The last few weeks have been utterly bonkers in regards to client work. Good bonkers, but bonkers none the less.
It’s easier than people might think to shut ones self away and work long hours resulting negative effects like eye strain, lumbar pains and signs of carpal tunnel. It’s especially easy when you enjoy what you do and you catch yourself looming over a tablet screen illustrating illustrating for hours at a time like some sugar crazed five year old who just discovered crayons.
In my effort to remain on top of my illustration game without sacrificing my health or work quality, I set about looking for tips and tricks online and found what I was looking for. I won’t go into my findings here because this post has a very specific subject matter, but I will say I found out there’s such a thing as hand yoga which made me chuckle but also make that “… Huh!” noise one makes when something is pleasantly surprising.
A couple of Hand yoga links if you’re interested:
12 Hand streches for Artists written by DonCorgi
Hand Yoga “Mudra” poses written by Beth Asaff
But the one technique I found to avoid falling out of “the zone” when you need to be illustrating a lot is, perhaps surprisingly, MORE illustrating.
Warm up Sketching.
Artists I have seen on social media commonly use the term “warm up” or “cool down” sketches. But it’s more than just adding more art to your list of projects. The whole point of the exercise is to keep things light, fun and sketchy without any obligation to produce something polished or even finished.
The result of these sketches has been noticeable for me, giving me a positive and playful approach to the days work ahead and boosting the flow of the lines once I am progressing client work.
It can be anything from a fun concept you’ve had in your head for a few days or finding a list of artist challenges online like Inktober since there is no illustration law that says it has to be October to use these haha..
Time Lapse of Samwise the Brave.
I chose to set aside thirty minutes to an hour each morning to produce a warm up sketch. It started with Gandalf as I had been doodling wizards for the last few days and I’d decided to bring one of my favourite subject matters into it. Pew machines. From there a structure emerged of making a Lord of the Rings tactical character each day.
We’re now at eight characters, with a row of Hobbits coming up next.
The group is taking on an aesthetic the likes of the Lord of the Rings or Star Wars original trilogy movie posters. A character collage.
Because I am a sucker for structure and creating new projects, naturally these regular sessions of casual sketches have taken on a larger goal: To produce a large poster as a finished product. Available only to Squadron members and of a limited number to stay under the Middle Earth Enterprises radar. With the LOTR series on the horizon they’re likely to be scanning the earth for infringements like the eye of Sauron looking for the ring.
With that said, I’m confident the artistic style and the inclusion of modern weaponry will keep things creatively separate enough to produce something small without consequence, and the books content becomes Public Domain in 2023 meaning that these illustrations will be able to be used more boldly quite soon.
Once the four Hobbits, Gollum, an Uruk-Hai, Mr Saruman and the big boss Sauron himself are finished then I will be sketching up a couple of towers and mount Doom in the background ready to start penning things out for the finished poster. Depending on how long that takes the posters may end up being available as early as January, along with vaguely named individual characters being available on my redbubble sooner than that so stay frosty!
I hope you’ve enjoyed this blog post and if you have any topics or questions you’d like me to tackle in future posts please drop a comment below!
HIWEZ OUT
