Justin Gerard
patreon
July Roadmap and A Mid-Year Direction Shift
🕑 Added 2024-07-01 12:00:09 +0000 UTCJune brought about a number of truly unsettling developments in the art world, and like many other artists, I didn't feel like posting much throughout the month. I spent much of that time reconsidering my relationship with the technology that I have taken for granted as being a natural part of my career all this time. After thinking about it for a month, I've decided that I am taking a break from digital art for a while, and going back to analog.
Mostly, this is in response to Adobe's betrayal of the art community and their attempts to harvest our work to train their new AI art tools on it. But it's not just them, it's also Meta, Twitter, Google, Etsy, Microsoft and essentially everyone else we've ever used to make, promote or sell our work who are insisting that it's okay for them to take our work without our consent, and make AI replacements of us with it. If you'd like to listen to a deeper dive on this, I did a presentation for Muddycolors last week on the issue: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpiCdhkIQjo
All this research and disappointment in media companies has forced me to reconsider my own goals for my personal work. And this is going to result some changes to what you can expect on here each month. First, as mentioned above, I want to spend the rest of the year making hand-made, analog work. We continue the pursuit of excellence in art through skill-building in traditional media. And I hope you will join me for this. We're going to be roughing it for a while! A lot more watercolor for dinner, and a lot less Photoshop for dessert.
But what will this mean for the Patreon here?
TUTORIALS: Going forward, we are going to be focusing on TRADITIONAL MEDIA guides. We started this last month with our first one, on watercolor spot illustrations:
And you can expect a lot more on watercolor as I renew my focus on that medium. Hopefully though, we will also get back to DRAWING DRAGONS and pencil work as well. But for the next few months, I am going to be focusing on guides that will help newcomers who are interested in joining us for the return of LETSDRAWMONSTERS!
LIVESTREAMS: Starting in August, I plan to dive back into community events with LETSDRAWMONSTERS 2. (Tentatively named "Watercolor Warriors" but this is still a work in progress.) It will be like the original series, with its focus on skill-building, sharing work with the community, and silly prizes. But this one will focus our challenge exclusively on hand-made analog work and pushing our traditional media SKILLS.
There are some new things we are considering for season 2. First is possibly breaking each creature design into 2 separate streams; a Wednesday stream for drawings, and a follow-up Friday stream for adding color in paint.
But I want to hear from you on this one:
Would you like 2 streams to give a longer working time? Or our old 1-stream speed-challenge format?
Let me know in the comments!
Monster-of-the-Month Club: This one has driven me crazy as it is where I have always shared my Photoshop brush sets. But I have to admit, with Adobe's betrayal of our community, my heart's just not in it anymore. But I have obligations to the supporters in this tier, and I do have 50 unreleased brushes that I owe you. So my plan is to release them as a big bundle later this summer. A sort of last hurrah before closing up Photoshop for awhile. I do plan to pick up Affinity and Krita, and Procreate when it hits the desktop, so ultimately I can transfer my brushes over to those programs and fine tune them in each. If and when I do, I will release ALL of them here.
Until then, I've got more PS brushes to share, and you can expect a lot of watercolor monsters hi-res art and process guides. I will also be continuing work on the Martian series, though I do want to stick to concept art there for a while. I will still be sharing updates on the game, and you can expect a lot of hi-res Creature Concept Art Sheets for it as well, including the new bounty hunters series we are diving into!
Classic Fantasy Art Series: For you all, it's the DUNGEON!
Sorry, DUNGEON MASTER SERIES!
We will be pushing to finish the calendar and sketchbook for this series throughout the rest of the year. And since our new mantra is DEATH TO PHOTOSHOP, I'm painting the rest of these Classic Fantasy Illustrations in watercolor The next one is, "If You Are Reading This, It's Already Too Late..."
Mentorships remain the same. If you've signed up, let me know on Discord or here which times work best for you. I will be running them July 8th, 9th, & 12th at 9AM, 1PM, and 8PM EST.
So that's it. I'm sad about the state of digital tools and media right now but I'm not giving up. In fact, I'm doubling down. I love painting and drawing, and I'm really excited to spend the rest of the year splashing around in watercolor with you, even if the robots do come for us in the end!
Comments
Isabelle Algrin
Is it bad that I am so happy about PS becoming hell on earth and making it so that you come back to watercolors, drawing and oil painting for a while ? ;P BEST YEAR EVER
Eric Ayala
I've avoided PS because of the cost. I've really enjoyed Clip Studio Paint. Does anyone know of this problem of AI scraping on that application?
Effie von Kleist
I’m so thrilled about the return of Let’s Draw Monsters! And with the new watercolor angle, it’ll be even more exciting than last time. The last year or so has been so confusing for artists. It’s hard to know which paths to take and what technology to trust. I’m hopeful if we can stick together as a community, perhaps we can effect some positive change. At any rate, I’m very much looking forward to leaning into traditional art alongside you and other artists, honing those skillsets, and your forthcoming analog tutorials.
Kelly Sparks
I’d enjoy two streams per piece.
Patrick Finney
Cheers to you, Justin. Fightin' the good fight!
Daria Gallyamova
I’m totally with you on this path towards traditional analog art! It will be wonderful to see more of your analog artwork, tutorials for traditional mediums and process guides! I recently bought pretty little travel kit of watercolor and it would be great to understand how to use it properly! And I’m thrilled to join Let’s draw monsters in traditional media! For me personally 2 streams sounds better because I’ll have more time to participate in my own pace. Plus I like to watch your streams (usually I watch them in record but for Let’s draw monsters I’m going to find time and participate), so twice amount of twitch streams sounds great!
Heather R. Hitchman
I feel you on the hopelessness of social media, I am working towards dropping them all myself. Meta is particularly infuriating, and I've found tiktok causes some kind of mental inflammation for me. Long form content all the way. I look forward to watching your MC episode!
janet A
good dude, fuck digital art.
LordofTempests (LoT)
i really loved your watercolor tutorial and it gave me the mental fortitude to do it a lot more, i'd love more tutorial unto the next great enemy, : the gouache, but also i'd like to learn from you how to do illustration design, how do you come up with great and authentic fantasy design !
The Dragon's Rest
You've made my buy some pencils again lol Edit to add I'd personally prefer 2 streams. For me it's all about watching the process so the longer the better :)
