Howdy.
I realize now that it’s been a bit since I’ve really opened my laptop for anything but schoolwork. you’d think that a creative would have more time. I probably do, I just need to spend it better, I think. anyways; There’s a recent artist who I’ve taken an extreme interest in. They make concept art and animations, and they’re really, really, really clean stylistically. Their name is Tsetse Bumba, and the way they render form is just so beyond me. Before this point, the only other artist I had really, really wanted to study was Akira Toriyama, Rest in peace; I had wanted to study his work so bad that I went out of my way to literally align my style with his. it informed how I went about anatomy, how I went about drawing the face; It took me a really long time to unlearn a lot of the things I had learned from studying his work. Mostly things like relying on lines and line art, ignoring tonal work and sticking to cell shading, an over reliance on working with strong primary colors or not really rendering hair in a realistic way. Not to say I didn’t learn important lessons from his work. I learned that I love character acting through posing and making cool things look cool. but I feel that, and forgive me for saying this,
My goal in my art life doesn’t really align with Toriyama’s; not just in terms of goals to achieve with my art, but also the time in which I’m making it. Right now, in my art journey, I see the next step in the thing I should be learning, as a concept artist, in Tsetse Bumba’s work.
If I had to quantify it, I think learning to properly paint with different hues and values on a micro-scale would be an amazing help for my future as a concept artist, as well as getting a good, quick process, so I’m not taking months to make one good looking piece. And rendering hair in a realistic manner. And composition. and color composition… And making good lists, but i don’t really have any evidence of Tsetse Bumba being good at that, haha.
Otherwise; in one of my classes, a teacher has been oh-so brutally forcing us to have one portfolio ready piece done every two weeks. The featured image is from this same class. I’m extremely happy to be being forced to do this. I hope I don’t make excuses. I once heard recently, that giving 40 to 60% of your effort is better than giving 100%; it avoids burnout and other such fatigues, and leads to healthier work. I think that in my experience, mentally telling myself that I’m giving 40 to 60% of my effort makes me give more effort than I would usually. If I know that i have to do something, I tend to put it off for days on end, thinking, “well, I’ll do it later when I finish ____,” and then after I finish that, I’ll find something less stressful to do as to not feel like I’m cutting off my own arm doing it. I literally could not explain that in a less esoteric way, avoiding responsibilities seems built into me on some level. Not to sound like a ‘downer debbie’. But I pride myself on my ability to change and improve. so I’ll make it through this regardless. Even if it is tricking myself into giving less effort so I do what I need to.
To close out, I plan on doing more free-form concept work, instead of specifically trying to design within a universe. I saw this one artist on social media pull two images of barely related concepts; a beetle and an astronaut, or something similar (their only point of relation I can think of is that they’re both physical objects); And create a design based off of that. I assume they’re doing the regular concept art thing of making a mood board and all that. That feels like something I could do.
I feel reinvigorated in my journey. wish me luck!
P.S. , I’m writing this before I’m going to sleep. I hope this isn’t complete gibberish.
Bye. See you.
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