violettawilde | (no subject)

It's been a bit since I've updated here. Since I've been wanting to write more journal-y things on a more frequent basis, I suppose I will drop in to write a little something up.

I've been putting a lot of focus this past week or so into improving my skill and speed as an artist. Since I'm between art jobs for the moment (I've got one coming up in a week or so, as soon as my client gives me the green light), I've been doing mostly throwaway art, speed-sketching and speed-painting in spurts of twenty minutes to an hour. I set a a timer and draw/paint as much as I can in the allotted block of time, then reset the timer and go at it again. Most of the time I'm scrapping what I do for these practice sessions just because they're not up to par or complete, though I did keep one, and refined it a bit. I might keep working on it. I saw this one with a backdrop of the Aurora Borealis when I went to sketch it. (I don't like the extended arm, though; it's not in proportion. But that's easily enough fixed. You can click the thumbnail to see a bigger image.)

I've been watching a lot of art process videos on Youtube as well; some are just time lapse videos with no commentary, and others are more tutorial-like. They're all useful, though, both in building mechanical skill and knowledge, and in visualization exercises, which I've been supplementing my practice sessions with. I've been prefacing my practice work with either a short meditation session in which I visualize myself as a successful, highly skilled illustrator, or with a time-lapse video in which I visualize myself as the artist creating the images in the videos. I don't actually copy the images in reality, obviously, and I'm using a variety of artists for this exercise so I don't subconsciously mirror the styles, but it seems to be a useful method of building confidence and shedding creative blocks. I'm not sure to what extent it will enhance my work, but I've noticed that if I'm watching the videos as if I'm the one creating the art, I'm aware more of the subtle techniques being used that weren't registering when I was watching as a more passive viewer.

I haven't got much more to talk about right now, really. My focus has been fairly narrow this week.

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===It appears that a number of the other "early-community kin" are trying to get back active on DW/LJ. (grins)

That's good to hear. I always liked the format of LJ/DW better than most of the other social networking-type platforms that are popular these days.

I need to try to look at art process videos again... I've been very put off as a lot of the learning materials and process videos for the illustration I've been into is dominated by 'get into the games/movie industry!' rhetoric and when I tried the last time, I just kept seeing the most un-creative works being made intentionally to appeal to the creators' hypothetical AAA/Hollywood clients. It's so disheartening for me x_x.

Edited 2016-02-06 21:22 (UTC)

Oh, I definitely know the feeling. I get the same way when I look at a lot of the industry standard art. There are also some beautiful works in the industry, though, that do show a good amount of creativity, so I try to keep that in mind as I build my own skills and experience and portfolio.

I always figure there are worse ways to earn a living, anyway. As long as there is still room and drive for real creative expression, either within the professional projects, or in my personal creative projects.