Timbo1834

First off I want to let everyone know that I feel ashamed that I haven't updated my art in a while , and in no way am I trying to pass this journal off as an excuse for doing that. If anything, this is probably meant to be some public form of therapy for myself... Now for whoever that sentence hasn't scared off, let's get into this journal!

Over the past few weeks, I have been going through a rough patch of feeling like I have lost my touch with my drawing. I'm sure that many people reading this know what I'm talking about. You take some time off from your craft that may be a couple days, or a couple weeks. You then try to go back to doing it and something is off about it. You aren't doing the same caliber of work that you feel like you're capable of. Well... I went through one of the worst one of those in recent memory. I would draw a face, be violently dissatisfied with it (I'm exaggerating of course) and erase it, redraw it, something still doesn't look right, erase it again and so on and so forth. It was really frustrating and for me, also really scary.

As I was growing up, drawing was one of the only things that people acknowledged that I was doing correctly. When the kids at recess would play double-tap football, I would always be the last resort to receive a pass. In school, I was criticized for my work on my spelling tests. There were also many meetings with myself, my parents, and the teachers for my diagnosed case of "Deficiency in Written Expression" (Do I still show signs of that deficiency in this journal entry? You decide Deviantart!). So with all the 'You have a lack of's 'You have a deficiency in's and 'You're not good at's, drawing was the one thing that I was acknowledged for being good at. I in no way think that I am a natural at drawing, but never the less, people telling me I was good at it was enough to keep me practicing. This isn't me expressing some deep seeded regret about my youth. I like the dorky life path that I took. I do however, want to express how crippling of a feeling it is to think that I might've lost this one skill that I have been developing for a majority of my life.

So I decided to go back to the basics. I went to my websites with human poses posted on them and I read through portions of my Burne Hogarth books. It felt like it was going to take a lot to get myself out of the art rut I was in. I was pretty much at the point were I felt like I was equally sucky at all mediums. Through the duration of this art rut, I was still frequenting deviantart, looking at you artists were putting out since you guys are so fucking good! I had also realized that a big majority of the artists I'm following were digital artists, and this made me feel a bit of pressure. I'm no stranger to digital art, but a majority of my work has been with physical paints or pencils. After seeing the predominance of the digital medium, I found myself nervous about being left behind with an obsolete mindset. So I decided that in order to get out of my art rut, I was going to draw and color something mildly ambitious, and I was going to do it completely on the computer.

The image that came to mind was these three fantasy looking characters fully in the frame, in action poses, and in a reverse pyramid scheme. When I got started, it was pretty cool to take advantage of some of the digital tools. I did the underdrawings of the three characters all on separate layers so I could move them around wherever they would fit in the composition. I put layer masks on those layers so I could non-destructively erase the areas being blocked by characters or objects in the foreground (thank you for that tip ctrlpaint.com!). It was an interesting experience, but then the forward morion I had began to wane. It felt like I was working three times harder than I work with my physical pencil, and I was trying to understand why.

There was a podcast that I listened to a few years back called the Kojima Productions Podcast Hosted by Ryan Payton (That's right, huge Metal Gear nerd here) and he had some guests who were all from 1up.com at the time, and I think it was Ryan O'Donnell expressing some discontentment with the Metal Gear videogame series by saying, and I paraphrase: "I don't like how I have to hold down three buttons just to fire a gun." While my biased fanboyism didn't agree with Mister O'Donnell at the time, his analogy about ergonomics stuck with me. This analogy surfaced back when when trying to describe what doesn't feel right about drawing digitally. It makes a simple task like drawing and adds layers of complication onto it.

I'll briefly describe what it's like to draw digitally (I make no promises). For me it consists of my right hand holding the stylus over the tablet and my left hand is positioned on the left side of the keyboard where I have mapped most of my most frequently used shortcut keys. So I will begin drawing an image by roughly drawing out the structure lines, I don't need to be too fancy in this part of the drawing process. Then I get into the details. I press the zoom button a few times to get close enough to draw the detail on the face. I bounce back and forth between the paintbrush and eraser tool using my ring and index fingers and I scroll around the zoomed in area by pressing the spacebar with my thumb. I zoom in and out to make sure the image I drew still works at full view. Often times I realize that my proportions are off. Then I have to press the F key to free-select the the area. I then use the scaling transform tool to make the head or the hand or whatever is dis-proportioned the desired size. I am also constantly increasing and decreasing the size of the brush tool with my index and middle fingers. I have gotten in the habit of saving often since freeze-ups have caused me to loose big portions of work that I've done on a piece, so I press the control+S keys with my ring and pinky fingers to perform a quick save.

If you take all of that into account, those are a lot of different tasks to do in order to draw in a digital environment. My analog workflow consists of my drawing surface or board, piece of bristol or mixed media paper, my Comfort Mate Ultra mechanical pencil, and my kneaded and nylon erasers that I keep in close proximity to my right hand. My left hand doesn't really do much except for holding my paper or board in place. This standard low-tech method of is actually much more streamlined. Zooming and lack of perception of proportions is pretty much a non-issue. It feels much more freeing for me to work on paper.

I understand that I didn't take using a Wacom Cintique into account, and if I come across $1,000-$2,000 to throw at one of those machines then maybe I'll revisit this journal/topic. For now my focus is on entry level hardware for digital artwork.

So after deciding to call it quits on the full digital project, I took what I had so far and I printed it out. I took the same idea and layout and transitioned to paper. Not only was it a much smoother experience to use physical pencils on bristol paper, but the image qualitatively looked way better than the line work than the work that I previously did. I felt like I was at home, and my recent art rut was behind me.

Now I don't want the takeaway of this jounral to be 'Tim poo-poos on digital art'. I want the lesson to be about being true to yourself. I was trying to draw like the next Jason Chan or or Stanley Lou and something about it didn't feel right. So I went back to the tools that worked efficiently for me. I'm guessing that someone who is a digital art guru is going to read this this and say "Oh! He just doesn't get it!" and you know what? You're probably right, but take pride in the fact that YOU DO get it, and it's a medium that you can use uniquely well. I am just recounting my experience of re-discovering that I'm an analog artist. I have been taking a great liking to doing things separate from the computer. In fact, this whole journal entry was written long handed first! You're just reading the edited version.

I also don't want to give people the idea that I'm saying not to experiment or expand your horizons, but there is the phrase "A man's reach far exceeds his grasp." It's helpful and inspiring to try new things, but falling back on something that you have a lot of familiarity and experience with isn't a terrible thing to do.

On that note, I want to close out this journal entry off with an idea/proposal. Notice that nowhere in this journal have I refereed to physical paints and mediums as "traditional". I personally think that calling techniques and mediums traditional gives them a negative connotation. It makes people think that these mediums and artists are stagnant or tied to the past, they're not going to advance any further. As someone someone who uses these tools, I feel the opposite. I want to see these tools advance and become better. The Pentel Pocket Brush Pen has allowed me to not be tied down by a bottle of ink and water cup. Water Mixable Oils have allowed artists to use that medium with minimum or no use of chemicals. Liquid Watercolor Paper allows watercolorists to break up the linearity of medium. Some significant changes have already happened to these tools and we should keep the progression going. So I propose that physical painting and drawing be referred to as "Analog" art. We aren't tied to the past, we just prefer lo-tec methods.

With the big Digital Boom in the art world that has happened in the last 10, 15, or so years this seems to be a topic that comes up a lot. Digital art versus traditional art articles up the waassu! And if you really think about it, this should come as a surprise to no one. It seems like it has always been in human nature to draw a line in the sand and to pick a side, and it seems like it is mostly between two choices. Pepsi or Coke? DC or Marvel? Republican or Democrat? It seems like us as humans thrive off of the scenario of belonging to one gang or another, But to me, I feel like art doesn't need to be this way.

We are now at the first time in history that 35mm film in movies is not the prevailing technology for movie production. Now film makers like Christopher Nolan and Steven Spielberg are speaking out about saving 35mm and keeping it as a format to shoot on. It makes me sad to see an age where this is happening and it makes me wonder if something like this will ever happen to art supply stores and retailers. Do I think that what we're coming to? No. At least not for a long while. And I think that it should never come to that either. I think it is a terribly obtuse perspective to think that we have gone as far as we could with physical drawing and painting and now it's time for digital techniques to take over. There is still new ground for traditional art to reach.

Now that second paragraph might have made this sound like this is going to be be my anti-digital stance and I assure you it's not. I love digital art, it does give me some tools and techniques that you can't achieve with paper and brushes. I just don't think it's a perfect tool. Both traditional and digital art have chinks in their armor, but rather than doing a whole pro's and con's journal entry, I am going to only highlight the things i like about the two and why I like to use both. As I would just like to focus more on the positives than the negatives.

TRADITIONAL ART:

-YOU ALWAYS SEE THE 'BIG PICTURE'.
Since your always working on one canvas or piece of paper, your aspect ratio never changes. you never have to zoom into a physical painting. It is because of this that any mistake you are prone to make will be noticed a lot easier since you're always looking at the whole piece.

-NO LAG FOR BIGGER IMAGES.
If I would like to do something 18" by 24" and higher, it's not going to feel any different when I use my tools. where as the brushes on a higher resolution image are going to chug a bit.

-THE RITUAL OF STARTING A PIECE.
I can see this being a point that wont sell people traditional art, but that's not what I'm going for. I'm just writing down the stuff I love. And I love the little things that might seem mundane to others. Cutting my paper to the right size, measuring and ruling out the crop lines, taping my watercolor paper down on a board with painter's tape. just doing these little things makes me feel like a more legitimate artist than just opening a document.

-FEELING THE THING YOU CREATED AFTER YOU'RE DONE.
This might be exclusive to painting since I wouldn't recommend smudging your pencil drawing with your fingers :-P. One thing I do from time to time is use a tooth brush to do spattering on some of my paintings and after it dries, when you run your fingers over it and feel where the bumps of paint rise up from the paper.... OOhh!! There's just nothing like it.

-THERE'S ALWAYS AN ORIGINAL TO SELL.
This is a point that traditional artists pride themselves on but I am going to give my sympathies to digital artist for this "facts of life" point that I'm making. Original artwork sells for much more that digital prints. People love having a one of the kind thing and will pay more for it.

-IT'S STILL A CHEEPER WAY TO START PAINTING.
I know there are some fantastic open source painting softwares out there (which one of them is my preferred application) so some digital artists don't look at software price as an issue, but I am focusing more on the computer/tablet combo. If you are looking for a decent computer to do get into digital painting and a tablet it's going to run you at least between $600-$800 and even more if you're wanting to go for more premium parts an equipment. If you want to try out painting for the first time, introductory equipment and paper is only going to be $20 to $30 at the art supply store. If you want to go more with the premium paints and brushes that trip will run you $100 tops. Not as ugly of a number as the digital rout.

-A BETTER SENSE OF PRECISION.
This is mainly a comparison to working on a graphics tablet (I have never touched a cintique at this point). When working on a graphics tablet you kind of feel locked in place where with traditional traditional art you feel much more free. It feels much more natural to do brushstrokes away from me with my right hand and it feels much more natural to do that on a piece of paper that I'm rotating as opposed to a given locked in perspective.

-BETTER ON THE GO.
You are not restricted to power outlets or battery life when it comes to doing traditional art on the go. While new inventions like the iPad makes digital sketching on the go a whole lot easier, there are nifty sized sketch books and tools that you can use anywhere without the fear of them running out of power.


DIGITAL ART:

-I LOVE LAYERS!
I love using this tool as a non-destructive way of trying out glazes and airbrush overlays, or juts as a way to keep different parts of the painting process organized.

-CONSEQUENCE-FREE EXPERIMENTATION.
It's nice to know that there is a tool that I can use to try out some crazy technique that I theorized or read about, and not feel like I am wasting resources like paint or paper. This can also factor into the first point I made with layers of experimenting with a look on a final piece on the layer above it, then delete that layer if you;re dissatisfied with that look.

-CUTTING OUT THE MIDDLE MAN.
To show traditional works on websites such as this one, there is always a digital intermediate process such as scanning or digital photography. Depending on what image you're trying to capture, this process can be a bit of a pain. where as with a digital drawing or painting, it is already digitized! So it is ready to go online right when the piece is finished.

-WANT TO PAINT IN THE DARK? NO PROBLEM!
Working on a backlit screen is nice, I mean really nice! When painting traditionally, you have to make sure that you have a bright light source to make sure that your colors are at the right tint and value. Not the case with digital painting, it's always what you see is what you get. Still too dark? Turn up the brightness!

-A FULL ART STUDIO IN YOUR BACKPACK.
With a laptop, a graphics tablet, and a good application to work with, you have a lot of versatility with something that doesn't take up a whole lot of space.

-BETTER IMAGE EDITING THAN ERASING AND REDRAWING.
With the different transformation tools you can get different parts of your drawing at the right size or shape without being destructive to your drawing (I'm using the word 'Destructive' an awful lot aren't I?).

-SAVING ON PRINTER INK WHEN USING REFERENCE MATERIAL.
When I draw or paint from a reference, I like to use one that is printed out and next to my piece as opposed to looking up at a computer screen and back at my art piece over and over like I am taking notes for a class (Who wants to be reminded of that?). When working digitally, the reference can be stationed right next to the piece on the screen, or even at times I will open the image as a layer in the document to move it around wherever I need it. This is much more cost effective than using colored ink which can be pretty pricey.

-DIGITAL FOR DIGITAL'S SAKE!
We have programs now a days like Corel Painter that tout that they are able to replicate traditional media in a digital environment. Traditional artists yell foul at this saying that nothing is like the real thing, and I actually have to agree with them. Why try hard to replicate a traditional look when you can easily do the traditional look with the real thing? But I don't think that is the stuff that these digital art programers should be focusing on. They should look at what they can do that traditional art CAN'T do. Vector graphics, alternative masking, this is the kind of stuff that digital artists should be focusing on and that's what I try to do.


So those are my thoughts on what is great about using both. I like to think that someone who uses traditional or digital is like the difference between oils and watercolor, we're all trying to accomplish the same goal in a different way. We should stop trying to push one or the other out and just include it into the family. We are all simply two-dimensional artists (and no, I'm not going to get into a 2-D versus 3-D discussion). When I run into someone who says that they don't draw on paper anymore, I tell them to give it another chance. When I find an iconoclast opposed to the idea of digital art, I tell them that it is a fun tool to play around with. A really good friend of mine once told me something, that i think that he quoted from another source, He said: "Use everything at your disposal and be a slave to no one." This is a quote that has stuck with me for a long time and I always think about it when planning out any given art pieces I do. We need to stop having an "Us Versus Them" mentality and think about how we can bring everything together to make the best images possible.

Thanks For Reading,
-TiMBo

Well, It's been a long time devaintart.

I am not to big on blogging or journaling things, so don't expect this to be a regular thing.

I have decided to get back into posting things on this site in a big way, so I logged back on, and at the top of my page it says that I have been deviant for 8 years. This makes me really sad. Not because I am 8 years older since I first made an account on here, but because 8 years has gone by and there isn't much in my gallery to show for it.

Well, that's not going to be the case anymore.

Im going to clean out a lot of my old art and get rid of a lot of it. Sorry if some of you have favorited that stuff and it is selfish of me to take it off, but I have become a very different person since I did those thing and it is not representative of what I'm capable of and who I am now.

So who ever is still or now watching, please give me your support for making my page fresh again.

-Timbo

I was just recently pretty sick and had no energy to draw or give my same grinning enthusiasm to doing my schoolwork. but now im over that and i will hopefully bring an onslaght of artwork here on DA in the near future.

i looked at my pageviews today and i saw that it was at 1888. that means i should start drawing a tribute pic for 2000 pageviews. so tell all your friends how cool my DA page is to boost that up to the 2K so you can see that.

For those of you that have actualy been close watchers of mine, you will now notice that there has been a huge amount of deviations that arnt in my gallery any more. Well... i did it, i just couldnt stand to look at it any more. i know that there my be many of you who think this is a selfish thing, but im a guy who only wants to look forward and keep on improving, and ive improved so much in a short 2 years. so for anyone who liked my old art, im really sorry. all i can promise you now is that there will be much better work to come.

-Timbo