I Will Not Disappear

Unlike most other artists who get full time gigs and drop off the face of the earth, I'm gonna keep sharing my thoughts, studies and personal work with you here. The reason I haven't been is because I still don't have a place to live, which puts a hard cap on how much work I can do outside of Riot. It's been emotionally tasking not to be able to pursue your goals for a month, so I'm a little shaken up. Now it's time to review all the things I've written in my journal from a month and a half ago.

You are always right. Any decision you have made in the past was the choice that you needed to make. Even if it seemed like a mistake, it was the best thing that could have happened.

Trying to change your habits as a test of willpower is immature and rarely works. You need to internalize a shift in priorities in order to succeed at that.

Becoming an adult happens in 3 steps:
1. Learn who you are.
2. There will be things you won't like (or you have to re-do step 1), so change them
3. There will be things you can't change, so learn to love them. It is illogical to hate yourself for things you can't change. Your past mistakes count.

Los Angeles is deceptively spacious. There is actually very little space, because people are always moving. You always have to wait your turn to enjoy things. I guess it's the same in New York, but there you just expect everything to be crowded.

Here is how karma works: you put in the time, and you get rewarded. Fair? Yes. Why does it work? Because everyone else gave up before you. Certain kinds of risks often pay off, because very few people take them.

It doesn't matter how you apply brush strokes as long as you put the right value in the right place.

We spend so long hiding our true intentions that all you have to do to make a connection with another human being is to reveal them.

It's infinitely harder to make compelling and precise brush strokes on the computer, so do them in three steps: put the marks down on a separate layer, then adjust them, then merge down.

You can save a lot of time by plotting down your hard edges first, because they're the most important.

By trying too hard you make it harder for yourself to succeed. You start thinking about the effort rather than the thing you're doing. Or maybe that's just me.

Picking the base tone is more important than subsequent colours, because it heavily affects how your colour mixing curves will look. Make sure you have enough saturation!

Oddly enough, growing up is about relaxing more than proving or achieving anything.

Commit to lines right away. Without committing, you can't design.

You can change skintone by changing the colour of the clothes.

You learn how to react to things from the people around you. And other people learn from you what kind of behavior you approve of or not. Pick the right reactions and approve of the right kind of behavior.

The more you think about something, the bigger it becomes. Be careful of this power.

Your subconscious limits you. Negative thoughts limit your subconscious. DON'T HAVE THEM.

I was told I'd have a hard time working after work. But in actuality, I need to work on my own stuff to stay sane.

Don't use straight lines with shift-click. Do them with your own hand - put personality into them.

Successful people are not the ones who take action when something is wrong, but the ones who keep achieving when everything is great.

Doesn't matter what you do, it's all about how you do it.

If you have time or brainpower to think about how well you're doing your task, you're not doing it well enough.

When you are presenting a bunch of your designs, pick the worst one and work on it until it is awesome, (or start it over) then rinse and repeat until you can't tell which one is the worst.

Design is changing the patterns of elements in a picture to draw attention to certain points in it. The cleverness and simplicity of distribution of the viewers' attention is what makes the design appealing.

Anticipation is more interesting than the climax. IMHO.

Figure out what else will be in the illustration besides the focus. You gotta have room for your eye to travel, not just points of interest everywhere.