Day of the fox

Hello amigos!

So, October 10 was apparently the day of the fox. I had no idea, and luckily one of my friends told me. Those of you who have been following me for a while probably know by then, how much I like foxes. They're so damn cute!

I took a short break from work and made this little sketch of two snuggly foxies.

I'm thinking about coloring it when I get more time on my hands again. I got plummed with work this week - which is a good thing though! Got some pretty cool opportunities coming my way again. But I'm so BORING! I can't tell you until it's official/printed/produced/released :c
As usual.


Don't be sad though! You can look at these steps instead :)

Have a fantastic day!
I'm gonna work work woooooork. All day, all night....


- Andrea

Be brave

"Mooster" Just realiized that I started working on it almost exactly 4 years ago!

Somebody liked one of my older pieces at Facebook, and oh I got all nostalgic... Hah, memories.

I remember how shy I used to be at fist, back when I just started to discover all the art communities and the artists dwelling there. As much as I admired them and wanted to be like them, I also felt really scared to show my own work.

So to those of you still hesitating:

Put yourself out there! 


Just do it. The sooner the better. I've been posting my artwork since 2002(I was 16), and I actually wish I did it sooner. You'll never get fully satisfied with your work, so the right time when you're ready will never come ;) Plus,  the feedback you can get from people viewing and commenting is absolutely priceless.

To all of you who's been sticking around since my early years - Thank You. You helped me improve, and you still are!

- Andrea

Work happened

Freelance work + Photoshop CS5 + Wacom Cintiq 12WX

Heeey amigos! How have you been?

I've been fine, it's been a good week. Things are starting to roll again. Don't really wanna jinx anything but I think inspiration has started to bloom again. I've had such a heavy art block through out the year, as you probably guessed already. I almost thought that I'll never get back to enjoy art again. Kinda scary isn't it?

This week has been pretty nice. Work at Netent flows nicely, and I also got some new freelance gigs coming in. It's really nice to get jobs coming in, without me chasing after them. Hard work sure pays off. Yay for me, but at the same time, it means that I'll have to shove some other things aside for a while.

Brb baby, I'll get back and finish you later!

So what are your plans for the weekend? I'll be partly working, obviously. Got a deadline 2 weeks away ghah. But I'm pumped. But I'll also relax a bit, I really believe in a nice balance between work and private life. Nowadays I don't draw and paint 24/7, like I used to a few years ago.

Laters compadres! :)


- Andrea

Why failing is awesome

While I was painting this passionate tiger hugging the air out of a poor fox, I got a question from a friendly soul on instagram.

Since I mentioned that it was a revision, he asked me if I could show the previous versions of that painting. And absolutely, I'd be delighted to.

Mostly because I want to convince both myself, and others how truly awesome it is to fail. And to show that it can definitely be worth giving a failing piece a second try. Most of us probably get discouraged when the artwork turns out to be crap as we go along working on it. And I guess you do need to struggle a bit, a graphics artist once said that "if it's easy, you're doing it wrong". Do you agree?

Ok, back to failing then. Hold on, here it comes dun duh DUUUH:

Ouch...
These are the steps of my previous version. The first one was the colorscheme that I decided upon. Clearly, as I look at it now, it wasn't a good one. Here's why:

- Both the tiger and the fox had the same hue, so it's hard to distinguish them both.

- The colours feel a bit muddy and dirty, and I tried to cover it up with a saturation-layer. This was not an optimal palette to pick from.

- In image 3, you can see how I kept struggling with the colours, still didn't manage to make it feel good.

- And in image 4, I just had enough and went bananas. Merged all the layers together and made a brutal paintover in an attempt to a new colour scheme(cause I wanted to start all over) No mercy aarrgghh!!

It still didn't work well enough. So I let it rest.

Clearly, I learned something out of this piece, and it got better when I made a second attempt.

I actually tend to revisit my pieces or sketches quite often, so yes I fail a lot haha! Started to understand, that when I just scrap the current piece, usually the new version will turn out so much better! Plus, it goes so much faster, cause you've already figured out the things you would try differently. Resulting in bolder brushstrokes, better colour schemes and so on......

*drifting away picturing myself easily doing pushups with only one finger, while Eye of the tiger plays in the background*


If your idea or story is a good one and important to you, then it's definitely worth the fight.





- Andrea

I wanna show you

Yes, I really wanna talk about it! Talk about what I wanna do... For you!

But I'm scared of jinxing, hah.

I'll stay quiet til I make it. 

Thanks for the responses on my previous post :) Like I mentioned in one of the comments, it is a bit comforting to know that everyone feels the same. Yet it's important to keep ranting and talking about it, just to have ideas how to overcome it next time something like that happens.

- Andrea

More on art and self doubt

Guys, I felt that I wanted to talk a bit more about potential and self doubt.
It's easy to cover up with lots of images and appear happy and careless, as if "life is so easy and yaaay".

I'm gonna be honest with you...

I'm often scared.
Actually I constantly fight against these thoughts in my head that keep reminding me of my fears.
Worrying that I'm not good enough, analyzing everything I do, freaking out if I see an awesome piece made by somebody else. You think that you'll never get to the same level, or like in my case - you think you're a fraud. It often feels like "oh crap, soon they'll realize how fake I am!".

I truly hate high expectations. I already do an exellent job myself there, whether I want it or not, haha.. You can probably recognize this too. The brain never shuts up.

No matter how big your fan base gets(I love you guys!!), those feelings will never go away.
To be honest, it almost gets worse sometimes. Don't get me wrong though! When things are rolling, then it's extremely uplifting and it really means the world to me, just the fact that THERE IS someone out there at all, who appreciates what I do.

A couple of years ago, all I wanted was to get noticed. Things would be so much easier then. Or so I thought. I was pretty invisible(and not that good), and kept looking at all these successful artists who has become sort of celebrities among the communities. I always though that "damn, their lives must be so awesome and free, they probably never doubt!"...

Haha, so wrong. Everyone doubts. It's human nature.

Even our heroes are scared shitless from time to time.
There is no Nirvana, and we will never arrive or cross that holy line where there's only peace and awesomeness.

I guess that cliché about making friends with fear of failure is true.
Embrace it. 

EMBRAAAAAACE EEEET!



No really.
We don't suck.

- Andrea

"You wish were a better artist?, that feeling will never go away. Stay confident, because it's normal. Just keep going!"

- Marlo Meekins

Underdog

 Ooops I did it again! I made some new art, then got me some faaaame, ooh baby baby (wtf..)

"Always be yourself, unless you can be a unicorn. Then always be a unicorn" Photoshop CS5 

I posted some sketches of this ridonkulus donkey in a previous post, do you remember? Decided to colour one of them, and hopefully this will grow into some sort of a visdev thingie with a full blown bombastic story along with it. We'll see.

As I wrote in the project on Behance, this will probably become some sort of therapy for me since I've been dealing with self doubt from time to time. It happens to all of us and we all know that it's only in our heads. We KNOW THIS! So why are we still doing it?

Uploaded the project yesterday, then this awesome comment popped up in my feed:

"You'll be much more likely to do something if the story is a metaphor for your own life or beliefs. Maybe somebody made you feel like an "ass" years ago and you held a grudge. Maybe you sought to do this person harm, then instead forgave him when you realized how miserable his life was. The donkey's story could be a fantasized version of that, or whatever you've overcome in your own life. Stories are about growth."

Oh.

 "You have no idea how spot on you were", I replied.

- Andrea

 

Battle Sheep

Yes. It's finally out!

Well, it's been out for a while, just haven't had the time to post about it. Last year I worked on a board game, the former name was "Split Sheep" but it got changed to "Battle Sheep instead". Hence the logo, I only used it as a placeholder ;)

Photoshop CS5 + Wacom Intuos4. Client: Blue Orange Games

You can see some sketches and stuff at Behance, feel free to have a look!



Now on to something else. What do you guys want to read about here? I'm posting some art every now and then, and I'll try to make some new tutorials for you guys soon as requested. But what else. Are you interested in my artistic life as well? Should I start blog-blogging? Kinda like a diary?
Waddya think?

Any feedback is appreciated :)


Peace, love and eat your veggies!

- Andrea

Rising from the ashes

Oh my.

360 followers on blogger.

Over 2k followers on insta.

More than 60k followers(wait, WHAT?) on Behance.



I keep seeing new faces every week, and yet I haven't updated properly since January...
What's going on? Where did you all come from? Are you even real?



I wanna thank you all for sticking around, this means so much to me, you have no idea. It gets quite overwhealming from time to time. But really, Thank You.

Photoshop CS5 + Wacom Cintiq 12WX + Wacom Intuos4 = LOVE

Let's have a fresh start, shall we.


- Andrea

I got interviewed

It's SUNDAY lalalala....

Hope you're all having a wonderful weekend out there.
Realizing that I don't even know who's actually visiting or reading... 

Who you are, wher're you're from, what you did, as long as you lopfffff nah I'll stop there haha.

...........

Last week, a Russian art site called 240grid published an interview about me and my art.
Link to the interview: Clickety! 

It's in Russian though, so I thought that I could share the interview here as well. In English of course :)

Curious? Read on below:

- How did you become an artist? Tell us your full story

That kinda just happened automatically. Just like many other artists, I've always loved drawing and painting, ever since I was old enough to hold a pencil. Then I guess I became one of those people who decided to turn it into a lifestyle, rather than a hobby.

- Where did you study? Was it useful?

I'm actually self taught when it comes to art, and I taught myself Photoshop when I was 14 years old, back when I could barely speak English...! Lots of improvising, but my stubborness helped me along the way. Sure, we had art classes during school when I was younger, but nothing super advanced so to speak.

I studied 3D graphics for 2 years though, and that was really helpful. Allthough I don't do any 3D work nowadays, I got a nice foundation and knowledge of what's expected from me when I design characters and such for 3D.

- How did you choose your specialization in art?

That's another thing that just fell natural for me, I never had to choose :) Characters are so much fun to paint and design.

- What is your favorite area in art?

I really love the coloring stage! It's so nice and relaxing to just zone in and paint, once the sketches are set and everything's blocked in. Sketching characters and put them in different situations is really fun too.

- What  films, games and books have you worked on?

I've worked on a bunch of fun stuff, too many to mention them all. One was a book cover that I painted for HarperCollins back in 2011(Always October written by Bruce Coville). That one was so much fun to work on!

Then there's this board game from Blue Orange games, called Battle Sheep. It's being released this year, and I got to illustrate everything for it. Can't wait to see it irl!

There's more going on, hopefully I'll announce more exciting stuff in the future :)

- What film, book and game would you like to work on if you could choose yourself?

I would love to work on animated feature films. One of my biggest goals is to work on a feature for one of the big time studios(Pixar, Disney, Dreamworks, etc). If they ever make a CG animated movie of "Freak the Mighty", then wow. That would be awesome to be a part of too.

There's also another personal dream brewing, I really wanna release my own art book soon! 

- Do you fulfill your characters with personality while coming up with idea or drawing?

Well, I try! :) That's something I'm trying to improve all the time. I want to become really good at designing characters, and understand the reasons why they look and act a certain way(easier said than done, ghah). Everything to show off their background and story even more.

- Tell us the story of your favorite character

I have one - Chicken Joe from the movie Surf's Up. 

One of my favorite CG movies! He's portraied as this stoned, super laid-back character who would get along with everyone. He's extremely skilled but never talks about it. It's all about having fun. I really like that mindset, and I like the whole sense of that movie. It's kinda cheesy but what the hell, I do relate to the main characters a lot, there I said it ;D

You start out as Cody Maverick, recognize the personal battles Big Z is having with himself, but eventually you wanna be like Chicken Joe.

- Do you use your friends or relatives as a reference? Have somebody ever recognized themselves?

Hmmm, perhaps subconcsously? In my opinion, I haven't really manage to capture a specific person that way yet.

Some people have pointed out that they see me in some of my characters though!

- What was your favorite book in the childhood?

I loved Harry Potter. Especially the first book. 

- Your special techniques?

Photoshop CS5! It's the only software I use. I try not to work with too many layers when I paint, I'll just get lost otherwise :D My first rough drafts usually start out as tiny, messy ink doodles on post-it's though, and I draw a lot in my sketchbook that's always kept close.

- How do you develop your style?

The more you practice your craft and study the fundamentals, the more you'll develop a personal style. I guess the trick is not to obsess so much around it. Your style will come through with time. You might not even notice it at first. 

- Some useful tips for those who works in Photoshop like you?

Keep the actual subject and light separated. Especially in the beginning. Block everything in with solid colours before diving into details and actual painting. That will make your workflow easier.

- Tell us some funny or interesting story connected with your art

I got one fun story to share.

About that story I mentioned earlier (Freak the Mighty, a book written by Rodman Philbrick). There's even a movie about this story, and I truly loved watching it when I was younger. I still cry my eyes out because it's so pretty and sad at the same time, haha. Anyway, a couple of years ago, I decided to make a tribute. 

While painting it, I also had the writer in mind and thought that when the painting's finished, I'll give him a copy of the painting to show my appreciation. 

At that time, I could only find any other contact details other than to managers/companies. I couldn't find a way to get in touch with him in person at that time. So I just let it pass.

Then after a year or so, I actually get contacted by the author himself! Telling me that he found my painting online and wondered if he could get a copy.

It's pretty amazing how small the world can get, istn't it? :D

- How do your personal projects differ from commercial ones?

I guess my subjects vary less when it comes to personal art. I get stuck in my comfort zones more easily(hmpf.. horsedoodles) and it's often harder to finish anything.

Commercial work forces me to plan everything properly and actually pushes me in a different way. It's less about me and more about what the client needs.

However, I'm always trying to pick the jobs that fit me and my style the best. If you want to paint characters for a living, then that's what you should aim for. Build a portfolio with characters, and the clients will eventually hire you only for that. 

Hope you enjoyed this little interview. If you still got questions, just feel free to ask :)

Ciao!

- Andrea