tori.lewandowska

Hide | 3D Environment Concept Art

30/03/2023
art process

Hide | 3D Environment Concept Art

post outline.

And here is the making of – if you are interested to have a look. But let me give you a break down as well.

/concept.

The concept was simple. I knew that I wanted to have one man standing on the platform and another hiding beneath it. And make it sci-fi. That’s pretty much it. So, not much.

I started out with blocking some shapes and decided to focus on the general idea of the scene. I applied a generic grey material on everything and kept the scene simple. Main goal was to set up the mood and the direction I could take this scene too.

When I first opened Blender to work on this I was thinking of some hangar. However, as I was exploring different shapes and placements, I started liking the idea of this being some kind of engine / factory room with large pipes going through the space.

Initially I was planning on having a wall behind the platform. However, this was coming off flat and I needed a little more interest in the back. That’s why I added the pipes coming from the top of the room. This way I managed to open up the space and give it a bit more depth.

/set up

The whole scene is set up on repeating geometry nodes. In the beginning, I was adding an array modifier to every geometry but that quickly became tiresome. Because of a previous project, I knew how to set up a collection in geo nods that could repeat automatically. Having a collection like this on the side proved to be very helpful and sped up the whole process.

I could quickly change, adjust or replace elements without worrying that it would create too much geometry. Despite the size of the scene, I didn’t experience many fallbacks in the performance of the software.

There is one collection for the bottom of the scene, which includes the pipes and the platform – so in other words, the forefront. Another collection consists of the pipes in the back that had to have a higher count than the elements in front. Besides that, there are elements like some wires in the middle and characters that sit outside of the geo nodes array.

I began composting the scene with Cycles in mind. However, upon adding more and more elements and especially when I started applying the textures the render time began to take too long. Even though I wasn’t planning on making an animation, I did want to have that option. Which in the end I also acted on.

With Cycles, my render time was over 1 hour with 1000 samples. And the denoiser was having a hard time with the volumetric in the front. When I changed to Eevee my render time went down and I was able to render out 120 frames in about 5 hours. Which I think is quite a bit of a trade-off.

/characters.

The models I used for the animation are from Mixamo. Since character modeling animation wasn’t really my main goal I decided to skip this process entirely and place the models in my scene. With the Mixamo add-on, I was also able to generate a control rig for the Mixamo skeleton and that saved me a lot of time.

For the character below the platform, I adjusted the up colours in Blender and replaced the original textures. Even though, looking back, we can hardly see him in the shadows. Which was actually the point.

/compositing.

I started with compositing in Blender using nodes, however, I wanted to have more control so I decided to render an open EXR sequence and do the final compositing in After Effects. I feel more comfortable using AE and that allowed me to do some more post.

/textures.

When it comes to modeling I feel pretty okay, however, the texturing part of 3D creation is still something I struggle with. Even though a lot of textures would look good on the preview, when I place them in the environment they behave differently and I’m often finding it difficult to make them work. Some of that issue might be the render engine since Eevee has a different way of reading textures and not all textures that work in Cycles will work in Eevee.

To make this whole problem bearable I decided to keep the textures procedural. Which worked to some extent.

/final thoughts.

I really enjoyed working on this project. I spent some extra time on elements that are not really visible in the final render but I wanted to take my time and give that environment some love.

I’m really happy with how it turned out but as always I’m already seeing bits and pieces that could be improved. But I will put this one behind and move on to another.

Happy creating!

Tori x

Cityscape Concept Art Process

30/03/2023
art process

post outline.

the idea.

The idea is simple: a ship flying over the city. Should be easy enough to make, I thought and then proceeded to overthink the whole artwork for way too long. Until the day I snapped to my senses, realising that thinking can only take me this far.

The city’s main structure and the surroundings have already been decided before. It’s a part of the world I’ve been exploring in my mind recently. The Ice Planet, or Zymno as I like to call it, is too cold to be inhabitable. Extreme cold is capable of freezing anyone in just a few seconds. However, the inventors that people are, the Source came to the rescue, projecting heat within several kilometres of its radius, allowing people to live a normal life. As long as they don’t step outside of the city. To not go into detail, the main event of the city is the massive energy ball in the centre. Naturally, the rest should be adjusted to it.

How would people build around it? If there is limited space, what would their streets look like? Would they use cars? If they can build a fake sun that doesn’t burn them their technology should be a little bit more sophisticated.

By setting the rules of the world and knowing its unique conditions, making decisions on the look of the city was quite easy – sort of natural even. Perhaps overthinking wasn’t such a bad thing after all.

3d blocking & sketching.

As much as I love painting environments, vehicles are not my forte. Neither painting this much details of a cityscape. But these issues could be troubleshooted after sketching the idea, I decided, so I opened Blender.

One massive glowing sphere. Check.
A bunch of generated boxes around it. Check.
A floating boxy ship. Check.

Pretty easy at this point. But a few questions arose:

What is the actual scale ratio between buildings and the Source?
How are the buildings placed? And therefore what do the streets look like?
What’s their size, etc?

I really liked the idea of being able to see the Source from any place in the city. Of course, that’s a bit unrealistic keeping in mind that I also wanted this city to have perhaps a few million citizens. However, knowing this I could easily come up with some solutions. If the Source is to be seen from the majority of the places then it means that the buildings should be more or less the same heights. Just like in Paris. The Eiffel Tower can be seen from all around the city because the City Council set a limit of buildings height to 37m, and later to 50m. That’s how I got an answer for two of my questions: the scale of the buildings and the Source. Another remained.

Now, the space is obviously limited. That means that every bit of it has to be utilized and that means not a lot of space for roads. But a lot of space on rooftops. Since the buildings are the same height, landing on the rooftops should be pretty straightforward. That opens up the airspace. Roads issue was solved.

So where do humans walk? I liked the idea of platforms and multiple levels. This would allow for a lot of the buildings to be also the streets. Platforms between them would allow people to move from one structure to another. I needed to create the feeling of it being cramped together. However, I didn’t want to make it overwhelming, like many of futuristic dystopian cities. Therefore stairs and lifts should be put in place and now we have a city that should feel like a fun labyrinth. The shops with displays could be on different levels. I guess naturally the levels above would be better off – not only better access to the ships but also sunlight.

camera setup.

Once the environment was blocked in it was time for the shot setup. I wanted to show the cityscape so facing the camera towards the Source seemed like an obvious idea. Pulling out too much to show the circular shape of the city was making the city look too small.

So I moved in a bit more and made the city’s radius larger. This way the city was now showing the scale. I really liked the idea with a bigger focal length, I think it was making the Source really stand out in scale against the city and the ship flying in.

But I wanted to show a bit of that circular shape of the city while still showcasing the scale. So I had to go with a smaller focal length that elongated the shot allowing me to also give the illusion of speed. I overlaid this shot with the dynamic composition template and it found out that everything was actually lining up pretty nicely, which convinced me that I’m making the right choice.

Out of curiosity, I placed the camera behind the Source. As much as it could be an interesting shot, it really didn’t bring in anything valuable. No context of the Source, no shape on the city – so I scrapped this idea.

3d scene set up.

Having decided on the camera placement, it was time to get the scene setup done. I decided to do as much in 3D as possible simply because of the amount of details this artwork required.

My first instinct was geo-nodes. I tried them before but Blender introduced a whole new system not so long ago and I still haven’t caught up on it. I used the geonodes to create the cubes, but my first issue was their rotation of them. They had to face the Source, not just straight forward. They also had to be placed on a specific plane shape. I decided there should be around 8 or more ‘main streets’ that would be bigger than the regular ones. This is just to add a little more structure to the overall plan of the city. I was also thinking of any celebrations or big events that might be happening.

The amount of geometry could crash the program so I knew I had to go low-poly. The OSM addon worked wonders for the first pass. I picked a small bit of Lyon, France, and imported the geometry into Blender. This was looking great – the shapes and building placements were interesting. I duplicated that around the Source and like that I had the city starting to take shape.

However I needed platforms. The area closer to the camera also needed some attention. For this scene I downloaded Simple SciFi geo nodes in hopes that I could utilise it for some detail work. I quickly realised that if I replaced the base geometry folder with my own simple buildings and the dots folder with some platforms I could generate my own city. This is what I did. With the modifiers options I could generate a lot of different building placements.

I brought the generated city into my scene and scattered them around the ground. This instantly made the whole image look more put together. With that in place I just needed my ship and I was good export.

For the ship I knew I wanted to use some pointy design. Anything with squerish design wouldn’t help to convey the speed. I also needed the lines to be pointing towards the Source, so I thought about this while sketching the shapes of different potential options. In the end I based my design on the SR-71 Blackbird. I started from there and build upon that, adding a little bit more bits here and there to break the obvious relation to the jet. However, this wasn’t really working out the way I wanted, and not long after I decided to download a free spaceship from TurboSquid. It came with all the parts being separate so I started moving things around. I pointed the wings down, added in four sets of thrusters, and some details on top.

I wanted to paint over it so I didn’t really bother with too much texture work. I just needed a general shape and the rest of the details I could add in photoshop.

With all of this ready, I rendered out several different passes along with masks and I could start with a paintover.

the paintover.

I actually painted this one twice. In the first version, I thought I’d add some fog in the city and avoid having any sharp lighting. This turned out to be difficult to pull off. I didn’t want to completely cover up the city. I wanted to show off the buildings. The detail was there but it was uninteresting, boring. Everything was one tone. Overall, looking up close, I thought it didn’t look too bad, however, zoomed out, it all blended up together, which made me believe that the painting is chaotic and hard to read. The lighting didn’t make sense and it was difficult to fight it in Photoshop.

So I went back to the Blender file and set up the sunlight. Right away I had more interest on the ground instead of the dark foggy blop of one-tone colour, like in the previous version. I also changed the position of the large building. I brought it closer to the camera instead of having it so far away in the back. In the first version, this building kept on lining up with the horizon line or the city line. I couldn’t find the right spot for it. Moving it closer allowed it to show the scale and also introduce another diagonal line leading toward the Source. It closed off the right side of the painting, which before was empty, and caused the gaze to wander away from the painting.

Once I brought the renders back to Photoshop I started the process again. This time I ended up with too much detail on the ground. Clouds shadows seemed to solve the issue pretty nicely. Thanks to that I was better able to control the light and dark areas of the city. Even though initially I wanted to have a rather gloomy sky, I decided against it. The first version of the painting already proved to me that I needed more light on the ground and I didn’t want the Source to be so overwhelmingly bright. Nor did I want to have an eerie feeling to the painting.

Before this painting, I painted the street view. It was the first attempt at tackling this city. The lighting in this piece is bright. It casts a yellow tone on the structures. Now, looking back, I think that the buildings could also be the bluish/silver colour that the buildings in the cityscape painting are. I went in this direction in the render, however, during painting I leaned more towards the yellow. It turns out it is tricky to make grey look inviting and positive.

In the first version, at some point, I applied a reversed fisheye filter. It helped the painting to feel more dynamic. I tried to simulate this effect in the second version in Blender. I increased the focal length and brought the camera closer to the ship. That change helped me get a little bit more of the city in, making it overall more dynamic and spacious.

Surprisingly the ship was probably the fastest and easiest for me to paint. The main structure was already there, the only thing for me to add was the texture and details. It went pretty quickly without much struggle.

I designed the Source before starting this painting. I had a general idea of its components, so it was just a matter of combining it all together. I also explored the textures in the street painting. I really liked the idea of the Source looking like a frozen bubble. The frost gives out a very nice texture. However, this texture was getting lost in the attempts of making the Source also shine. From far away the Source would lose this detail anyway, so I kept it overall bright. I had to indicate that it is a power source so adding lighting-like lines was a pretty automatic decision.

Somewhere in between all of this I also designed five buildings. More for myself. The first two, I came up with while painting the street view. Obviously. I needed these buildings to appear in the painting. However, I think it wasn’t until I sat down at the three other buildings later that I really started to understand the design language of this place. There is still a lot to uncover. I’m not so sure about the materials and textures in the city. I know that the dominant building material should be metal and I really would like it shiny and pretty. However, this is not as interesting. It leaves a lot less room for imperfections. Overall some surfaces should probably hold this shininess of the metal, while other parts should be worn out, replaced, and patched up together.

These sketches I kept very simple. I wanted to focus on the structure and leave the materials behind. The first two buildings I designed were in 3D. This made me focus on too many things at once. I wanted to apply textures as quickly as possible to test it with lighting. For the later buildings, I kept it mostly in Photoshop. For inspiration, I took mostly classical Roman architecture and European neoclassicism. Trying to blend elements of these with a sci-fi feel was exciting to explore. I didn’t want to make it too obvious, however, I did want to make it feel familiar.

final thoughts.

This project taught me a lot and was extremely fun. I already came up with a bunch of other ideas on how to make this city look even cooler. But this has to be it for now. Otherwise, you might catch me in 2 years still repainting a 58th version of this cityscape painting. However, to sum up on what I think could be improved: I think that the labyrinth part could be explored even more. This more applies to the painting of the street view. The open space looks fine but I think it lacks a little of that human touch. Well, maybe robots built it, who knows. I also think that the nose of that ship in the cityscape painting could be improved. But the more I messed with it the stranger it looked. Another thing would be that building on the right. It needs to be designed separately and I sort of think of it there more like a placeholder than an actual building. (Rumor has it that this building is actually a default cube.)

Right, anyway. Onto another.

Tori x

Animate your painting. How to animate your illustration.

10/04/2022
video tutorials

The reason I got into animation was because I always felt that a still painting is somewhat boring. Like it would just be so cool to make it move. I was always so excited to come up with ideas as to how I could bring it to life.

Don’t get me wrong. I love painting. Despite having a love-hate relationship with it, it is like my comfort space. It feels nice to paint and zone out, especially since I’ve been doing it for a while so I have my routine and my favourite brushes (which you can grab here). Even if the paintings suck sometimes. It happens, everything can’t be perfect all the time. And it’s okay.

Anyway, back to turning paintings into moving images. Short glimpses of that world you painted. I think there is something so engaging and satisfying to it. Especially when it works.

To do that I use Blender or After Effects. Sometimes even Photoshop. It all depends on the subject. And the whole process can be easy if you don’t go overboard with your planning.

A while ago I made a tutorial for that. For beginners. So if you are interested, take a look. It’s a cool image and cool effect. I really enjoyed making it.

Happy painting! (and animating)

Tori x

How I learnt digital painting

03/04/2022
Blog

If one day I woke up and forgot all of my digital painting skills, I’m not sure I would’ve picked it up again. The learning process of it is long, difficult and confusing. There is the whole technical aspect of software and its features and on top of that the never-ending subject of art practice like anatomy, perspective, colour theory, composition, shading and more.

Someone ask me recently: where to start? How to learn it?

And I’ve been pondering this question since. How did I learn digital painting?

Here’s how: by coping.

Copying.

Before you dismiss what I’m trying to say, I don’t mean copying someone’s work and then going online and claiming it as your own. However, I do mean copying photos as accurately as possible.

That’s how I started with digital painting and I think that’s why I was able to improve quickly.

Let’s break it down and see why this is a good way to start.

As I mentioned, art is a very complex subject. There is just a lot to it, so when you are a beginner, it is important to divide your learning process into small pieces. Learning anatomy and colour theory all while you try to wrap your head around how the brushes and layers work in your software of choice, is just too much. You have to choose one subject at a time and tackle it.

I started with tracing portrait photos and then colour picking the colours from the photo and applying them to my traced sketch.

What’s next?

After a while, you will feel like you understand your process and the subject a little bit more. That’s when you will eventually start testing the waters and getting out of your comfort zone. And you will do it with more confidence. Because the medium won’t feel like it’s limiting you anymore.

You will understand the brushes, the canvas sizes, the brush settings and colours, etc.

And when the time comes to draw a face, for example, on your own, you will be able to apply all of the memory from tracing to these new paintings. But now with more knowledge, hopefully, after you go through some anatomy tutorials.

That’s when learning anatomy and perspective is good. You can definitely start with it or do it simultaneously. Whatever feels right to you.

Be mindful.

Now, be mindful. At this stage, you are no great artist, yet. Don’t try to show those practice paintings and call them your original artwork. Because it’s not. There is nothing wrong with being a beginner.

A lot of people will have different opinions on what you can or can not do when you are at the beginning of your art journey. That’s why there is so much discourse online about tracing and copying. A lot of people would do all of that and then pretend that they did it all by themselves. That behaviour is not only harmful to those that are doing it but also to beginner artists. It creates a false narrative.

Anyone that studied art or went to some sort of drawing/painting class will say that a lot of the practice at the beginning is trying to recreate someone else’s painting, aka master studies. Or do photo studies, because copying is the best way to learn.

Copying master paintings is great, copying photos is good too, and copying real-life subjects – amazing. Copying modern artists you see online – not so much. I’d recommend not doing it. Not only because these artists might not be okay with it, but also because most of the artists online will already have some sort of stylization to their art and you want to avoid learning shortcuts. If you want to understand art fast and develop your style into something cool, start with realism.

How is it going to help?

Starting from realism is great because it will teach you all of the rules of how the world works. When you will understand how it works you will be able to break these rules later on with much more confidence and understanding. This will also most likely result in better-looking art.

This is why a lot of teachers would tell you that you shouldn’t start learning art with anime – because it is stylized art. While it has a lot of rules taken from real life and then applied to the art, beginner artists will not see these correlations. This alone will put you in a box, where exploring different techniques will feel more difficult, just because you skipped the very important time of learning the fundamentals.

Final thoughts.

Art is complex and it really is a never-ending subject. Once you start learning it, you will be learning it for the rest of your life. There is always more to explore. This can be both freighting and exciting. But my main advice is: take it easy. Break it all down into smaller topics. Don’t try to learn everything at once. Baby steps and you will get there!

Draw subjects that you are passionate about! Don’t force yourself to do boring studies. Fanart is great because it will keep you going. (Although, again, I would watch out with anime/manga fanart, just because it is stylized art.)

Remember to be observant! It’s a skill on its own and you need it to keep on improving. A good way to bust it is by watching art critiques! That’s when you will see what mistakes other artists do and you’ll be able to look out for the same mistakes in your art.

And finally: happy painting!

Tori x

4 ways to master drawing poses

21/02/2023
art tips

post outline.

I got asked by one of you on TikTok to explain how to draw poses from references so here I am! Let’s get straight to it.

Quick Poses.

Drawing from a reference can be overwhelming, especially with poses. The proportions, the right placement of everything and if you mess up in one place then you need to fix the other and it’s just a never-ending loop of bad fortune.

But don’t worry! There is a way to overcome it.

The answer is Quick Poses. Or as some people might refer to it – gesture drawing. (Although it’s not really the same thing.)

You might have heard of it, but to those that are new to this, I will quickly explain.

The idea behind Quick Poses is just what you are probably assuming from the name. You draw the poses quickly. I mean like 10/15 s quickly. On a small piece of paper. Two or three poses on an A5 piece of paper. If you’ve never done that before, you might be thinking this is ridiculous. I know, because I thought the same.

‘No one can draw a good and complete pose in 10 seconds!’

But that’s not the point. You aren’t supposed to produce a full quality, incredible, masterpiece in 10 seconds. You are supposed to look at the pose quickly, gather from it everything you need, put it on the paper, not overthink and move on to the next one.

The incredible thing about this exercise is that it really works. When I first started with it, I was overwhelmed. I didn’t know where to start, the poses were too complicated and the shadows confusing. But the time was ticking and I was getting increasingly more frustrated.

But after a third or fourth pose, with me being completely unable to put even two lines down, I finally started to approach it as ‘screw it, I’ll just do it.’ And that’s when I switched my mindset from trying to produce a perfect pose to just doing it.

The first line on a white sheet of paper is always the most difficult, after that, you start to kinda wing it.

Drawing Quick Poses is supposed to let you get into that flow of painting. If you do this exercise every day for a week or two, I guarantee you the 15 seconds will start to feel like it’s too long.

Of course, you need to be critical about your work to some extent, to make sure you are improving. But for the most part, you just need to let yourself produce a lot of ugly drawings.

Now, let me tell you about 4 different ways you can draw the Quick Poses. I recommend trying all of these methods. Some might feel easier than others and they’re all just techniques. None is worst than the other but they all will teach you different ways of looking at a reference and translating what you see to the paper.

Lines.

The first technique, and probably the most obvious one, is doing Quick Poses using a pencil and just sketching it down. However, you want.

For most of us, this is the most familiar way and it can be something you’d want to do when you begin. That’s how I approached it. However, there is some downside to it. Using a thin pencil (or a brush if you are drawing digitally) can cause you more problems than solutions during this exercise. The reason for it is that a thin pencil is designed for drawing in the details and in 15 seconds of drawing you don’t have time for any details. You will be lucky if you managed to sketch in all of the limps.

The solution to this could be using for example a Koh-i-Noor pencil, that is thicker than a regular pencil which allows for more dynamic strokes. Or use charcoal.

This being said, I’d recommend starting this exercise with the next technique.

Silhouette Drawing

In this technique, I’d definitely recommend getting a black (or any colour you’d like) paint and a bigger brush. The point here would be to focus only on the silhouette of the person you are referencing. This is a good approach because you will be less likely to get caught up in the shadows and all of the other unnecessary details.

Using a bigger brush will also limit your ability to control how much detail you put in. It’s a good way to force yourself to look at the whole pose, instead of focusing on smaller parts. This way you will start seeing poses as these singular big shapes.

Negative Silhouette

Another similar exercise is using the same paint and brush but now instead of painting the silhouette, you paint only the background. This technique is pretty much the same as the one above. The difference here is that you are forced to look at the pose in a slightly different manner, which might help you understand the shapes better.

Sometimes when we know what we are painting, we tend to forget that we are supposed to paint the shapes. By painting the background instead of the silhouette, you will be forced to stop looking at the reference as a body and focus on the shapes in a more abstract way.

Shadows Only.

Here, you’d draw in only the shadows. Forget the outlines and silhouette. The only thing that matters would be the shadows that you see. You can definitely limit yourself to the shadows on the figure only, or the shadows that are also surrounding the body.

In this technique, I definitely liked to use charcoal the most, because it allows you to place big strokes in a very fast manner, but using paint or the Khor-i-Noor pencil also works.

Here again, you will be forced to look at the pose in a more abstract way, however, you will need to have some understanding of the pose anatomy already. That’s why between these exercises it is always beneficial to study human anatomy. You need to understand human mechanics to some extent if you want to get better at drawing poses.

Final Exercise.

And if you feel like you’ve painted enough of these tiny ugly drawings and you feel confident in them, you can definitely pull out a bigger piece of paper and do a longer study session for an hour or two. Even three. Hopefully, after drawing quick poses, you will be able to look at the reference with a better-trained eye. This shouldn’t be overwhelming as much as before.

And if the big piece of paper is looking very scary, remember that you can first sketch the pose on your small piece of paper, to see if you understand it and then slowly draw it on the bigger one

Conclusion

You know if you do this exercise every day for a week for just 10 minutes, after 7 days you’d have drawn 280 poses? That’s quite a lot. I think you’d need like a whole sketchbooks for that. I know you have some empty ones laying around. We all buy them thinking that we will make them pretty one day. But you know what’s more fun than a pretty looking sketchbook? A sketchbook with 300 poses in them, where every pose is better than the previous one.

Anyway, all I’m trying to say here, is that this really doesn’t take that much effort for the amount of improvement that you can achieve in such a short amount of time.

I highly recommend this exercise. It helped me a great deal.

Here’s a picture of my sketches from my first ever sketchbook I did.

And here is a pose study I did after these exercises. (A3 format)

useful websites

And lastly. Here are some of my favourite websites where you can practice Quick Poses.

Thoughts on Art Block & how to hack it.

15/03/2022
art tips

I see a lot of people post about ‘art block’. It’s like an ongoing inside joke within the art community and I definitely use it as an excuse sometimes as well. Don’t get me wrong.

However, the truth is, I don’t think that art block is that much of a deal.

Let me explain.

As soon as art becomes your job, you can’t just say to your client or your employer: ‘Today and for the next two weeks I will have an art block, thus I will do no work.’ With or without a struggle, you still need to produce good quality work. That’s the reality.

But maybe, first, let’s first try to define the infamous art block. Because what does that really stand for? Lack of inspiration? Lack of motivation? Lack of ideas? Lack of energy to create? Self-doubt? Skill limitation? Dissatisfaction with the work we’ve created? Frustration over the way it looks?

Art block can be caused by many factors and usually will result in the artist not producing art. But again, when you are a hobbyist or a beginner, you can allow yourself to not pick up that pen for 3 months (although I’d advise against it), however, when you are trying to pursue art as your career, you need to find ways to not let an art block affect you. Ever. For the most part, you simply won’t be able to afford it.

And perhaps that’s one of the key differences between a professional artist and a hobbyist/beginner artist. A professional artist will deliver quality art, often on a very tight schedule (depending on the industry) and still manage to come up with creative solutions.

Disclaimer: don’t misunderstand. We are all human, we have our highs and lows, moments when we are more or less creative. The professional artist, however, will tend to get over their lows in a fast manner. Once it’s your job, you are forced to find a way out of it fast.

So, what do professionals do?

Well, first you need to identify the reason for your art block and then attack that specific issue. Let’s go over some of the things I’ve mentioned before.

lack of ideas/inspiration

Lack of ideas is relatively easy to tackle. However, I think we’ve all been there, scrolling through Pinterest for 3 hours, only to close the drawing app with frustration. In that case, you need to stop overthinking it. Good exercise for this is my abstract painting method. You can watch the short video on this here.

The idea is that you put mindless and abstract strokes on your canvas until you start to recognize some from. This can lead you to very interesting outcomes and, because you will paint without expectations, you will be less likely to be disappointed with the outcome of your painting. It’s also a good way to focus on the creative process more, rather than trying to achieve some sort of outcome, like you’d do while painting from a reference.

Of course, another good practice would be going on ArtStation but, what also works like a dream in these situations, is watching speed painting videos. Every artist has a different technique, so sometimes just by observing, how they start a painting, how they put down colours etc. can easily inspire you to try it on your own.

lack of motivation

This one of course is a bit tricky. If you work for someone and you have any sense of responsibility, you won’t struggle with motivation much, because it’s just the things that need to be done. And even if you will struggle to do it, you will still do it because you have to. (Unless you perhaps want to debate quitting).

Different things will help different people. When it comes to art block, I usually try to go to websites like Artstation or film grab and look for inspiration. Finding a nice reference photo with interesting shapes also spikes my interest and motivates me to paint.

If these things don’t work for you, maybe you need a routine to put yourself in a creative zone. Perhaps through music or podcast or going out to a cafe or a different room in the house. Or maybe you work best with a clear schedule and all you need to do is set up that you paint every day at 8 pm for two hours before bed. I did it during school and it worked wonders.

Some people will have to go outside and try to experience something different to get that motivation. You will have to experiment on your own.

self-doubt/skill limitation

Pro or not a pro, we all sometimes forget how to paint. And it’s just because painting is difficult. You should practice every day to keep your skills consistent. So when this art block gets you, try to do studies, break down the forms, focus on observing. Stay loose with your sketches, don’t fix anything, let yourself experiment with different brushes and brush sizes.

You can also do painting studies of full images. For me personally, I found that the less detailed the work is the better I find my way back to my art flow.

Try to limit the time you spend on your studies, you want to avoid thinking too much. If you want to practice poses, this is a good website for it. Set the timer for 20/30 seconds. Definitely no longer than a minute and let yourself make mistakes. The whole reason for the short timer is that you should not have time to start fixing your drawing. Draw it quickly and move to another one.

frustration with the way your art looks

And here, finally, all of the above and master studies. When this frustration kicks in you need to take a step back, stop comparing yourself to other artists and instead put all of your focus on how they got their art to look like this. Not only it’s a great learning exercise but it will also open up your perspective on a lot of different techniques. Here is the time to go into the details. Analyse all of the brush strokes, colour, go with a colour picker over these paintings and take note of everything.

You can create a board with examples of work that you find incredible. Go over them and make notes on different things you notice that they do. Compare between them. Ask yourself: WHY and HOW. Why do you like it? Why does it evoke this feeling in me? How did they showcase this subject? Why not in a different way?

Save that board and go back to it from time to time whenever you feel stuck or uninspired. This is actually good for any sort of art block because it allows you to go inward and really think about what you want your art to look like and where you want to take your art next.

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Remember! Art is great but it’s difficult. It requires a lot of time to master, so don’t beat yourself up whenever things aren’t exactly going your way. Take every failed attempt as an opportunity for a lesson.

Every professional has once been a beginner. Dealing with art block and overcoming it is something every artist had to learn at some point in their lives. Unless they have the privilege of working whenever and however they’d like. Most of us, however, have deadlines and schedules, people in the team or clients, that you have to deliver to. It’s all part of the journey.

Happy painting x
Tori

These two paintings I created using the abstract method. I did not expect these results whatsoever but the painting process was very enjoyable.

How to practice perspective drawing

15/03/2022
art tips

How to practice perspective drawing! Easy exercise for beginners.

I never really had to practice perspective drawing as much. I could say I had an eye for it and intuitively I could get pretty far with just sort of faking it. But that can only take you so far.

When you want to paint backgrounds and be comfortable with them, perspective is something you can’t avoid. Unless you want to become a slave to 3D and trace your scenes from them (I’m guilty of this).

I already posted a TikTok about how to practice perspective drawing and you can watch it here. But I want to elaborate a little bit more about it because a 1-minute video isn’t long enough.

I will take you through the perspective drawing exercise that will help you understand space and objects within it quickly.

Step 1. Pick a photo & analyse it.

Picking the right reference is an art form in itself. The best pictures for practising perspective would be the ones where the lines of the ceiling and the floor are visible. Now, why? Because these are the structure lines that, if noted right, will lead you to your vanishing points. Why would potentially a bed or a chair not be the best option for finding the perspective lines? Because these objects can be rotated within the space, they can be uneven or tiled. If you follow an uneven edge it won’t lead you towards the correct vanishing point.

While doing this exercise you need to look for clear photos. Don’t over-complicate it.

For example. This photo is nice. You could definitely find two vanishing points and mark them correctly. However, if you are not experienced with perspective drawings, this photo has a lot of traps you could fall into.

Let’s take a look at the traps before I show you the correct way.

First of all, the ceiling is diagonal. This automatically eliminated the number of lines we can use to track down the perspective lines.

The bed has a lot of stuff on it, which makes it difficult to see the edge, thus finding the line.

The rug covers up the floor. It has an edge that could identify our vanishing point, however, we can’t be sure if the rug is actually perfectly rectangular.

So if I was to paint in the perspective using these guides, it would look a little bit like this.

As you can see, everything fell apart. Let’s discuss why.

The first mistake is, as I mentioned before, using the bed and a rug as a guide for the blue and pink lines. The bed especially has very unclear edges, which makes it difficult to correctly place a perspective line. That’s why, in most cases, it’s pointless to do it.

Another reason why the lines ended up being misplaced is that I used lines that are too thick. In this exercise, you need to be precise with where you place your lines. Lines that are too thick will naturally cover the edges that you are trying to follow, which can result in being less accurate.

Now take a look at this photo.

Because I’ve done this enough times and I know where the traps are I was able to track the perspective lines correctly. Notice how I’m using thinner lines that allow me to have more precision.

I only use the edges of the room’s construction. These can be the panels on the floor, the window frame, the railing outside or the wooden beams on the ceiling. They are usually the safest bet.

In conclusion, a photo like this still can be analysed but it’s more difficult than a photo with clearly defined floor and ceiling lines. Especially if you are just starting out, avoid complex references. Start simple and as you will get better you can move on to the less obvious examples!

Here are examples of easy photos.

( extra tip: Look for ‘minimalistic room’ on Pinterest!)

Step 2. Add more lines to your photo!

Because I’m trying to convince you to use simple photos, I redid the analysis and so here it is.

The next step is to add more lines to the vanishing points so that we can draw in some additional objects.

Remember that the lines need to be straight. Wonky lines won’t work!

Step 3. Draw in the objects.

This part is completely up to you and will depend on what kind of photo you chose for yourself. My suggestion is, again, to keep it simple. You can draw in just boxes at first and just see if they feel like they actually belong to the space.

Don’t start with complicated objects that have lots of curves or diagonal lines, because they might confuse you. The objects I’d start with would be a drawer, a bookshelf, a table, a bed frame, picture frames or posters on the wall, a rug. Anything that has a simple form.

And once you have your guidelines, you can clean it up a bit and have fun with adding details!

When you will get comfortable drawing these objects, you can switch them to some complex ones, like round sofas or office chairs.

The point here is to not overwhelm yourself with this exercise. Going from simple to complex is the way to slowly ease yourself into the idea of perspective drawing.

The whole reason why we are also using reference photos is that it’s a beginner-friendly exercise. By having that references you don’t need to worry about constructing the room from scratch and, thanks to that, you are eliminating the possibility of learning it wrong.

Ending notes.

I really hope this exercise will help you quickly understand the perspective drawing in action! I remember when I started out I understood the theory but I couldn’t quite put it into practice. I found the proportions and vanishing points confusing. By analysing the photos like this and testing myself by drawing in the objects I was quickly able to understand the logistic of it.

If you try it, let me know your thoughts! And if it’s not working out for you, also let me know, so maybe I could address it and help you out!

Happy painting! x

Tori