I spend the most part of October traveling in Europe for different art shows. A week in Portugal for the fantastic THU 2024 event, a short week in Turin for the View Conference and a unforgettable week at Lucca Comics and Games in Tuscany.

During those weeks I did a ton of portfolio reviews and talked endlessly about art, my own, my colleges art and just about art in general. And I was thinking about the ever-asked-question: What would you tell yourself if you could give advice to young Ejsing?

 

Demo Painting View Conference

Wide brushes, less details simple palette and almost no rendering in the background

One of the first things I would say is: “Don’t render everything” We always have an urge to make everything pretty, to show off and brag about all the things we are good at. If you render every single detail in a painting equally it all looks equal. And its rarely doing anything good for the experience of the image. Often when I am doing demo paintings I have to show the acrylic technique in a very fast speed version. It means a lot less rendering than in my professional work. I have less than an hour to paint a painting when people are watching and I try to be fast about it so that no one gets bored. The final demo paintings always have me thinking: “It’s pretty good. Why do I spend so much time on my other paintings when it’s all there in half an hour”?  The looseness and lack of details makes for a stronger impact: And every time I promise myself to take that knowledge on to my next pro-work in the future. 

 

Second thing i would say is: “Go nuts” you’ll never learn anything from playing it safe. I was very early on accepting full color illustration assignments and had to figure it all out while working. I always went very safe when it came to the drawing part but in colors I experimented a lot. I always wished that I had been more reckless when it came to the sketching and drawing side: Instead of copying references all the time I should have just let loose and trusted in my own ability to sort it out. To be honest its only in the last couple of years I have tried sketching in ink straight away with no pencil sketch to go from – inspired by Karl Kopinski and Jung Gi. And I found out that I can do more than I thought I could. Ohhh I wish I had trusted that decades ago. 

 

I tried to make the strokes and details in the background very simple to not pull the eye away from the elephant guy.

When looking through portfolios I would often stop at one piece that somehow stood out from the rest: When asking people what this image is about they often would say: “Ohh that one, that’s just a personal piece”. Its not strange that the personal pieces are the ones with most on their mind. Often when we don’t care too much about the client, the art direction or the performance anxiety we relax and focus on the narrative and the mood. It’s in the personal pieces where we shine and tap into our own soul and emotions and bring forth a tiny bit of ourselves. And it shows. Had I known that 20 years ago I think I would have been less obsessive about finding a great style or constantly comparing my output and finals to everyone else. Painting from a personal angle, expressing your own ideas and design and stories are key to images that will linger in the mind with you for decades.

No faces in the background characters, just shapes and color.