I am writing this with my eyes closed. Yes, literally. A recent diagnosis of my dry eye suggests that half my meibomian glands (that produce oil to lubricate your eyes) is dead, the other half is constantly inflamed and unable to function. The doctor projected that in one or two decades, all my glands would be dead, and I would have to rely entirely on outside lubrication to be able to just open my eyes. Sitting in the same room with 80-year-olds who are waiting to get the sa

Environments, like plein air landscapes paintings, are arguably the most complex category of concept art. Here is my developing take on what skills make up environment concept paintings. All fundamental and story skills overlap each other and improve alongside each other. FUNDAMENTALS Perspective. It's important to maintain the cohesiveness and realism of the perspective. Objects of similar sizes depicted in different sizes serve as a good anchor for establishing distance. Li

People who do independent and skill-heavy creative work such as art often have bad mental health. We experience a lot of art burnout, which is ironic given that we chose this path because we love it. The truth is, our passion is part of the fuel for this problem. Here are a list of remedies for burnout that I've compiled through personal experience and things I consume. Mental Reframe your worth. My self worth is tied to the quality of work I produce. Which is a good thing on

Our thoughts are composed of language. The more complicated the language, the more complicated our thoughts -- just like how infants have simple thoughts because they don't know any words, and grownups have more complex thoughts because they have a larger vocabulary. Language also helps shape thoughts. I have a lot of different ramblings in my brain, they make me feel a certain way and I assume meaning out of informal feelings. By putting these ramblings into writing, I creat

Everything below costs around $1500 together. A fair price to let you do almost everything in art! You also don't have to buy everything. I think that anything related to creativity is a good purchase. People are not short of art materials (anything from this list to a free elementary school pencil counts as art supply) but short of creativity. Traditional Art EASELS $550 U.go plein air pochade box (+2 compartments, clear palette glass) $250 U.go wet paint box $150 Atworth fr

When I was 6 my parents bought our first car, a Mazda. They consulted me to choose a color for the car. I was a girly girl and chose red (only girly color) and a hello kitty themed seat wrapper. 13 years later when I was 19 -- no longer a girly girl and preferred muted earth tones over red -- the car exceeded its life expectancy and was mandated by the government to get recycled at a scrap metal recycling facility. The sadness is hitting me now, a year after the red Mazda was

First, let’s define what “real” and “fake” mean. In the Chinese classic Dream of the Red Chamber , everything revolves around one line: “When the false is taken as real, the real becomes false.” There is falsehood within reality, and reality within falsehood. These two concepts are incredibly blurry. Take a small internal example: imagine I’m furious and yelling at someone. What I say is exaggerated—“fake” in the traditional sense. But my anger is real. Or take an external ex