Ho boy, so this is going to be a really long one. I hope you all have better attention spans than be, because this may get kind of heavy and deep in terms of artwork discussion and description. Hopefully you guys enjoy the pictures I have at least, and I also hope this is informative and or useful in some way. Enjoy! <3
Also if this journal cuts off in any place please tell me. D:
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How many of you digital artists kind of have...a secret life of sorts, one that you don't really share with the rest of your art community because you're not sure the pieces you've made fit in with your digital work. To be perfectly honest, my digital and traditional artwork evolved not alongside one another, but back and forth, from one to the other and back again. I'm not sure why my brain decided to work like this initially, because the more I worked on one medium the more my skills in other mediums would suffer. After doing digital artwork for well over a decade, and traditional work since I was three years old I'm twenty-nine now, and I've realized some things about keeping that steady balance between working with both traditional and digital.
I feel like somewhere along the line this year and the end of last, my subconscious realized it was no longer satisfied with my traditional art skills. As many of you have observed my digital work has soared in ways I least of all could predict or can even fathom to this day. That being said, my traditional work, as mentioned earlier, suffered. But what always helps that is practice. Yes, practice practice practice. Do art. Do lots of art. Don't stop doing art until you're burnt tf out. And when you DO burn out, really REST.
This is a huge rule for me; always rest. But at the same time, if you're in a professional freelancing environment where deadlines are king, that kind of thing may not be an option for you. For me, when I get burnt out on digital commission work, I alert all my customers that I will be taking a small hiatus of a week or two, and they're always quite understanding.
And then...
I sketch my little heart out.
It's something I've been doing to help art block, as well as burnout. When you stop focusing on what's expected of you for a little while and just draw to your heart's content, it's amazing what kind of things you can learn about yourself and your skills in artwork in general. I can safely say that by doing these sketches I have improved vastly as an artist in very little time.
What I primarily focused on in my sketchbook were the basic forms of the body, identified mostly by individual parts and sometimes defined, other times simply in the form of gestural study as seen below here:
"Model in blue chalk pastel and charcoal"
"Abstract Curve, Form, and Contrast" & "Tornadoes on the Prairie"
Charcoal
Ergo, the other thing a bunch of artists say, which is to 'draw like a child', is 100% true. I watched a video a couple nights ago about an artist who said 'perfect art is boring'. Which...I have a tendency to agree for the most part. I love looking at artwork with zero conceivable flaws, nearly perfect composition, technique, and a shining finished product. But only for so long. Eventually the prettiness of it all kind of loses its momentum therein one's synapses because there's nothing further to decipher. Often, flaws give a piece more depth than one might realize.
So when I was doing all these facial and bodily studies I had to really work against my habitual ego of always having things perfect from the get go. You really do need to work over it, layer after layer, much like digital art actually! The more layers you have, the more depth it'll have (and yes that goes for those of you who only use one digital layer, which is totally fine! In fact in paint tool sai I prefer using a single layer o.o ).
"Facial Study" & "Fist Study"
Graphite, Charcoal, Smudge Stick
"Hand Study....again"
Graphite & Smudge Stick
"Nose, lips and hand study"
Graphite & Smudge Stick
"Elf Eye" & "Wolf Eye"
Graphite, Charcoal, & Smudge Stick
"Cat Eye" & "Leopard and Rose study"
Graphite & Smudge Stick
Figure drawing in particular provided a huge challenge for me. I struggle a LOT with getting down the exact anatomy from the beginning and not getting sucked into the details like a black hole pulls in a speck of dust.
"Witch hand, eye, and circle study" & "Hand in Fabric"
Charcoal, Brush Smudge
"Figure study" & "Tree study"
Graphite, Charcoal & Smudge Stick
I've described a lot of my dry media, but what about wet traditional media? A lot of what I said still applies, but painting requires a little bit more raw instinct than drawing in my personal and extremely humble opinion. Sometimes when I jump into a medium that I've never done before (and that's rare, because I'm kind of obsessed with learning them all), I really have to focus to get a feel for how whatever kind of paint I'm using acts. For inanimate objects, I'm amazed at how different each kind of paints' personality can be.
"Mineral peaks" , "Startled Fox" , & "Intense Feline"
Watercolor & Watercolor Pencils
The key is to keep arting. Sometimes you get the privilege of making your own schedule based around your art, and sometimes you don't. Some artists, especially those of the professional variety cannot afford to get art block. They cannot afford to have a mental stopper in their creativity. Burnout can certainly be arduous to remedy, but so is having to find another form of employment. It is important that you as an individual artist find what balance works right for you personally.
MATERIALS USED
Watercolor pencils
Gilded leaf