Back from London and Photoshopping

        The London Concept Art.org Workshop was a real eye opening experience. Though many of the instructors initially promoted weren't there and the event schedule was a mystery throughout the whole time, it was a great time meeting like minded artists and industry professionals. We were given great insight on how the entertainment business works and how to design for video games, art making processes. But what shook me the most was how much time one must put into his practice as an artist. 

( Here's the Hostel Crew. Me bottom left in green.)

( Best day of the trip.)

        I put together a rough portfolio and showed my stuff to all the great instructors there. After the event was over I then showed my work to Jason Manley. After he flipped through the images and asked one thing, "What's holding you back?" What is holding me back? Me of course. But how do I move forward? How do I communicate the visions in my head? Through patience and persistence.

        There's some romantic idea which exists in world where one escapes a present living situation, runs away from home to become reborn in an foreign land or in the town next over. They do this to thinking its the answer to "What is holding (me) back?" Until they realize what this traveling actually did was to point them in the direction of what needs to be done. So going to London, seeing and experiencing the professionals, semi professionals, the glassy eyed students (including me) there talking about art, story telling and J.W. Waterhouse made me realize just this. 

I spent another 3-4 hours on this head. Looking to eventually speed up but I've begun to accept the fact that it's going to take time until I get to a Feng Zhu speed. I have to "burn the mile" with my medium as Iain McCaig says. 

An Armor line study.

Then a thumbnail experiment to have fun with design for design sakes.

This took way too long to doodle these. The thought process was brutal at some points. 

The idea here was to play with the baddie archetype, those grunts you'd have to fight before encounter a mid sized boss.

        Continuing to balance living my life with art. A good bud of mine told me some advice on how to improve at art; become obsessed, and spend as much time drawing and understanding form and doing what you do however you do it.

Sounds simple right? Stay tuned.