Today was another good day for art. I’m definitely over the honeymoon phase of starting the Rapid Viz book, but continuing to make the practises. The book sneakily teaches me how to shade better now. Surprise over surprise, but what pleasant surprises. Again – a lot of things come down to geometry and being friends with geometry on a 2D canvas.
I did some more than what you see in the following, but mostly prep work and that ungrateful work in the middle of things where you don’t really have something to present yet, but spent your energy.
Early concept of a portal between spirit world and natural world. I’m glad I had the idea, but this doesn’t really look good yet.Pondering whether LC will need sleep in the natural world and regenerate energy by spending time at home. A lot of personal emotions went into this piece as a bonus.Winter is hard when homeless. One day pictures like these will make more sense once I have more comics out. But along the way – practise practise.
I took a long weekend off. I did not plan this, but enjoyed it and apparently I needed the extra- relaxation to really kick off a great new week.
Today I officially announce that I will be focussing most of my attention (aside from commissions and other already pending little tasks) on making LC’s comic “The Fearful Creator” happen. I have done quite some preparation work already, but I kind of never went the last step as with many of my past endeavours. Not anymore, I told myself. This time I’ll push through, I just have to, otherwise my whole universe will never get rolling. More on this topic the next days.
first glimpse into the spirit world
The Bluth/Goldman book really helped me. I then peeked into Betsy Luntao’s “How to Draw Backgrounds with Characters” and ofc “Framed Ink” as possible next steps in my learning journey towards sequential art. But then all of the sudden “Rapid Viz” by Hanks & Belliston. I did not really decide to work through this one first, I was just drawing since an hour until I realized what was happening. There is no magic bullet in art, but if there was one for me personally, it is Rapid Viz. The exercises ‘fixed’ basic visualization problems that I carried with me since years and that really weren’t tangible but still very uncomfortable in my mind within one session. I should not question my luck too much. It’s hard but healthy to admit that I must have been drawing ten years with severe deficiencies on a base geometry level of fundies … but I needed the time to figure out what was happening. And yeah, a lot of life took place, too.
And how can I measure my progress? My confidence and output on thumbnails literally went through the roof. Most of the theory was there already, I just had no way to visualize it quickly and reliably.
Thumbnails for a spider commission.Thumbnails for a personal illustration themed “My secret friend”
About the artist
Styxcolor creates freelance concept art and illustrations. She blogs about storytelling and art since 2020.
E-mail: info@styxcolor.com
