I’m trying a new thing here. I like a good mailing list and sometimes I worry that my mailing list has… not been that exciting. I want more great artist mailing lists and I thought I’d try to make the sort of mailing list that I would love to find.
I often try a lot of things and fail at them. I give up on stuff, I procrastinate, I get demotivated because they flop. There’s a lot of reasons and excuses, but the point is: it happens. I obviously don’t want that to happen with this, but it might. So I’m not going to promise that you’ll get one of these every week from now on, but there’s always a chance that you will. I guess we’ll see.
So here’s a quote I like, an image I find inspiring, a book or article I’m reading, a thought I’m having, a product/tool that I’m using, and a brief overview of what I’m doing/making/releasing.
Noah
“The most exhausting thing in life, I have discovered, is being insincere.” – Gift From The Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh
We spend about 99.99999% of our time pursuing various goals (financial, career, relationship, physical, etc.) and a vanishing few moments attaining those goals. That moment where you finish your book and send it to the printer. That second where a painting goes from in-progress to “finished.” That moment you realize you’ve hit your target weight, your target lift, your target time.
And usually it’s a bit underwhelming.
Sure, celebrate it. Make a thing of it. Kick back and have a drink. Tell your friends.
But so much of the joy is in the pursuit. The countless hours pursuing a goal are, in fact, where the real joy is.
It’s cliche to say that “it’s not the destination, it’s the journey.” We all cringe when we read that, because we’ve seen it so many times (probably even printed onto pillows a few times). Those doesn’t mean there isn’t a truth in there, though. We might know it intellectually, and we almost certainly do. But we carry on feeling otherwise, and thus don’t benefit from the truth.
I know, strong start for this section. But they stole both of my nail clippers at airport security in Egypt (the clippers I’ve been flying with for about the last 8 years or so) and I needed some new ones. They were just regular nail clippers so I took this opportunity to explore the internet’s weird world of Best Nail Clippers (in the list of Things You Never Thought You’d Google).
They’re a cool design and they seem to work great, if you want some probably-over-engineered nail clippers.
Doing
Oil painting! I’ve done a fair few figure paintings in oils now, so I wanted to get back into landscapes. I just uploaded a new process video of my latest one.
I found out that my first book, Paint Figures Better, is finally on a boat and headed my way. I’m ridiculously excited and intimidated. It’s supposed to be about 1400kg and 4 cubic meters worth of books, which is probably around the same size and weight as my car.
We’re about 53 hours in and Paint Figures Better’s Kickstarter campaign is over 80% funded! I’m feeling really blessed by this. It’s stirred up all kinds of shit online, but I’m so amazed by the people who support me and want me to succeed.
Updated my article, 10 Books Every Artist Must Read because some of the books have been updated/reprinted since then and some of the info was out of date. So yeah. If you’ve never read all of these books, get on it.
I originally shared this article a few years back and I know it helped a lot of people jumpstart a study habit, so I thought I’d refresh it (and post it somewhere other than stupid locked-down Medium).
I just wrote an article on whether using reference for art is cheating. It comes up a lot and so many students and aspiring artists worry about it, so I wanted to address it.
Just posted an article over on Reference.Pictures called 10 Ways to Use Reference to Make Better Art. I’ve shot thousands and thousands of reference pictures and shared them with the world. So I’m asked pretty often to help people better understand how to use reference. I thought I’d share a few thoughts about that which might help some people out.
2020 has been a shitshow but I’m kinda grateful for it.
Not everyone gets a complete life-reset. It’s hard and painful and most of the time it sucks, but coming out of it on the other side almost feels, well, liberating.
Going through awful stuff has made me appreciate all of the good things in life. I love my friends and family even more now. I appreciate their company, support, and love more than I ever have before. I love you, my supporters. In my endless striving to improve, I often lost sight of just how good I had things. I don’t do that as much any more. I take time every day to just be grateful. I’m so, so grateful for you.
I’ve also learned and grown as a person more than I normally would. If pressure can be a catalyst for change, this year has been an avalanche. There was no resisting change. Growth was essential for survival. I dove into books, spirituality, meditation, etc. to learn to open up and be a better person. It’s working. It’s not complete, because those things never are. But it’s helping.
So thank you. Thanks for being here. There were certainly times when I thought my days as an artist were over. And sometimes I still have those thoughts. But knowing that there are still people supporting me has been immeasurably encouraging. It’s nice to think I can still have a future.
2018 was the best year of my life. I know I said that about 2017 too, but there just seems to be an upward trend happening. Coincidentally, it was also a really good year for my art. I explored new subjects, remedied some of the weaknesses, got back to working traditionally, and tried whole new mediums.
Remembering Home – Was supposed to be my last piece of 2017 but I kinda missed the deadline.A bit of sketching process for Remembering HomeWe got engaged! I proposed to Rachel in Bali on a beautiful afternoon by the sea. We then bobbed around in the sea. It was just about as perfect as anyone could hope for.We made an elephant friend in Bali. We miss him. <3In experimenting with new styles, approaches, and themes, I created this concept piece. I call it How the Sun Found the Moon. After I did that, my then-fiancée Rachel wrote a poem to go with it. It’s adorable.Bali was an incredibly productive time for us and we both worked hard to push our work to new levels. I had always neglected foliage in my work, so I wanted to have a piece that was focused on it so I could overcome that challenge. I also wanted to expand my figurative skills. All of that led to this piece: So Hand in Hand They PassedDoomsday! One of my favorite Magic pieces I’ve done yet. I painted it early in 2017, but due to release schedules it wasn’t shown until 2018. I’m still quite proud of it.The Winged People – wanted to do a somewhat faster, simpler piece after doing that one with all of the foliage. This came together in just a few days, as I recall.Idylls of Love – Again pushing the foliage aspect of my work, as well as expanding and changing my style. I began incorporating more linework into my pieces here. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long time but also something I hesitated to embrace.The Peaceful. A short story for The Sin of Man. I had the bones for this story outlined for a long time, but finally got around to writing it.
These were some concept pieces for The Sin of Man. I wanted to explore some not-exactly-human humanoid species in the world. So I started with giants and pygmies. I’ve started writing some stories showing off a bit of their culture and behavior, too. I’ll publish some of that in 2019.
Some work done for Guilds of Ravnica for Magic: The Gathering. I’m including them here because this is around the time I painted them, sequentially.
The Legendary Sorceries! Dominaria was a dream job for me. I got to paint epic, iconic work in exactly the sort of formal way I love. Mark Winters gave me incredible freedom with these and I think they’re some of the best work I’ve ever done for Magic. I was honored to get to do justice to so many iconic characters/moments.
All of these were painted in 2017, but I had to sit on them for a long time.
History of Benalia. One of the… odder jobs I’ve gotten from Magic. Done as a concept for what Sagas could be, it was an opportunity for me to explore something entirely outside my comfort zone. I’m really happy people love the art, but there was definitely part of me that doubted this piece a lot. It’s just so different from usual that I had no idea how to judge it.
A bit of apparel design, just because. When we were in Bali and Thailand I got the itch to try something entirely new for me. I wanted to make some cool clothing with my art on it. So I designed some work specifically for that purpose. I had to wait till we flew back to Europe and had a more consistent shipping address to see the samples, but it was a great feeling to see my work on a wearable piece of clothing.
I now sell apparel on my website and am gearing up to launch some new designs in the coming weeks/months.
Exploring Portugal. We love, love, love Portugal. Definitely one of the highlights of our travels this year.More Portugal goodness, cause it was just so damn gorgeous there.Quick study I painted of my lady. <3Married! It was all a bit of a whirlwind, but soon after we arrived back in America we ended up heading down to the courthouse for a little wedding attended by a couple friends. It was a beautiful day and we loved it. Happiest day of my life.
Over the summer, I re-ran Art Camp 3: Landscapes. It was a chance for previous students to do it all over again as well as for a new wave of students to dive in. I hadn’t done anything with Art Camp in 2017, so it felt good to get back to it.
It’s inspired me to start working on making Art Camp 4 for 2019.
We started a podcast called Creators Chat. We had been having so many good conversations about art, life, writing, working, motivation, goals, inspiration, etc. and felt like they were good things to share with the world. So we set up a camera and started recording. We’ve now done 10 episodes and are planning on more in the coming year.
Traditional painting. I finally got back to working in oils again. This is a goal I had been trying to do for a long time, but managed to keep putting off or being unable to do. So this year once we were back in America and more stable I prioritized oil painting again and have done a whole pile of new pieces that’ll be coming out in 2019.
Rachel and I took the month of November to focus on writing. Her on her novel and me on my non-fiction book, How to Be a Creator. While neither of us were strictly following the guidelines of the challenge, we both wrote a tremendous amount and managed to hit our goals. It was an exhausting month and a strain to try and force so much writing out of ourselves, but it was a hell of an accomplishment.
Afterwards, I focused more on sketching and doing personal work because I needed some art therapy after all of those words:
Polymorphous. An exploration in a new direction I’m taking my work. Landscapes, but very, very weird. This was so much fun to paint. I recorded all 16~ hours of the painting process and would like to put together a narrated timelapse of this one.Spirit Cairn for Magic: The Gathering. Cause glowy rocks are cool.
I didn’t paint this card this year nor did it come out this year… but I did put together this video recently. So I guess that counts.
I’ve continued to experiment with new sketches as you can see above. As well as diving into some personal pieces in oils both as preparation for a refocus on traditional media and practicing to teach oils. Art Camp 4 is just around the corner, after all.
Which brings us to now, right on the cusp of a new year.
I have so many things I’ve done and so many more that I’m planning to do. I’ve never had so many possibilities or excitement for my future. I’ve mentioned probably half of the things I’ve been up to and am planning on, which should give you a pretty good idea of what my life is like right now.
I’ve already set my goals for the new year and have begun moving toward them. I’m hitting the ground running and it’s gonna be a wild ride. I hope you’ll follow along.
