#026 Back to the Drawing Board

Two days ago I received a package from Amazon containing The Skillful Huntsman which I have mentioned in my previous blog post as well as Jurassic Park. Know that every art book you own as a PDF file is even more inspiring when owned in a non-virtual way; it’s hard to understand, but there is just something amazing about owning the real thing, the feel of the paper, the ink on the pages, it adds a new dimension to the book. I find that if they were inspiring on the computer, they are even more so when flipping actual pages. Although I am very thankful to own The Skillful Huntsman, I am even more excited at my Jurassic Park novel. I read it many years ago, but I was still very young and I had also read a French translated version. I’m enjoying this re-run through it and it has been keeping me up very late at night like it used to.

I have failed my goal to draw every day, mostly because of my job at the pet store, which has be busy all day and extremely tired at the end of my shift, but I finally got to draw tonight as I sat down for a Nocturnal Drawing Session with Dave! We still have them once in a while, but although we both keep saying we should have them every day like we used to, we are often given to the path of laziness and we frequently end up skipping them. No need to bring us down now though, because we did a pretty good job tonight. I worked on my Khamaeli lizardmen again (I am really aiming to deeply develop these so I hope you’re not tired of seeing them), once again giving to small rough sketches, although I also did a larger sketch, mostly emphasizing on the shape and silhouette. You’ll notice I used the Sharpies and Touch gray markers my wife got me from her work today!

In other news, I have started the planning of my next vivarium project and since this planning has come to the sketching phase, I thought I could include the sketch in today’s post. The sketch does not include vegetation. I plan on making a vivarium environment based on my 2009 illustration The Training Sanctuary, this vivarium is roughly 25 to 30 gallons (it is not standard sized so it’s hard to tell), is planned to be an aqua-vivarium and should house a mix of green/brown anoles, house geckos, green tree frogs, and if possible, blue-tailed tree lizards.

That pretty much concludes today’s update, I hope you have a good week; be creative and don’t stop drawing!

#025 Getting Out of the Mud

My pencil is sharp but a dull line marks my crumpled torn-off pages. I dive deep beneath the turbulent waters of my imagination, grab a concept with my bare hands and pull the fish up to my drawing board; I know what this should look like, reminiscence of my catch is clear, but only shallow bones remain on my soaked paper.

Avoiding art block or art slumps is not an easy feat; one day or another, every artist encounters them and must work to get through the rough patch. Although I am still young, I have been drawing since many years (my oldest coherent drawings date from when I was about three or four years old), and I have had the problem show up one time too many; I have actually been fighting off an art slump very recently and am only starting to see the end of it now. So what is the magic trick to get through the art block? I do not believe there is. I will however, share with you some tricks I find helpful to get it together on my end.

I would have to say that viewing art books is one of the best ways I get through harder artwork phases; the Internet is a great source to view artwork, but it is also a very discouraging place, there are so many excellent artists out there it can sometimes feel like we are lacking talent. This is not true of course, who knows what these artists have been through to get to the level they got to today? Can you say you draw one hundred figures a day? Maybe they have. Art books are a bit less discouraging in the fact that they are meant to be mentoring tools, you know these artists are good and you can often learn from them in the way you could learn from a teacher; nobody looks at a teacher with jealousy; so this is a good way to get inspired without getting too discouraged.

Dan Luvisi recently posted a list of what inspires him to do his wonderful artwork; now this guy inspires me quite a bit himself, but to know what inspires and artist that inspires you…man, I feel like I’m going to the roots of talent itself. Check out the books he’s got on that list; I haven’t been able to view them all, but I did find a PDF version of The Skillful Huntsman: Visual Development of a Grimm Tale at Art Center College of Design, the book was incredibly inspiring and it has given me the kick-start I needed to go uphill again.

 Taking a walk, taking a shower, activities that do not require your imagination or eyes as much as let’s say, reading a book or watching a movie; these “brain off” activities can help you reconnect with your thoughts. One of my teachers and mentors from the Ubisoft Campus, Edouard Kachaami, once told us that the world we live in puts us in constant stimulation, there’s always text at some place, music in our ears, a game to be played (you just lost “The Game” by reading this), a movie or television show to watch…this overstimulation causes us to lose creativity, because our brain doesn’t get a chance to think about stuff. Take some time off to do an activity that requires less brain and enjoy as it fills up on ideas. Feels good man.

While reading The Skillful Huntsman, I got to sketch some ladies from reference pictures I had kept from Yimmy’s Yayo (check out this blog, seriously, it’s nothing more than visual crack, he says so himself), I also followed the artists’ advice from the book and started sketching some thumbnails to capture the design of the Khamaeli lizardmen I’m working on right now.