourself into doing what you really wanted to do all along. You’ll also find the five or ten minutes often turn into ten or fifteen minutes without even realizing it.Now, how are you feeling? Like a winner? An artist? You should. Artists do art, and you’ve been doing it every single day.
How many hours do five minutes every day over twenty years equal? A lot. Be in it for the long term. And when you’re not drawing with a pencil, draw with your eyes. See the world as an artist because you are an artist. Be modest in your goals, at first.Five minutes a day and soon you’ll be putting in the long hours without even thinking about it. Why? Because you proved weeks ago who you really are!So, I wish for you those small improvements. Because, then, I know you’ll be making new ones next year and the year after that, just like I will be.I’ll know both of us are making our world a little more beautiful, five minutes at a time.
(FIGURE DRAWING FOR ARTISTS — Making Every Mark Count — STEVE HUSTON)
Day 60 – W.I.P
Cottage lineart based on the model I made in SketchUp…not sure if I’m going to finish it…I’m really not a person for environment or landscapes, it seems.
Day 59 – Winter Sunset
Corel Painter Demo
Experimenting with various softwares besides Photoshop…the watercolour simulation isn’t bad, frustrating at times but quite capable (also killing my PC when I over do it.)
I suppose with practice this could be very good…if I had 430$ to spare…
Day 58 – Tearing down the Veil
Noone ever mentioned it would be a pleasant experience, right?
Sorry, Solas, I have a knack for torturing you recently…
Day 57 – Crazy
My feelings for the past several weeks regarding everything.
—-
Since I am struggling with skin tones due to values, I’ve decided to let go of the traditional shades and and just pick random colours of the Photoshop wheel while trying to paint a portrait (depicting my feelings I can’t really express in real life.)
Rather surprisingly, it was fun to paint, and for once I haven’t actually struggled with painting.
Also, out of complete curiousity, I did a value pass after finishing the portrait and voila, it was actually pretty good. It would probably deserve a bit more range, but I think it would come out way too saturated if it had.
So, I present you with Very Crazy Um Abbas.
Day 55 – I tried, Nalia
..gotta work on my painting skill, really, this is…not as I expected.
OC Nalia Lavellan belongs to @nipuni
Loose Lineart
Loose line lineart, cca 30 min each. Might do some more, they are also quite relaxing and undemanding. Just…scribble and doodle around the page :)
Day 51 – Vagabond
Not really a proper render, based on original 9Dragons artworks.
Day 50 – Quick figure practice
Had a killer migraine and spent most day holed in dark and silence, trying to sleep, so 15 min study it was…didn’t even have strength to upload it.
Day 49 – Sera
Trying to unblock my current drawing mojo.
Day 48
Also called the day I failed at art.
No picture today, tried three times, ended up scraping it all as it was disastrous… today is not a good day for my creativity.
Important is, I did draw…right?
Here’s one of my ‘year ago’ pictures, instead…
Day 56 – Malika
My Sacred Flower healer got herself a new armour and deco, and since there’s only pitiful amount of 9Dragons fanart out there, I thought I might as well draw it. :)
Day 46 – Dread Wolf Concept
Or what I now call “Why won’t he date you anymore when the moons are full.”
…I’m sick and delirious. That’s my only excuse.
Day 45 – Happy Kiss-Fen’Harel-Day
*furious winking towards the fandom*
Quick morning doodles to soothe some ruffled feathers within the swamp…erghhh I mean a lovely place…of DA fandom. <3
Day 44 – Giveaway Portrait, digital pencil
First price from a giveaway, for @wyndx <3
No wealth is more useful than intelligence and wisdom;
no solitude is more horrible than when people avoid you on account of your vanity and conceit or when you wrongly consider yourself above everybody to confide and consult;
no eminence is more exalting than piety;
no companion can prove more useful than politeness;
no heritage is better than culture; no leader is superior to Divine Guidance;
no deal is more profitable than good deeds;
no profit is greater than Divine Reward;
no abstinence is better than to restrain one’s mind from doubts (about religion);
no virtue is better than refraining from prohibited deeds;
no knowledge is superior to deep thinking and prudence;
no worship or prayers are more sacred than fulfillment of obligations and duties;
no religious faith is loftier than feeling ashamed of doing wrong and bearing calamities patiently;
no eminence is greater than to adopt humbleness;
no exaltation is superior to knowledge; nothing is more respectable than forgiveness and forbearance;
no support and defense are stronger than consultation.
(Imam Ali, a.s.)