The Earth-Toned Pill

Link: http://jackal111.deviantart.com/art/Highway-101573565

I've come to the realization that to become a better artist, I have to actually DRAW...

And paint. And create.

I've already known for a long time that you only get better by doing things, because in most cases, practice truly does make perfect. But for so many years, I've neglected my artistic talents and let my imagination become a stagnant nothingness that seems to delight in providing me only with artist's block when I need it most.

So in an effort to take a stand and make a change, I am going to pledge to myself that from here on, I will create at least one work of art a day.

And the digital painting you see above is my first step towards making this happen!

It doesn't matter if its big or small, polished masterpiece or scribbly sketchbook drawring (misspelling intentional), because all I care is that I am forcing myself to create and hopefully become creative again.

Maybe in the process I can get skilled enough to quit my day job too...

You never know, right?

After being inspired by Hideyoshi's amazing AF-014, I decided to embark on something similar. It seemed only natural for me to do some kind of aircraft, because I've always had a love for anything aviation-related, but especially military aviation. I plan to put several hours in this piece, and I'll document the major steps on here as I go.

So to start off, here is what I've got:

Click on the pic for a larger view

I started out by creating a gradient for the sky on the background layer and then laid out the clouds using a standard brush, followed by forming with the smudge tool and motion blur filter.

The initial lineart is just that... Initial. I plan on cleaning it up and adding more details before laying in the flat color layers. Yep, that's right. This one is going all the way. Enough screwing around for me; I want to finally create something digitally (like my traditional-media self portraits) that I can be proud of.

If you have any suggestions or thoughts, let me know!

Hot off the press:

Click on the pic for a larger view

I think I have a total of about 2 hours into this. I didn't do much with the surrounding scenery because I made some technical mistakes early on that would have made that difficult.

Anyway, time for a new project...

Here is a digital piece I'm currently working on:

Click on the pic for a larger view

This started out with me drawing a bunch of abstact lines and shapes in Photoshop, and quickly evolved into what I would call a worn-out robot that has been sitting in someone's backyard for a couple years.

What do you think?

I'm a big fan of the web site deviantart.com for a whole lot of reasons, not the least of which is because it has a highly-active user community that fosters a high degree of cooperation and collaboration amongst users.

I was searching for a good set of Photoshop drawing brushes on the site (of which many exist and are free to use for non-commercial purposes, as long as credit is given to the creator) when I stumbled on this fantastic digital art tutorial by the user aquasixio. If you're like me, you'll knit-pick at the his spelling until you realize he's French and probably doesn't speak great English to begin with.

Anyhow, the tutorial taught me a lot of little things I thought I knew and really helped me get excited again about art in general and digital art in particular. Even better is the fact that deviantart is chock full of tutorials like this one, and although some are honestly of dubious quality or usefulness (an inherent weakness of peer-controlled content environments), all will serve to get your creativity going I'm sure.

And if you have time, stop by my little corner and say hi.

I stumbled on this great quote while checking out Dani's drawing website:

"As artists, we are creative people - but you can’t expect your creations to come out of thin air. If I want to draw a character in a certain style, or write the story in a certain way, I want it to be because I decided it was the best way to go, not because I was too ignorant to realize it could be done differently."

Check out her entire article here, which deals with her awesome work developing art for a childrens' book!