Tonight's progress. I'm just trying to get my rusty skills back in shape. This is from photoreference of my mystery celeb (who is the visual inspiration for Fafhrd). It came out a bit clumsy, but I definitely feel that toward the end of the drawing I was getting better. I wasn't worried about fussy little details like hands and face, more the basic forms of the body itself. I want to do a few more sketches like this to get the ol' skills dusted off, then do a bunch of gestural sketches to try to figure out poses I might want to base a painting on.
The poor barbarian! His chest is all messed up! That's me trying to exaggerate beyond my ability to do so.
A part of my goal I didn't mention in that long rambling post below.... when I'm done with the Frazetta/Jones emulation phase, I hope to move beyond, into more expressionistic work, to push myself into my own territory. In other words, think of this as my Renaissance, and it will serve as the basis for my further development toward my own painting style.
Also, these paintings are helping me deal with multiple figures interacting wth each other in a defined environment, in the context of a good composition. Total stopmo stuff!
Ok, I need to just quit with the ramblin'! See, it's like I always say... artists do what they do BECAUSE they have something to express that can't be expressed in daily conversation. If I could say it, I wouldn't need to be an artist. See?
3 comments:
I see. It's a beautiful sketch, Mike.
I love the "U of Me" concept!
I do like the art assignments that force you to work... But at least with filmmaking, I've made a deliberate decision to NOT venture into filmschool or an art school's animation program. When you're motivated to learn you really can go faster on your own.
Plus: So much of the visceral message of being in art school seems to be "Wait. You're not good enough." ...Screw that!
I could spend four years listening to people who aren't making films talk... Or I could spend that money setting up my own home studio... Read the textbook in a week or less... And be focusing on how to apply the lessons I'm gleaning to my own art, NOW, interweaving more info sources than the curriculum allows...
And then there are the mental critics that teachers and fellow students install in your head... I'm not saying that having a fresh pair of eyes analyze your work is not a good thing. But you need artistic allies who are sympathetic to your goals. And you should be always working to create a work of art that YOU love -- keeping your own mental voice the loudest. And that mental voice needs to be an ally, too. Encourage what's right in this iteration of a project -- it doesn't matter what you did wrong, so long as you can find something to build upon in the next piece.
uh
/soapbox
Thanks Shellster!
And Sven - I couldn't agree more!
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