89 days to what?

So what's this blog all about then?

Old Pencil Sketch from High School.

In a nutshell. Artistic improvement. 

When I first decided to teach myself how to illustrate 5 years ago, I didn't really know what that meant and if I had known how long the journey would be I may have thought twice!

What I did know was that I was creative. 

I knew I could draw but hadn't done it for almost 15 years since those pencil sketches for art class in secondary school (high school). 

I knew I had just turned 30 and I wasn't getting any younger waiting around for stuff to happen.

I knew I actually had to start taking action if I wanted to get anywhere.

Beginnings...

I bought my first Wacom tablet in 2007. I was right out of Uni (2nd degree) and unemployed at the time so I remember umming and ahhing about the price tag which I think was somewhere around four hundred Australian dollars. Incidentally that tablet is still the one I use. Go Intuos 3! 

Hear Kitty Roar

I had to dig around in the e-closet to find the first digital sketch I did with it of Kitty, my cat at the time. Actually it was a sketch of a photo I took of Kitty; my first real study now that I think of it. 

You may be fooled in thinking that it isn't that bad and that I must have had some skill even then. Even I must have been impressed with myself because I had the gall to sign it. 

I totally faked it. Oh I did both of them alright but they are faked because while they both are fairly accurate to the photos I was drawing from, replication isn't at all what makes up artistic skill.

I could churn out a decent cat from reference but if you asked me to draw one from my imagination that would have been a totally different game. 

Artistic ability like many creative crafts is about understanding the importance of and mastering fundamentals, in this case encompassed in line and action, gesture and anatomy, form and perspective, value and colour theory. Making these second nature is imperative and this can only be be achieved with incredible amounts of practice. Incredible amounts. 
Some may have heard of Gladwell's theory in the book Outliers about needing 10,000 hours of practice in order to become an expert at anything. That's probably conservative. 

Since the days of the cat drawing I dedicated some of my free time to art on top of the day job and whatever else was going down, but it was generally pretty aimless. I did get better, albeit slowly. In early 2011 about 24 months ago after a long-term relationship went kaput I did a major re-evaluation of where I was heading. With the whole lot of free time I now had I decided to do at least one sketch or digital doodle a day. I mostly kept to it. I began to see improvements more quickly, but I was still just painting whatever I wanted to paint with no real focus.

Focusing in, burning out.

Volume 1 of White Cloud Worlds

16 months ago I went to a 2 day weekend concept design workshop in Wellington. It was run under the White Cloud Worlds name, a New Zealand concept art and fantasy illustration art book started by the awesome Weta senior concept artist and great teacher Paul Tobin. He doesn't update his blog that often but that's because he's too busy doing things like designing Orcrist, Thorin Oakenshield's sword for the Hobbit, amongst other things. The equally awesome illustrator Ben Wooten was also teaching there.  If you are a budding concept designer or illustrator in New Zealand, I highly recommend these workshops for intensity of learning and value for money. The next ones should be coming up in March 2013 but they haven't been announced just yet.

That was where it all kicked off in earnest for me.  Concept designing was a process I thoroughly enjoyed, could see myself doing for many many hours in a day, and may even be able pay me a decent salary to do it if I got lucky enough to convince someone I could do it! I really needed to get clocking on my 10,0000 hours.

After that I spent 3-4 hours a night dedicated to improving, all after an 8 hour work day. A quick calculation showed that at that rate and not counting my already clocked hours, it would take me....9.62 years to get to 10,000!!!  I began to paint on the weekends. I had little to no social life. I wangled some flexibility at work to go down to a 4 day work week, mostly due to the most awesome manager ever. I'm not saying that just because he may be reading this, but seriously, my manager can beat your manager, any day, easy.

I even started getting some freelance jobs here and there for Indie game companies and some graphic novel concept stuff, but nothing major. I was running on an average of 5 hours of sleep a night for 8 months. I improved even quicker still but it just wasn't sustainable. I burned out and couldn't paint anything for weeks! I needed more time...and there just wasn't enough around. 
It was around this time that an idea started fermenting away in my head. I needed a good chunk of solid exclusive time to dedicate only to levelling up my skill, maybe a few months even, But how was that going to be possible?

Barrelling in.

Greg Broadmore holding his Victorious Mongoose

The final push came from something Greg Broadmore said at a week long concept design workshop I attended in September 2012. Greg is another incredible Weta concept designer responsible for way too much cool sh*t for me to mention without me soiling myself. 

He had talked about how when he was younger he was off and on the work benefit for a while and had become disillusioned with his life. He then took all his savings from working part time at a video rental store and for 3 months did nothing but draw every day and finish his first comic. The comic eventually became his folio of sorts which nailed him the job at Weta, though I'm sure his down to earth nature and even more awesome beard had more to do with it. 

Bing! 

That did it. I had forgotten that I had savings too! I was in. 3 months was perfect, the risk was addressed in my head and I was ready. Now I just had to convince my boss. Did I mention he was awesome? 

750-ish, but who's counting?

This long ramble of which I promise there will be much less of in future postings, leads me to the here and now. I have 3 months of dedicated time. I do still have all my outgoings and I will be living on nothing but savings. Who needs years of savings anyway if not for moments just like these? 
In this time I plan on working 10 hour days, 6 days a week. That should equate to about 750 hours, less than a tenth of a good 10,000. Not that I think 10,000 is a be all or end all figure but it is a nice motivational touch-point to keep the rack tightening.  Speaking of racks, my weekly schedule for the next 89 days:

The timetable is ambitious to say the least. I will be focusing on my fundamentals and studies as well as running through the concept design process every day to simulate a studio environment and also hopefully land some new pieces into my portfolio. 

Oh and there is the "little" add-on of a finished comic, graphic story, whatever you want to call it. I want to test my skill as a story teller, apply myself to a decent length project of my own and have a finished product at the end of it to boot. From my burning out last year I realise the importance of balance and healthy eating, sleeping, socialising and exercise periods have been built in.

I am hoping this will stand not only as a journal of my journey, my process, my improvement but hopefully also as a source of my learning's in general and as inspiration to people like the 5-year-ago me, with desire in bucket loads but not a clue as to how to go about the next steps.

So I hope you will come along with me; the path upwards is narrow and unrelenting but the days are yet long and bright and the way is well marked.

Amit