Daily Speed Sketches - Try It!

Hey Folks!

I thought I would take a few minutes to talk about daily speed sketching, a great habit that has seriously been helping me improve my art speed and skill over the past month. For those of you who aren’t aware, I work with an independent game studio making 2d art and animations for games. For many years I've been trying hard to constantly improve my digital drawing and painting abilities. I’ve had several roadblocks standing in my way however, largest of which is a very loud internal critic, my “perfectionist” side that is never satisfied and can cause very slow progress and loss of motivation.

A few 5-minute color sketches from yesterday.

In the last years I’ve made a little headway in quieting the perfectionist in me, but I have not found anything that has been nearly as helpful and inspirational as doing daily speed sketches over the past month. I take a few minutes every single day, no matter how tired I am, no matter how much I have already drawn for work that day, etc. etc. to do some speed sketches. Here are a few reasons why making this daily commitment is so great and why I would encourage any artist, beginner or advanced, to try it too:

1. Timing my sketches helps me get in the habit of using the proper progression from big blocks -> smaller blocks -> details. I can't get stuck on one area because I know the clock is ticking and if I don’t move on I won’t get the whole thing down on the [digital] page in time.

2. Timing sketches forces me to turn off my inner critic, and just draw without thinking about stupid stuff like "how does this look?" "is this terrible?" "should I be doing this totally differently?" I only get to think about that stuff once the drawings are done. After all my speed sketching is done for the day I do some healthy self-critique, only aimed at doing better the next day and not beating myself up over what I just did.

3. Drawing or painting a broad range of different subjects from many different angles every day helps me keep my eyes fresh and inspires the other artwork I am doing.

4. Speed sketching helps me get really good mark making, motion and fluidity into my work. It's great to do before more serious work to warm up and get going, or after serious work to loosen up and relax.

5. Doing a few minutes of speed sketching every day is a realistic and easy way to make sure I am constantly working on improving my artistic abilities. Doing longer pieces for practice is also great and necessary, but with speed sketches I can quickly do many iterations of a subject and see tangible progress even within a few minutes...which leads me to...

6. It's rewarding! It lets me see real progress in a short period of time, which is incredibly motivational.

A 5-minute seascape

All that said, here are a few online speed sketching tools that I use: artists.pixelovely.com/ , lovecastle.org/draw (caution, there are some nude models in there). I’ll also sometimes sketch from life if I have a good subject nearby. And there is always google image search if I have a specific thing I feel like drawing.

A compilation of various 30-second line sketches from various days.

Here's where I post my daily speed sketches: sketches.nataliemaletz.com (linked to this blog as the “Sketches” page in the navigation above). Please check them out – I’d love to hear suggestions for what techniques I should focus on, what subjects I should sketch, and whether or not you are seeing the improvement that I am!

Hopefully this will inspire some artists out there as it has inspired me! Happy speed sketching! ^_^

Process Journal: Ruins Interior

I recently finished several mini-scenes for Havencall. Here I'll go through the steps I took to create this one:

I used a a wacom tablet and photoshop. Interesting tidbit: I painted this scene 100% with the same photoshop brush: a "chalk" brush that is in the default brushes set, with opacity jitter set to pen pressure in the "transfer" options.

1. Set up

I've put down some messy lines just to figure out what kind of scene I am going for. The perspective is all off, but I'm not worrying about that at this stage (perhaps I should be?). I'm just getting down the general idea.

2. Blocking In

Now I've taken a big, soft-ish brush and slapped down a couple colors on a new layer, one for the basic shape, and another to define where the light is coming from in the scene (mainly from above here).

3. Background

I slapped down a quick background in a layer below the walls.

4. Defining

At this point I'm defining the shapes of things without the original lines. Here's where a lot of the perspective issues are getting fixed (hopefully).

5. Adding

Adding more stuff to the scene! Keeping the direction of the light source in mind and staying loose and relaxed.

6. Variation

Adding texture, cracks, and more colors to increase the realism.

7. Details-Pass 1

More texture, more colors, more cracks...

8. Details-Pass 2

Here I've continued adding details, such as patches of moss here and there. I've also defined the puddles better, added a piece of foreground rubble, and added a big light shaft streaming in through the broken roof. I also have Aura in there to double check that the scaling and colors work together. It's pretty much done at this point!

9. Final Adjustments

All I've done here is fiddle with the levels, exposure, etc. a bit to make it a little more dramatic. And it's done! Here are some close-ups of the finished scene:

And that's it!

=^_^=

Latest Creative Endeavors!

It's the last day of January, and the past month+ has been filled with my favorite sort of things: creative endeavors! So what have I been up to that's made my last blog post already 6 weeks old?! Here's a round-up!

~ Havencall ~
Of course, I've been working mainly on my biggest and most exciting project, our point and click adventure game! Since my last post I've finished a new background - Aura's bedroom (aka the attic), have made progress with the third battle scene, the design of the third "boss," some NPC designs, and some animations. I've also been working on the story, fleshing out scenes and dialogue in the second world mainly. It's all very exciting and awesome and I can't wait to share it, but we don't want to share too much or the game will get spoiled! But, I think I can share some in-progress stuff without spoiling too much! Here's some NPC line-work that I posted in my recent IndieDB update:

And here are some speed thumbnail sketches I made while brainstorming for "boss" designs. Keep in mind that these are super rough!! But I thought it might be cool to share what goes into the very early stages of designs...

None of these thumbnails are terribly close to the final design I settled on, but there are a few that were strongly inspirational. Which thumb would you liked to have seen developed?

Also speaking of Havencall, we decided to be a little more responsible to our fans, and update the Havencall facebook page at least once a week! So Monday is now our update day! This not only will keep our followers interested and entertained, but it should also help keep me productive, because I'll want to make sure I have plenty to write about every week!

~ Secret Simulation Project ~
A good chunk of my time lately has gone into this "real work" project. Happily, even my "real" work is creative! Sadly, I cannot talk about this project very much aside from saying it's a simulation and it's pretty cool! Although, it is always difficult doing "real work" when I have so much Havencall stuff waiting to be made...

~ The Saga of the Epic Mayan Pyramid Cake ~
As I mentioned in this post, last month I was requested to create a cake that looked like a Mayan Temple, for an "end of the world" party. Here are some pictures of this epic process:

 The vanilla cake batter was delicious. Waaaay too delicious.

This cake basically contained butter. lots and lots of butter.

 All layers baked!

Frosted! It was half chocolate, half cinnamon frosting.

Stacked!

Finished!

 Unstacking!

Demolished. And that's the end of the saga of the epic Mayan cake (except we had leftovers for a long time after!). And now I feel like eating cake.

~ Kitty Beds ~
Recently I decided that this:

was simply not cutting it for a cat bed. I'd made it very quickly many months ago. The time was right for *real* cat beds to be made for my two [superspoiled] cutie pies. Here are some pics documenting the process of making the new beds!

 I used an old blanket for the stuffing. The middle was cut into rectangles, and the batting from the edges was removed and rolled into long cylinders. The grey fabric is fleece left over from another project.

 These edge pieces were long!

Rollin' em up like a cinnamon roll!

 Dinah oversees as I cut out the side pieces from the fabric.

 Stuffing the edge pieces was somewhat amusing.

 Me being a goof and wearing an edge piece. It's a fashion statement, ok?!

 1st one done!

 Phoebe using the 1st bed. It was a little small for her. Oh, and that's David's January One Game A Month, "I Can't Escape" in the background!

 This is Phoebe in the second bed I made. It has a black middle part, and is definitely a better size for her!

 And here's Dinah in the first bed. Perfect size for her! Now both my kitties have a super soft and comfy spot to curl up. =^_^=

~ Backstage Graphic Design ~
My sister [in-law technically] Jamie writes incredible musicals, and recently she was offered a venue and is doing a production of one of her shows down in Phoenix! I did a little graphic design for the show: a poster and logo for t-shirts. It was a fun process figuring out what to do with the design. In the end I settled on this design for the poster:

And this is the 3-color logo for the t-shirts:

 Backstage is a super fun musical with awesome music and a great story. If you're in the Phoenix area March 14th, 15th, or 16th, you can check it out at the Desert Rose Theater, and tickets are here.

~ Speed Sketches ~
A few weeks ago I decided to do a little bit of speed sketching every single day in order to improve my drawing speed and perceptiveness. I've been posting them every day in my sketches micro-blog (linked to this blog as the "Sketches" page, above). It's been going pretty well (no missed days yet), and I think it is actually helping me improve! Here are a couple of pages from random days (these are all 30 second sketches):

And now, it's time for me to get back to work!

=^_^=