End of the Month Post - April 2022 - The Art of Blokfort

HEY, I'm keeping it super short this time.

I'm back to doing art, yay!

I'm doing a lot more sketch work, rather than line-art. I don't actually like doing line-art pieces all that much, and I feel like I have more freedom with sketches. I'm super happy with the outcome of the last batch of 'sketches' I've done, but some of them make me question if it was still a 'sketch' in the end. A forever ongoing question for me I guess: "What's a sketch?"

I've been poking at aspects of Eyes on the Prize, and I'm just not happy with how the background process is going. I am actually working on it at least!

I've cleaned up the Commission Details page and added a Form page.

Da En'

Commission Details! - The Art of Blokfort

Commissions are open once again, though you may notice in a somewhat limited fashion.

Please send a note / private message if you have any questions.

Commissions / forms will stay open until further notice.

It's been a while since the last monthly post. I do monthly posts as a sort of "here's what happened in art" journal, as a way to gather and condense what happened for myself, as if anyone was interested, as way for them to see what's on my mind. I haven't been doing monthly posts lately, because I simply haven't been doing much art, if the galleries were any indicator. I recently picked up a full-time job, with a 10-hour 4-day week schedule. It's pretty nice getting three weekend days off, however I'm usually pretty tired on those working days. I get home and generally don't want to do anything except "have fun" for the last few hours of my day. Sadly, there are many times where I just do not have fun with drawing. It feels a little sad to admit this, but drawing can be a frustrating process that I generally don't want to deal with on a workday. Yet there's still tons of projects I want to get done and commissions to do. But, these days, I just do not have the time for all of it currently and I'm having to limit what content I can promise to complete.

Currently, I have my eyes on working on aspects of Eyes on the Prize and doing commissions. For EotP, I want to change how I do the coloring and background. I want to try doing "sketcherly" background, and actually giving the characters some color. I call it "sketcherly" because It's like a sketchy painterly finish. Only problem there is that I'm not that good at picking colors, but I'll figure it out, when/if I get time.

I'm still doing commissions, but I have to pick and choose which ones I accept. I don't like making people wait, so I can't really accept too many, and the ones that I do accept will have to be Sketch - Flat coloring types from now on. I simply don't have time to do big line-arted character sheets, or intricate armors and backgrounds, unless I'm willing to make people wait a long time for them.

So yeah, less art from me in general, but I'm still doing it!

Although it was the end of the year, I didn't have anything to say that I could say with any sort of resolve, so here's some things now.

Although art commissions were going well, I once again, neglected personal projects. Since the start of January, I've come up with a new system to try out for overall general content, since I can't trust myself to do it in any sort of reasonably free-willed way. The system is simply doing and completing one Personal Project, then two commissions. 1-2-1-2. This way I don't hold myself to a timetable on the calendar and will still be free to generally do what I want. Right as of writing this, I need to complete two commissions before doing something personal again. I've been playing around with an iPad app called "Nomad Sculpt", and it's a great tool. Highly recommend checking that one out.

That's all good and well, but I've had a rather large change happen in my life recently that will affect how much art I will get done. I've picked up a full-time job, so now there will be generally less art getting done. I'm still going to do it of course, but still. I've changed my Commission Status to CLOSED for now, with some commission changes that will likely occur in a month or few. I'm not quite sure on them yet.

As far as actual *content* is concerned, I'll still post what I can, and share stuff on Patreon for what is available. But again, there's going to be significantly less of it, sorry about that!

I don't think I'll post alt pictures on Newgrounds anymore, as it feels like I'm spamming. Alts will be on other sites I use, like the following:

My own site - blokfort.com

Twitter - (6) Blokfort(NSFW!) 🔞 (@NSFWfort) / Twitter or (6) Blokfort (@Blokfort) / Twitter

Weasyl - Blokfort's profile — Weasyl

e621 - blokfort - e621

It's getting a little difficult to come up with things to write about in regards to art stuff these days. In general I'm pretty happy with where I am currently skill-wise, but that doesn't mean I want to stay where I am. I still want to get better, and there's still a lot of different avenues to even attempt. Currently, I'm looking into ways to improve my shading. on my Commission Details page, it shows a small sampling of what shading I can do, Flat, Simple and Complex. Flat isn't actually a shading of any type, it's just base colors. Flat Coloring is, funny enough, something I need to work on, as I don't quite grasp the idea of "tone." A piece's tone depends on how dark or light it is, what warm or cold colors you use. Typically, the colder colors have a darker tone to them, so for example a blue sky will have a darker tone than a hue-shifted green sky or something. I'm pretty happy with how Simple shade is going, but I'm not very happy with Complex shading. I'm a little unsure if I should even mention it but in all honesty, the past few Complex Shading pieces I've done I've been a bit unhappy with for various reasons. Admittedly, a few of the reasons you won't even notice unless you have a magnifying glass and dissect each piece bit by bit, but it's still on my mind now and then.

There are a few pieces in which I can use to demonstrate what I mean when I said I needed to work on "tone" earlier; A recent short one of two page comic, and the completed Silk and Dagger comic are two such examples. Even though it's a Flat Coloring finish, some parts I feel like are simply too dark or other parts that are way too bright. However, I'm afraid to change the coloring too much, as I liked the color combinations when I first made them or that I'm afraid it will detract from the original design too much. This could mean I need to change how I design things, or that I simply need to understand color synergy better. I have a few ideas to try for this at least.

Because of all of these issues I currently have in art, I'd like to try and wedge in fundamental work alongside commission work. I of course love getting commissions to work on, but I think there's honestly only so much "skill building" that a commission can provide. Commissions are being made based on the setup you see in the Commission Details page, with a little bit of wiggle room. Of course I still learn a lot from commissions, but I don't really get a lot of opportunities to experiment in wide and weird ways. It's funny, but that's kind of what the Weekly Vote stuff was for but unfortunately I haven't had time to do Weekly Vote stuff for a while now, and that doesn't seem to be changing anytime soon. Fundamental work is simply things like attempting digital painting work, messing with brushes, "live" modeling exercises, shade experimental, etc.

Last note about commission work, I've recently made an update to the Commission Details page to say that I'm no longer functioning on a Open / Close commission work flow, instead I'll just try to work on things when I can, and be comfortable with the idea that the art piece will eventually get done. I say that as if that's going to be the new way things will be, but in truth I've always generally done this. As long as I get to the work, and finish it within "a reasonable time frame," then everyone is assumedly happy!

End of the Month Post - October 2021 - The Art of Blokfort

Earlier this month I have finally completed Silk and Dagger, an 8 page comic! It's a frame-by-frame comic featuring one (technically two) of my characters, Nasuka and "Boy". There's not much to say about it, but I'm very happy to have completed it. I learned a lot while doing it, and experimented with small things such as line-art thickness. Basically, when an "object" is "closer to the camera" then I make the line-art thicker, or something is further away, then I'll make it thinner. I was also able to experiment with more POV or FOV type shots, such as exaggerating what something looking like when it's lying down, or something. Hard to explain a thing from a picture into words. I'll be posting each page on Patreon one day at a time, then next week it'll be posted publicly.

I've made more of an effort to get the Comics page working, It's still not quite how I want it, but it will have to be good enough. How would have thought it would have been so difficult to put two images next to each other, with designated links attached to them? Comics that have a more tradition comic-page style will have a more web-comic general style of viewing, whereas frame-by-frame comics will have a gallery viewing experience. This is because I don't really know how to get both formats to look decent at the same time.

I'm going to be handling commissions differently for a bit. Instead of saying "I'm Open or Closed" I'll simply just accept whatever commission someone wants at the time. Anytime I Open Commissions again, it's a wave of commissions, and I feel a tad rushed to get them all done for the next wave. Instead I will simply say that "I'll get them done eventually." and it's up to the commissioner to see what my art schedule is like. I've updated my Commissions page and Trello page to reflect this info a bit. These days I can somewhat predict and manage things in 1-2 months, but anything in the 3 month range or further is not something I can generally do. But again, I will guarantee that if I have accepted a commission, I will get it done. One may ask for multiple commissions if one would like, but it's up to me to plan and see what gets done. If someone has requested a commission, I now have a handy form they can fill out. It's still a work in progress though, as I've had to go back and change / update multiple parts with it as time went on, but I'm glad I have it.

Final topic for this month is about content. I don't like doing things in a specific time frame. "Daily Sketches" get hard for me to do after a while. It usually turns into: "Ugh, I have to do a thing today, but I'm not really feeling it." and then I feel like I don't do a good job on it. So, like with commissions, I'll just do random sketches whenever I feel like. Further more, I'd like to do comic stuff again. Eyes on the prize, First love, whatever other things, etc. I want to say I'll have a page done every week, but I don't want to make that the standard that I will follow perfectly. It's just a general guideline. I'm currently working on a smaller 2 page comic with Abrus (one of my characters, of the Dusk Fans) in it, as a warm up of sorts.

I didn't do a post for July because I had basically nothing to say that I felt warranted time to even say it. I officially started work on Silk and Dagger, an 8(9) page comic. Currently all of the sketches for each page are done and now I just have to go through and line and color it all. Honestly it shouldn't take very long from now until it's completion! Speaking of sketching/sketches, I'm still pretty damn happy with what I consider a 'sketch' currently. It's very easy for me to go from placement/thumbnail sketches, to a sketch, to line art now.

Speaking of line art, as of August 30th, I'm thinking I still don't really like the process of doing line art. I'm happy with how my line art looks now, I know how it works and how to work around it and stuff (incredibly detailed explanation, I know). However, I find myself more and more 'unhappy' with the general finished look of it. I always feel like it's not quite right, how 'flat' it looks, and how it's not a painterly style. As far as how 'flat' it looks, I guess that's just because I still don't have a great grasp on anatomy, and know how to work with perspective and angles and such. Line thickness and thinness could also play a part in specific points I suppose. But besides that, what I'd really like to do is to do painterly type stuff, but I currently don't have time / energy / willpower to get into it. I feel like with how my sketches currently are, I feel like I might actually have a good way to get into the whole structure of it. It's hard to explain, heh.

Summer kicked my ass in terms of willpower and energy to get artwork done, which was another contributor to why I feel like I had nothing to say. "I am / was tired and didn't get very much work done." was a near daily circumstance unfortunately. I feel a lot better now at least. Content-wise though, I'm a bit light this month because of the work on Silk and Dagger, and low volume of commissions to share. Not that I mind, I'm merely mentioning as to why I don't have much this month, between how much I worked and what work actually got done.

Now for a totally random and unrelated list of things.

I want to do:

• • Animations
  • 3D modeling
  • Comics
  • Painterly
  • Emotes
  • Design Characters
  • Plushes / Plush Toys
  • All the things

Original Post here: End of the Month Post - June 2021 - The Art of Blokfort

In usual end of the month post-fashion, I will continue in random disjointed-not connected point to point journaling, without looking at a previous post to see if I've already said something.

First off, It's hot, and I don't like it. That is all.

In the middle of May, I accepted way too many commissions, again, and figured it would take at least 1-3 months to get it all done. Well, I got it all done by the end of this month! I'm going to be taking a break from commissions a bit to re-evaluate and look over a few things, but also to just do whatever I want in art for a bit. As far as what will happen after the break, I'm planning on doing a fairly large project that might take a while. No, sadly it's not Eyes on the Prize, or any other project I have shelved at the moment (I swear I'll get back to it some day). While I'm working on this project, commissions will have to be 'smaller' in difficulty and amount.

Near the start of of the month, I finished the sort of "family line up" of the Dusk Fan assassin OCs I have. I've been going through my other characters to finally give them some sort of 'official' art as well, since it's a little funny and sad to leave them at 'concept art' stages.

For some of the larger of the pieces this month, it really goes to show that if you have the tools and you know how to use them, you might as well use them. Art Studio Pro (ASP), for the purposes I need, has some of the worst lighting layer options, yet when transferring the PSD file of the art piece into Procreate (Pro) with the same exact settings gives you vastly different (and much better) results. It shows that there's still room for growth for ASP and I hope that there will be changes to the lighting settings for it in the future. Pro recently had an update to allow more layers to be used, which is pretty nice, however the brush settings are still absolute garbage-trash-incomprehensible-fury-inducing (for what I need). So currently, I do the line art on ASP, and then if I need to do fancier lighting, I transfer the PSD over to Pro.

Lately I've been playing around with sketches once again, and I think I've found yet another format that I like. What it basically came down to was canvas format. I like the idea that sketches aren't *PERFECT* quality in terms of an image file, but I don't want something like a .jpg for anything, those artifacts and loss of image quality suck. My base canvas format is generally 3000x3500 300dpi using a 6-pixel sized (px) brush for line-art on more "finished" pieces and a 8px brush for sketches, or thereabouts. All artworks used to start with the same base canvas file, though lately I've been experimenting with something around 1000x1200 300 dpi. Using the 8px brush on the smaller canvas is quite hard to work with, since the lines are big and blobby, mistakes were easier to make. So basically, this is how the canvases and a few experimental sketches were done:

• Big (Default) Canvas - 2500x3000, 300dpi
• Small (Sketch) Canvas - 1000x1200 300dpi
• Finishing Line-art Brush - 6px (smaller)
• "Sketching" Line-art Brush - 8px (somewhat bigger - trust me the differences are noticeable)

1. Big Canvas + 6px / 8px - How I normally do finished pieces, ignore.
2. Big Canvas + 8px - This tended to take a bit too long to get done, didn't really feel like a sketch, but also didn't look like a "finished" piece. At least, to me. Examples of this would be all of the Dusk Fan characters.
3. Small Canvas + 8px - The canvas size is way too small for the brush, and as stated before makes certain things very blobby, and mistakes arise more often.
4. Small Canvas + 6px - The sweet spot. I can jot something and still have it look like a nice "sketch" but not so clean it gets mistaken as a finished pic. And it's quick!

So basically the 8px brush goes into the dumpster, bye bye. I've replaced it with a different blobby sketch brush too.

Honestly I don't have a lot to say this month.

I'm adjusting some commission prices again. I've updated the "Additional Notes" card, you can see it on the commissions info page: Commissions Info! - The Art of Blokfort

All time-lapses for Patreon will now be 2 minutes, since that's a pretty good length of time. It's not too long, and it's not too short, and it fits within Patreon's file size limit of 200mb per file.

I feel bad for putting both [Weekly Votes] and any type of comic work on hold, but I've been taking too many commissions as of late, heh.

I've been trying to do some "sketch line-art" type stuff done, the idea being that I'd like to get some actual art of all my characters done and not leave them in 'concept art' land. There's 45 characters total! I'm trying to get a little quicker with the line-art phase of a drawing, so hopefully this helps me out a bit.