How have you improved this year thanks to SVS Learn?
First of all, I have tried to watch as many Critique Arenas as possible. Trying to guess which illustrations will make it into the Final 16, which ones will win, and then comparing my guesses with what actually gets chosen and listening to the subsequent live critiques has been very educational. The take-home has been: story, story, story!!! And focus in order to tell the story! Critique Arena occurs fairly late in the evening where I live, so sometimes afterwards I am so geared up I can’t sleep, but whenever possible I like to watch it live, and vote, regardless.
Since I knew from Critique Arena that I needed work on storytelling, I took the Sterling Hundley Ideation course this year. I have also been working through the Foundations course track, recently completing the entire gesture and perspective courses, and watching large parts of other courses as I have had time.
In addition, I am currently working on setting up a website and so have used the portfolio course checklist to decide what gaps I need to fill. It turned out that I needed a narrative sequence, so I used Slowvember to work on one of three pieces for this sequence. In the process my Slovember illustration became a Draw 50 Things piece (actually 25, but that was an option in the course) which subsequently turned it into a Slow-cember piece, but I’m experimenting and learning a lot as I go.
So far my illustration journey feels like the golf swing that Will talks about, and has for about four years now. I love a challenge, but sometimes wonder whether my style and process will ever gel, especially since I am not young. Late last year I competed Lee's Dream Portfolio Exercise to that end and have been referring to it this year. But I have faith that through the process of intelligent practice and hard work, my style and process will eventually come together. The main thing that keeps me going when I get discouraged is that I do see progress!
Another recent thing that is helping me to keep faith in the process is the book Art and Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland, which Jake recommended on the Three Point Perspective Podcast episode Books Every Illustrator Should Read. It has a lot of insight into the nature of our fears about the art process, and since people working alone sometimes can feel like they’re stabbing around in the dark, that is very helpful.
Next year’s goal is to continue with this year’s goals, but also to work faster. I’m working on streamlining my process, because being slow makes me miss so many opportunities! (Like using my Slowvember piece for this gallery, for example.) But I know some of the slowness is because I experiment so much with style and technique, so I have faith that if I keep putting in the work, eventually things will settle out.
How did SVS Learn impact the creation of this piece?
This piece was created for Childhood Week (the prompt was “Mission”), but using a lot of ideas from SVS Learn. I put it on the forums and on my critique group early on to see whether the story read clearly, because it was tricky to portray a pretend game and yet make it clear what was happening. When I got feedback that it didn't read well, I completely ditched my first composition and came back with a lower camera angle that increased the sense of urgency (I don't remember which course that was from, maybe Creative Composition, but I know I learned it on SVS!).
A major goal besides storytelling and increased efficiency (mentioned above) has been to work on complex environments, so I took the Building Backgrounds live class with Brian Ahjar last year. This piece and my Slowvember piece this year both use a lot of ideas from that class. I exaggerated the gestures more than I usually do to in order to enhance the storytelling (Building Backgrounds class), but in the end, I also hit on the idea of using the blanket to double as pretend waves (Ideation class).
I also used the idea of grouping items according to color and value from Draw 50 Things. And the perspective courses helped a lot as well.
But the real test is in the viewer: Can you tell what is going on here, and does it make you care? That is the main thing I have learned from SVS this year, and what I tried to keep in mind most of all while creating this piece.