Artist's Block

So every once in a while, I get artist's block. I pick up a tablet and try to draw something but it just turns into scribbles instead. Literally scribbles. No matter what I try to draw I just don't like it, or I can't get that idea in my head. And no matter what I just hate it. Sometimes it happens just for a day, sometimes it's a couple of days. I don't think I have ever had anything more than a week go by where I just don't want to. I don't get frustrated with it. At least not any more.

I realize that sometimes you just need to step away from your craft to get your head on straight. And even though I still don't know what to draw, I still do a little practice. I have been using Sktchy for a while now and just pump out some 30 minute sketches. It's not much but it's a positive direction for your craft.

Embedded Images in Illustrator

I had several students who were having issues with embeding image files in Illustrator in order to share the file.

Trying a new Workflow.

I realized as I did the contest for Artstation that my workflow left something to be designers. I would block in, sketch, refine, add a new layer and create a new object and it just felt like I was spinning my wheels. So I watched some videos on how different people did different workflows and I thought about playing with them a bit more.  So last night I created this in about an hour.

The steps goes as follows:

Rough Line Drawing: I created a rough line drawing, Used a solid circle shape with dynamics and no opacity or flow. I tried to paint the basic shape but for me working with lines is more comfortable.

Rough Silhouette with Lines: Selected the outer bounds of the lines, inverse and filled with black. Drew lines over to block in the shapes.

Silhouette Grayscale: Locked the layer, cleaned up the shape, and changed the values to represent the parts of the suit

Gradient Layer: Added a gradient layer over the the gray scale silhouette as a clipping mask. Mine looked like this to keep the colors where I needed them.

Multiply, Overlay and Texture: Next I created 3 clipping layers, a multiply for shadows. A overlay for highlights and another overlay for textures. 

Paint Over: Finally I added a new clipping layer for some basic painting 

For an hour, not too shabby. 

Painting Mood

So on my quest to get better on understand painting with mood, I started researching last night on painting mood itself. And honestly there wasn't much out there. It was kind of this obscure search that didn't really bring up many results. Maybe I am thinking too much into it. The best I found was a info gram from StudioBinder.com on colors and mood. And it basically gave screen shots from movies and based the shots on color. A deep overtone of color.

So is this mood, does color really do it all? No not by itself. I think tonight I am going to play around with some sketches. to get true emotion. I am going to work with body poses and hands and faces. I have some sketches that I have started a while back ago and focus on the mood and feeling of each sketch. 

I also got a new book that I need to go through tonight. Hopefully it gives a bit more insight on painting mood working with storytelling. 

What to do now

Well now that I am done with my Artstation contest, I need to get back to some basics. A couple of weeks ago I managed to talk with Alex Negrea over Skype and got some good feedback from him. He said that I need to do the following:

1. Connect with my audience. The majority of my pieces have no interaction with the audience. This also is about working with mood and storytelling.

2. Work on my Lighting, lighting is about mood and I need to reinforce the mood.

3. Work a bit more on portraits and hands, mainly incorporate them into storytelling.

All good advice from him.

He did tell me that I was good at rendering and he did like my rendering of the Bar, because it tells a story, and generates a conversation in his head.

The Bar

So that being said I wanted to say that he was very supportive and very of me and very friendly. 

So now what am I going to do about it?

After a bit of pondering while the contest was going on, I realized a couple of things. First is to get my workflow a bit more streamlined. I tend to jump all over the place when I work and with my workflow I feel I need to tighten it up a bit more. This will hopefully speed up my paintings and allow me to push myself into faster and more art. I watched several of  Anthony Jones's videos on workflow and improving weaknesses. 

I am going to practice working on some shadows and emotion stills to get a good idea of what I need to accomplish for lighting and get some more work on hands and faces with emotion. I will try to get some emotional stills from movies and paint some sketches from them to practice it a little bit more. 

Overall I will continue to work on my work until I reach my goals.