Hi Szymon! As an illustrator in her begging years, it's quite devastating to hear you calling your latest piece a "fail" - Because when I look at this piece, I think to myself that it's amazing and that I'll never be this good! So my question is - Can you describe your journey of being a beginner illustrator, what your struggles were, and elaborate about the steps of achieving your own unique style? I'm curious to see some of your old works, please consider sharing them. Thanks! ~Nurit
Hi Nurit,I consider this image a âfailâ because I thought it would turn out different and that what I thought would be the theme of this image would be much more visible and I just didnât convey that. At this point Iâm not strictly focusing on the technical side of painting, I know I can paint a pretty image. Now Iâm trying to convey specific things with each of my paintings, so if I fail to do so the image is a failure in my mind. Itâs actually very much connected to your question. At the beginning of my journey I was almost exclusively concentrated on HOW to paint, as probably most of young artists. I was very impressed with images that were well painted, very detailed and extremely rendered. Most of my paintings were just a struggle with the tool and I considered an image to be successful if I managed to achieve a look of the painting that simply didnât suck in technical terms. And if some of my brushstrokes looked close to the brushstrokes in other artistsâ paintings I would be actually happy. The better I was getting the more I was thinking about WHAT to paint. Since the painting process wasnât consuming all of my attention I was slowly becoming capable to create images that I actually wanted to create. Still, I was very much impressed with highly detailed artwork so I was pushing my images as far as I could in terms of rendering. I always struggled with characters because my background is in architecture so at the beginning I didnât understand anything about designing and posing characters. My characters were just based on the animated movies I liked so much but I didnât know any principles that need to be applied to create strong characters (for example I didnât know about the existence of something called âline of actionâ). This is something that I start to slowly learn right now.Also, a very important thing that happened to me at a pretty early stage of my journey was the realization what kind of artwork I actually wanted to create. I started with sci-fi because the very first imagery painted digitally that I ever saw was the concept art for Star Wars, Revenge Of The Sith. That was a period of my fascination with Star Wars and also at the time most of the digital artwork that was in the internet was related to sci-fi so I thought that this was the thing I was supposed to paint. But I really struggled with that subject. I wasnât a good at designing spaceships and futuristic cities (and I actually still struggle with this kind of assignments), but I just kept doing it. But from time to time I would paint something cartoony, just for fun, and I remember that one time a friend of my commented on one of those images saying that my sci-fi stuff is OK, itâs well painted etc. but whenever I paint something cartoony itâs much cooler. And at that moment I realized that I actually prefer painting those animated-movie-kind-of-looking images, and that people respond to them better than to my sci-fi work. So I switched to that and felt liberated in a way.But after few years when I achieved a certain level of technical skills and I was already working full-time as an artist I came to a moment of huge artistic block. I didnât enjoy painting highly rendered images that looked like a frame from an animated movie any more. I was mostly doing this kind of images for my day job but I didnât feel like doing it for myself. I was already working on my first feature animated movie and already had a client base that made me feel somewhat safe in terms of my future in the industry so I wasnât so focused on creating images that would fill my portfolio. And this is the part when my search for my own style begun. For at least 2 years I struggled with trying to find an original style and after some time I was extremely frustrated and almost didnât produce any personal work. But all my experiments felt really forced and didnât really feel âmineâ, and they were all about rendering style. I was getting more and more confused so at some point I just decided to be honest with myself and I browsed through my huge âInspirationsâ folder and chose a handful of images that I REALLY responded to, no matter what style they were painted in. And I mean REALLY responded to, in a subconscious way. And it turned out that none of those images were highly rendered and some of them were actually very graphic (I absolutely love Mike Mignolaâs work for example). The range of styles in this folder was very broad and it made me realize that I didât respond to this artwork because of a particular style. When I thought about it more I realized that what I reacted to was the way those images used fundamental principles and broader ideas. So for example, I could have a very graphic image and a very painterly image that I would equally love because of a very strong shape-oriented design and value structure etc. So I realized that in order to be true to my taste my own work should focus on this particular use of principles that is the very reason for my love for the work Iâve chosen to put in that folder. But it also turned out that I love artwork that seems to lay on the opposite sides of artistic spectrum. Like very graphic, simple and flat images, and those that masterfully depict how light and color work. So right now my own work looks the way it looks because Iâm trying to merge those few aspects of art that I love the most in otherâs work and find a balance between them that satisfies me. And thatâs why I donât think I have a unique personal style (if I do have a style then itâs sometimes way to much influenced by Eyvind Earle ;) ). Iâm trying to stay true to myself and make artistic decisions that please me. For example I started to give my characters âemptyâ eyes just because I feel that adding pupils instantly pushes stylized characters more towards the Disney feel and I donât want that at the moment. And I know that my personal taste will evolve and in a year I might paint in a different way than now. And thatâs fine. Staying true to yourself is crucial. I guess music is a great example here. Most of the greatest bands and musicians of all time will be remembered forever because they did what they loved and they tried to please themselves so their music had authenticity. Britney Spears wonât ever become a real legend because she tried to please the audience, she was a product of her times⊠And if you want to see my older work you can always check out my deviantart gallery ;) http://lordbiernac.deviantart.com/gallery/?offset=24Ok, that was a lot of writing, hope it will be helpful to you :)Take care!-Szymon