Artistic Mischief

How are your new year's revelation moving along? Have you achieved any of your goals yet?
For me, these recent months have been really busy and full of art, some of it is unfinished, some of it not ready to be revealed. But I've still created more than ever before, and it's nowhere close to fizzling out. My head and my notebook are full of ideas, each more ambitious than the last. And thanks to focusing more on learning I feel like I really made a leap with my art compared to the plateau I was stuck on for quite some time. 
I don't have anyone else around me that shares my passion apart from my lovely fiance, and that endsup feeling a bit lonely sometimes. So I'd like to share some of my journey with you, what helped  me a long the way and what I made of it.

One of the major pushing points was LenamoArt's Bold Plan challenge, which helped me organize my priorities and finally get my shit together.
For example, it helped me identify that I want and need to get better at anatomy. So I couldn't have gotten a better birhday present than Proko's photo reference bundle (from my sweetheart of a brother). Here are a few of the timed figure studies I did with that, and boy did that help boost my gesture.




Another inspiration came from Angel Ganev's Youtube channel. Even though he paints in a totally different style, I find his manner of explaining very fool-proof and he did get me thinking about brushwork a lot more than before. Also he's hysterical.
Here's a few portraits I started on after watching his videos:

 

Another incredibly funny youtube artist I recently found is Ethan Becker, who is just so COOL I can't get over it. His work is also very different from mine but the way he treats motion and reference totally changed my outlook. I can definitely recommend checking him out and trying out his advice on using a video instead of a photo as a reference.



And another major discovery I made for myself recently is that you can get inspired by anything. And you shouldn't wait for it to hit you up the head, but actively seek it out, look for it. 
Some things that inspired me this year are for example Banks' new album, Kaycee Rice's otherworldly dancing, the epic witcher book series (surprise, surprise!), the magnificent art everyone did for Evilbook 2...

This gorgeous photograph by Alessio Albi that inspired Night sweeping over the forest




This beautiful person, who took me in as a friend



And most recently, prompted by Wacom's new challenge, I finally got around to painting a character inspired by slavic folklore, by my own culture. 



Some of you might remember the enthusiasm with which I painted my Sami shaman, how much I worried about the little details, about her costume, about the culture and so on. Hopefully, there will come more characters, inspired by other cultures, but I must admit, with Bojana I felt so much more comfortable and free to ideate simply because I've grown up with that aesthetic. 



What's coming next? Well, I still have a truckload on my plate to finish, but I'd like to leave you with this EPIC piece of writing (who says fanfiction must be bad?) based on the Fallout 4 universe. On the scale from 1 to 10 I'd rate it "can't wait for the next chapter, but fear that once it ends life will be meaningless". Go give it a read!