Some of my recent studies. Granted they are very much in my comfort zone but it felt nice to play it safe for a while. I've found improvement and a stronger sense of style as I went so they are doing some good! I intend to move forward into head and body studies and hopefully achieve similar things there.

It's been quite some time since I have updated this blog. Mostly because I have been far too busy working in 3D/uni work to do regular paintings like I used to but also because I've been having (another?) crisis with my art.

At the moment I'm really starting to enjoy working in 3D especially since using Zbrush; the program is the perfect balance for me. I have taken a big interest in improving my skills in that program and have come to terms with concept art and illustration not being the be-all end-all of my career.

Regardless of this, I still want to keep working on my painting skills as that really is where my main interests lie. Plus the satisfaction you get from a good painting far outweighs any feelings I get from 3D.  For my current university project I tried to produce some really good 2D concept and illustration work, and I didn't quite hit the high standard I'd set for myself. I know I'm certainly not the best but at the same time I did think I could do better.


Fortunately through all this I have been able to identify weaknesses and formulate a plan of action.

• Identify my strengths and begin to work specifically on those, accepting that anything more will have to be learned later in my own time
• Look at other artists that do the kind of work I like and study them
• Do more master studies
• Learn more about composition and lighting
• Work cleaner, especially with my concept art and presentation skills
• Be content but never satisfied
• Rinse and repeat

I really enjoy concept art, but I've began to accept that if I ever want work doing it then I will need to work in a more understandable and polished way; right now my concepts tend to make sense to me more than they do anyone else, so that has room for improvement.


Also the way I present my work makes a huge difference, but unfortunately I don't seem to have that great an eye for graphic design. Again that's just a case of looking at how others do it and translating that into my own work.

Art is a constant learning journey, but I aim to work smarter not harder.

First painting of 2016

First painting of 2015

I find it a little difficult to look back at the year since I get it confused with my academic years, but this time last year I was only just beginning to settle into uni life. Instead of blabbing on I'm going to try and split my year into significant stuff/landmarks.

- Got rid of toxic relationships

Without going into too much detail, a big change happened for me when I ended an incredibly toxic relationship. It certainly wasn't easy, but it sure paid off. I finally began to re-discover myself (cheesy as that sounds) and find my confidence which had an effect on every aspect of my life (for the better).

-Formed strong friendships

Whilst I got rid of bad relationships I also found new friends at university who I'd consider some of the best friends I'd ever had who I felt inspired and pushed me to do better.

-Started doing more original paintings

One of my biggest insecurities(?) in my paintings was that although I could copy a photo pretty well, my original pieces (which is what I wanted to do) were in no way up to scratch. They all ended up pretty awful, but I started to re-paint some of them and the obvious improvements made me feel so much better.



-Quit my job

For several years I had worked part time at McDonalds. I kept my job whilst at uni, only working in the holidays when I returned home. I had intended to work full time all summer to earn some money before I went back, but it made me so incredibly miserable I decided to quit. Although it may not seem like a big deal to most, it was to me; the significance of choosing to have no money rather than work a ridiculous job that drained any joy or motivation I may have had was pretty large. In reflection it also made me want to work even harder at what I do to ensure that I never have to do this kind of job again.

-Found my place at uni

After a very long summer I finally moved back into Leicester into a new house shared with three very good friends. I'm not quite sure how but everything seemed to click for me; I began to open up, speak to more people on my course who (through no fault of their own) didn't know I existed. This had a really big positive impact on the way I saw myself and increased my confidence yet again.

-Bagged a cool boyfriend

Soppy but necessary I also met my boyfriend (also on my course who also didn't know I existed, nor I him) and so far he has been wonderful and makes me very happy. With him being in the year above me I have learned a great deal from him already, and there's something very nice about being on the same course and understanding the demands from it.

-Improved in 3D

Following on from my boyfriend, I have learned a lot from him and have also made peace with 3D. Something I never thought I'd say. For an entire year I felt like I was learning 3D at uni just to get by; I had no intention of ever doing any professional work with it, but I think I've now finally seen potential (in myself as well) to consider it. My main aim is still concept art and illustration, but it doesn't feel like the be all end all of my career, which leads me onto my next point:

-Offered new opportunities

I won't talk too much about this since I don't like talking about things that aren't necessarily set in stone nor have happened yet, but good things are coming and they have an awful lot of potential. I'm very excited.

I feel like I could talk about stuff and things for a lot longer, but without telling you my entire life story, these are some of the main points.

Overall this year has gone from pretty low to very high. My only new years resolutions are to worry less and keep doing what I'm doing. I finally feel at the stage where I've worked it out, got my shit together, produced some good stuff and opened doors for myself, so now all that is left to do is keep going! I'm excited to see what 2016 has to offer!

Since I'm lacking in uni content on here I figured now that I'm working on my next project over Christmas I can do some process updates on my personal blog.

The next uni project is the 'Dichotomous characters' project which involves us concepting two characters that (to my understanding) look well together but also look very different.

To begin the project I used a similar process to my sentry gun which was to decide on a strong definite 'theme' before I even began concepting. This means I don't need to spend ages searching for a theme through my concepts and can instead focus on my own mini brief. I decided to do a space Queen and her handmaiden with inspiration from Queen Amidala's elaborate costumes and her plain (in comparison) hand maidens.

Although I was directly taking inspiration from somebody else's idea I tried to back track and look at where the designers may have got their inspiration from.


As I was pulling up reference and inspiration I was finding that I could trace back almost the exact costume and/or headress and hair inspiration for their designs. Something that I admired in their costume design was the solid base in Historical and cultural reference; one of the costumes for example doesn't differ any further than a kimono and one hairstyle/headpiece is almost exactly the same as a Mongolian Queen's.

Since they're so similar to their reference and probably more iconic/better known than their real life counter-parts if I try to start my designs from those inspirations I will arrive at something far too similar and would just end up looking like a Star Wars rip-off no matter how hard I tried.

To counter this I tried picking out aspects of the costumes that I liked; the impractical head-pieces, the excess of fabric and the detail and overall strong impression of the costume. I started pulling up Medieval/traditional Russian clothing which I was actually quite unfamiliar with. They ticked a lot of the boxes I needed especially in terms of huge and elaborate head pieces and rich detail in their layers of fabric. I still had to include some Chinese pieces since they were so fantastic I couldn't not let them influence my own design.

Moving away from the Queen's design I knew I wanted her hand-maiden to look plain beside her while also looking sleek and elegant. I found more modern reference for this design. I also began looking at Alien faces; to further separate my designs from Star Wars' I decided I should make my characters Aliens. I thought this would be an interesting challenge and would be more fun.

I also began looking at Art Deco and geometric shapes. Of course being influenced by my last Ancient Egypt themed project I considered designing my Aliens to look like they were the ones that influenced the Egyptian's style but I knew this may be too far-fetched and would limit my possibilities of a cool design.

Knowing that Silhouettes probably weren't going to work for me I went straight into sketching. I tried to focus on shape and not get bogged down in details since I knew once I started I'd never stop. I made the decision to design the Queen first since that was going to be the strongest design and then let the handmaiden be influenced by that.

Moving on with my favourites from the last batch I was struggling to find something I 100% liked- I had aspects of each that I really liked but they wouldn't all fit together properly. I did feel like I was achieving a sense of what I set out to achieve with my concepts though.

I started to refine some of the ideas which helped me move forward with something I quite liked.

Finally I had settled on an idea give or take a few details. The large headpiece is incredibly impractical but also large and imposing. The dress is relatively plain instead of silhouette but too much may have made the design lose balance.

Something I didn't want was for the queen to look too inviting, overly feminine or sexy. I felt the bare arms made her look just a little too nice and the large sleeves blocked her out just enough to make her look solid and strong. My alien space Queen does not dress to please the male gaze!!

With a Queen design I was comfortable with it was time to move on to her handmaiden. I really struggled at first to come up with something that looked good on its own but also worked beside the Queen and didn't make her look remotely as high-rank.


Eventually I came through with some designs I liked. I came up with veiling the handmaiden which would also hint that she was not as important as her Queen.

With the designs somewhat solidified so far I knew it was important that they worked from anything other than front view. I sketched them out in slightly more lively and realistic poses to begin to visualise them further. The next stage is their Alien faces which I'm hoping to make work really well with their clothing. Once I've done this I'll probably go all out on the details and my my am I looking forward to it!

So I've just completed a five week university project. I completed the project itself in 3 weeks and I'm really happy with what I've produced. In the last two weeks I made a tomb from scratch which was something I'm completely unfamiliar with doing. I'm proud of myself. I think I worked really hard and I think I've produced some pretty good work, especially by my standards and my track record with 3D.

Do I sound bad for saying that?

I would consider myself incredibly self-aware. It's a blessing and a curse at the same time and it probably comes from childhood when everything you said and did was judged and you could get bullied for it. I don't believe the idea of being judged for what you say and do has changed except for everyone's a little more subtle and bullying isn't as obvious when you're adults.

For a long time I've known I was pretty good at art. How did I know? Friends told me, family told me, my teachers wanted me to take my art GCSE a year early because I could. I eventually learned that I didn't need to disagree with people when they complimented my work, and that didn't mean I was stuck up or snobby; a simple 'thankyou' doesn't mean 'I know' when somebody says "that's really good!".

So I continued on accepting compliments graciously but I always had this nagging feeling that people were judging me for not disagreeing with them when they complimented my work. I'm not sure whether that's true or not; whether this was a classic set up of "you're so pretty" "not as pretty as you!". Being so self-aware I worried about these things; I thought about how people's opinions of me would change when I said thankyou and would openly admit I was proud/happy with a piece of my work.

I won't deny that I am incredibly proud of my work, and I do think that I am pretty good at what I do. I certainly have room for improvement but I'm definitely not bad. Now some people seem to interpret that as 'stuck-up', snobby, even vain. Because of this I tend to hide my pride... but should I really have to? Is having self-confidence (something I've lacked for many years) so bad?

It could stem from society; something my situation reminds me of is the typical situation girls so often find themselves in. Boy tells girl she is beautiful. Girl is self-conscious and doesn't think much of herself so needs boy's validation on her beauty or her personality ("you don't know you're beautiful, that's what makes you beautiful"- One Direction, anybody?). Girl insists she is not but boy insists she is. Boy is a fantastic person for telling the girl she is beautiful. Now how about this: Boy tells girl she is beautiful. Girl says "I agree". Boy is conflicted and confused at girl's self confidence she is not supposed to have and promptly takes back his compliment or insults the girl.

Probably a completely different discussion for another time, but it is reminiscent of this bewilderment with self-confidence. I completely understand that there is a fine line between being proud of yourself whilst being modest and being proud of yourself while sitting atop your high horse telling people how awful they are compared to you. But where exactly is that line? Perhaps it is just personal opinion, since there are some people I would say are just simply confident in themselves and their work whilst other people would say they're stuck up and an awful human being.

Leading on from this a phrase that scares me is "you're making us look bad". I've heard it a few times -especially in the classroom/learning environment- and I'm never quite sure how to take it. Considering it's mostly heard in a learning environment may actually say a lot. Regardless, do people think that I'm doing this deliberately? Do people think I'm being malicious when I try and best myself and work hard? Because that's the only person I'm trying to be better than: myself.

It's an incredibly difficult topic, and something that I'm constantly struggling with. On one half: "why should I pretend I'm not happy with my work when I am?" on the other half: "whatever I think of myself I must be careful with how I present myself to other people so I don't come across as somebody I'm not". Maybe it is all about balance. Be proud of yourself but don't scream from the rooftops about it? Or maybe society needs to get their head around confidence since it is such a peculiar thing.

These are only personal thoughts and ramblings and my perspective on things. As always I enjoy hearing what other people think and other people's experiences on what I talk about.

In a world where information is at the tip of our fingers and tutorials and advice are so easy to come by its no wonder that we want everything fast.

I've found that a lot of questions to artists are now worded in a certain way: what tutorial did you follow? What brushes did you use? What reference did you use? What technique did you follow?

It seems like they're trying to find the shortcut to why the artist is so good. It must be the type of brushes they're using, they must have watched a great tutorial etc. But funnily enough there is never a straight answer to these questions."I watched this 5 min tutorial and gained 3 art levels" - it never sounds like that.

The answer is nearly always practice. Working hard every day and being bad before you can be good, and taking a long time to get good. Nobody wants to hear that! They want a quick solution, they want to get good fast. I'm no stranger to feeling some kind of disappointment when an artist's skill comes down to practicing; it's like reaching the top of a flight of stairs only to realise there's another 100 flights to go. It's hard, but it's the only way to truly get better at your craft.

So stop trying to find the shortcuts and accept this is a long journey and you're gonna hate it a lot of the time! You will get better, but only if you practice.