Reflection #61 – March 23

A very warmthy welcome!

I meant to write this one yesterday but it kinda slipped my mind and I was doing enough other stuff to forget it. Now, while I have other things on my agenda to get to, I remembered to properly conclude all that’s been happening last month.

So March began with executing my internship – the biggest portion of time I spent with this month and let me say, it felt quite different to perform in a set schedule with predestined amount of work to be done – somewhat like school but without the taking work to home part. I am very happy about the flexibility of things and my coworkers and I learned that even while doing one day of homeoffice, I enjoy it more to be actually present on my working place as the environment lets me focus all on the work that has to be done.

It’s just that most of the work I do is rather mundane: filling out charts, inheriting files from last year, designing power point presentations… I do like every and all physical tasks that I can do for a change. It would be rather boring but it helps to see the bigger picture and what we are working towards which feels quite rewarding after a work day, and I often come home fatigued – but happy. Maybe even because it is such a different field from what I’m used to, I’m learning more things that have been nagging me on my personality over the years: I have already become more resistant to the thoughts of what others think of me. I have done some mistakes on my end but I learned to live with them and take accountability instead of shying away from it. And I have gained some more confidence with approaching people and stating my true intentions rather than talking around what actually matters. Once again: it’s the work environment that allows for it and I happily take the opportunity to grow more characteristically.

However, this comes with a downside: It is taking a very big portion of my time each day I have to work and some additional time to regain the energy lost from it. Luckily, while on the travel to my job, I sometimes have the downtime to sketch. During the beginning of the month, I was able to do some pencil sketches on paper, but wanted to advance in my capabilities, hence I bought me a tablet to be able to draw digitally and be much more flexible during my time in the internship and for the years to come.

I’ve been working with it for two weeks now so I’m still only getting accustomed to it, and how to use the tools and brushes to my disposal. But so far, I can say that it’s been good for rough pencil sketches and paintings, especially when the train ride gets a bit bumpy but moreso because I like the aesthetic of it.

In the early days of using the tablet, I did each a pencil sketch and a speedpainting every day, which was quite nice but eventually, I broke the routine and went to more figure-based artwork. So far there’s only one of them uploaded and that is:

Come together late night at home (because I’m not used to drawing anthros in public) was this experimental painting with Tobias and Zavi, which is a wild mix of what brushes I’ve been using so far and the colours that speak to me the most. However, I’m not quite attached to it and it’s mostly to mark a stepstone of the artistic journey I have with this new tool.

I have two more sketches in the works that I want to colour but I might leave them for the evening, while I’ll keep sketching and painting during train rides to get more accustomed to the software and it’s possibilities.

Slightly before that last work (I had to break consistency for structure’s sake), I was working on this little drawing to celebrate the beginning of spring. The pose just came naturally as well as the skull-shaped head. though originally, I wanted to have snowdrop flowers growing out oft he back of her head, but these violet flowers contrasting the strong green background just did it for me. I have become a sucker for Violet / Green and Violet & Red colour schemes probably – but not limited – to my wider colour range monitor(s). That makes me interested in looking back at my gallery and specifically looking for what colour schemes Ive been using in my earlier days if there’s anything sticking out.

…

So a quick look through my gallery told me, there were no specific colour schemes I followed in my earlier years. Since 2020, I started to have more greenish and earthly tones with the later half of last year really dipping into deep blues/ violets.

Do be more precise, I’d like to do something like a colour barcode for my entire gallery, see if there’s any website offering a tool for such a thing later before I get sidetracked more…

Lastly, I finished this ref sheet today. It has been in the making since the beginning of December last year with several different things causing multiple delays. But I am very happy to have finally finished it and being ready to continue with the second part of it.

One of the many troubles – perhaps the biggest trouble I had with it – was the rendering of the scales. I couldn’t just apply the scales-brush I had made in 2020 and used on the last comm like that because it was too divergent from the client’s vision and references gathered, so I had to place every single one by hand basically… and multiple times because I wasn’t very happy how they were looking for a long while. Balancing so many details was truly a challenge, I guess dimming the overall values down helped with not making it look overcrowded with deets. The wings were another very hard part, as the original design: Valstrax from Monster Hunter (4?) was so weird considering all of the other designs from the series. In hindsight, I’m happy I can do those cool thrusting effects and looking forward to playing around more with poses for the fullbody painting still coming.

What I really regret tho, is not having enough time and focus to be spending on the very important animation exercises I keep pushing on front of me for a little more than an entire year now. Because I have to do another internship and to apply, I’d like to be able to showcase more in that regard.

Ah but I can’t help it sadly, I need to have this commission out of the way first so I can properly focus on animation maybe I will have thought of some specific concepts to do then, which is yet anther hurdle for me to overcome.

Ehhh next month is going to be hard but I’ll have to manage some way. At the very least, There’s gonna be Easter next week, some downtime to enjoy ^v^

This should be it for this month. I highly doubt I’ll be able to write the next reflection punctually as my busy schedule foresees tooo much happening around the time.

Anyway, I’ll be heading off now and find something more to do before it’s early bed time.

Enjoy your April!

~Souvillaine