Epiphanies

So if you read my previous post I have been having a little artists block. And I am okay with it. But when the artist block breaks it's like a dam. Your flooded with ideas that you can never do them all. This morning was one of those cases. I just started playing Mass Effect Andromeda, and I didn't get to bed until 2am. I still can't get used to this daylight savings time thing yet. I woke up as usual when the cat started bouncing on my head to get fed at around 5am. And today was a little bit different, with that mix of sleep in my head as I put my head down I am thinking wait, I can do a lot. I just finished two contests. One the Ancient Civilizations contest and another one was the Thrust Competition. I could really flesh out those universes. And I have my Batman Beyond that I haven't touched in a while, As well as the future Distant universe that I haven't played with. And I have some stuff from my Thesis that I wanted to finish. There is five things for me to do right there. Not to mention I want to get some more practice in on getting better at art. And I could easily come up with an illustration on one of those concepts. Just have to remember to tell more of the story. With all that in my head I really didn't get back to sleep until about 7ish. Wife is going to hate me today cause I probably will be cranky :)

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.