All of us it seems fall out of the hobby at some point or another (so I hear at least) and I was no exception. There were two periods i can remember where things cooled off for me hobbywise. The first was late in high school and the second was just after college when i got a job at the Sweater Shop (booooo!). These periods were filled distractions like boobs (see last post if you want boobs), smoking, guitar and riding bikes... oh and burning things to keep warm while we smoked. Please by the way tell me what your breaks from the hobby were filled with in the comments below.
People say that 'practice makes perfect', i both agree and disagree, for a few different reasons but the reason i want to focus on here is 'A change is as good as a rest'. You see these breaks in my hobby journey bore the fruits of some of my greater milestones in painting because seemingly out of no where I could paint better..... much better, check out Bertrand and his mates below
I had gotten neater and more precise and better chooser of colour. A miracle of natural ability!!! Break his fingers!!!! you may exclaim or things of that ilk. (all things like that i dislike btw). 1- why break my fingers when you can learn from them and 2- IT WAS NO MIRACLE and I was no natural.
So what was it??? Well for starters I had matured mentally , tho some may still dispute that, and physically, so a natural increase in ability was going to happen. however my knowledge of painting seemed deeper and this was because of the 'Game' from my last post.
I never made the 'game' just about painting i made it my template for all things in my life. I got better at the 'GAME!' ( i just lost btw x x x) it's the real reason I got better and Its a real transferable skill. A principle if you will and i stick by it to this day.
Top tip i learned is in the pic above but I'm not just going to tell you what it is. Play the 'game' and post below and see if your 'eye' spy is good enough to spot it.
(The game is the eye spy game from my last post)
Next time I will show you another milestone and for me it's a biggie
Tommie
(I am crap at grammar btw, you may have noticed)
Loving the look into the Journey that you took before I started seeing your stuff all over the internet!
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing your early work, and the painters that influenced you.
It's interesting that you credit some of your biggest breakthroughs to personal growth during your break from painting...
I took my hiatus while backpacking around the UK and Europe... I went back home with hundreds of reference pictures of grass and dirt (and old buildings, seascapes and the obligatory "holding up the leaning tower of Pisa" snap).
I also understood better the strange colour and tone choices I saw Euro-painters using. (the stuff over here really is that colour!!)
...when I got back home at the end of 2008 and was painting better, everyone credited my improvement with my shiny new tools and equipment. (in particular my instant love of the new Citadel Washes - OMG Devlin Mud, if only I had been able to hug you and love you and squeeze you and call you George right from the beginning of my days as a painter!)
And... to the point of all that! - I totally understand the effect of taking a step back and learning to see the world a little differently... But my guess (as much as it hurts to admit it) is that I think I can spot some Flesh Wash and Chestnut Ink going on.
*tilts head*
...and maybe some green ink too?
Ah the good old 'break', my breaks have always been a bit like a hobby butterfly, still loving the nectar of the flower but seeing the shinyness of other flowers nearby is so tempting.
ReplyDeleteThe big break for me was probably over a 3 year period just after uni where i met a girl who lived a fair bit away and all my weekend time was meeting her and not meeting my friends, finding the hobby slowly ebbing away as we started playing WoW (i know, i know, i got help and am free now).
Thankfully it ended and i found a lovely new lady and she encourages me to do the geekery, hence going to your lovely painting days, entering my first GD and buying so much stuff i now have a rather daft backlog!
onwards and upwards though, hopefully i wont lose the bug of painting again, as i do love it so.
Coherent color palette? I'm not good at the game :p
ReplyDeleteBreaks...yeah. I was a pro musician for years and took a few years off (1995-2000) after things fell apart and I moved back home into a talent wasteland. Trying to put a band together when there's not much going on was difficult, and I walked away rather than end up circling the gutter the rest of my life. Now I've been playing for a while and re-discovering my passion for guitar (and bass and drums...), and I'm happy it's an integral part of my being again. Not sure how links work here...
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3667682/Music/Capricho_A.mp3 (2012)
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3667682/Music/Maggot%20Brain.mp3 (2006)
Which brings me to painting. I grew up with a bunch of AD&D players, saw guys painting minis in the late 70s/early 80s. Both were accomplished fine artists, so it was some pretty nice stuff. I'd love to see it by today's standards, back then you pretty much only had contact with the 'community' at a convention. I never picked up a brush, though.
In the early 90s, one of those artists was singing in my band. We bought some minis and started painting. The dwarf on my blog is from this era. There's also my first mini, a Partha minotaur if you dig deeper in the blog, from this era. Painted maybe a dozen minis in 91/92 and then a dozen more in 97/98.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3667682/Minis/Archives/Minotaur3.JPG (1991)
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3667682/Minis/Archives/Conjurer.JPG (1998)
As I flourished on guitar (punny), I kept thinking about minis. Some friends on a forum I frequent were painters, including one GW expat (Iain Compton) who encouraged me to start painting again. I sold off a cache of M:tG cards in exhange for some paint and had at it in 2011. Mostly did the gnoll in the old style I had learned from my buddy. I consider him my 'first' mini, after the 13-year hiatus.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3667682/Minis/Completed/Gnoll.jpeg (2011)
Got ensnared in some career stuff for the next year. Read a bit here and there about painting, but didn't paint. Then the Sedition Wars kickstarted and also kicked my in the pants to get back painting. I joined a thread on the McVey forums where Ali had talked a couple people through painting a model; bought the model and jumped in (much thanks to althai for the help). Then someone ran an informal 'Getting Started' competition for folks starting/returning to the hobby. I entered and won, to my complete surprise.
So I've just wrapped up my 9th mini, with a focus on improving with each one. I've got a long way to go, but I can finally begin to see the progress if I step back objectively. Having played guitar since 1984, I've learned a lot about learning over the years, and taking it slow and avoiding shortcuts is difficult but quite rewarding. So I'm trying to apply that and work on my core theory mini by mini.
I'm excited to see where I'll go!
Love the capricho!
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