The title of this post sounds fairly obvious, but when it happened, it kinda
hit me like a punch in the face. It was
the kind of lesson where I had to really step back, take a long pause, and
think about it before I realized what it was I was learning. What am I talking about? Let’s take it from the start.
If memory doesn’t fail me, I originally came across
Blizzard’s art contest on Twitter.
Blizzard is a video game company most famous for World of WarCraft and
its Diablo franchise of games. They were holding a
contest for fan art for one of their conventions. It was pretty simple – they were just asking
for fan art. I play Diablo so I thought “this sounds fun, let me try this.”
So I did some of the most fun research for a project
available – I played the game. I also
looked at some of their public art and started working on a painting. I started with detailed sketches of the
character's 'pets' I wanted in my painting, knowing I would have leave the main
character to my own imagination. Here
are a few of the sketches.
Sketch 1 - pet dogs (which have a really interesting shape to them).
Sketch 2 - The 'Gargantuan' - a large, brutish zombie. (This was a lot of fun to draw)
Sketch 3 - The general layout of the piece along with a few sketches of the main character. Here I had practically zero reference where in the other two sketches I had solid references.
Looks pretty okay (this is as nice as I’ll be to myself),
doesn’t it? I had a complete image in mind and planned to put all these
sketches together in one painting. I
started placing them and had a decent composition. The painting process was going pretty well
despite a few difficulties putting the sketches together without having them
blend in an ugly way. There was just one
thing that looked off – the main character.
Unlike the other elements I planned to include, there was no
clear point of reference for the main character. I didn’t think it would be an issue. I could just pull from different materials
and make my own character. So, on Photoshop, I sketched
out a very loose main character, placed the different characters in what I
thought was a pleasing composition and began the coloring process.
I was very happy with everything except the main
character. It lacked the detail, depth,
and refined quality of everything else.
I also spent almost no time on it in my sketchbook, choosing instead to
work straight off of Photoshop. There's always a large difference in the end product depending how far along in a sketch I get on paper and when I start it on Photoshop. It's an issue I've been working on.
For a while, I kept working on it, telling myself that it’ll
get better, that, given the time and effort, I’d eventually be happy with it.
That didn’t happen.
Eventually, as the deadline came closer and as I grew
disillusioned with the piece, I had to admit to myself that I wasn’t going to
finish this. The discrepancy in style
and look between the main character (where I lacked clear reference and prep
work) and the rest of the piece was clear and I had to be honest with myself
and know that I didn’t have the skill to produce this kind of work. Why?
I’m sure there are a ton of reasons, some I won’t even know. But I think it’s because 1) I lack the practice most people have and 2) there
are a few foundational skills that still need developing (anatomy, perspective)
etc and these things will develop naturally (albeit slowly) with practice and
more work. This might sound like an
excuse but professionals have been drawing since they were so much younger, they
might’ve gone to school, trained at work – for whatever reason, I doubt they
have been developing their skills for only two years, which is nowhere near
enough.
So, what does that mean?
Well, I have to have realistic expectations of myself and
not grow frustrated when I can’t produce something outside of my skillset. Does that mean I’m done growing? Definitely not. I’ll continue to push myself, to aim for
images and compositions that need problem solving. Sometimes I’ll figure it out, sometimes I
won’t. Either way, it’s part of the
learning process and I need to accept that.
It’s hard to tell myself “you’re not good enough for this
yet.” But it’s true and I don’t have to
feel bad about it. I just have to look
forward to the moment I’ll think “I AM good enough for this.”
So what ended up happening to the painting?
Well, I was honest with myself and I realized that I should just work on what looked the best - the gargantuan.
And I was pretty damn happy with it.
