Painting trees is hard, but I feel like I am getting better.

Using hard edges seems to give a better result, than keeping things soft. Some of the studies suffer from lack of focal area though. It is an interesting balance, I have yet to understand and use better.

Just learning about anatomy, light and color.

So after talking to one of the artists I look up to, Jan Drenovec (check out his work here), I decided to try and adapt a study schedule. There are several reasons, why I wanted to do this.

1. he used it and another artist used the same schedule and they got really good. So it seems to work.
2. it frees my mind up from deciding every day what to study. Making small decisions like that costs energy, so by not having to decide that, I have more energy to make decisions in the artwork itself.
3. I think I finally know, where I want to go and what I want to do with my art. And this schedule tackles most of the areas I want to improve.

So here it goes, day 1 and 2 of the schedule.

In order to get a better knowledge of the planes of the head, I painted this study of the famous Asaro-Head.

I will have to paint one of these soon, so I figured it would be good to get used to painting those horns.

I tried to stay loose.

So 2020 has been an interesting year for me so far.

First my Wacom Cintiq Companion became unusable. Which meant I had to invest in a new computer, which is always a big step for me.

I learned so much about current graphics-cards, processors, laptop screens etc. as I hadn't in years.

But I finally decided and I am now waiting for it to arrive at my place. Until then this means going back to my old (2008!) desktop computer for me.

Second I am currently trying to pick up a new habit. Drawing or painting sketches every day in the morning of different subjects with traditional media. In the past I feel like I have been studying only very sporadically. Now I am back to focusing on those fundamentals again. I am posting my progress mainly on instagram and facebook, so feel free to follow me there. The idea is to establish the big shapes and value - groups (tonal arrangement) rather simply and quickly and to not mess with details.

I got the inspiration from following Vaughan Ling's morning guts stream on Youtube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnNB0rGTO1M

Here is the result of the first week or so.

In the past, I was always looking for some new tutorial or book to learn stuff. This is good and all, but I feel like just by doing these small studies, I am improving more rapidly then ever.

Instead of putting a lot of focus on data-collecting, this approach focusses on learning through failure and repetition. Also it is just a lot of fun.

Give it a try and tell me how you liked it.

P.s. if you don't know where to start. I would suggest rocks and trees, since it doesn't matter if proportions are off. Just go to pinterest and look for "rock formations" and "trees".

Setting a timer is also a good idea, since it forces me to stay focused on the big shapes.

Have fun.

The nature of this site makes it so that, I like to update it last, with new artwork. Websites like artstation make it way easier in my opinion. So this is why I starte updating my portfolio on Artstation first. I will update this site as well. But not today and maybe not tomorrow.

https://www.artstation.com/flohaeckh

So check out the new stuff over at Artstation. I will probably upload more art soon to artstation. There are some things I am dying to share.

Every once in a while, between jobs, I do these quick little creature sketches. I tried to keep it under 30 min. I feel like, I am at a point right now, where I know how to move through one of these, without struggling a lot.