Jumpstart

I need to find more ways to study to improve. I did '10 weeks': divide time into 10 week chunks and come out the other end with 10 satisfactory pieces, a goal of one or more pieces a week. This was in preparation for the duo show I had with Studio Gallery. It more or less worked in that I needed a large amount of work, had to allow myself to work, and accept whatever outcome and have enough work to drop the weakest pieces if need be.

Now I have a full time job, work a little overtime, and have a long-ish commute every day (1.5-2h total in the car daily) and I have way less time. I need more focus but am confused if it's the right thing to focus on.

So for this approach I've decided to work backwards... Dream up the portfolio I want and take the steps to get there-- as if that is a finite journey-- but currently I am starting at the beginning.

To summarize, here's what I've done:

1. Took a hard look at my skills- What i'm good at, eh at, and poor at. The good was just as important as the poor because I need to force myself to focus. Throwing the things I'm 'good' at into a piece on an 'eh' or 'poor' drill or study turned it into a scrimmage, which was impeding my progress. For more context please see this article by Paul Foxton-- his post put some words to many issues I've been having: http://www.learning-to-see.co.uk/how-to-get-better-at-painting-without-painting-anything.

2. Prioritized which of these are the most important to work on. It doesn't really matter why I consider myself weak in an area. Why beat myself up? The only thing I should focus on is improvement. How could I get started? I borrowed this book, The Big Bad World of Concept Art for Video Games: An Insider's Guide for Students, from the library, which helped me along a bit. I also work for a game company so I was able to have a vague idea if the information seemed accurate-- and I can say yes, it was. http://www.amazon.com/Big-World-Concept-Video-Games/dp/1624650201 

3. Decided what sections the portfolio should have and how I can show breadth within each section.

Characters - eras, age, genre, gender, T-pose/Apose, dynamic pose. Show iteration

Props - isolated. Weapons, everyday minutae, fantasy objects

Environments/setpieces - interior, exterior, urban, rural, contemporary, historical, abandoned, scale etc.

4. Define approach, style and desired results... Realism? Cartoon? What draws me to create? And practically speaking, with which do I have the best chance of pursuing a career?

5. Pipeline - creation and iteration

Need to figure out a way to generate a lot of content fast so I can get going. 

Took a look at The Skillful Huntsman. Applies to some categories more than others. http://www.amazon.com/The-Skillful-Huntsman-Development-College/dp/0972667644.

6. Define work structure. I have a limited time and how can I fit stuff in and still be productive? Trying out the Pomodoro technique http://pomodorotechnique.com/

7. Scheduled: Timeboxed areas of study (see step 2) and created tracking sheet. Goal: 8 pomodori on day off, 4 on weeknights. Goal is to take frequent breaks and avoid burnout. I need to carve out the time and focus.

8. Here we go!

Study of Gerome bust

This is 'Bust of Jean-Léon Gérôme' by Jean Baptiste Carpeaux which I studied. Here's the process.

My goal was brush economy... not to overpolish, and interpreting reference, not just a pure copy. It took several hours-- longer than I'd like. But the brushwork came out ok (still want to get more economical), forms look readable. I had awesome reference, the photo below.

ps. transparency lock and guides. any means necessary!

1. Blobs.

2. I used vertical downward textured brushstrokes to try to preserve gesture and carve the form in an interesting way

3a. Rendering. I worked with a grayscale adjustment layer on top to focus strictly on value. That's why there's pink on his forehead.. but it didn't appear that way while adjustment layer was visible ^_^... 

3b. More rendering. The double looking edge on the right of my drawing is cause i had to do major surgery to make his head thinner (copy the layer and transform), and then I merged layers. I'll clean that up later.

4. I had polished my render and then added color (color layers). Further polish with normal, screen, multiply, whatever I needed in that moment. Needed to repaint some hair, some of it is grey 'cause I went back to grayscale to fix stuff

5. Surgery to correct hairline and polishing lights and darks. Used lasso to nix that weird edge i talked about in step 3.

6. Final lighting polish. Done

Start

finish