68. RRRRGH Space Zombie Variants
67. Headquarters Upgrades
Survive X rounds before help arrives!
66. Towers
So I’ve been making some mockups for an imagined TD game. The process has been a lot of fun.
65. In Hot Pursuit
64. Drawn While Listening to Adele
63. Bear
Someday, someone will give this face a job.
62. New sketchbook to replace the one that got stolen in Oakland (see previous posts)
61. Underdrawing
Sorry for the shitty lighting. Trying a new chiaroscuro process.
60. Djinn of Fate
I’ve been at this for three months now.
Maybe it hasn’t been all that long, or maybe my mind just processes time more slowly now. When I felt myself plateauing, I knew that there needed to be a change of action. I’ve spent the last two weeks going through thirty hours of youtube tutorials and illustration DVDs to substitute a real life professor, or workshop. Self-teaching is an incredibly difficult task.
I have the discipline, but when I decided to develop myself in this way, I didn’t take into account the mental fatigue and lack of professional support network. Those who know me understand that I am not an introvert by nature. In fact, I deeply love being around others. Being in school allows one to learn and practice skills in the company of peers, but I don’t have that option. I am in my room, working on bettering myself 6-12 hours a day. Sometimes I won’t leave my house for three or four days in a row. The isolation hurts me the most, but I know I can’t stop, not until I am good enough.
My body is tired. My mind is tired. I’m struggling to develop my skills as quickly as possible, in the direction that I THINK my strengths lie. For example, environments and compositionally strong scenes utilize my background as a traditional painter; however, comic style/pseudo-realistic character drawing was something that I never focused on. Even simplified cartooning does not come naturally to me, because, well, UCI shit on illustration the way the Westboro Baptist Church shits on human dignity. And although I can dismiss past opinions, I have a lot of catching up to do in terms of illustrative skill building and conceptual thinking for games.
My friend told me that when I’m ready for interviews, I won’t know if a company is looking for someone with more experience or not. I won’t know what type of artist they’re looking to hire, since they may want to begin going a new direction, in a new genre. That information, compounded with my growing anxieties about job searching, has led me to not sleep easily these past two weeks, even with the aid of medicine.
It is a subtle worry, a creeping feeling of incompetence tucked under my skin. Wherever I go, there are a thousand things on my mind, and the struggle to be present is consuming me. The stress isn’t as bad as Teach For America or working at Uniqlo, but I don’t want to compare the life that I lived in the past to what I am striving to wake up to. I am fighting for happiness. I am battling for fulfillment, and nothing less.
Two nights ago I fell asleep. I cried. I cried because I love art, and I realized that I’ve loved art consistently my entire life, more than anything else in this world. This is the thing that I want to be great at. I want to struggle with it. I want to command my spirit. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. And everyday, when I get to work, I am yelling, “No more fucking around.”
59. Pew Pew
I need to increase my time efficiency, but I’m still not doing as terribly as I was before.
58. Forest Passage
Finally getting where I need to go.
57. Speed Painting Exercise(Blimps)
The result of hours of youtube videos. I’ll probably do a few of these. They help me practice value, composition, and atmospheric perspective.
