Back to basics

Hello!

The last week or so has been a bit of a roller coaster in terms of productivity and learning.  I took a few days off to rest my eyes and brain earlier this week, and it felt great, but it feels even better to be back!  As I approached my blog for the first time in over a week, I pondered ways to enhance the experience of my readers in ways other than explaining my drawings and process in gross detail.  The point of this blog, personally, is to journal not only my art and progress, but personal reflections as well as nuances that come with training the brain to see differently.  Learning new skills not only stretches the imagination and perception, but has profound effects on everything from lifestyle choices to communication style.  Not interested?  Skip ahead and look at pictures below!

Motivation comes and goes, especially when the only deadlines you set are your own.  I took some time off from full-time employment with some money saved to learn as much as I can about art/design, and to take the first steps into changing careers.  I previously held positions in healthcare related fields and administration, and became what I had always dreamed of as a child – a glorified call center representative.  I decided at one point that I was tired of the anxiety, environment, and basically everything with the exception of my amazing co-workers.  Healthcare is a great field of work, with many rewards, benefits, and no shortage of jobs.  I’ve obtained a plethora of stories to tell, good and bad, but with each interaction with the irate, depressed, suicidal, and manic; I began to question my own sanity.  So, here I am, forging a new path.  I won’t go into details as to what things I liked and disliked, as everyone keeps a mental list of the pros and cons of any occupation in which they are participating. Adults will unanimously agree that reality is distorted by perception, and the only way to know if your feelings are produced in a think tank is to indulge.  The balance of family, work, love, and health is much more fickle than we care to admit, but the ups and downs inspire communication and creation.

So far in my time off, I’ve lived a pretty lean existence financially, other than the occasional lunch and dinner date with my girlfriend.  She has been supportive and encouraging in many ways, and I cannot thank her enough.  I realized just how much I was spending while working, and how I made up for my unhappiness with how I spent my Monday-Friday existence. Granted, I did not save enough to take an entire year off, so I’ve been on the hunt for various jobs that will pay the bills, but I have definitely lessened the arbitrary amount that I felt was necessary to be happy.

One thing I have definitely learned, was that just because I am not consistently working for an income, does not mean I have to be a complete slave to my work.  Progression begins to plateau, burnout becomes reality, and energy is wasted. Taking a few days off to relax and stop critiquing myself invigorated my senses again.  Occasionally, I do feel a bit selfish to have all of this time to myself, but those feelings subside much more easily than soul-crushing anxiety.  I would compare my feelings to taking the wrong exit on the highway, which leads to a few scenarios:

1. Intentionally miss an exit five times, as you know you’ll be arriving at the dentist to get your teeth drilled.  Eventually, you get your teeth drilled, and reward yourself with some Netflix and mashed potatoes.

2. You miss an exit, decide you don’t really care because the scenery is great, but have no idea how you’ll afford to keep the tank running.  

3. Turn around, get back to where you were supposed to go.  Continue forward.

Option 1 was how I felt arriving at my office job most days, option 2 is where I am currently, and option 3 is my goal as to how I would like to feel more often.  As much as I love the spontaneity of option 2, life has to be somewhat realistic. However, it does not have to be dull and drab.  From my experience, people are not particularly complex beings in their actions.  Many can go on for days, including myself, about their thought process and intentions.  However, our actions may only communicate that we know how to sit in front of a computer or any medium for hours upon hours and potentially do something with it.  Sure, I would love to make money doing things I enjoy, but there is something raw about cutting yourself off from the blanket of comfort that a steady income provides.  New challenges arise when you take the path into your own hands.  Sometimes it’s cause for celebration, and sometimes the dentist calls and asks where the hell you’ve been.

Anyway, onward to the art!

I will preface this by saying that last week was a particularly challenging week for me.  I was low on energy and motivation, which prompted me to take a few days off.  I came back ready to go, and spoke with a few artist friends for some insight. One prompted me to return to constantly return to fundamentals, as he does even as a full time professional.  Sometimes we hear things we know we’ve heard a thousand times, but when it comes at a particular time from particular people it can have a different effect.  Knowing someone personally who is leaps and bounds above my skills level still feels as though he struggles with basics at times was a nice confidence boost.  I decided sit back and study a bit more, read more, and practice basics rather than attempting to come up with new things every day.  Consequently, I do not have much to show as much of my work was line practice, scribbles, random shading and texturing, etc.  I also set a few art-specific goals for myself in the process.

Goal #1 – Close Photoshop and get more acquainted with traditional methods, with particular emphasis on line work.

So, after purchasing my first graphics tablet, I decided to try art seriously for the first time in years. I was amazed by the amount of options software provided.  I began doodling in full color, with the ability to transform, shape, and shade as I pleased.  So much cooler than pencil!  Well, in some ways yes.  However, during the process, I found that I never really knew how to convey a message or image using only lines.  I was of the understanding that people were either really into lines to compose a piece, or fit into more of the classical category of painting blocks onto the canvas and refining until the desired effect is achieved.  I got so acquainted with the latter process that line work started to intimidate me, as I was horrible at it, and did not see images in that manner.  After browsing various artwork, videos, and reading, I found that every technique has a place, and neglecting a common skill has no place among professional work.

And what did I find?  I love doing line work now!  I have a long way to go, and I am unfolding new ways to me more effective and efficient.  I broke out a mechanical pencil and the rest of my sketching tools and got to work.  Now I’m looking into buying a scanner, because line work on paper is so much easier!  I initially told myself I would just tough it out and learn to start on the computer to save time, but as with many perceptions, this proved to be false.  Photoshop and Illustrator make it very possible to do intricate and detailed line work from the start of a piece, but there is a disconnect that is only filled by giving something physical form and stimulating tactile sensations.  Not to mention limitations in technique that I did not notice before when taking a software-only approach.  This is not to say that I will begin every piece on paper, but I have a better idea of how to accomplish certain looks and can decide what is best prior to starting.
Here are a few pages from my sketchbook.  Nothing too fancy, including a little crayon action for fun. 🙂

A few updates to various pieces I had already started:

Blended her face a bit more and reshaped a few things.  No, she does not have a glass eye.

A bit more line work in the reference piece from 13 Assassins.

A little bug I started on before bed last week.

Often times I warm up my hand by drawing a sphere or ellipse and shading it in, then it gets erased and I move on. However, I started messing around with texture brushes and layers a bit more with the next one.  Nothing fancy, and it could use better lighting in the middle and some other places, but it gives you an idea of my warm ups.

Last, but not least, I’m working on anatomy and speed.  I can spend 20+ hours on the same person, and I’m sure he/she will look pretty good with the amount of time spent, but I felt like I was often times starting out too detail oriented and slow. I had to get rid of the urge to detail and pay attention to form.  Therefore, I started doing ten minute gesture exercises in Photoshop with various techniques from hard lines to soft brushes.  The website I used is http://artists.pixelovely.com/practice-tools/figure-drawing/ if you’re interested.  It’s a great site with various settings for speed and content of drawings.  Ten minutes is not long at all, but you can change the timer (or pause), skip ahead, change genders and clothing levels of models, etc.  Pretty damn cool, and a great resource.  The best part for me was that when that timer was done, I had to MOVE ON, no matter how unfinished it looked.  This is a pretty common practice in art classes, and I intend to get involved with life drawing classes with real models.  In the meantime, I’ll just draw friends.

Well, that’s all for now.  I hope you enjoyed this update, and have a great weekend!

-Alex

Weekly Progress (first week)

Hello everyone!

I suppose I did not specify how often I’d be posting, but here is what I’ve accomplished so far this week.  I’d prefer to keep myself and those reading up to date on projects.  I took some advice to keep sort of “journal entries” to not only stay disciplined, but to keep record of where I am, and to which direction I’ll continue.

First off, I spent a bit more time blending the grays and messing around with tone on my last portrait.  I’m trying to figure out some of the problems I’ve had with blending and tone, and plan on doing more portraits to shade in faces and skin tones more accurately and effectively.  Faces are great practice, they’re as simple or as difficult as you want them to be, and there is no real maximum when going for the most realistic result.  This statement applies to most things, however, faces can really never be more important figures in any picture as they tend to create their own focal points.

I plan on working on more of her within the next few weeks.  I had some struggles when I attempted to create layers for her face.  I have not found an efficient way to blend a face in the blocking phase (granted, I haven’t drawn a ton of faces yet) while using several layers, so I scrapped them and went back to one.  I also decided to read up on custom brushes, and made a few of my own.  As you’ll notice I blotted out the swatch to be more deliberate with color choice (the color picker can make things muddy when used too often).  Hands off the alt key!

(click on any image for a larger version)

The next few landscapes are my attempt at picking some nice shapes and colors out of photographs, and sort of blending them into the background, warping and bending their contours with free transform, and finally coming up with a completely different composition.  I then chose some colors I liked, and threw them down.  I’m not exactly sure where I am going with either of them, but it feels good to get a few basic ideas out.  However, I realized while dealing with my confusion of direction with each that my fundamentals on perspective need work.  I then dove in to a few books on basic drawing, spent some time outside sketching plants and the Iowa River, and decided to tackle the fundamentals head on.  I feel like a large portion of my stopping points deal with a lack of fundamental skills, so it’s good to strike a balance between having fun with your own designs, and advancing your knowledge and visual library through study.  They’re both still very rough, and I’ll probably overhaul several things in both, but they were fun to start.

Lastly, I took one of my favorite scenes from 13 Assassins and went into some line work.  Line work has been my bane since I started drawing with a tablet.  I got used to blending shapes without the aid of lines, but struggled as I worked up to more complex shapes and figures.  Well, no excuses, line work just takes time and practice with the wrist.  This is my start of retracing many of the rough lines I threw down in the first layer.  I have not gotten to the right side yet (burning building with some straw on fire), but I wanted to post before it got too much later in the day.

Anyway, I’ll get back to work on some drawings!  I plan on posting more within the next few days.

Thanks for reading!

Sincerely,
Alex

My first year of progress, and thoughts on the process.

As promised, here are some old drawings and sketches that I dug up from my Google Drive.  Ranging from oldest to newest.  Some finished, some abandoned, some in progress.  Some/many are pretty bad, but that’s the point!  
First 1-3 months

My first drawing ever on a tablet.  Metroid! I drove to Best Buy, bought a Wacom Intuos Pro 5, and went to town.  No prior Photoshop experience, and not much drawing experience at all.  I used a few references, and it took me about three hours.

First reference drawing (ew!) in Photoshop.  Coffee thermos.  Line work and shading basically non-existent.  Maybe one hour?

 

Random turtle boy.  Photoshop pencil function and some lighting effects (for some reason).  Not sure what I was going for, but it was fun.  About two hours.  I was going to draw him again with brushes in the second photo, but apparently got bored.

I tried my hand at some landscapes/architecture (if you could call it that).  Witches house and a castle guard tower.  At this point I hadn’t read much about perspective, color theory, and definitely not line work.  Without the use of references or prior study, I just started slapping down shapes.  I spent about two-three hours on each one (ouch).  Good practice either way, and a quick reminder now of why I now use reference and perspective grids.

 

Some quick sketches of a witch and her house/surrounding area.  I paid no attention to line work at this point, and was just going for overall compositions.  I zoomed out a bit from previous landscapes to focus on perspective a bit more.  Still having a hard time constructing where things should be, but my understanding began to improve.  I was probably about 3-4 months into my new hobby at this point.

Old tree man I made for fun.  Took me a few hours.

4-8 months.  This is where I started reading a bit more about theory and concepts, as well as seeking critique from a few friends.  Progress is slow, but still progress.

I went through sort of a monochrome blue phase for a while.  I was still really bad about using references and trying to come up with things in my head.  I felt like I had reached a plateau about 6 months in, and began to get a bit more frustrated with the pace of my progress at this point.  I found myself wasting a lot of time trying to come up with ideas from my head, a common pitfall for new artists.  If you have not studied objects before, or drawn them, things will be extremely difficult to come up with without reference.  Professionals USE REFERENCE ALL THE TIME.  Don’t get into the mindset that it is somehow wrong.  Trust me, you’ll thank yourself later even just for tracing.  You must train your eye.  Eacch drawing was at this point was taking more time, and becoming less productive.

A few random sketches from my sketchbook.

      

I decided to get into some Photoshop photo manipulation and to mess with effects for hilarity and to dive a bit deeper into what Photoshop could do for me.  Each photo took about an hour to edit (and it shows), but I had a blast and some laughs.  I’d like to go back and make some more of these concepts at some point.

Quick scribbles in Photoshop and in the sketchbook.  I felt like I wasn’t making decisions with my lines, so I decided to use pen, and to not erase anything I had put down.

8-12 months.  I started using reference more frequently!  I still have issues finding the right photos, figuring out how to incorporate them, and trying not to rip people off, but that is what part of what makes art so complex and hard to learn.  My compositions started improving much more rapidly (or so I felt).

I drew a bunch of hands from reference (a few pages worth), and guess what?  My hands got better!  Who knew?  More pen drawings from the sketchbook.

I tried some tutorials from ConceptCookie.org, which were great for learning if you’re into someone talking you through the process step by step.  Sometimes these are great for me, but other times I am too impatient and would rather learn by just doing (sometimes to my disadvantage).  I will definitely be doing more tutorials in the future, and would recommend hitting up YouTube, or any reputable art site for anyone interested.  I’m not sure that they really helped as much with my drawing skills as much as the way I used Photoshop, and how to become more efficient.  At this point I also began to use layers, something scary and foreign prior to these tutorials.  Sadly, I lost most of the data from my tutorial paintings, so here is an unfinished landscape (so intriguing).

Little rainforest creature I made for fun.  I’d definitely tweak him a bit (OK, a lot) now, and add some strong lines and fix the muddy colors, but I was mainly going for a decent composition rather than details.

I was about a year in at this point, and looking for a challenge.  I wanted to do a full landscape, with some studies of what objects may be placed into said landscape.  I spent many hours trying to construct a cool frog head entrance to a cave, only to take it out of the final drawing.  At this point I started to realize that I didn’t have to stick to my original plans.  I definitely clung to every idea that I had before this, and often led to wasting many hours with a dead idea.  However, it is tough to throw things away as a beginner when even drawing simple shapes can take hours.  In the long run, if it benefits your drawing, take the damn thing out!  I have not finished this landscape either.  To be completely honest, drawing was and is extremely hard, and many times I left drawings unfinished not due to a lack of effort, but a lack of knowing what the hell I was doing

Hey hey!  More references!  Here’s an old tracing and filling in of a warlock from the game Destiny.  I loved the concept art and spent about eight hours going over the details and trying to figure out which techniques and strokes they used to get the desired effects.  He’s unfinished (especially the bottom half), but I’m happy with what I learned so far from him.

Naked chicks!  Woo!  I was too nervous to try drawing her face (photo, not live nude).  Turns out a messed up foot is a lot less noticeable than a lazy eye.  She was my first anatomical drawing.  I’ve drawn several body parts since then, and I can say that each one is always an improvement over the last.  You can get as detailed as you want with anatomy, and it really trains your eye.  Suffice to say it is the best practice aside from maybe portraits (no lazy eyes! Well, unless your subject has one, then by all means).

12-18 months.  Nothing.  Not a damn thing really other than a few half-assed sketches.  If you are serious about your art, breaks are fine, but don’t go more than a few weeks.  Picking up the pen again was painful after several months off, and I had to re-learn many things.  That’s not to say I did not do anything, as I took a lot of time to observe nature, faces, bodies, etc.  However, if you want to improve, you HAVE to draw.  All the time.  No exceptions.

Which brings us to now.  Of course I haven’t put every single drawing into this post, and do not intend to.  I hope you enjoyed looking at my first year, and observing the slow process of improving various aspects of drawing/digital painting.

A few things I have tweaked about my process now as opposed to when I started, and a few tips:

• DO use reference (have I mentioned this already?).  
• DO quick sketches before your final product.  
• DO NOT be too tough on yourself.  
• DO be persistent, but not too stubborn with your ideas.
• DO be disciplined and practice as much as you can, drawing whatever you can draw, even if it’s just what is right in front of you.
• DO NOT be scare of anything.  I was scared of faces and anatomy for the longest time, and in turn I did not get any better at them.  It shows.
  
• Most importantly, take your time and have fun!  There’s no rush, and artists/non-artists alike will notice when things are rushed.  Speed is great once you’ve got your fundamentals down and can still complete a polished product, but it is by no means essential.  Especially for the hobbyist.

Anyway, no more lists or rules for today.  Here is my current project.  I’m tackling my first portrait with photo reference, and taking my time with the details.  I’m maybe a few hours in, but I have a long way to go.  I felt as though I was not seeing tone and shading like I should, so I decided to use only grayscale.

Look at that eye!  The first eye that I’ve been happy with so far.  I’ll probably still do some tweaking, but this part alone took about 60-90 minutes (yep, speed is not my thing).

Thanks for reading!

-Alex

Art boy introduction

Hello everyone!

My name is Alex Fenzel, and I am a 26-year-old creative living in the Iowa City area.  The purpose of this blog is to showcase the process and training that I am undergoing to become a better general artist, specializing in digital 2D (and eventually 3D) mediums.

I have about one year of continuous experience painting and editing in Photoshop/Illustrator, as well as keeping sketchbooks using traditional methods.  I believe there is little information on the artistic process for the budding artist aside from tutorials and lectures, and I plan on adding my own work to my blog as often as I am able (every day if physically possible).  Much of the art showcased on the internet has been completed by industry professionals, leaving many beginners disparaged upon comparing their own work to those with 10+ years of experience.

Remember the old saying that an artist have 10,000 bad drawings within them? I found myself scouring the internet for drawings of professionals’ early days, and usually came up empty-handed.  I will post everything from the good, bad, to the ugly not only for my own motivational purposes, but to help others as well.  I hope to bring together both artists and non-artists to show that the process is long and arduous, share my triumphs and frustrations with you, but mostly to have fun and learn!

Please feel free to comment, ask questions, or drop a line to let me know how you’re doing!  If you have any of your own projects that you would like to send me, feel free to do so.  Shameless plugs are also welcome!

A little info about me and my interests:
– Guitarist for going on fourteen years.
– I studied Psychology and Music (vocal performance) at the University of Iowa (I love stage performance including plays, theater, and opera).
– Gamer for basically all of my life.  I am currently hooked on Super Smash Bros 4, Monster Hunter 4, and Borderlands 2.
– I have worked in and out of the healthcare industry for about five years to support myself and help others.
– My dream job is to become a concept artist and/or illustrator for the gaming and film industries.

I hope you enjoy my blog, and as mentioned, feel free to communicate anything from comments/questions to critiques.  I appreciate your time and support!

Sincerely,

Alex

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