At first, I did not realize I lost my way. I thought to myself, what could it hurt to take a week off? To prepare some things for the next chapter of my comic Street Prey (SPREY)? Being nice to myself for a change yielded some surprising results. My art almost instantly „improved“ now that I suddenly had a bit more time to breathe and experiment. And quick first successes made me want to exercise more. At the same time my concept art career received a massive boost with my first gig as a concept artist for a small indie studio.
Suddenly I have new perspectives for my work. Suddenly I got a first contract pay in that was very real. My true luck is not the money itself, although I appreciate the pay very much, but that it caused a massive boost in professionalism in me. I have studied hard since then, even harder than before. And this lead to more gains. And then more good things started happening to me, because it is always like this. Only if you have some momentum already you are given more. By now I‘m thinking that studying the ways of concept art and focussing on this for a future day job might be or bring me closer to my ikigai.
I am still committed to making my comic and everything else on my to do list. It just seems that the concept art training I‘m seeking out is the key to push things to a completely new level I could never have imagined sitting in my old comfort zone. How did that all start? Imagine I was browsing Artstation and Pinterest and thought I wish I could bridge the gap. I thought and wished that for a long time, months, maybe years. I wish somebody could teach me, anybody. What if I could have a shred of the Feng Zhu School of Design? And then suddenly this opportunity came up to take part in a course inspired by his school and Youtube channel. I knew it was an important decision. I would have to make time for it constantly, a lot of time, while also working my contract and continuing SPREY. I haven‘t regretted a single moment. I also took up the good habit of setting aside at least 20 minutes a day to study a bit about business. I still have no idea what I‘m doing, but I still know more than before already. Time passes really quick at the moment. I am realizing that you sometimes get the best results when you focus on one or a maximum of two projects per day. But this thesis needs more testing.
I took this day to go over the last week a bit. I realized I did so so much that I cannot sensibly squeeze this together in one blog entry. It might make it harder for you to learn something from it if you are inclined to do so. So I’ll split the week up in several entries that I will post over the next days. Hopefully I will catch up to the present, soon.
To my surprise – I drew lightnings all week as warm-ups and actually finished that mini- lightning project fornow. The first tasks in the course were all about (re)discovering simple line drawing exercises. Just by chance did I discover that lightning must indeed be my personal element. But I will not stop at this and will explore other elements in the next weeks. Learning at least the basics of how to draw them and spending more time with them and documentaries on how they work are an investment for lifetime. Fire, water, rain, earth, all the elements, weather effects and natural phenomena – that is never going to go out of fashion. You just have to find your own way of how to deal with understanding and depicting them.
See you next time!
