Free Digital Painting Videos

Over the last month or so I've been recording videos of my painting process and throwing them up on youtube to share with the world. The first one is of Domina, the art work I talked about in my previous post. The other two are speed paints I worked on during my class demos. In real time Domina took about 6 hours, while the others took about 3-4. Using a Wacom Intuos 3, and Photoshop.

         

         

         

I intend to post more of these on a semi-regular basis so be sure to check back on my youtube channel every now and then for new updates and content. http://www.youtube.com/user/claytonbarton. They're all free painting tutorials so be sure to jump on it! 

Rackette and Aina

Happy youtubing.

http://www.claytonbartonartist.com/

Digital Paintings - Domina and Insidious Curse

Focusing on Digital Painting and Modelling
This year I have put the 3D side of my creativity on the back burner, and focused more on developing my skills in digital painting. It hasn't been easy, there is still so much to learn even after mastering the basics such as perspective and anatomy, values, lighting, composition and design theory, and the big one for me - color theory. But it's all so awesome to learn, just for the fact it provides that constant challenge, knowing that the art work I do tomorrow will always be better then the art work I did today. Again, it's all about really being present in the process and not so much the out come. With any luck there will be no end to how far I am able to push myself.
Now although I've been paying my painting a little more attention lately, this doesn't mean I love my 3D modelling any less. My heart still yearns for Verts and Poly's and I do intend to make some kickass Digital Sculpts in the not too distant future. In fact, without giving away too much, I want to get started on a new games project using UDK (especially after seeing the new trailer for the Unreal 4 engine).
This is a screenshot of a head I sculpted up as a test dummy to try out some of the new features of ZBrush 4r4.

"You are retopologated..."

Domina
This is a piece I painted up a week or two back for a class demonstration at Victoria University. The demo took about 6 hours all up, jumping between Photoshop CS4 and the flashy new Photoshop CS6. As with every new painting, this was just another opportunity to refine my work flow. That's why practice is so important and something which I suggest all the time to my fellow, aspiring artisans. Practice allows us to get to know ourselves, to understand how we as artists work, how we think and develop ideas. The more we practice the more automatic the spawning process of these ideas become. You begin to see yourself spending less time staring down at a blank canvas because your brain gets into the habit of developing ideas on the fly, it gets used to the fact that weather or not there is something floating around in that noggin of yours, you are going to start laying down lines regardless - and thus adapt. I also believe that the 'style' or 'look' to ones art work, the thing that makes the output original and unique, is achieved only through those laborious hours of practice. What else could style be other then the way you, as an individual, express yourself?  

Domina - Beauty and the beast in all their glory.

Insidious Curse
This little gem I did a fair while ago now, in fact I'm pretty sure this piece is from 2011. Another typical theme for me, chicks and monsters - gotta love em. I wanted to post up this one because to me, it was a corner stone in solidifying my painting technique, and also the first time I really started to play around with directional lighting and color.  Color is certainly one of my weaknesses. I can get my grey scale value's pretty much spot on, but add multiple colors to the mix with multi colored light sources and I'm in a world of hurt and rainbows. Insidious Curse was a great learning experience, and it helped me to really pay attention to light distance, intensity and how the type of lighting effects the way in which it interacts with an object.

Insidious Curse - Caution! Is Insidious

Getting Faster and Developing Ideas on the Fly
Half my problem used to be placing too much importance on a single work. This holds me back from turning out content on a more consistent time line. It is important to get into the habit of setting a regular time frame in which to create a work, but even more so not to dwell on the finished product, but rather move forward, straight onto the next piece without the procrastination in between. This is an important skill to have, especially when you take into consideration that in the industry (and freelance alike) chances are an artist will be turning out 3-4 concepts a day, maybe hundreds spanning over months, of which only a small selection will see the light of day as a final character or environment design.
So then how does one get better, and faster at the same time, creating more content in a shorter time span? Like with everything, it's all about the energy and the effort that you're willing to put into it. The more time you can set aside to practice 'getting faster' the faster you'll get. You start off by setting yourself an hour to come up with your character or environment concept, and you do that for a week, maybe even a month, spending multiple hours a day putting in that time to practice. Sure at first it'll be a bit of a struggle, but your abilities will adapt to the restrictions you set for yourself. But it does require a good amount of self discipline, something I have to admit even I struggle with. After smashing out a concept per hour (or two if it's really too much to handle), you then try to do it within half an hour. Yeah they will be speed paintings, and yes the quality won't be the greatest at first, but it'll get better. Most importantly it will train your brain to come up with ideas on the fly. 

Here are some speed paintings I did, spending roughly an hour on each, in which I focused on both my speed and lighting value's.

As you can see the paintings aren't the greatest and not entirely refined either, but what mattered to me most in these exercises was the lighting value's, ensuring that the image looked accurate both close up and from a distance. It was really figuring out how intense the highlights should be made in contrast to the shadows and vice-versa, and also how the lighting fell upon the forms under different lighting conditions.

http://www.claytonbartonartist.com/

Metamorphoses Complete

1st Post for 2012
Well here is my first post for 2012. A long time waiting, I know. It has been an interesting year. A year of change, a year of rebuilding; rethinking. But most of all evolving.

Sense of Direction Blurred
Certain events had unfolded in the latter part of 2011 which saw me thrown off track for a good chunk of the first half of the year. No matter how focused one is on their goals, how determined or how clearly they see the path laid out before them, the reality is that when one part of your life begins to crack, the rest follows behind as the supports weaken, quickly collapsing in on itself. It's hard to pull one's self out of such decay. The loss of motivation, of that drive which is so important, renders any talent possessed useless. Yes it was still there, but the great energy I used to fuel it had become depleted and my sense of direction blurred.

A Transformation Begins
Other parts of my life began to come into focus. Such as developing my social skills and confidence. For the first time in a long time, I was forced to truly get to know myself through my own loneliness. The way I looked, the way I interacted, the way I thought. Before, my life centered on my work and my relationship. Now that relationship was gone, and my work seemed to loose it's meaning. It was strange because I had it stuck in my head that at least without having to maintain a relationship, I would have more time to focus on developing my skills and evolving as an artist (which does take a lot of time), but it was as if the reason behind trying so hard with my work had disappeared after that point. In the end it was something that needed to happen, a point in my life that was long over due to come, for I had let myself deteriorate to the point where it was those two things, and those two things only that defined me, not just to others but myself.
My painting, and modelling practice began to diminish, to once a week or less. But on the other hand, I was going out more, socializing, putting myself out there, venturing  into places foreign to me. It was hard, because I was shy, introverted, but that was the reason I needed to do this. If I did what I'd always done, I'd get what I'd always gotten, and I knew that if I wanted to become comfortable around people, if I wanted to become confident and out going, then just like with my drawing that is what I'd have to practice.

Metamorphoses Complete
Soon enough, I recreated my life, formed new social circles, close friends, and developed a confidence which took away a lot of the fear that went along with social interaction. My speaking, and sentence structure had improved, the way I expressed my ideas and thoughts had improved. I became more independent then I'd ever been before, became my own person, comfortable in my own skin. I even found a new and greater love which brought along with it a new burst of creative energy and inspiration.
Now where did that leave me and my art? Well. Luckily I was resilient enough not to completely crumble and never really ever completely stopped working. I slept more, went out more, but I still made sure I found the time to paint or draw. There reached a point where this little self transformation I'd undergone completed itself.

Refocusing
One of the personal decisions I made in regards to my art work was to drop the dream of getting into comics. The more I did my research the more I found that the industry and market for comics was beginning to dwindle (despite the super hero movie increase in recent years). Times have changed from when comics were considered a source of entertainment, it was the fan boys now that kept the industry going while the new generations went home to serf the web, play on their smart phone or console. To make things even more discouraging the guys who had made it into companies like Marvel or DC were underpaid for the amount of work and man hours they put in, unless you were an absolute pro who at the same time was in high demand. And if you wanted to go indie you'd be in a world of hurt, losing more money then you were making in all likely hood.
So I decided to turn my attention to my Concept Art and 3d modelling. Rather then practicing line weights and cross hatching techniques I started learning about lighting values and colour theory, design and composition. After all, the games industry was one of the biggest, if not the biggest player in the world of entertainment. It seemed like the smartest decision I could make, the most worthy investment for the energy and effort I would put into my new en devour. Games were always something I had applied my art too, but it seemed that now this direction had come into sharp focus, and there was no more confusion left about the industry I wanted to work in.
This decision also complimented my teaching in the Advanced Diploma Games Development course. After undertaking some extra classes in 3D modelling and Visual Design, I needed to do research to ensure I was teaching the most up-to-date content in the world of game development (technology moves at such a rapid speed that there is no choice but to continue learning and discovering new features and techniques). This in turn helped me to further develop my own skills and develop as an artist in the field I'd chosen to stick with.

Stagnation
I have gone through my ups and downs this year which I am so thankful for, because now, I have never known myself better, nor have I ever been in a better place in life. All the experiences I've gone through, for better or for worse have gotten me to this point. I am in a good place, but I must continue to move forward, putting my foot down on the accelerator and really pushing my self to gain back the work ethic I once had. Because without that, all the talent in the world will not save me. I have learned a lot along the way, personally, technically and philosophically. But there is still much left to conquer and I will, I must continue to evolve. A body of water which moves is the purist, cleanest water you can find, but when it comes to a stand still it will stagnate, become a swamp for breeding insects. This I strongly believe is so true to life. We must continue to move, learn, evolve and develop otherwise we will stagnate. Part of the beauty of life is change, thus we must grow. The journey never ends, so it's important to remember that the walk we take along that path means more then to where it leads.

http://www.claytonbartonartist.com/

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/

A Fine Balancing Act

I’m just going to make a quick post today; I have to go off to one of my classes in an hour or so. I was up till about 4 this morning, finishing off these sketches. I had other work to do during the day, so I had to put the hours in during the night, as often is the case. It’s a hard balancing act, putting enough time into personnel life so that relationships don’t fall apart, putting the time into your day job so that you don’t lose it, finding time to finish off the home work for the part time course you’re doing, and then using up the rest of the time to do what I consider most important – my drawing. And getting whatever sleep you can in between. 

These sketches are from the usual artists, David Finch, Mark Silvestri, Ed Benes. Humans are creatures of habit. The way I see it, when you’re trying to learn how to draw you need to copy and emulate other artists in order to gain experience from them. That’s how you gain new knowledge. Because the thing is, if you’re trying to draw stuff from your own head, you can’t learn anything from yourself if the knowledge and experience isn’t there to begin with. I like using other comic artists as practice mainly because as somebody who wants to work in the art form it’s important not only to have the skills in anatomy an proportions, but also the dynamic appearance comics have which make them so appealing. People enjoy comics because it allows them to escape from reality and enter a fantastic world inhabited by fantastic characters.  That dynamic element you find in comics is hard to capture when drawing from life or photography (although both are still just as important).

Anyway, that about wraps it up for today, I will probably do some of my own stuff tonight; see how I go. Hopefully this practice I’ve been doing has rubbed off on me a little more.

Anything Worth Doing Never Comes Easy

I did these sketches a few weeks ago, when I first decided to get serious about my drawing practice. Again, these sketches are mainly referenced from the work of comic artist David Finch. I think what attracts me most to his style is his use of shadow and rendering, and the sheer amount of detail he manages to fit into his work without it ever looking over done. I guess I have always been attracted to that grungier, darker comic art style and it is defiantly a style I am looking to incorporate into my own work. 

These sets of sketches are the newest ones I’ve been working on. Nothing special, just more practice, getting up that experience. It can be hard doing these every day and night, as the motivation slowly drains and procrastination sets in. But I have to be tough and learn to get past it because the matter of the fact is there is no better way to develop my skills then to practice, practice, practice.

  

And here is some of my own work, straight from my head. The first image is of a character called Reptile from the Mortal Kombat game series. I did him a few weeks ago now, he was kinda my first guinea pig in regards to testing out some of the stuff I’d learnt from drawing the work of David Finch and Marc Silvestri. The only thing I referenced in the reptile picture was his clothing. I have been playing a fair bit of Mortal Kombat lately and I really like all the unique characters available to play as. Reptile and Noob Saibot are the two fighters I like the most though, probably because of their creepiness.

The cone head zombie guy is more recent and is actually a creature I had lurking around in my dreams the other night. He seemed to have the ability to raise the dead, and I was there defending myself against the zombies with nothing more than a small hand gun. It was a frightening dream but very cool at the same time. I like nightmares for the reason they can often provide one with quite unique and profound ideas for a new art work or even a story. As you can see with the cone head drawing though, it stands as much cleaner and confident when compared to the reptile one, so I do think all this practice is rubbing off on me. 

 It is hard for me to upload my own work, because I feel at this point it is very inferior compared to where I want the quality of it to be. I wouldn't say I'm embarrassed of it exactly, but I do feel like I'm putting myself out there on the line. 

This is still something which I think is necessary though. I want people to see how I progress. I want other artists to watch me as I take on this journey, and how I will get to where I eventually want to be. This is a big part of why I created this blog. I think some people just think an artist is born with their skills already there; the reality is talent can only get you so far and you have to work hard to grow as an artist. I wanted to show people who make these assumptions that we all start out on the same level. And I want other young artists who are at the beginning of this long and treacherous path that they will get out what they are willing to put in. The more you practice, the more you sacrifice, and the more pain you are willing to go through in order to get what you want the more you will be rewarded. Anything worth doing never comes easy; it's as simple as that.

I have often wondered what talent is really, and the way I see it is it is that drive to better ones self. And it just doesn't apply to art; it applies to anything someone can have a passion for. It's the thing inside you that tells you not to give up.

Quantity over Quality

I didn’t get a chance to upload this set of sketches the other night. These ones in particular were referenced from photos rather than art. Although I think that drawing from the work of artists you admire is important, using photos as a reference during practice helps you to gain the ability to transmit real life onto paper, perceiving it in your own way, similar to the way a caricaturist interoperates their observations into their own exaggerated interpretation. 

 And here is some more work I did yesterday, some studies from Marc Silvestri and Ed Benes. As I re draw the work of these comic artists I notice more and more that I am picking up bits and pieces of their techniques. It looks like I am trying to emulate their style, but it’s more the fact I am learning how to use shadows and render effectively, not to mention practice with the human proportions and anatomy something I really need to know how to use and have a solid knowledge in as a comic artist. I feel I should defend myself on the matter of copying other artist’s art as a method of learning and source of study for fear of judgment, but at the same time feel that there is no need to as all artists have their influences. I will take away the knowledge and practice I have attained through the experience of drawing the work of the talented people I admire, and I will apply it in my own art.  I do feel that seeing and doing is the best way one can learn, so going by that, if I draw enough of the magnificent work these artists have done, my skills will rise to meet theirs at some point given enough experience.

Some of these sketches do have mistakes in them which aren’t too hard to find. I just wanted to mention that the reason I have not corrected these errors is because I draw these sketches in pen from the beginning. The reason I use pen (a regular ball point biro to be exact), is because of my belief that to get the most out of experience and practice what matters most is quantity over quality. So, by doing these sketches in pen, I do not have the luxury of spending hours fixing up a single drawing using a pencil and eraser which in turn forces me to move on from one sketch and get multiple more done. Some will disagree on the quality over quantity remark, but this is simply my own bias, and the reason for it is that a few months or a year from now, regardless of how errorless my work may seem now I am probably going to look back and see that it is nowhere near the standard it will be by then. It makes more sense to smash out as many sketches as I can, because the more I practice, the more of that volume of work standing between me and my eventual goal I will get through.

These drawings are of my own, completely from my head without the aid of any reference what so ever. I don’t have many of these right now for the fact that I am still learning, and if I don’t have the skills there yet, there isn’t too much knowledge I feel I am able to retrieve from myself at this point to further my learning. I do think that drawing my own work without reference is so so important, and possibly the biggest step toward my goal with the most to gain, but right now it is a lot of experimenting and applying what I have learnt from my experiences, practice and memory. I do think I could and should do more of these, I guess I have been avoiding it because of the fear of going out on my own. It’s very hard to create an image entirely from your imagination without any other sources of reference, that’s why I applaud comic artists so much for their abilities to do this every day. Yes, most of them use reference, but in large they rely on their skill to draw a 2D picture of a 3D scene from no place other than their mind.

I sketched out this gun toting gal this evening, using pencil. I am fairly happy with her, although she isn’t perfect, I can see a clear rise in my skill level since cracking down on my drawing practice. It has only been two weeks since I’ve starting getting serious and really committing myself to drawing every day so I am look forward to seeing where I will be at in a few months’ time. I just need to be patient and stick with it.

I accept now that my work will never be perfect, but that will never stop me from thriving to reach that perfection. And this is the beauty of art. A good artist is never satisfied with their work and so they are always trying to improve, and alas, they always do.