Lil Gods - Foliage Sketches

I recently got into sketching with actual pencil on actual paper. Sounds weird to say but I only tend to do life drawing stuff in my moleskin as opposed to creative stuff.  I had a blast and for some reason it was very therapeutic being covered in pencil smudges and what-not.  I took some pics and mounted up some of the doodles. I had to do these as I was working on a larger composition but I needed to work out a visual language before I could do the piece real justice.  I've still got some things to resolve with it and I feel I can push these a bit more but once the major image is done I'll post it up here.

The House of Mouse

July means one thing in our house.  My Daughter's birthday.  Usually this means some overpriced pressure cooker of a party.  Not this year.  This year we decided to go to Disneyland Paris.  I feel duty bound to apologise that its not Florida's big brother for some reason.  Well, she's 5 and although trekking around 5 parks wouldn't kill her but it would seriously harm my health as I'd be carrying her for most part as was the case with Paris, plus she may not even remember it in her later years..and I WANT MY MONEY'S WORTH DAMMIT.

Now this trip could have gone one of two ways.  Disney corp and machine + the French (only joking) = cynicism overdrive. Or what actually happened.  Which was the exact opposite.

In short it reminded my why I wanted to get into art in the first place. The designs, the wholesome family nature of it all.  It was perfect.  Sure I know the piped music and the other mind hacks they employ but I simply didnt care.

Forget gritty sci-fi shots, custom brushes, software packages and office politics. This reminded me what really got me interested in art.  Appealing characters and wonderful environments.

The Studios park has albeit small but sweet gallery showing of the visual development of various features. This was my Space Mountain.

Z Brush? Mudbox? forget them, this is the real deal.  It was the roughness and looseness of this sculpt of the Beast that made it exciting, makes it feel part of a bigger, more energetic process.

My new aim is to try and recapture that raw eagerness I had before I necessarily had the skills.  Often the skills and the niavity are mutually exclusive.  The trick, I think if you can keep both, that is when the magic really happens. Now I dont want you thinking it's going to be all puppy dogs and rainbows from here on in. But I have to try and not take the work I do for granted in the fact I can do it.  I mean, I should be jumping up and down out of my mind at all the infinite possibilities at my disposal.  We as people have a habit of over complicating things, I know I'm certainly guilty of it.

Disney comes in for lot of flack.  Some of that could be deserved but you cannot deny they put on a hell of a show.