211-240 (Originally written July 2017)
30 days is starting to feel like a week which is crazy.
This month was a blur and from my perspective just a bunch of random creativity. Which is what I do I guess as I focus on a new piece each day. However, I focused on no themes. I fell into my usual traps and comfort zones- spaceships and weird stuff. I feel I have fallen behind on wheeled vehicles so I would like to address that.
I have been a busy bee this month and I have not been this consistently creative in my entire life which is a good thing but also depresses me a bit (what the hell was I doing for the 4 years at uni?!).
This busy-ness meant my daily pieces became an afterthought or something I needed to get done but not my main priority. Which was an interesting experience. I used a bunch of shortcuts and tricks to save me time and I found that I was smarter in my decision making often shelving some considerable amount of work for something I could get done. I guess this makes me resourceful and should be a great asset professionally too.
Undoubtedly, having my technical skill be much better than it was before is better and I find I spend longer staring at assets and thinking about what I will do with them before I put stylus to tablet. I love this way of working and I want to push this further. Also becoming better at integrating 3D and photos into my work. I have started to take more reference images again and I try to get my 'scene' all in-camera so there is less to do after the fact. At times I have rearranged items and created a mini photoshoot. Nothing fancy yet but a nice exercise.
So in 4 months, I will have done a year of this and I have no idea how that will turn out or what I will be like as an artist. One thing for sure is that each month has surprised me in a different way and on the whole, it is a positive experience. Even though my work does fluctuate in quality ( i have noticed I can produce about a chain of 2-3 decent pieces before the quality drops again) but comparing each month side by side it is nothing but improvement. So for that, I can't complain (but I probably will).
