Johnsibbick.com

http://www.johnsibbick.com/

Just found the website of a book illustrator who I really enjoyed back when I was younger (though I didn't know his name.) Check out John Sibbick's stuff, especially his art illustrating the myths and stories of various cultures.

So...

It's the start of week 5 of the quarter and I'm feeling the stress of trying to balance my output at school, my personal creativity and the other aspects of my life (church, family, social stuff.) We're half way through, and I sometimes wonder how I'm going to make it through these next few weeks.
I love my school and I love the growth that stems from the intense nature of the full time program, but it's draining at some points. It demands a tremendous amount of investment in regards to time, money, and soul. I sometimes feel guilty whenever I'm working on something that's not directly or indirectly related to school work.
When I was at CSUN I had a teacher who constantly drilled the idea of maintaing our personal artistic projects while we were working at a studio, or on work for others (like school assignments.) At the time I thought it was an odd thing to say. How could any creative person not devote time to their personal creativity? For artist it's suppouse to be as natural as breathing right?
During my first quarter at Laafa I finally understood why he would feel it was so relevant to tell us that. Four days a week of 7 to 10 hour days, and many, many nights when homework assignments would take me well into the early morning (I remember staying up until 4 AM finishing perspective homework.) It scared me at some points because I began to seriously question whether it would be possible in the future to work in the animation/illustration industry and do independent work. Could a person devote an equal amount of energy and passion to both without burning out?
Laafa's made me think about that alot. Of course again, I love the place and all the Atelier students can see the incredible progress we've made, but it can be so mentally and physically exhausting.....

The irony of course is that I feel guilty about typing this instead of doing more studying and classwork.

Somethings a foot.

Yes I missed my update, and all I got was this awful pun. Anyway, here's a foot cast I've been working on.

From Allan Kraayvanger's book Figure Drawing workshop.

Walk before you fly."Most of us look with awe at the drawings of the Old Masters. Those works are timeless, made by the finest artists of their generations-artist learned from and contributed to the accumulated knowledge of all the generations before them, benefiting from a solid foundation and building one for those who followed. At some point in the mid-nineteenth century, artists began the search for other ways to express themselves. There had always been innovators, but that was when the search began in earnest. The Camera had made realism in art seem almost redundant-and so began a new and very exciting chapter in the history of art.A major consequence of this new emphasis on novelty was the elimination of traditional methods of teaching art in most schools. The results are obvious. Only the very few schools that continued to teach the hard-won knowledge of the past were able to consistently turn out students who could earn a living in the fields of illustration or in anything but the rarified market of the avant-garde. And so a great many artist with potential became plumbers, carpenters-anything but artists or illustrators. (Here's the good part Brianna)The vast majority of people cannot understand or appreciate the so-called "fine arts" of today. These are the very same people who constitute the major market for reasonably priced art. Given that art is language, a way of communicating, it defies logic why anyone would speak in Greek when addressing an English-speaking audience and then complain when no one understands him or her. A whole new culture has grown from this new art that speaks only to a selected few. Throughout history, charlatans have taken advantage of those who need someone else to tell them what they should like. It is interesting that most of the artist who have withstood the test of time acquired the basic traditional skills of drawing before branching out in other directions-Degas, Modigliani, Matisse, Picasso, Van Gogh, and Klimt to name only a few. You must start from a solid base if you are to move into uncharted waters. Nothing is so empty as the search for newness, or the attempts to be contemporary when you are working from a wobbly foundation.

Grey headless figure.

From the last quarter.

Okay I'm a horrible person.

I missed my weekly update, but I'll have new stuff up soon.