Archive

Y'all surviving winter? I... struggle with winter. I try to enjoy it, but the simple fact is that I love getting outside and walking around without my face hurting cause it's cold. And it's not even that cold here. I think I'm just a wimp sometimes.

Anyway, I've been staying inside and staying busy!

I launched some new gaming/work desk mats today. They're way bigger than I thought they'd be (36x18", so waaaay bigger than the usual 24x14" playmats I sell). But I'm extremely pleased with the quality of them. They seem very well made and I think they look great.

I made a mug! I’m a big fan of coffee and stoicism and wanted a way to merge those two interests. So I took a little time and painted something for a Memento Mori mug. Now I can be reminded of my inescapable mortality every morning. It’s great.

If you’d like a mug and want to give me a few bucks, you can buy a mug here. They’re nice and chunky and big. I’ve been using mine for about a month now and still really enjoy it.

Happy New Years! 2023 is upon us.

I uploaded (almost) all of my art from 2022 onto my blog in one easily-scrollable place: https://noahbradley.blog/2022-in-art/

I really like looking back on a period of art like this. It's nice to get that birdseye view on your development as an artist. As we're making art, we're so focused on each individual piece, and each individual portion of that piece. We rarely have a conception for how it all fits together into a year of art, much less how it fits into our whole career of making art.

I hope you get a kick out of this. I didn't upload everything I made, but there were also hundreds of figure drawings and quite a few odds and ends. But this is most of it.

Hey y'all! I just finished up one more painting for the year and wanted to share it with you all.

It's been... a year. One crazy, wild, rough, amazing year. I've had some really high highs and some really low lows. But I like where I'm at now and I'm damn proud of what I've accomplished over the last year. I think I've set myself up for a great 2023 as well. Lots of art and writing and teaching and photography ahead for me.

Life is good, perhaps not just in spite of the difficulties, but because of them. If everything was too easy, maybe we wouldn't grow enough. Maybe we wouldn't learn to be grateful for everything we have.

Hey there, it's been a while. Life has been... insane. The last 6 weeks have been non-stop for us. We were out in LA where Rachel attended Lightbox, then I went down to Colombia for a bachelor party, we went up to NYC to celebrate Rachel's 30th then came back to VA to go on a group camping trip to carry on that celebration, and finally I was in a wedding for my best friend this past weekend. Oh and Thanksgiving yesterday.

It's been a lot.

But the socializing is finally calming down and I can return to my introvert cave. The last month has left me motivated and excited to get back to creating, though, so the next month should be a time of renewed productivity. I need a little recovery and rest time, but I often find I get my most effective rest when I'm somewhat busy doing things.

Black Friday sale

Just a couple more days to back Paint Figures Better on Kickstarter! We're about 119% funded right now, so this book is really going to happen. I'm blown away by the support and love for this project and I'm excited to get it out to everyone. The design work is 99.5% done, so I'll be ordered some samples from the printer this week.

I'll be selling the book after the fact, but backing the Kickstarter will get you a book sooner (and, almost certainly, more affordably). But if you'd rather wait and see what other people think of it, I totally understand that.

Also re: international folks. I am going to try to get it into people's hands over there. I've been looking into sending books to Amazon warehouses in England/Europe and that might work. I have no idea how it'll affect the price, but I'll do what I can. I imagine the hate-brigade will tank any Amazon listing of mine with 1 star "reviews," but hey, that's the way life goes. I'm just lucky to get to make this book at all.

https://PaintFiguresBetter.com

Rachel and I just uploaded our newest Creators.Chat on "Why You Suck at Art (and how to stop)": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HS_O9ChL0X4

I think we all suck at some aspects of art. And sometimes we suck at everything. So it's important to acknowledge those areas, face them, work on them, and eventually master them (or at least learn to suck less). We had a lot of fun chatting, as usual, and I think we share some useful ideas in here.

I've got a week left in the Kickstarter campaign for Paint Figures Better! Things are going well still and we're 115% funded. I'm very very excited to get these books ordered and then out to everyone later this year. I have a feeling my mind will be blown when I finally get to hold a copy of this.

Some new work for The Sin of Man. Wanted to see where my imaginative figure painting skills were at these days. Nice little level-up from last time.

Thanks to everyone who has backed and shared Paint Figures Better—we’re fully funded! The book is really gonna happen. If you’d like to be the first to get your copy, you can still go back the kickstarter. I’m very excited that this project is going to happen. It opens up a lot of doors for me. Now that I know that I can make a book, I’ll probably be making a lot more of them now. I hope you’ve got a lot of room to spare on your bookshelves.

So I’m making a book! We all know that I used to suck at figures, but in the last couple years I’ve gotten pretty good. I wrote 55 tips that helped me to finally break through my barriers and get out of that plateau—and I think they’ll really help you all too.

I’d love to print a little hardcover book (8.5”x8.5”) but I need your help! Printing and shipping books ain’t cheap, so I just launched a Kickstarter to try and fund all of this. I’ve tried to make it as affordable as possible because I know a lot of people are strapped for cash these days. There are also ebook options for all of you international folks (because international shipping is expensive and stupid and annoying).

Your support means the world to me. If you can’t back the book, spreading the word would be greatly appreciated. The cancellation a couple years ago set back my work and career in ways I can only begin to convey. So doing something as public as this is not only terrifying (because of potential backlash) but also extremely daunting (because I don’t know if enough people still support me). Thanks to all of you who help in any way you can. ♥

After about a million requests, Rachel and I finally did a couples reference pack. It's a long time coming but we were thrilled to get back to shooting photos and excited to finally do one together. We had a blast shooting this stuff and I couldn't help but do a study based on one of the shots:

I'm still hard at work on my new book about figure painting. I'm finishing up one last editing pass before getting some people to read through it. But I'm fairly confident in it. I think it might help a lot of people who struggle with figures. It won't be a book on how to paint figures (there are better books on that), but rather a collection of tips on how I got un-stuck and actually improved. I spent a long, long time being pretty mediocre at figures, so I'm in a sweet spot to help people out of that rut.

I don't have an exact date yet, but I'm hoping to launch the Kickstarter in a couple weeks. There's a lot more work that needs to happen before that, but I'm mostly just incredibly excited. I've always wanted to make a book. I, like so many other artists, have bookshelves full of art books. They've been my companions for many years and I'm so elated to be making something that will hopefully go on other artist's shelves.

We have a new Creators.Chat video up! I know the title is cringe-level click baity, but it's legitimately a quite good video and I think we talk about some really useful stuff. If you want to be more inspired and less blocked, this might give you some good ideas for how to do that.

I'm hard at work on my first book project, which is a bit terrifying. I'll be talking more about that and launching a kickstarter for it next month, but that's my excuse for not having any new art to show. I'm pretty excited about this book, though. And making this first one is getting me excited to make more books in the future, too.

I had some footage sitting around with my process of painting Lightning Bolt for Magic: The Gathering a few years ago. It's a big oil painting and one of my Magic pieces that I'm most proud of.

Hope you enjoy the video! And I hope you like all the new videos I've been making lately. I've really missed making them. It's a nice way to share the creative process.

Have a great week!

Some new not-AI-generated work for The Sin of Man! Felt good to get back into my comfort zone for this piece. Pure landscape work like this is what I built my career on and it's nice to do from time to time. Also painting rocks is incredibly meditative.

I've added a video on my youtube channel about my AI sketch process using tools like Midjourney and DIsco Diffusion. I've had a blast working with these tools over the past couple weeks and wanted to share some of my experiences and suggestions about them. Check it out if you're interested.

I've also gathered a bunch of the high res files, renders, and settings that I've been using into a big download for anyone interested in taking a closer look at how I made these images. Might help if you want to get started and are struggling with getting your prompts just right or wondering how to best take a raw image and turn it into a nice sketch.

Just posted a new Creators.Chat episode, Will AI Destroy Artists! We've been getting a ton of questions and concerns from artists about AI art and we wanted to take the opportunity to talk about those. We've also had a fair bit of experience with it after using these AI art generators heavily for the past couple weeks, so we wanted to share a few tips on how we're using it. So yeah, check it out if you're interested in AI art and what it might mean for artists.

I've also recorded a bunch of process videos from sketching from some of these AI images and am putting together a short video explaining my process. I think it's an amazing tool for creating ideas and images and I think it's a tool that every artist should keep in their tool belt. I'll shoot another email sometime this week when I get that one posted.

Just a quick post for the artists (and other creators) among you. We're finally back to Creators.Chat! We've missed doing these videos together and are absolutely thrilled to be back to it. We love talking about this sort of stuff and are blessed to have the chance to share some of those conversations with you.

Hope you like it and let us know if there are any other subjects you'd like us to cover!

New piece for The Sin of Man! Hope you like it. It took quite a while to paint but I'm fairly pleased with the end result. I've always loved really busy, cluttered scenes like this but just never had the patience to do them myself. But I seem to be getting more patient as I get older, which I suppose is a good thing.

So I've been playing with one of the new AI art generation tools and it's absolutely ridiculous. Like really. I'm absolutely blown away by how well it works and the quality of the outputs. Here are some of the sketches I whipped up based on outputs from Midjourney and a little painting over them:

I'm still in a neck brace and dealing with all sorts of nerve issues, but recovery from my surgery is going pretty well and I'm still able to make art. I'm doing sketches every day this month, but wanted to find time to finish this piece I sketched out earlier this year. I put more time into this piece than I probably needed to, but I'm ok with that. Some work just takes a lot of time to really come together.

Hope you like it!

Noah

I mentioned before that I was dealing with a rough neck injury for the last month. At long last, I got through the system and had an MRI on Monday night. Tuesday morning I got a call from the orthopedic department that they needed to see me immediately. I had two severe disc hernias in my neck that were pressing on my spinal column. The doctor said it was a miracle that I was still walking.

We packed our bags and I was admitted into the hospital that afternoon for surgery on the next day. There was a lot of getting poked and prodded and a tremendous amount of boredom waiting for something to happen. But at long last, on Wednesday I was brought into the OR and operated on for a few hours.

Here's a shot of me after I got back up to our room:

New art for The Sin of Man that I'm titling "Eve." I sketched this piece about 4 years ago but didn't feel up to the task of painting it at the time. I was very inexperienced with painting waves and obviously struggled with figures. But the past few years of figure studies and some dedicated studies on water/waves recently led me to feeling comfortable enough to take a shot at finishing this piece. I really hope you like it!

I republished my post, 10 Books Every Artist Must Read, with some updated info on it. I put the list together a long time ago and I'm proud to have influenced hundreds/thousands of artists to read these books over the years. There are now some books I'd add to the list (and I'll probably do a sequel or two soon), but this list still stand admirably. You can get a pretty damn good art education by reading these.

So this month is #MaySketchaDay! It's one of those monthly art challenges where you do a sketch every day. I needed to do some new sketches anyway for The Sin of Man so I'm taking the opportunity to do that.

I've done the challenge a couple times before and I usually end up with at least a few pieces that I want to finish. Fingers crossed that this year is the same.

Hope you like the first 4 days of sketches. Many more to come!

Still working hard on some figure paintings! Also working on writing up my thoughts on figure painting and how I learned to get better at it. It's been a subject I struggled with for about a decade and then finally got pretty good at it. So I want to share some of the revelations I had on it and hopefully help some other people shortcut their own learning. I'll be doing both writing and some videos. Maybe a book? We'll see how feasible that is.

Just a quick update for today but hope you like the paintings!

Hey y'all! So my neck is still super screwed up. I've talked to a few doctors at this point and the general response has been "wow that sucks." I'm talking to another specialist this coming week and hoping for new/better answers. I can still do my work, but the cloud of pain and general inability to do what I normally do has been tough.

Kratom

In brighter news, I just posted a new article about one of my favorite things: kratom! I've been recommending kratom to my friends for years and, even though it's not the sort of thing I usually share, I thought some people might benefit from it. So if you're curious about kratom or if you've never heard about it, check out the short article. It's been a big help for me and I hope it helps some other folks.

Figure painting

I've edited, updated, and expanded my article, How I Became an Artist. It's been 7 years since I published the original and it's had nearly a million views since then. So I thought it was due for an update.

A lot has happened in my life and art in the last 7 years. Some of the best and worst events in my life so far. It's been quite the roller coaster.

Click here to read How I Became an Artist

How I Became an Artist

The 19 year journey of my art so far. See my art progress and change as I overcome the trials and blessings of my life as an artist thus far.

Wanted to continue my portrait practice but start transitioning back into paintings. I'm naturally a painter but I force myself to draw more so that I don't always lean so heavily on my stronger painting abilities. I did that for a very long time and it was certainly helpful for kickstarting my career but maybe not the most beneficial for improving my skills.

But now back to painting! These turned out a bit better than I had expected. It feels great to be seeing/feeling some notable improvements in these. They've been a struggle for me for so damn long but they're starting to get to a level that I'm happy with them. Always further to go and more stuff to try, but I think I can get there.

Continuing my portrait-learning practice with some self-portraits. Always did love self-portraits, ever since I started seriously working on my art as a teenager. There’s something nice about always having a willing model and the artistic tradition is pretty fascinating to me too (Rembrandt was an early major influence on my work).

Hope you like it! I’m back in my studio next week and looking forward to resuming work on more finished pieces. I’ve been pushing my figure drawing (both referenced and imaginative) in the last month and I’m hoping for an increased level of confidence in those as I get back to more work for The Sin of Man.

Wanted to share a few of the daily portrait studies I’ve been working on lately. I’m taking a little break from finishing paintings to return to studies and work on some of the weak points about my art. Wasn’t thrilled with where my portraits were at, so trying to spend some time slowing down and improving those. They’re still a little weird looking sometimes but I feel like they’re improving, which is a good sign. It’s a never ending road but gotta keep making progress.

That’s all for now. Hope you like ‘em!

Noah

New painting! Hope y'all like this one—it took a lot of time to make and I poured a lot of love into it. I really like how much time I get to devote to my paintings these days. I have the chance to make them the best pieces that I can.

In other, new, exciting news, I'm finally re-launching my store! Lots of stuff that hasn't been available for a long time (or ever). Grab prints from The Sin of Man and from Magic: the Gathering and more. :) And to kick things off, I'm doing an automatic 20% off of everything (except for artist proofs).

New art for The Sin of Man! I promised I'd be finishing a lot more paintings for my world this year and so far I seem to be keeping that promise. Only 3 finished paintings this month, which is a bit less than I had hoped for—but I do love unrealistic goals, so there we go. :)

Photobashed (obviously) from some of our photos from our trip to Cyprus that are on Reference.Pictures. It'd been a while since I did a piece this heavily photobashed so it was a fun change of pace. Might have to bring that back into the regular rotation of techniques.

Hope you like this one! Should be able to finish up another painting by next week to share.

More new art from The Sin of Man for y'all! A super happy piece to kick off this week. :)

I've been meaning to paint this piece for about 9 years now. I liked the sketch a lot when I originally did it but didn't feel confident enough in my skills at the time to do it justice for what I had in my head. But now, thanks to all of the figure painting practice last year, I felt good enough to take a shot at it. So here it is! After a long, long wait. Hope you like it.

I finally got covid (yay) but am mostly past that now. Certainly took it out of me and kept me from painting for a little while. Glad to be back to work now. Got some more work that I'm really excited to share!

New painting for The Sin of Man! Started this one a while back, but finally made the time to finish it this past week. Hope you like it and I hope you're having a good first week of this new year!

BTW, I'm having a sale on both Art Camp and my brush pack. Just use code "2022" on either one to save 20%.

Now back to painting,

2021 was my sabbatical.

I love the idea of sabbaticals. I wish everyone had the chance to periodically stop, step back, have fun, and explore. We shouldn't have to wait till retirement to take some extended time off.

Even before I was pushed into an early pseudo-retirement after last year's clusterfuck, I had been tempted to take one. It's too easy to become tunnel visioned as you progress in a creative career. Your nose is up against your painting and it's hard to take a step back and remember why you're even bothering making art in the first place. But I had the chance to do that this year.

I produced less finished work this year than I have for a long time, but I think the time off was a smart investment for my future art. I'm really excited to create again.

A year ago today my life ended. I was cancelled and I’ve spent the last year recovering, learning, growing, and healing from that. It’s been the hardest thing I’ve ever gone through and I’m so grateful for how much support and love I’ve received through it all.

I wrote a piece on the whole experience, What It’s Like To Be Cancelled. It was hard to write and only scratches the surface of what happened and what the results have been. But I hope it gives a few of you a little glimpse into what this has been like.

Thanks for being here for me. ♥

New work for The Sin of Man! I know, right, two paintings in a week? I’m impressed too. But this one came together fairly quickly and just… happened. I’m also trying to remember my roots a little and return to a bit more painterly work. I realized I was missing that aspect of my work more and wanted some of that back.

Some new art for The Sin of Man! Felt good to get back to painting weird, surreal, mysterious creatures.

I painted this one on the ipad in Procreate. I’ve been on the road the last couple weeks, seeing friends and eating too much. It’s been great. I’ve done some sketching on the ipad but hadn’t ever tried to finish a piece on it. But now that the world is opening back up again and we’re going to be able to travel more, I knew I wanted to try to start & finish a piece on the ipad. So here we are.

I love practicing. I love doing it, thinking about it, talking about it, reading about it, watching those great movie montages where somebody practices something. Everything.

So I’ve done three videos about practicing and how to do it well in the context of art. It’s most useful to artists but I bet 95% of the information would carry over to just about any other creative work.

How Much Should You Practice Art? - https://youtu.be/5eNV-h8hhsg

So now! Foundation is one of the “cooler” places for NFTs these days. While Rarible and Opensea are certainly great platforms, Foundation is one of the ones pushing for more premium, high quality, collectible art. So I was pretty excited to get on there. :)

Interlude

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I’ve gotten about a million questions about NFTs in the last week of doing them. So I made a video today where I explain

1. WTF is an NFT
2. Is it a scam?

So I’m doing a new, weird thing! I just made my first NFT and you can check it out here.

If you’re now kinda confused, that’s ok! I was confused too. NFTs/cryptoart is a way to make digital art collectible. They’re kinda like digital tokens that you can buy and sell and are tied to a specific piece of digital art.

I’m excited by the possibilities of them because they have the potential to be a great new way to support & invest in your favorite creators/projects.

2021 has been a great year for me so far. I’ve been busy and made some cool stuff and wanted to share some of that with you.

I’ve been shooting and releasing a bunch of new Reference.Pictures content. Just this morning I released the 5th new pack this year. I’m aiming to do weekly releases on every Tuesday. I decided not to spam this list with every one of those because that seemed a little excessive, but if you do want notifications of them be sure to also sign up for the gumroad mailing list over there.

Wow, we’ve really made it. 2021. I am so happy to be sitting here today on the other side of that mess that was 2020.

I’m not really sure what this year’s going to bring but I’m going to try to be the best person I can be, to make the world a better place, and to add more good art to it.

I’m going to be re-starting Reference.Pictures and launching new packs on there. I might not spam this list with launch I do on there (as I plan to put out a lot of stuff), but if you want updates on that you can sign up for the mailing list there on or you can

Yep, this is an email trying to sell you stuff. But hey, at least it’s cheaper-than-normal stuff, right? :)

First off, we’re doing a 20% off sale on all of Reference.Pictures. Thousands and thousands of pictures all for 20% off. We almost never do sales on our stuff, so this is a bit of an exceptional treat here.

2020 has been a shitshow but I’m kinda grateful for it.

Not everyone gets a complete life-reset. It’s hard and painful and most of the time it sucks, but coming out of it on the other side almost feels, well, liberating.

Going through awful stuff has made me appreciate all of the good things in life. I love my friends and family even more now. I appreciate their company, support, and love more than I ever have before. I love you, my supporters. In my endless striving to improve, I often lost sight of just how good I had things. I don’t do that as much any more. I take time every day to just be grateful. I’m so, so grateful for you.

Just wanted to share some new art with y’all. :) Painted this one a couple years ago for Magic: the Gathering and happy to see it finally come out.

Hope you like it! There are only a handful more MTG pieces to come out from me. It’s bittersweet to see it come to an end. I had a great 9 year run of working on the game, but it feels good to move on. Better things, right?