From time to time, I think to myself: “Man, I wish I had kept up drawing. I’d have been really good by now if I did it more consistently…” And so for a while every once in a while, I get the urge to draw or paint. It usually lasts for a bit, and then I become distracted by something else and all that effort is lost.

But regardless, here’s something that I started working on recently. I’m not sure how much further I’m going to get with her, but I’m happy with the way it’s turning out so far. Note, of course, that I suck at pretty much everything that’s not presented. My colouring skills are grossly pathetic. My shading is fairly poor these days. My speed can only be described as slugish. Even drawing faces, which I did a ton of, is somewhat lacking for me lately.

I like to think of skills art in terms of leveling up. It is very much the case in art that you can obtain a basic education, and then you must only practise frequently for a long period of time to become a skilled artist. Sure, there are always more art programs to learn, more filters to experiment with, new materials to manage, and new styles to solidify. Ultimately, though, I feel like I’ve got the foundation that I need. Can I simply just “grind” enough to become very good?

In other news, I’ve ordered a copy of Chaos & Evolutions from blender.org. If you’re unaware, Blender is a highly respected open source 3D modeling program. A couple times a year, they make open-source short films and sell them online. Regardless, the concept artist for the latest film, Durian (ie. Sintel), has published a DVD describing his workflow and showing off some 8 timelapses of himself painting. I was extremely impressed by his free timelapse that you can see the announcement/link for here. I’m hoping the DVD (which I think is some 10 hours by the way) is similarly inspiring.

Another thing that impresses me about David Revoy (the aforementioned artist) is his use of open source tools. I know that there are many Adobe / Autodesk fans in the artist community — and there is much merit in these tools — but I’m extremely impressed at the quality of open source tools these days. I think David Revoy very much shows that it’s possible to produce extremely good artwork using an entirely open stack. In particularly, I’m involved in the community surrounding the open program, MyPaint (I offered to host their wiki and am currently doing so). For the interested, I used MyPaint exclusively in the production of the above sketch and the previous blog post about the new Dragoon concept art.

Cheers.