Here’s some stuff done for the two last bloodsports. For those who don’t know bloodsports are challenges in the Crimson Daggers community and are a great exercise to improve, and feel part of the community, it’s totally worth and I recommend anyone to give it a try 
http://crimsonbloodsports.blogspot.com
Bloodsport #13: Time travelers final piece, wip and sketches/studies
Bloodsport #14 Beastmasters Final piece, wips, sketches and studies
I saw many people doing this but it wasn’t will the other day when Brent did it that I was motivated to redraw an old piece. I’m glad I did it, because here you can see all the days with lack of sleep, all the days saying my friends I preferred to stay at home working, my interest on learning from many different artists, the headaches those days struggling or my fights against distractions…THIS IS NOT TALENT, THIS IS HARD WORK.
I have to say I spent more time on the new one, but, last year was not a matter of time, I knew almost nothing about anatomy, light and color, design, etc.
I still have to improve a lot so, keep the hard work!!
A few car designs inspired by a sketch Scott Robertson posted the other day on Facebook.
A couple of sketches
It’s been 3 weeks since I said I was going to start working on a personal project to reinforce my design skills, get ready for FZD and feel it like a real job in some way.
But I failed, I’d like to say now everything was right but it wasn’t, I have to learn from this failure and repeat it again in the future because is something I recommend to anybody.
I painted this illustration just as “teaser” of something that I hope gets bigger with time.
Now I can explain what was the idea, in the 3 weeks, I was goinn to work on a project with a script part written by me and part written by a friend who was going to act as a client. There were deadlines, revisions, etc. And the part of the script I wrote was to set up a story with elements I would not be comfortable with because of the lack of experience but I was interested in.
The point is I wanted it to be like a bloodsports challenge, something where I not only practice, but also study new stuff. So the first week was going to be full of study and the other 2 designing and doing a few more studies if required.
The first week was right, live streaming only 1 hour a day I had a lot of time to keep focused studying.
In less than a month I’m going to Singapore for the certificate courses at FZD school. To take more profit of the school I’d like to reinforce my design skills a bit more, that’s why I’m going to put myself working on a “fictitious project” to reinforce my design skills over the next 3 weeks.This project is under an NDA so I won’t be able to talk about it or show anything.
It’s an ambitious project so I will need a big amount of hours dedicated. Obviously the time live streaming will be considerably reduced, so I’m going to stream only for 1 hour everyday at my usual time, 9AM CET, and focused on the bloodsports, taking it as a little break.
My goals after this 3 weeks are:
- Have the work for this project done, and then and only then, show all the work done.
- Replace the pieces from last year still in my portfolio for stuff done this year since my work is different now.
- Start sketchbooks in sites like conceptart, cghub, etc. (now I only have one on the Crimson Daggers)
The deadline is June 11th 22:00 CET. The “fun” starts NOW.
It’s been 3 months since I started my deathline and almost 4 months since I joined Crimson Daggers. I’d need a whole new post to explain how happy I am being part of this group, and how much it helped me and hopefully I could help others. But I’m going to talk about the detahline this time because after 3 months a few things changed. For those who didn’t see it, here is my original deathline.
I’m glad to say I’ve been following the point 3 as planned and trust me, my body missed a lot doing some exercise, I feel much better now and I’ll keep doing.
On the other hand, the hard work related to the next other 2 points, made me have 3 times a couple of days sick in the last 5 weeks. The lack of sleep and an irregular diet made me feel very weak from time to time. And I totally hate being on bed because I want to keep being productive. I’m also going to have less coffee, it wasn’t working on me recently and I was feeling even more tired after having it.
About the 1st point, I had no idea what I was talking about with studies, so I was doing meaningless studies for two months, without applying them, so at the end, they didn’t help me to improve and I only got a nice gallery of well painted copies. In the last month there were days I didn’t do any study if not required, but all the studies I did (or most of them) were applied on speedies, illustrations, etc making me feel I improved more in this month than the previous two.
There’s another thing, at the beginning I related streaming to doing studies but not anymore. At some point someone suggested me to show also personal stuff, would make the channel more interesting and that’s what I’ve been doing. And I’ve been waiting every week till Sunday to compile all the studies in a “studies of the week” sheet, but from now I will post them as soon as I can.
About the livestream, I have to say I’m impressed how I’ve been able to stream every single day for several hours and how much I enjoyed it and helped me to keep working.
I’m going to slightly change the first point as:
1. Do studies every week, apply them and post them.
The second point is more complex, it’s about building the portfolio and getting a job and it will take time. It’s true though, so many people asked me if I work now. I’ve been for a year without a job, since I decided to take digital painting as a serious professional option. I didn’t even try to get one since I’m trying to get better and better because I compare my work to other professionals and it’s not good enough.
But there’s already a date when I will start looking for a job no matter my level: August. In one month I’m going to Singapore to study at FZD school for 6 weeks (Actually I was going to go on April, and I planned it on January, but a few issues made me re-schedule that journey) and after that all my savings will be gone, so money needed, job needed. Till then, keep working hard and try to get better, if something taught me the Crimson Daggers is you can do this by yourself if you work really hard.
In this 3 months I replaced 7 pieces in my portfolio with better works. By August and specially after been to FZD school my portfolio shouldn’t have any work from last year.
I’ll write another post like this in 3 months, still not sure how my trip to Singapore will affect the livestreams or blog updates (I want to keep doing them) but the hard work won’t change at all.
And after all this long text (sorry if it was boring) some studies I painted on my livestream and designs.
This last one requires an explanation. I was painting the study on my livestream when another Dagger (Chilingo) jumped in my channel and told me “I like it, but can you make it yours?” So I added a big pink monster.
I submitted my entries for those challenges but I wanted to spend a bit more time before including them in my portfolio. Now I’m done with them.
I forgot to upload these sketches here. I drew them on Tuesday, got a crit from Trevor and Kekai, and other Daggers, fellow artists and friends voted for their favs and gave me some feedback. Thanks everybody!! Now after two days not much productive (that happens) I’m working on the final concept for MAX MARNSTEN 2099!!!
This time I have no excuses, I have to submit something for the Bloodsports challenge. The environment design course’s over, and that was the main reason I wasn’t able to finish my entires for other previous bloodsports (hopefully I can someday finish my poster of Princess Mononoke which is the one I had in a more advanced point).
You have all the info related to the new challenge HERE
I’m going to work on the Sci-Fi IP, and this morning I was drawing the first sketches on my livestream session (I will do the study later tonight). I will draw more variations of the character but here are the first 8 (I drew 2 more but they were horrible).
Your favs? 
Here are the studies of this week. I’m not very happy with the result of the latest ones, not sure if it was for the time spent, the pain in my hand or I was just tired. I’ll try to get better results next week. At least, 7 days = 7 studies
And here are the speedies from the last 2 Royal Fellas Challenges. Both painted in 2h30min.
Day 24th, topic: Sci-Fi Priest. Not bad at all
I joined today the livestream of The Royal Fellas (MArius Bota, John Silva, Sycra Yasin and Cristian Chihaia “Sickbrush”) in which they proposed a subject to paint, this time an elemental creature. Each one chose a different element: fire, wind, water and earth. We were free to paint the element we wanted, and I tried to do something with wind.
The livestream was about 3 hours but I spent about 4h in total. I got some feedback showing my wips to the people on the chat that helped to improve my piece
