Tag: creativity

Don’t worry, take the small job.

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    As mammals we’re attracted to shinny things, which explains why doors to the entertainment biz are crammed with talent.  We look at working on the set of Iron Man as a dream or goal, but what happens when you arrive and your job is to mop up the blemish on Robert Downey Jr.’s sweet face?
    It’s not success that we want, it’s recognition for our hard work.  This is why Disney movies in the 90’s had penises to and fro.  People worked hard but got no recognition, no praise.  Thus, hidden dick.
    It’s not money we want, we just don’t want to worry all the time.  It’s not absolute freedom we want, it’s a worthwhile challenge.

LiveStream Analysis – May 30th, 2017

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Like night, I made this live stream:
I consider it a failure   But, like all failures, we have an opportunity to learn something.  When something doesn’t work out, it’s always best to take a step back and reason out its shortcomings.  Otherwise, you’re doomed to repeat the same mistakes over and over again.
So, let’s commence the flagellation!
  • Composition was not solved.
    • Very early on in this painting, I arrived at a composition that I liked, but I settled too quickly.  The buildings on the hill were not solved early on, the sense of scale could be pushed further.
  • No Reference.
    • Civilization does not start abruptly.  A town does not just begin all of a sudden, there’s a progression of buildings on the outskirts of any town, which lead into a denser packed city.  If I used reference, I would have figured this out sooner.
  • No Reference!
    • The desert sort of looks like a desert, the town sort of looks like a town.  The lighting kind of looks correct.  Not good enough.
  • Did not solve color or light.
    • Before I jumped into painting finer details, lighting and color were not solved.  I fought with it in the beginning, but never quite figured it out before I moved into painting if further.  This led to a backwards approach, where I’m trying to fix my mistakes as I move forward   This is a bad workflow, because it does not allow for what Bob Ross calls “Happy Accidents.”
I could go on, but this is a sufficient scolding of my efforts.  Looking at the painting now, I should have stopped 20 minutes in; that at least could have served as a decent sketch.
It’s the Backwards Approach that always gets me, and we all encounter it in our work.  We push too far ahead and leave a mess in our wake, only to have to back track and clean up after ourselves.  I’m quickly considering this to be the death knell of a painting in progress.  If you’re detailing a painting but it feels more like a punishment that meditative pleasure, maybe you should set it aside and work on something else.

Tuesday Afternoon Live Stream

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I present the aftermath of yesterday’s 2 hour event – A Giant Leaping Through the Clouds.

 

Always reflect on what you’ve done, and try to look at it with a fresh pair of eyes.  Sometimes that means coming back to it in a day, or looking it at backwards, upside-down, etc.  If you don’t like what you’ve done, don’t beat yourself up about it.  Whenever we draw, we’re improving.  If you want to improve, then draw.

 

leapingGiant.jpg

Livestream – Feb 28th, 2016

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I’ll be painting in Photoshop, live, starting at 12 PM EST.  I live in Spain, so that explains the time.

I’ve been inspired by the mountains and wide open landscapes of Spain.  I have an idea of a giant leaping through the mountains, which I’ll try to execute this afternoon.  I’ll post a link when the time comes.

Show up if you can, and tell your friends!

 

mountainLandscape.jpg

Cheat Day #3 – Empieza Fuerte

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I’ve realized something profound a while ago, something I’ve been procrastinating to admit to myself.  This particular “something” is preached by self-development experts, artists, writers, and all people who strive on getting a lot done in any given day.  I guess I’ve been procrastinating on writing about it, or admitting how important it actually is, because I figured it was set in stone – something we should all be doing, like not eating too much sugar.  What’s the point of delving on it when it’s so obvious, right?
That piece of advice is this:  If you want to have a good day, start in a good way.
Essentially the opposite is true as well.  If you want to be distracted, unfocused and all-around shitty for the duration of the day, wake up with social media, porn, and bad news.
We artists live off of our daily practice, and the act of sitting down to work is the practice.  Doing the work is the whole thing.  It’s not your ideas or your insight, it’s what you do everyday.  Ralph Waldo Emerson once said:
    “Sow a thought and you reap and action; sow an act and you reap a habit; sow a habit and you reap a character; sow a character and you reap a destiny.”    
The daily act gets to the heart of what masters of productivity preach: Do the work, become the person.  Fake it till you make it.  Keep it Simple Stupid.
We have a tendency to overcomplicate things.  But when we’re in the trenches of our work and bombs are blowing up all around us, of course it’s complicated.  At the ground level, life is chaos.  Zooming out and looking at the big picture is useful, because the big picture is where you’ll start to see patterns.
Looking at Emerson’s quote again, if you do something every morning—like scrolling through the endless magic that is Imgur—this will turn into a habit.  You’ll be distracted for the whole day, and Imgur and Reddit will call out to you for the rest of the day.
I’ve grown to dislike the word “successful”—I’m not even sure what it means anymore.  The word itself has been so much it has lost all meaning.  For example, the word “Awesome” used to describe 50 foot tall snarling winged horses that breathed fire and pissed lightning—things of that nature.  “Awesome”, after many years of dilution, is now used to describe the moment you get the last everything bagel at Dunkin Donuts.  The word “successful”, to me at least, now refers to Youtube videos of a young smiling dude-bro standing (or sitting) in front of a camera plagiarizing the words from self-development coaches like Jim Rohn or Tony Robbins.
One of the most important tips I’ve ever gotten as an artist or musician, is to not study your favorite composers or artists, but study who they studied.  Bach simply had it going on, and all of the great composers from the classical and romantics eras of music all studied his work.  Dig deep into the sources of inspiration from successful folks, because the great thinkers of hundreds or thousands of years ago may have had a better understanding of the human condition that we do.
I’m more writing to myself here than to you, dear reader, for as Flannery O’Conner once wrote:
“I write because I don’t know what I think until I read what I say.”
Words and ideas are yours for the taking.  Our lives are a collage of our experiences, and we are what we eat, do, think, and say.  Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, after all.

Rapid Failure – How to Memorize Complex Objects

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What it is.

Dog
An example of using Rapid Failure to memorize dogs.

 

The Rapid Failure method is a technique for memorizing the combinations of simple forms that, when combined together, create something complex.  Everything we perceive can broken down into simple shapes, which is a key principle in drawing.  If we memorize those shapes we can develop a mental roadmap that allows us to depict whatever we want, whenever we want.

I developed this technique while looking for a way to incorporate spaced repetition in drawing, thus allowing me to draw from memory.  I wanted something simple and quick and so far, it’s worked.  Here’s how to do it.

 

How to do it.

helecoptor
RF for an apache helicopter.

 

1. Baseline

  • Attempt to draw the object from memory, as best you can.
  • The drawing will no doubt be abysmal, but it’s important that you record a starting point for later comparison.

 

2. Observe

  • Open up Google and look for clear and precise reference photos, all from various angles.
  • Don’t dive too deep into details or anatomy just yet — look for large forms that you can commit to memory.
  • Compare the reference to your previous attempts.

 

3. Memorize

  • Put the reference away and draw the object from memory.
  • Focus on one or two major shapes, and draw them several times from several angles.

 

4. Repeat

  • Look for your mistakes a calibrate accordingly.
  • If you feel inclined, try drawing the entire object.

 

Benefits.

horse-02
RF for horses.

 

Once you understand how to draw a dog, that knowledge is transferable to every single quadruped that lives or has lived on planet Earth.

 

As the name implies, it’s important that you move rapidly.  But when I say rapid, I don’t mean move the pen as fast as you can — it means to not stop, to move steadily and continuously and to fail with purpose.

Use a pen.  It should be obvious that you’re not going to be erasing anything, and you want your lines to be bold and visible.

Working this way provides some great benefits…

Instills confidence.

  • When you fail on purpose, the fear of getting it wrong evaporates.

Improves line quality.

  • Line quality comes from confidence and control.

Increased awareness of form.

  • Form is paramount to a good drawing.
  • If you focus only on large shapes, you’ll naturally become bias towards depicting form over detail ( which is a good thing ).

The shape, form and construction of various objects is transferable.

  • Once you understand how to draw a dog, that knowledge is transferable to almost every single quadruped living on planet Earth.

 

If you have any questions, agreements or feel like antagonizing me, or a way this technique can be altered and enhanced, do me a solid by leaving a comment below.

Good luck, and have fun failing.