Here we are guys, the final video in my 30 ways to fill a sketchbook series.
I feel like there’s so much to talk about today, I also have something pretty cool to
share with you all, but first to set the scene for this piece, I’m gonna be painting a
beautiful Icelandic waterfall landscape from a photo I’ll have linked below, putting
real effort in to get it as realistic as I can.
I felt like this would be the perfect way to round things up, doing something I love
which is landscapes but also doing something that would take a lot of time and work and
commitment.
To get myself in the mood for this one I actually went back to the very first video in this
series.
I can’t believe that was about 3 months ago now.
At the time I was planning on uploading a video a day.
I’d been struggling to create art and to be active in sharing photos and videos with
you guys and I thought if I set myself this challenge I could jump right back in at the
deep end, work really hard for a month and then settle into 2017 feeling more disciplined
and hopefully at a new level in terms of my knowledge and abilities in art.
Obviously it took longer than 30 days and I’m actually quite grateful for that.
Over the last 3 months I feel like we’ve been on a real journey, all of us.
I’ve loved hearing from you all, realising that we’re all kind of in the same boat,
all loving this art thing but also trying to do better.
I never in a million years thought at the start of this that I’d end up being able
to reach so many people.
It still blows my mind that my videos could help to inspire anyone, and seeing how the
community on this channel has grown and how open and how willing you all are to share
your struggles and your encouragement, I can’t thank you all enough.
So, 3 months later, did I reach my goals.
I mean, I started this in a place where I didn’t like anything I created anymore.
I was lacking confidence in my abilities, my art just felt quite empty.
There hasn’t been a page in this sketchbook that I haven’t throughly enjoyed doing.
Not everything turned out perfectly, some things went completely wrong, but I can honestly
say, I do like all of it.
In terms of becoming more disciplined artist and content creator, I’ve worked harder
in the last few months than I ever have on my art and my videos.
And the weirdest part is that I really started to enjoy it.
The planning and the editing, I even think I’ve got better at recording voice-overs.
Then the goal of trying new things, pushing myself out of my comfort-zone and developing
my art style, learning what I liked and didn’t like.
That’s obviously a journey that never really ends, but for now Im definitely more secure
in knowing the direction I want to take my work in.
Even little things like for example, I used to rely really heavily on brush pens to get
forward a particular style in my work, and I was starting to find it quite restricting
not only in style but in applicability, and throughout this series I’ve gradually found
myself leaning towards finer lines, my plain old mechanical pencil, ballpoint pens, and
finding my style starting to really shine through.
My final goal was to begin to tell a story with my art, less of the superficial drawing
because it looks nice, not that there’s anything wrong with that, I mean it’s kind
of the whole purpose of todays painting, but in general I wanted more reasoning behind
things.
I suppose I achieved that if the reason was to learn something and to push the boundaries
on what I’m usually comfortable drawing.
That’s the reason behind the whole series, so I guess each page contributed to the purpose.
My next step is to take things further and look at creating a meaning or a narrative
for individual pieces.
As I said in the first video in this series, I want my art to tell a story.
So that’s what’s next.
You can tell these 30 Ways videos have lit a fire in me to get creative when I’m already
talking about the next series.
But I feel inspired and I don’t want to lose momentum, so I’m going with it.
The new series is gonna encompass a lot of the themes of this one.
You guys have told me you like to see and be talked through the process, the trying
new things, the experimentation and sometimes the mistakes and how you learn from them.
So we’re gonna do all that, we’re gonna look at the journey from the birth of an idea,
through the development stages, the research and reference, experiments, thumbnails, the
challenges that pop up and all the bits that go into creating a finished piece every step
of the way right from the start.
Each episode will start with a prompt, the series starts on Sunday and will continue
every two weeks, indefinitely.
So I can’t wait to start this new leg of the art journey with you all.
Now back to this particular journey.
A question I keep getting is will I do a flip-through of this sketchbook now that the series is
over.
And yeah I absolutely will, but not quite yet.
The sketchbook itself is only about halfway full.
I was using it exclusively for this series and now that we’re at the final video, I
feel like I’m free to let loose in here and do whatever I want with the rest of the
pages without worrying about messing up anything I’ve done so far.
So you’ll get your flip-through, just a little way into the future and with a load
of extra stuff in here too.
In the meantime, that brings us to the next topic I wanted to cover.
This is so exciting, I’ve been waiting to be able to share this with you all.
I’ve actually put together copies of this completed sketchbook, every page featured
in the video series, compiled into a little book that you can own yourself.
I put a lot of work into getting it as true to the real thing as possible, I just thought
it would be amazing to have something epic come out of this whole project and I’ve
honestly never been so proud of anything I’ve created.
So these are limited edition, I’m only doing one print run of these, there are 100 of them
available, they’re all signed and numbered and I wanted to make them really affordable
so hopefully anyone can get their hands on one.
This is a chapter in my art journey that I really want to remember forever, maybe I’m
being overly sentimental about it, but I really feel like, I’ve come a long way, and the
thing thats made that the most rewarding is that you lot have come along with me.
Now at last I’ll just talk a little bit about the actual painting process for this
page.
I started out by mapping out key areas of colours and tones with a diluted gouache to
kind of act as an underpainting.
And then I pretty much worked my way around he page in chunks, with the general idea of
painting darker areas first and transitioning into light.
There were definitely times in this process that I felt completely lost, I felt like I
kept adding and adding and painting and not seeing any progress but I realised that once
I started focusing again on chunks of shadow and tackling different tonal values one at
a time, it started to all make sense again.
All in all I spent an entire day on this with a few hours of breaks in there.
I’d say altogether I spent about 5 or 6 hours painting.
It’s the kind of thing that would normally be more stressful than enjoyable, just feeling
anxious about getting it right, but I honestly enjoyed every second of it.
And I love the finished result.
I hope you all love it too.
That’s all for today, thank you so much for watching and listening to me ramble on
and be cheesy.
Love you guys, and I’ll see you in the next one.
Bye!