My leap...

Jason Galterio

I am posting this here because I have a feeling that I am not the only one who has these same feelings.

I look at other people's images and I say "how do I get there?"

Their images have a spark...  But not one spark. Could be a spark of creativity, realism, emotion, life.

I keep trying, but that brass ring just seems to be slightly out of reach. Every once in a while it feels like my fingertips just brushed the edge of the ring, but I just didn't manage to grab it.

I'm not looking for any answers here or even any encouragement. Every image is different. Every artist is different. What is needed to leap that chasm is different for everyone.

I just wanted to offer everyone, including myself, that little push to keep trying.

Linwelly

Yeah, been there done that, mate, more than once. I think I have improved over the last years, but usually it went in plateaus. After I reached a certain level it took a long time until I reached the next one, and the time lapses between seemed to get longer. And still there are works I look at and thing wow, I wnat to be able to do that, and I know I'm still a long way from that.

Now, you didn't ask for that but since I'm such a "know it all"

Things I do: search through images I like, mostly from other people but as well ones I like from myself, study them with the question what makes me like them so much.

Make studies, ignore the perfect image for a while and just learn one thing, eg. I liked the atmospheric feel in the images I looked at. So I worked on only that. made a simple thing in a simple situation and create that atmosphere I wanted.

Try a different way of working, for me that was to accept that some things just go faster in postwork, so I learned about Gimp and porstowrked the sh1t out of some images.

In your case maybe try to get a closeup on something, since you usually have rather large scene sets in your renders (just ideas)

The whole point, go for one single aspect to improve on and get that right, then tackle the next instead of trying to push it all at once.

Jason Galterio

Good advice. I think you are more disciplined in your approach than I am though. It sounds like you have somewhat of a plan when you sit down to work.

I am considerably more haphazard, rarely having an end goal when I start off. Admittedly, this doesn't help in advancing things for me, artisticwise. I am still approaching things purely as a hobby and stress relief.

Multiple times in my "process" I am saying things like "let me put this here" and "what happens if I do this?" It's a lot more experimental I imagine. Not quite as bad as just throwing random things at the wall, but not all that far from it either.

Just so that my motivation for the original post is clear...  I figured I wasn't the only one with this sort of approach, coupled with the associated annoyance / frustration / failed images. So it was a little bit of "hey, you're not alone."

Though it wouldn't be the first time my assumptions were wrong. I could very well be alone in my insanity. :)