Sketchbook text

BEFORE SCHOOL

Growing up I was very much into video games and cartoons, like most kids. I lived somewhat on the country side so we had a lot of forests and feilds. There I used to run around with sticks which I pretended to be swords and chop branches and grass pretending they were monsters and stuff. I pretended to be a hero in a RPG world. Growing up you obviously stop with that stuff.. which honestly I kind of miss to be completely honest! I turned to drawing to express these fantasies I had and I never really stopped drawing. It was something I loved a lot and I doodled a lot in school.

So that brings us to my school years I suppose.

IN SCHOOL - MENTALITY

I've always been very creative. I'm thinking in creative ways and I learn in creative ways. If a teacher was very dull and boring, I would practically learn nothing and had to push my self to my limits not to fail the tests. This is the problem with schools, they are boring. If you've heard Sir Ken Robinson's lectures, you know what I'm getting at.

We are taught in a very strict and boring way in school. Schools are very close minded, really. The system is making the teachers teach us to become teachers and forget about passions and interest.

I realized this very early in my school years and I will tell you why I was lucky to do so in a moment... I always felt like I was being taught things I really didn't care about and knew I would never really have to use. I understood that we all needed to learn the fundamentals so we could have a basic knowledge to live normally. Beyond that, most things we learned felt unneccesary to me. So I spent my time drawing in most classes and didn't care about school to much. I just learned what I needed so that I could pass the classes. After that, I spent my time drawing and playing video games.

The reason I think this realization was good for me is because, as Sir Ken Robinson tells us, kills creativity. And since I spent more time being (quote on quote) "lazy", I preserved a lot of that creative thinking. That's my belief anyway. I suggest you go listen to Sir Ken Robinson's lectures, I'm not going to try and go over his point half assedly.

TIMELINE

But enough about schooling.. There's kind of an art timeline with me, as well. It all kind of evolved weirdly. As for most kids I were drawing weird stuff at first.. but it went from that to video game stuff that I drew in my notepads. Eventually, kids got crazy about anime. It started with pokemon, where people were drawing and tracing the pokemon.

Then Naruto happened and kids got insanly into anime and naturally I dove into that thing too. I actually started like a little competition thing with some of my class mates. He selfproclaimed himself as "THE ANIME GUY", you know? And I wanted to prove myself so we started drawing and comparing. That got me really into it and I started joining art sites and wanted to learn more. I went from tracing to actually drawing things. The guys were still tracing and when they realized that I was actually doing better than them, with the real deal. "THE ANIME GUY" said to me "yeah well drawing is lame anyway!" and went over to music.. For the girls I suppose.

So I stayed within the anime frame for quite some time. I eventually joined a group called Lock Legion where people were animating random objects with locks on them, symbolizing the face. It was simply an easy way to get into animating and you felt like you were a part of something.. So that escalated quite quickly into more advanced things. 3 or something years into that I suddently realized that I actually enjoyed drawing more than animating. So I completely stopped animating and just drew cause I loved to draw, basically.

However, during my "animation" phase I realized that art was something I couldn't stop doing and it's really the only thing I could see myself doing professionally so there was no going back. I had, and have to do this. Else I might as well just lay down and rot.

Well, I eventually joined Conceptart.org. I sort of realized even before I joined concept art that I enjoyed creating creatures and characters so I guess I kind of gravitated towards the site naturally. But it wasn't before I joined conceptart.org that I really started to understand the importance of doing art studies. I started pushing the studies a bit and noticed a really big difference in my work. I just tried my best to keep that up and during that ride I just realized more and more that I what I wanted to do was actually in the beginning of the timeline. Drawing video game stuff!

After that it was pretty easy to know where to go. Today I just do whatever I would have loved to see and play as a kid. You know? Whatever I would find cool at the time. It sort of gives me the feeling that hopefully people will appreciate my work more if it comes from a really genuine place. Hopefully it makes it interesting, unique and personal.

TODAY

Now all I'm doing is trying to get better so that I start getting some work. I'd like to do this full time. That's basically the only thing on my radar right now.. There's no plan B. I'm going to have to go for it. Do it or die trying sort of thing, you know?

Anyhow.. I hope you enjoyed this and I'll probably make another sketchbook video in the future.

Bye!