Progress Made

Wow... It has been a while. Especially since I did say I'd be posting here on a weekly basis. Well, here I am again now regaurdless, and pleased to say that the practice has not stopped in my absense. Here's a little recap on what I've been up to.

I'll start from where I left off with my drawing, replicating the art of the artists I admire most as part of my practice and to build up some experience in working with those styles. Marc Silvestri and David Finch were my main sources of inspiration and I certainly worked from their art for a number of months, drawing what they drew, getting a good feel for the time and effort involved in creating such detailed illustrations. Working with shadow and rendering was extremely valueable in teaching my self how to manipulate lighting around the forms, how little and how much rendering I should include on the drawing. I watched David Finches DVD's over and over again, asked advice from artists such as Greg Capullo and Nar, all of whome were very helpful and encouraging. After a while, I did notice my own style coming through onto the paper. A hybrid of other styles at first, my true style became more and more prevalent, I think, just due to the fact that I had been drawing so much.

When I noticed this, I started drawing on my own, without any reference from other artists or photography. It was time to go out on my own, to discover my own ways of  composing, conceptualising, detailing, and rendering, to build up my own confidence without having to depend on any outside resources. The more I drew, the more comfortable I became. Here's some of my own works:

Another major factor in improving on my skills has been gesture drawing. I frequently started using a website called posemaniacs.com where I would do sets of about 120 30 second gestures a day (about an hour of gesture drawing). Although these were very simple, thumb nail sized gestures, the more I practiced these poses the more energy, character and strength I began to find in my final works. These tiny sketches cannot be underestimated. They have helped me so much in not only being able to proportionalise, pose and manipulate the body a lot easier, but it's alowed to to sketch out a base drawing at a much faster rate and with better accuracy. In fact now, if I think about it too much or am too careful about starting out with a drawing I find the results a lot less sufficiant then if I just go with the flow and trust my instincts.

Over the last week or two I have to admit the motivation to keep on going, to keep pushing myself has worn thin. It's hard to keep on going when you feel like your energy is so depleted. I'm afraid if I don't though, if I become lazy with this I will lose all the progress I have made thus far, and I can't let that happen.

http://www.claytonbartonartist.com/