What's Your Space Opera?

As you're working to improve your painting technique, one huge roadblock can be subject-matter.  What should you paint?  While you're actually painting, you're making progress... but sometimes it's hard to get going.  One piece of advice that I give to artists all the time is to create a space opera.  Is space not your thing?  Then design your own fantasy epic.  The point is that a structured personal project will give you an endless list of things to paint - leading to more time painting, and less time asking 'what should I paint today'?  Even if you don't aspire to become a concept artist, this is a practical way to streamline the idea generation process.  Also, it's a ton of fun!

Design A World

The painting at the top of this post is one of my most recent sci-fi landscapes, but I could think of it as the start of a larger project.   I could pick individual aspects of this street scene to design on their own in greater detail.  It's full of characters, signage, architecture - on and on.   Any of these elements could be examined further - creating at least a month of painting.  If you think of yourself as a world designer, there's no end to the depth you can explore.  What does the government iconography look like?  What type of cars do they drive?  What is the energy grid like?  The idea is to envision a world that makes you excited to discover more.  When done correctly, you'll find yourself daydreaming about this imaginary place - filling it slowly with rich details.  Then when it's time to paint, you'll have an overflowing list of subjects to choose from.  

How to Start

I've got two favorite methods: a single painting, or a written overview.  If you have a single painting that transports you to another place, start there!  It doesn't need to be a sprawling cityscape - it can be as simple as a portrait or creature design.  As long as it makes you ask 'what else?', it's a good starting point.  More frequently, though, I like to start with writing.  Even if you don't like creative writing, it's still the most efficient way to organize your thoughts and brainstorm.  Spend a week imagining your epic or space opera, taking notes as you brainstorm.  Make sure to write down natural features like weather and landscape details as well as man-made features like architecture and technology.  Once your ideas begin to take shape, it's easier to fill in the specifics.  After a week or so, you'll have plenty of material to begin sketching and painting.  

Great Examples

Lexxy Douglass - Cloud Factory

If you keep your eyes open online, it's hard to miss personal projects like these.  Recently I've been watching the Penny Arcade reality TV show Strip Search, which features the illustrator Lexxy Douglass.  Her new project 'Cloud Factory' is a great example of this sort of project (right, below).  Sure, there are characters and landscapes  - but how often do you think of illustrating plant varieties?  Potions and herbs on a shelf?  These everyday objects really bring an imaginary world to life.   Other great examples are the books published by Design Studio press such as The Skillful Huntsman or Alien Race.   If you have any more examples, please tell us in the comments!  

Lexxy Douglass - Cloud Factory

Thumbnails: The Most Crucial Stage of your Painting

This post could be quite short.  The title says it all.  But I want to elaborate with some of my personal experience, and share some links to well written blog posts on this deceptively simple aspect of illustration: thumbnail sketching.  If you're not familiar, I'm talking about the quick preparatory sketches created before an illustration.  Varying in style from artist,  the only constant with thumbnails is that they are planning images. Often crude and loose, they serve to collect your thoughts and make composition decisions. 

My Struggle With Thumbnail Sketches

A proper illustration, concept design, or graphic layout begins with 20 or more thumbnails.  This forces you to try a variety of options and eliminate all but one.  Ever since I made the switch to a digital process, I've found myself  occasionally skipping the thumbnail sketching phase of my illustrations.  Not always, and not for any particular reason - it's just been happening recently.  The real danger that I've discovered is wasted time.  It might seem like I can save time by skipping an entire portion of the illustration process, but the net result (more often than not) is an illustration that's hit a 'dead end'.  A dead end is when I realize my composition is broken, but I've already spent hours and hours working on specifics: anatomy, rendering, texture, etc.  A dead end painting is often not worth fixing, and a totally fresh start has better odds at solving the visual challenge.  

Something Missing

I've explored the possible reasons for skipping thumbnails, and my best explanation is that digital art is 'fluid'.  There's no fundamental divide between lines and paint - just a few keystrokes.  A small image can be turned into a large image just as quickly.  What this means for me is the temptation to transition from a 'thumbnail' straight into the final image simply by opening 'image size' and adding more resolution.  This method has its positives, but it eliminates a potentially critical step from the natural media process: review.  When I used to make large pages of thumbnail sketches in a sketchbook, I was forced to look at all of them next to one another and select the best one.  Next I would enlarge this image (usually manually) onto high quality paper and begin the tight pencil sketch.  I always thought of this process as a nuisance, one streamlined through the digi-ficaiton of my workflow, but now I'm not so sure.  

A New (Old) Approach

My new idea is to go back to the old way.  Not necessarily with paper and pencil, but with the same fundamental concept: lots of ideas generated quickly.  Since Photoshop is my medium, I'll need to figure out a way to keep the spontaneity found in 1.5"x1" pencil drawings.  The primary main problem with my digital thumbnails, historically, is a tendency to over-polish.  My new (old) approach will combat this problem by focusing on a short list of guiding principles:

Quantity.  At least 20 images, ideally all on a single page.
Simple Media.  To keep my ideas flowing, I'll limit the tools to a single brush and single eraser.
Work Small.  Drawing physically small on-screen might help me avoid overworking them.  No zooming in.
B & W.  Even though I love color, I'll keep that for the second phase of the process.  

Composition Basics: Sketching thumbnails-  by Dan dos Santos-  Dos Santos is an amazing cover illustrator (you've surely seen his work), and does a great job articulating his digital thumbnail process in this article.  I especially like his artificial limitation of '4 gray-scale values'.  

The Thumbnail!  By Jon Foster - Another amazing illustrator, and if you've seen his work it all seems effortless.  This post exposes all of the planning and scrutiny that leads to such dynamic final paintings.   It all starts at 1.5" tall.  

Part 4: Pteranodons / Hatchling Sketches - By James Gurney - The only thing I love more than Gurney's work is his thought process.  His blog is a gold mine of insights, and this article on the thumbnail / art direction process will not disappoint   

Tips From Other Illustrators

Clearly this is an important issue, and my mistakes should not be your only study materials.  To the right is a list of fantastic articles on the subject, created by a variety of working artists.  If you know of any other blog posts on the subject of thumbnails, please post them in the comments!  

The Bottom Line

Thumbnails aren't beautiful, but they are critical.  Every time I spend my time with them I'm pleased with the final painting.  If you're new to illustration now is an important time for forming good habits, so please - please - make thumbnail sketching a part of your routine.  

Architecture for Illustrators

Concept artists and illustrators have the exciting job of translating their imagination onto the canvas or computer screen.  How wonderful!  It's great up until the moment you realize that you don't actually know much about the subject you're supposed to be inventing.  After all, concept artists and illustrators are not architects, fashion designers, industrial designers, or engineers.  They're a mixture of all of these professions- and yet are infrequently trained in any of them.   So if you're an artist, it's up to you to learn a bit about each of these fields.  Let's start today!

Buildings and the Principles of Design

College was the start of my love affair with architecture.  I never had a particular interest until I began to see the overlap with 2D, graphic, design principles.  A building, after all, is just a large geometric shape.   It has a silhouette, rhythm, repetition, emphasis, balance... it's all there!  

Wanting to know more, I began to watch movies and read books.  Concise Townscape was the first book that really hit home.  This book dissects urban spaces into visual design elements - much like a graphic design text would explain visual compositions.  The coolest part is that it opened my eyes to this invisible world of visual flow in cities.  Want to make a viewer focus on something really cool?  Make them walk up a set of stairs and then proceed through an arch or tunnel.  The first thing they see upon exiting will be visually impressive.  Simple principles like this were amazing insights to the way I experience cities, and in the way I design buildings for video games.  Even if I don't have the skills to be an actual architect, understanding the fundamental concepts makes me a better concept artist.

 

Inspiration

As I learned more about the design language of architecture, I started watching movies for inspiration. If you have netflix streaming, make sure to check out Urbanized (or the direct link here) and How Much Does Your Your Building Weigh, Mr. Foster? (Direct link here).  These are amazing looks at both individual buildings (Foster) and entire cities (Urbanized).   Museums are another great place to learn about the subject - especially the National Building Museum which is not to be missed next time you visit Washington DC.

The list of resources is endless.  If you have any particularly cool websites or books to share, please -- put them in the comments!  Ultimately, the important thing is to never stop learning.  I didn't think architecture was interesting until I started digging, and now I consider it one of my passions.  If you approach tangential subjects such as industrial design, fashion, advertising, and landscaping - you never know what passion you might uncover.  And as a concept artist or illustrator, you can never know too much! 

A quick list of recommendations

1. Concise Townscape
2. Architecture: Form, Space & Order
3. A Shelter Sketchbook
4. Why Buildings Stand Up
5. Eames: The Architecht and The Painter
6. Urbanized

Information Hierarchy

We've talked about the principles of design - and as you know by now, these are guidelines for organizing the information within a single composition.  The same concept applies when you're working with more than one piece of information, more than one painting, and need to guide a viewer's eyes through the content.  The video in today's post shows the design process for my personal portfolio site - explaining the my layout choices and why I scrapped each one leading to the final composition.  

Arranging Objects, Large and Small

Information design is necessary when you're trying to clarify something to your audience.  For instance, navigating an airport is a information nightmare: everyone is rushing, and no one is familiar with the layout.  As a result, the designers tasked with creating signage have an important task.  They are trying to prevent people from getting lost, and are forced to compete with a barrage of noise, sound, and crowds.  Next time you're in an airport, though, you'll notice that they did a pretty good job: signs are large and visible, often written in multiple languages.  The signs are placed where they're the most likely to be seen, and they are generally surrounded by negative space or blank walls.  Visual tricks to draw the reader's attention, just like the 2D principles of design.   In fact the more you look into the subject of information design, the more overlap you see with the 2D principles of design.  It turns out these guidelines aren't limited to arranging objects within a canvas, they are used to arrange nearly everything.  

Apple: Information Kings

Even though I'm a PC user, I can't help but admire the way Apple advertises their products.  They understand the importance of an information hierarchy, and it's evident by looking at this diagram (right).  I've taken screenshots of the entire vertical scroll for their iPhone 5 website, and stiched them together.  Next to this image I created a diagram simplifying the use of photos and major layout elements into solid color rectangles.  See the shape?  It's like a funnel.  It starts big and bold, and as the reader continues through the piece it gets more and more specific.  The images get smaller and smaller as minute details are explained.  It's an information hierarchy.

Does Your Portfolio Need an Information Hierarchy?

As I discuss in the video, there was a lot of thought that went into the main page layout for my portfolio.  What I didn't say, though, is that my old portfolio didn't even have a main page.  Until recently I limited my website to only my dozen best paintings.  The portfolio section was... the entire site.   And if you're just starting out, I'd recommend this school of thought.  Until you've been working for a few years, it's unlikely that you'll have enough work in total to need an information hierarchy like mine.  My site has upwards of 50 paintings, and those are selected out of a much larger total grouping.  As a result, though, I couldn't get away with a single page website any longer.  For the sake of my audience, I needed to put a road-map for the content and make the general groupings more obvious. 

As the internet becomes more and more cluttered with content, art and otherwise, you'll need to compete harder for attention.  In this environment, knowing how to control a viewer's attention and gaze is crucial.  Are you considering your personal information hierarchy?

Start Anywhere

I've spent a lot of time on Ctrl+Paint explaining different study aids, reference materials, habits, and mindsets.  As important as all of those concepts may be, sometimes the most important step is to simply start.  Start anywhere.  In the video below, you can see a warm-up sketch I made of a dragon - first it plays a 30 second time-lapse, which is immediately followed by the 22 minute real-time recording.  The goal of this drawing was not to make a portfolio piece, or to have anything wonderful at the end of 20 minutes.  The goal was to get warmed up.  Let's face it: drawing carries a lot of psychological baggage and sometimes it can be challenging to begin a work session.  So making a stream of consciousness painting like the one shown in this video is a great way to break through the slump.

Learning by doing

Sometimes the best way to target your problem spots is to make a quick drawing and be very critical afterwards. In this case I can look at the result and see that there are perspective issues with the horns and a general asymmetry in the face.  When you're in the moment, it's easy to miss these things - but that's fine!  Now that I'm warmed up, and aware of these issues, I'm ready to approach an actual painting.  When I work on something with higher stakes, I'll be on the lookout for these anatomical issues.  A good way to avoid these problems is to flip the canvas (horizontally) every so often - this gives you a fresh look at your subject.  For the sake of the recording, I did not flip the image at all and you can see the problems it caused. Another problem was that I progressed from line to value too quickly.  If I had spent more of the time refining my line drawing, I would have had a stronger form on which to add light and shadow. Once again, this is a lesson better learned while warming up than in an actual painting.  

Livestream

Dave Rapoza: Crimson Daggers Livestream

I love watching other artists painting live.  Dave Rapoza's livestream, found here, is fantastic. Seeing another artist painting is a great way to witness problem-solving.  Even though Dave and I paint in different ways, being able to 'watch over his shoulder' while he does a morning warm-up is invaluable.  Also, he picks great music.  Do you have any other favorite livestream artists?  Tell us about them in the comments!  

Get In There and Make a Mess

I like the way 'start anywhere' sounds, because it is comforting.  I know that every mark I make on the page can be changed and refined - the important part is start filling up that canvas.  You can always change it if it's not coming out the way you want.  It might sound obvious, but getting started is much harder than finishing a painting.  You've got my permission: get in there and make a mess.  Have fun!

The Importance of Email

Writing is a topic I've never covered on Ctrl+Paint, but it's time to broach the subject.  I hope you won't be mad when I tell you that your writing could be... better.  Based on the thousands of emails I've received from Ctrl+Paint readers it's safe to generalize:  you guys aren't prioritizing writing.  I'm not telling you this as an insult, but because you probably won't hear it from employers.  Since we are all competing for attention, your skill with words is nearly as important as your skill with a paintbrush.  This video explores the art of writing email.  The importance of structure, editing, and most importantly brevity are often overlooked by 'visual communicators', but it's worth your while to practice these skills.  

When in doubt, say less.

Where to Find Reference

I'm often getting asked by readers about my sources for reference materials.  After all, if you've watched Observation to Imagination, you know that I use a lot of reference.  Reference is great for both studies and final illustrations, any quality matters.  Low quality reference materials are generally less informative than high quality sources.  In today's blog post I'll give you a basic rundown of my favorite sources for reference materials and why I like them.

Before I get into specific categories, I want to mention a bit of search advice.  When using google image search, specificity is your friend.  "German Luftwaffe Helmet" is much better than "army helmet".  With this in mind, I will often do text searches before I do image searches in order to find more specific words.  For instance I might first study up a bit on wikipedia to learn a bit more depth before jumping to image search.  Even if all I want is an image, knowing enough about your subject to have specific terminology is very useful.

Anatomy

For whatever reason, anatomy reference is always tricky to find on the internet.  Sometimes I'll find an interesting tutorial or guide on DeviantArt, but my primary source for anatomy reference is printed books.  My favorite authors are Loomis, Bridgman, Villppu, and Hogarth.  I'm not opposed to newer online sources, but I've had better luck in print.

Costume

Costume design often has very specific requirements like historical accuracy, and as such your reference materials will vary.  There are some great illustrated books of historical costume reference, and google searches can yield nice historical images (remember to be specific).  For modern costume or sci-fi I like to use fashion photography.  The New York Times online always does a nice job showcasing runway events.  Street style fashion blogs are also really great for edgy designs - my favorite being the Sartorialist.  

Landscape 

My favorite for high-quality outdoor imagery is Flickr.  The vacation photos alone make Flickr an amazing window onto the world.  Specific locations are a good way to search Flickr - so a travel article or two might help you find the names of cool exotic locations.  Once you have the location, try searching it on Flickr with different modifiers like "in the fog" or "sunset".

Vehicles

If you're designing space ships or hover-bikes, it's tempting to be inspired by other paintings of space ships and hover-bikes.  The problem with this strategy is that you end up with derivative designs.  To keep things fresh, it is much better to use real world machines as your reference.  If you don't know much about cars, construction vehicles, or space shuttles it's worth doing a bit of text research first.  Once you have specific names, though, you'll be able to find plenty of reference on google image search. 

Texture

If I want to design a brush or create a textural overlay, I love to use CGTextures.com.  This site has the biggest library of free, high quality, textures I've ever seen.  

General Inspiration

Sometimes you want style reference, not subject-matter reference.  If you're trying to figure out how other artists paint water, for instance, you would want to work from paintings instead of photos.  My favorite place to get current concept art and illustration is on CGHub.com.  It's not as searchable as google images, but it's filled with high quality work.  I also love to check in on the blogs GorillaArtfare and Muddy Colors.  Ultimately, I have a long list of inspirational artist - and if you want to hear more of them make sure to follow me on Twitter.  

Bottom Line

Reference is extremely useful, but it's often only as good as your search term.  Even though it sounds mundane, honing your search-term-skills is very worthwhile.  Since the internet is stuffed to the gills with images, knowing how to filter them is an art all of its own.  If you have any websites you'd like to add to this list, please share them in the comments!

This Will be Hard Work

I have a google alert set to notify me of me newly posted 'digital art tutorials', and it routinely frustrates me.  Every time I see a blog post with a title like '40 Amazing Digital Painting Tutorials' I want to pull my hair out.  It's not clear when this trend started, but the results are obvious: beginners are being mislead.  Art technique is hard, and takes years to learn.  A simple look a DeviantArt or Youtube video comments reveals that beginners aren't satisfied with their painting skills and have no idea why they aren't improving.   It's totally reasonable that they feel this way, in my opinion, because the internet presents digital painting as an easy skill to master.   In reality, it's not!  Art is hard work.   More specifically, it's both technical and mechanically challenging.  First, watch the short Ira Glass video to the right - it's a fantastic bit of advice.  Now let's consider the process of learning to digital paint in two major parts, and where the internet tends to shortchange beginners. 

The Technical Side

You might think that learning to digital paint is like learning to make other digital files - it's both technical and rule driven.  So the web ought to do a great job at teaching this - after all, learning things like HTML, video editing, or making podcasts are very well documented by online tutorials.  But it doesn't.  This mode of thinking leads to project-based tutorials like "paint a flaming eyeball" and "create stunning concept art robots" (in case you're wondering, those are fake names) which lay out a series of steps to follow in order to make a specific final result.  This teaches the software part, but it completely glosses over the most important piece: painting. Digital painting, after all, is essentially just.... painting.  So if you're feeling frustrated about your results, ask yourself: how are your traditional skills?  This leads me to the second half of the equation.  

The Mechanical Side

Painting and drawing use finely-honed motor skills.  Just like playing a sport, you can understand the rules in a half hour -- but that doesn't mean you can play professionally.  The only way to improve is through repetition.  Practice, and practice, and practice, and your technique will improve.  This is the void left by the internet. When was the last time a Youtube speedpaint video talked about years and years of practice?  Practice isn't sexy.   But it's an undeniable truth, and you'll be a happier artist if you're prepared for a marathon, not a sprint.  Even as a professional concept artist I am learning every day, and plan to hone my craft for generations to come.  It's not a fast process.  Like Ira Glass describes in the video (above), there's going to be a gap between your current skill and your current taste.  The real challenge is coming to terms with this struggle, because you're going to feel if for a long time.  You're going to feel it for years.  Hopefully, you'll feel it (in some small way) forever -- because there's always more to learn.

Help Change the Conversation

The internet brought us all together.  Even if much of the training content available glosses over the value of traditional drawing and dedicated practice, it brought a bunch of artists together from all over the world to start a conversation.  That's extremely cool.  We're all learning, and we're all in this together.  Since you'll have opportunities to give feedback to artists with less experience than you, remember to encourage the value of  'foundation'.  If you see someone struggling with their digital painting, ask them how often they practice drawing with a pencil.  See a beginner overly concerned with the particulars of photoshop, or which tablet to buy?  Remind them that drawing in correct perspective is far more important.   Ultimately, the most important part of 'digital painting' is not 'digital'.  So let's help change the conversation.  Art is supposed to be hard work. 

The Meaning of Light

There is more than one way to light your scene. What is your lighting adding to the story? This video introduces some of the psychological implications of typical lighting setups. In fact, it's common for beginners to ignore lighting completely, rendering forms in a generalized way. As you progress as an artist, however, you'll need to harness the narrative power of light and make it work for your compositions -- not against them.  

Imagining light

If you're not painting from observation, light is even more important.  It's often obvious in beginner work that the artist does not have a strong grasp on the principles of light, because their imagined spaces are flat and confusing.  For this reason, light is one of the five categories I explore in the newly launched "Observation to Imagination".   I've always been a huge fan of light and it's power for storytelling, and luckily the new premium series gave me an opportunity to explain my approach.  

Mood & Light

The painting below is very loose and painterly, but the mood is set elegantly with a bit of intentional lighting.  In this case the deep shadows are deep and atmospheric, allowing the artist to use implied detail instead of extreme polish.  More than anything, Atack is revealing just enough of the scene to activate the audience's imagination - and he's doing it with intentional lighting.  

Noble's Island by Josh Atack

These two images to the right are painted by the same artist: Dorje, and each has a very different mood.  Once again, it's not an overwhelming use of polish or detail used to tell a story in these pieces... it's light.  Light used carefully and intentionally.  Beginners often add light as an afterthought, overlooking the massive impact it has on the mood of an image.  Instead, one might consider the light and color palette before even designing a composition - letting mood drive the piece instead of objects.  When was the last time you started a painting by choosing a lighting situation?

Ultimately, painting light is.... just painting.  Some painters would argue that there is nothing else.  It's a lifetime pursuit.  In my opinion, though, it's a constant source of beauty - and worth the challenge.  If you're looking for books specifically aimed at this topic, I highly recommend "Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter".  It's written by James Gurney, and does a wonderful job simplifying a complicated subject.  

I hope that you already love light as much as I do.  But if you don't,I encourage you to spend this week looking at paintings with one thing in mind:  light.  How are they using it? What is it telling about the mood?  Why have they decided to use shadows?  In a good painting, none of this is arbitrary.  Have fun studying!

Fortress of Summer, Dorje  (click to enlarge)

Highland Gap, Dorje (click to enlarge)

Art trade

I've just listed a couple of my recent favorites here, but there is a whole world of other artists using light to their advantage.  In the comments, I'd love to see a list of your favorites so we can all trade influences and enlarge our inspiration folders.  

Measuring Proportion

If you’ve seen Being John Malkovich (pictured above), you’ll remember the “7 ½th” floor.  Once you see the jarring contrast between the size of a person and the five foot high ceilings, it’s impossible to shake the feeling of unease.  This was an intentional narrative device for the film, but I see it all the time in novice illustrations.  What you’re seeing is proportion in action.  Proportion is a relative measure of height or distance; one object compared to another.  Our brains are really good at seeing proportional mistakes, so don’t accidentally set your characters on the 7 ½ th floor!  It might seem obvious, but even subtle proportional mistakes in the drawing stage can kill a painting before you ever have a chance to polish it.

Observation to Imagination

It’s been awhile since I released an episode of Ctrl+Paint unplugged, but this is a special occasion.  The next premium series, "Observation to Imagination" (coming March 28th) is all about connecting the gap between observational drawing skills and illustrating from your imagination.  It’s two parts: a series of videos, and a collection of 40 assignments designed to walk you through the concepts.  Since I’m so excited about it, this week’s blog post and next week's blog post will give you a small sneak peek into the format. 

First off, watch the video (above ) to learn a bit about visual measuring for proportion.  Additionally, it’s worth watching the earlier episode about visual measuring for angles. Next, there’s a homework assignment to go along with the concept in the video (below).

---

Instructions
Accurately measure & diagram simple objects from direct observation.  (Optionally) once you’re satisfied with the overall proportions, lightly sketch in the general contours.  

Quantity
15 household objects (or more if you prefer.)

Media
Photoshop: Digital line drawing, simple objects for reference.
Traditional: Pencil, paper, eraser, simple objects for reference.

Background Info
Blocking in an object’s proportions is essential to it’s ultimate success, though artists often rush the process and make mistakes.  The goal of this assignment is not to make beautiful contours, but instead to capture accurate dimensions.  In fact, you can can completely skip the contour stage if you prefer - since accurate measurements are plenty challenging on their own.  Even if you’re working digitally, make sure to work from direct observation instead of photos - you will get much more out of the assignment.

If you'd like to submit your results, we'd love to see them on the Facebook wall!  Since this assignment involves a high quantity of drawings, it's best to shrink them down and present them on a single page for Facebook viewing.  

Choose To Succeed

"Do you think the dragons are big enough to ride and fight with?"  This is a quote from my second grade journal, and it was accompanied by the art you see at the top of the post. At seven years old, art wasn't something I analyzed – it was something I did, and it was fun. In fact, I only did it because it was fun. In the twenty years since then I've spent a lot of time making art, thinking about making art – and even more time getting in my own way (not making art.) All of this has lead me to an interesting conclusion, and hopefully it will help you in your own artistic pursuits. Though I could describe in a variety of ways, here's the short version:

More Dragon Lord (Still age 7)

You'll have more luck as an artist if you choose to have fun with it.

Before you dismiss this as self-help nonsense let me explain a bit of personal history. There have been times that I felt great about making art due to naivete (see 'dragon lord' above), and there have been times that I've dreaded making art because of poor self-esteem. Neither of these are sustainable relationships. Now that I'm a professional artist, I know what it means to draw every day. That includes 'bad drawing days', and days where I'm in a terrible mood. To make this work, I have to control my mindset. The conclusion I've come to is that most successful artists weren't born successful.  They got that way through a long series of small victories, and successes happen more often when you don't dwell on failure.

Choose Not to Fail.

The attitude I've decided to adopt is simple: my next project is going to be a huge success, so I will approach it with all of my energy. Is every project a success? No! Of course not. I've had tons of failures. But each time a project completes I can choose to focus on the minor successes, or on the minor failings. Every project, big or small, has both. When I focus on the negative aspects it's easy to delay the next project in fear of another failure. Instead, when choose to focus on the small successes, I'm ready to dive into the next attempt. After all, it's going to succeed!

Get Lucky.

20 years later, the subject-matter hasn't changed much but my technique has improved.  It's all a matter of hard work and small victories.  (Click to enlarge.)

When it comes to breaking into the commercial art world, luck is an unavoidable factor. I've listened to dozens of 'breaking in' stories (my favorites are from the Sidebar podcast) and they all seem to mention incredible timing. Lucky breaks. Knowing the right person. What these stories often leave out is the attitude that allowed the luck to happen in the first place. Remember: when the opportunity knocks, you need to have a portfolio ready to show. To help visualize this, let's quantify it with some made up numbers. We'll pretend that every piece of art you make and post on the internet has a 1% chance of attracting the attention of an art director. Knowing this, what is the proper mindset when your recent submission is met with no response?

a)  My art is bad, and I should give up.

b)  That one didn't work, but the next one might!

Clearly 1% is a made up number, but the point is fair: 'good luck' only happens to you if you are determined. In order for the lucky moment to happen, you have to be willing to try 99 times and hear nothing in return. Sadly, the world is not filled with cheerleaders. No longer seven years old,  I can't expect others to tell me how great my artwork is. Now it's up to me to focus on the minor successes instead of the minor failings. And at the risk of being overly dramatic.... this just might be the secret to a successful art career.

Since this post is heavy on theory, I'd love to hear some practical tips and personal stories in the comments.  So lets hear it:  How does mindset affect your art-making?   

Are you Experimenting?

It's easy for artists to get into ruts as they learn and in their professional work. Our brain craves familiar territory, and will default to the 'comfort zone'. When was the last time you did a painting experiment? I'm not talking about picking a new subject-matter, or designing a new character. I'm talking about strange, unexpected, daring, experimentation.

The video to the right is an example of me using experimental techniques.  The results are unpredictable, but that's how discoveries are made!

What's an Experiment?

Every artist has a different definition, but I think of it as any piece of art that could never be included in your portfolio. A piece of art that isn't about beauty or polish, but instead strives to test your boundaries. I went to college with an artist named Carl Beu that painted with Photoshop differently than anyone else at SCAD – specifically, he used the smudge tool in a very striking way. The image below is an example of his technique – you can see that smudging 100% strength leads to a bizarre and unpredictable sort of blending. This was the result of experimentation with Photoshop, and over time he made it part of his standard painting technique.  

An example of Carl Beu's unconventional smudge tool technique

Remix: Found Sound, Found Art

Ever since college I've been fascinated by Paul “DJ spooky” Miller, who writes about sampled music in terms of 'collage'. As a visual artist, writer, and DJ, he examines the cultural importance of re-mixing and mashups. For him, the samples he chooses to use in his music add not only rhythmic and vocal layers – but cultural and historical ones as well. He overlays disparate parts into a rich, textural, unified composition. If the raw materials that DJs use to create their music are 'found sounds', what might the equivalent for digital art be?

Paul Miller might be a musician, but it's the experimentation that I want to focus on. Much of his work tests his personal boundaries; perpetually broadening his definition of 'music'. As he challenges himself in this way, he makes artistic discoveries which would have never happened by working in a conventional manner.

Collage as Texture

As samples layer together to create electronic music, so too can images layer together to create a painting. In this Feng Zhu video, he starts his painting by layering a number of photographs on the blank canvas. What's interesting is that the photos have nothing to do with his drawing. As he explains, the collage of photos is a quick way to achieve the 'feel' that the final painting is going for, and to give a set of background values. As the painting continues, he covers up these photos with paint – only allowing hints of the original collage to remain in the final image.

Is this first step 'painting'? It is 'collage'? One thing's for sure: it's experimental. Even if there's not a clear name for it, Feng is able to save time and energy by using this technique for his work. And though I'm not sure where he learned to work this way, it probably resulted from personal experimenting.

The Experimental Habit

For most artists, working like this doesn't feel natural. Regardless, I encourage you to make small experimental 'doodles' and studies every week. The stakes are low, because these will never be 'finished' portfolio pieces. Instead, you're just testing the limits of Photoshop. You never know when you're going to stumble into an effective new technique!

Are you already experimenting? We'd love to hear about it in the comments!

Cracking the Style Code

Examples from the Ctrl+Paint wall

Weekly Workbook #001

As of this writing, I've seen about a dozen entries in the the current weekly workbook challenge: “Stylish Monsters”. So far, they're great! For those that haven't heard about it, I'm providing weekly drawing activities at the Ctrl+Paint Facebook page, and everyone is invited to participate. This blog post is going to take a look into my motivation for this particular challenge, and how the principles apply to a much wider range of subject-matter.

Observing the rules of style

Join in!  Everyone is invited, so to get started:  Upload it to the facebook wall or add it to the Flickr goup.

Style observations for "Monsters Ate my Birthday Cake".  Though I made this sheet, the characters are © Sleep Ninja Games

When you carefully observe a still life, the challenge is to mimic realism. When you carefully observe a stylized illustration, your goal is the same: to mimic what you see. Surprisingly, the most important skill when working with existing styles is knowing how to see. To test this, I assigned creating monsters in the style of “Monsters Ate my Birthday Cake” which has a very simple set of rules. Looking at these designs you can see that shape is priority #1, and that all of the edges are hard. Next, you'll notice that there are no outlines at all, even though it is a 'cartoon' style. You'll also notice that the colors are either totally solid, or use a slight gradation. Finally, there are small details used to add character and indicate material such as scales or tufts of fur.

How did your monster compare to these rules? Looking at the current submissions, there's a range of accuracy. Some nail it, while others missed some of the rules. If you haven't tried yet, I encourage you to enter your own! You can post your submissions on the Ctrl+Paint Facebook wall, or in the Weekly Workbook Flickr group.

Design vs. rendering

Designing the shape of a monster is totally separate from creating an illustration of that monster. Thumbnail sketches, for instance, capture a lot of information about a drawing though are not very detailed. The same goes for creature design. Below you can see two of my paintings: on the left is my example for Stylish Monsters, and on the right is the same design painted in a much more realistic style. They look very different at a first glance, but note that the shapes are essentially the same on both versions. The only thing that changed is the style with which I decided to depict it in my final painting.

My example artwork for the Weekly Workbook

A slightly modified version of that monster, placed into a composition

My final piece is done in a very different style, but the design is essentially the same as my original.  (click to enlarge)

Why is this important? Because it takes much longer to paint the image on the right. If I want to design a creature, it's much more effective use of my time to make simple drawings to test out shapes and ideas – even if they look more cartooned like the image on the left. Thumbnail sketches, design sketches, and doodles contain a vast amount of information – it just needs to be 'resolved' by the artist. So making a final illustration is somewhat like unpacking the visual information contained in a sketch and giving it a final coat of polish. In short, be creative with sketches and save your polish for the successful ideas. If you want to learn more about this concept, Design Basics is available in the Ctrl+Paint store.  

The value of versatility

Artists often ask me "should I pick a style?".  Though there's not a one-size-fits-all answer to this, my experience has been that versatility is useful in the commercial art world.   At a single game studio, I worked on kids games and adult games - with very little time in between.  Staying flexible made this possible.  With this in mind, my advice is to practice a wide range of styles.  

But remember: they're all based in your ability to paint realistically... so you have to start with a solid foundation.  So keep working on your still life paintings!

What can you cut?

Which would you rather have: five mediocre things or two things you really love? In theory I prefer the two, but I often choose the five mediocre ones out of habit. Because we're on the internet, it's extremely easy to have everything. And though this might seem great at face value, it can be deadly to your creativity. When was the last time you bought an art reference book and read the entire thing? In a digital age where it's really easy to get stuff, sometimes we overlook the benefits of getting rid of stuff. Let's take a look at this idea in the big picture first, and then in terms of creating artwork.

Prioritize your activities.

In "Focus Your Time" I talk about getting more done by doing fewer things. It might seem obvious, but it actually takes a constant effort to stay on top of this concept. One of my challenges is being a gamer. I really enjoy playing video games, but have recently decided to cut out console gaming and limit myself to handhelds. Though it was a hard choice, it's allowed me to spend more of my time on creative pursuits, without completely eliminating the fun of gaming. What can you cut out of your schedule?

Limit your options.

One of the most common questions I get from you guys is about creativity. Specifically, it's about feeling a lack of creativity. In reality you might just be suffering from option-overload. A blank canvas is the ultimate open-ended question, which can stop many artists in their tracks. Can't think of what to draw? Limit the scope. In “give yourself assignments” I talk about pretending to be an art director for your own personal work. Random generators are another great opportunity.

"Left  Behind" by Vyle,  Copyright Disney Studios

Limit your colors.

Some of the most engaging paintings use color as a beacon – not as an overall barrage. See how this Tron painting by Vyle draws your attention to the focal point? This recognizes the power of restraint and the use of negative space to empower the subject. It's all about relativity: 'bright' is only possible when surrounded by 'dim'.

© DreamWorks Animation SKG, Inc. © Paramount Pictures Corporation

Cut the visual clutter.

It's easy to assume 'more realistic' means 'more detailed', but that's almost never the case. If an image is clear, it doesn't need much visual information to tell a big story. Storyboards are a great example of this efficiency in action. These great sketches from How To Train Your Dragon prove you don't need photo-realism to get the point across. Even though you are able to add details doesn't mean you should. Just like with color, use detail sparingly.

Another great example of this principle is the work by Sparth.   If you follow the game industry, you've probably seen his designs.  The cars for Id software's Rage proves that he's more than capable of detailed imagery (below left), but many of his illustrations like the one on the bottom right make wonderful use of selective focus.  The spaceship is very detailed, though the background is left atmospheric; activating the viewer's imagination.  

Copyright Id Software, art by Sparth

Art by Sparth

Subtract everywhere.

As I've shown, eliminating the unnecessary is a great way to highlight the good stuff. In fact, I'm experimenting with this as a personal creed. In an attempt to make better art and get more out of my time, I'm on a constant hunt for things to eliminate.  So let's talk about it in the comments...What can you cut?

Welcome to Ctrl+Paint 3

New Structure

Each revision of Ctrl+Paint has been a bit different, but I'm extremely excited about the simplicity of the Video Library.  Many of you asked for a list, and you were right: it's a great way to see the big picture!

New Schedule

From this point forward, the new schedule is 1 written post every Thursday.  Tuesday and Thursday took on special meaning for me these last two years, so it's going to be a bit strange switching to a single Thursday weekly post.  That said, you can look forward to much more activity on Facebook and Twitter - so get connected!

Same Goal

I want to teach you to digital paint, plain and simple.   The page is still totally ad-free, and my focus is on teaching the material as clearly as possible.  I thought it would only take six months to get to this point, but it ended up taking two years - now I'm excited for the next two years!

 

Info about Logging In

New hosting, new log-in system

With this new re-design, all of the old login usernames / passwords have been removed.  If you've ever been able to log-in to Ctrl+Paint for commenting (or for the old Forum), that  user name will no longer work.  I'm sorry this happened without warning, but for technical reasons I wasn't able to transfer these credentials.   Most of the comments were migrated from the previous site, though, so that's good news!

What does the new log-in allow me to do?

It's just for commenting.  When you post a comment on one of the videos or blog posts, you'll see a picture like the one to the right.  If you don't want to log in, you're more than welcome to post as a guest.  If you do log in, you'll need to choose one of the portals; they're pretty self explanatory, but I'll clarify a few things:

Squarespace:  If you happen to have a squarespace website, you can log-in with this information.  If you don't, you're not missing out on anything.  

Twitter / Facebook / Google:  These log in profiles do not automatically tweet / update facebook / or comment in Google+.  All they do is use your name and avatar from the service.  (You don't need to worry about spamming your followers)

What happens when I see the big black screen with a 6 on it?

It means you hit 'esc' on your keyboard.  The screen is only for my personal log-in, and has no use to general readers.  Why don't I just get rid of it?  Because I can't.   It's extremely frustrating that my host won't allow me to remove this functionality... but, that's how it goes.  So if you see the big black six, just hit 'esc' a second time and you'll go back to the page you were on.  Sorry for the hassle!