More Crits!

I will be updating this post as I get more crits in. I will try and do one or two a day for the next week until we are all finished up.

Our next lovely image comes from a long time friend of mine, LA-Fairy. As her name implies, she enjoys drawing fairies. Before I begin I must say that her art has made a great improvement over the years.

That being said here are the changes I would make. First, you are thinking linearly instead of in terms of light and shadow. There is no clear light source and there seems to be conflicting shadow areas in the face versus the rest of the body. So I decided to go with the body shading and take it from there. That means there is a lovely primary light source to her upper right, our left. Light source is very important because it determines how the form will be rendered. Be sure to have a clear light side and a clear dark side with consistent values on either side.

One other thing, the first thing I noticed when I saw this image was that the contrast was very very low. If you put a layer of black turned to saturation mode you will see very quickly that your figure is hard to distinguish from the background. With that in mind, I separated her from her background onto her own layer and popped the contrast immediately on both layers. Contrast is very important. It helps guide the eye to know what to look at and to better understand what is being seen.

Here is the finished contrast difference:

Taking what you already did in the legs, I fleshed out the forms more to show roundness while thinking about core shadow. Core shadow will be perpendicular to the light source and in this case ought to hit about halfway in her thigh and legs with variations based on the volume and roundness. From there I added some cast shadows hitting her thighs. I altered her shoulders and chest to make them more painterly instead of fully outlined. This gives the illusion of depth and will make your work more realistic. From there I changed the hair to include a clear light and shadow side instead of just strings of light and dark. I also added some large chunks fanning outward from her face as that is what would happen if she were really flying around. Also, as I played with the light source I could soon see that the shadow was in the wrong place. The shadow will be at the same angle as the light source. In this case, it is slanting in from the left so the shadow needed to be moved to the right.

I did alter some proportions as I went along. Mainly, the shoulders were a little out of place and the hands and fingers were too small. I didn't bother with reference so you may want to find some or if you do have some, think about proportion and size in relation to the rest of the figure to really get those areas down. Lastly I added some soft green rim lighting to define the form on the other side of her. One thing I did not play with much was the background. You will want to spend more time thinking about how it relates to the figure. You'll notice I did crop the image as there was too much empty space and the composition was getting a bit boring. Perhaps in the future you may think about having a more dynamic pose. Studying line of action may be of help.

Overall, I think you just need to think about light source and contrast. I would also think about the purpose of each image you create. Is it meant to be on the front of a greeting card? Should there be more of a background? Or is it a quick character concept? These are things that will change how the work evolves and what should be included.

While doing this critique I realized that in the future I will want to live stream these so I can explain exactly why I am doing what I am doing when I paint over them. I think it will be a great resource to everyone who wants to know why I make these changes.

Our next image comes from Chris.

As this image is coming from a beginner, as he called himself, I will keep my critic simplified. What I do see are some large blocks of color which is good for starting out. It looks to me like you used some sort of photo for reference. This can be okay to do from time to time but I have found that in the beginning stages of learning art, drawing from life helps you to see shapes 3 dimensionally. This allows you to understand the correlation between spacial planes to a higher degree than drawing from a 2 dimensional photograph where you have only one flat view of the object/subject matter. Also, starting by drawing cones, blocks, and eggs are a great way to focus on learning how to render value without worrying about complex shapes typically found in the face and figure. This is what I recommend for most beginners. Once you have mastered that, drawing portraits would work the same way. Basically, you would want to think in terms of light and shadow and not in terms of drawing the eye, the nose, and the lips. What I mean is, instead of drawing element by element, draw the general blocked in shapes of light and shadow. Turning your image upside down will also help you see these relationships without thinking about your predetermined notions of what an eye or a nose should look like. As this particular piece is in the early stages, and I don't have the reference you used to look off of, I think a paint-over may not be helpful. I will however recommend that you show some sort of a light source as this will help you give some depth to your work. As it is, the large blocks of color don't have enough range of value and look a bit flat. For a beginner however, the proportions look to be in about the right place. If you can do this freehand, you will have a far greater advantage than if you trace, so try to do it freehand whenever you can. It will keep your skills sharp. ;)

Thanks so much for your patience! Expect another one tomorrow!

Perfect Perspective Every Time

So I was browsing some art forums lately and I came across an amazing perspective tool from freddieart.com.

It's a tool that adds instant perspective to your canvas by adding path lines radiating from a circle. The simplicity of it is ingenious. These circles are easily re-sized or moved to fit the perspective you have already established or to quickly build it up from scratch. I recommend watching the video tutorial as well.

It came during a particularly useful time. After spending hours mocking up a ship for a book cover using a mechanical pencil, a long metal ruler, and several computer papers taped horizontally to see my distant vanishing points, I realized it wasn't receding drastically enough for the composition. Luckily, I was able to plop the vanishing point tool directly into my canvas, line them up the way I wanted, and draw it again digitally with much less hassle. Whew.

I recommend this tool for just about anything! I can't wait to use it in more environmental works. It's easy to forget about perspective in character art but it's still an important principle to remember, especially when rendering cylindrical objects and ellipses or feet. (If you aren't going to use perspective in your portraits at least be mindful of your eye level as I have discussed before.)

And yes, that is why I haven't updated with all of the remaining crits. I have been working really hard on this new steampunk periodical called Clockhaven Chronicles due to be published mid November. I've done 3 illustrations for the project and I am very excited. It's all done so expect the rest of the crits shortly.

And in other news, Ballistic Publishing contracted me to do a tutorial of my Elven Concept piece which will be featured on page 130 of Exotique 7. It will be included in the DVD for those who pre-order the book. In it I narrate my process including line of action, keeping your values close in range, and light sourcing. A quick step by step video can be seen in the resources section of my website. It was a bit weird trying to put it together as I have never used video production software before, but I was tickled to death when I heard back from the folks over at Ballistic. They said it's probably the best walkthrough they have ever received! =D My trial version of camtasia is already up, but after feeling my way around it I think I may try an open source program and make more tutorials.

Speaking of resources, I posted four free texture packs on my website. These are free stock images with no usage restrictions. My camera is crap, but I've still found them useful.

Stay tuned for more crits and thank you all for your patience!

Crit Day!

Hello hello! It's time to begin our crit day extravaganza!

Our first piece comes from Jonathan A Moore who graces us with some lovely Star Wars/X-men work (click for full view):

The first thing I noticed about this piece, aside from it's epic subject matter of course, was the strong lighting throughout. The lighting was rendered with confidence and I am impressed. This is a good example of showing the difference between cast shadows and form shadows as cast shadows (like that shown under the assailant's arm) are sharper than form shadows (like the gradual shadow on Han's cheek). A lot of digital art I see nowadays have shadows with soft transitions and it ends up looking a bit blurred.

That being said, I do see some room for improvement. I feel there isn't enough mid-tone in Solo's face and you may have gone just a tad too far with the sharpness. The transition from the dark side to the light side (haha) is a bit drastic. I also wish there were more saturation throughout to really make the image pop. It looks to me like white was used to brighten, and black was used to darken. In general, I don't recommend this as your colors become dull quite fast. Instead, try using a slight tint to your highlight and for shadows, add more saturation as you go darker. In this case, I think the highlight color would work well with yellow and orange hues to reflect the desert environment outside. Adding a slight overall color will really help pull it together and make the whole illustration look cohesive.

The area with greatest contrast is Han's face, which is great as you always want your focal point to be the area with greatest contrast, but the background has so many different light and dark values and details it's getting a bit busy. I would add a layer of soft color over the background and reduce the opacity until I got to a good balance of foreground to background. A way to avoid having this problem in Photoshop is to check your values as you create the piece by starting a new layer on top of everything, fill it with black, and set the layer to saturation. This will give you a great view that can easily be turned on and off to show you how your values are working.

Here's my "after" (click for full view):

And a side by side:

And here you can see the difference in contrast:

Our next piece comes to us from MeMilly:

The first thing I noticed was the lack of strong light source. It seems more of a soft ambiguous light. Instead of thinking of things like individual objects, a leaf here, grapes there, a face, etc. think of everything as having planes and shade accordingly. Like this:

Now you can more clearly think about where light and shade should fall. It looks a little like the image has a light source is coming from the front, a little up, and to the right. With that in mind, I would shade the face a little bit differently. I would focus on the highlights where the plane changes shift causing specular highlights that catch the light just right. With frontal light, the sides of the face should darken to help them recede into the background so I added some shading to either side of her face. I also enlarged her forehead as it looked a bit too small (typically, the forehead is the same distance from the brow to the hairline as the brow to the tip of the nose in a frontal view). I added a little texture, and I changed her hair quite a bit. It seemed to me like it would make more sense to have her hair be wet like her face. Wet hair clings to the head and is darker throughout with sudden specular highlights.

The background didn't have a lot of form. It looked like leaves just drawn in without regard to form. Again, think of plane changes. The sides of the grapes needed shading to show the overall curved form a vine of grapes would have. Likewise, the leaves should have shading to push the tops of them back into space and show some cast shadows from the leaves above them.

Lastly I added some more color variance to give the picture more interest. I realize this was a color challenge and you had a limited color pallet to work with, but I felt this gave it more interest.

Now I didn't really spend enough time on this to call it done as it stands, rather this is a starting point for MeMilly to take it to the level she wants. I hope it was helpful.

Crit Day! Post before the 11th and get cc!

Hello hello! It is a glorious day (and no I am not just referring to it being my birthday). The sky is blue, the air is a cool 76 degrees, and life is good. Thanks for all the warm messages. Let's celebrate with my first ever crit day!

Post a link to one original artwork of yours and I will offer my critiquing services to the first 10 who post artwork here (I'll be surprised if I get more requests, but if I do I will try and get to yours as time allows). You have one week to post your work. On Sunday the 11th I will begin critiques. It's okay to post works in progress although I would prefer the image be at least somewhat complete. Loose sketches are too early of a stage.

If this goes well, it's something I will try and do often. It's a small way of saying thank you to all my followers and watchers. Truly, I am very glad to have had so many people take an interest in my work and my blog. My ultimate goal for my website and blog is for it to be a resource to other people. I can't tell you how much critic has helped my work improve. I wish I could get in depth critic on all of my work but now that I am working for commercial clients I find that non disclosure agreements have heightened my respect for some good ole cc.

So go ahead and post away! ;)

Ways for hopefuls to break into the industry

It's a curious thing to me to see so many people ask about how to break into the industry. I may not be a well known name in the industry, but I have my foot in the door and there are some great bits of truth I have discovered in my short journey (mind you I've only being serious about digital illustration since February of this year). Despite my short time in this field, I've suddenly found a pouring of illustration offers coming my way. I am ecstatic. I wish I could post what I have been working on, but know that I have been working hard.

One thing I have found to be true from all of this is that people take your art as seriously as you do. I first came upon this phrase while reading an article on the five fears that can destroy an artist. First and foremost, a serious artist spends some serious time working on art but that alone will not get you work. After building my portfolio, I realized I needed a professional web presence to be competitive. Soon after creating my art website, revitalizing this art blog, and posting on conceptart.org I found illustration offers pouring in. I couldn't believe it. What I gather from this, is that by creating a professional space to showcase my work and declaring myself an illustrator boldly on my homepage (granted I had only done a few personal commission at that point but you have to start somewhere), I showed people that I believed in myself. I also let my family and friends know what I was up to. I wasn't just doing art as a hobby anymore. I was serious about it and working hard. It was an attitude adjustment and people can tell that I have changed. I used to be embarrassed to let my friends see my work. Not anymore. It is what it is and it was time to own up.

That isn't always enough. The next step was getting my website seen. That's where my deviantart account and posting on art forums came in handy. I wrote a journal to let my watchers on deviantart know where to find my work online, but what really has helped me branch and network has been the simple and yet powerful act of posting critics and offering insight on conceptart.org. People were curious about this person they had never heard about. I've always been of the mindset that you have to give a little to get a little. Helping others and cheering at others accomplishments is a win win. By commenting on other people's blogs and taking part in online discussions you become visible. You aren't going to get much traffic by getting your website up and twiddling your thumbs. And you never know who is going to be a good referral. Networking is very important when it comes to this industry. Another great way to get your work seen is to take part in challenges and contests. My work is in the current ImagineFX magazine again for winning the monthly challenge and this time my new website will be printed beside my work. With so many people scouting for new talent such a thing could only help, not hurt.

Now there are even better ways to get your name out there. Putting yourself on networks like elance.com or cloroflot are great ways to get your work shown to potential clients right away. Setting up tables at conventions and meeting people in the industry is also a great way to get your name out there, or so I hear. I want to do this soon, but I simply don't have enough work to sell at this point. It is something I hope to do in the near future however.

So to sum things up, how do you break into the industry? First, make good art, second, create a visible web presence, and third, network. So get out there and make it happen!

Do you have any tips on how to break into the industry?

Ah sweet internet, it's so good to see you again!

Ever get cut off from the internet and feel absolutely lost? My internet was down all day yesterday and while the frustration was eating away at me I was able to hunker down and do some drawing and my productivity was much better. Makes me want to sign up for that selfcontrol app I heard about but sadly it is only for Macs. For now I'll have to try out a similar extension for Firefox called leachblock. Distractions are dangerous and I am guilty of surfing news sites when I should be drawing.

With a lot of commissions pouring in at this time (yay), I really want to up my productivity and the speed at which I work so that I can get more art in every single day. I was supposed to get up this morning at 5:30am and get to drawing, but after the hubby woke me on his way out the door for work I soon fell asleep again. Drats! I didn't used to try and get up at ungodly hours of the morning. It wasn't until I read this mind altering article on the differences between professional artists and amateaur artists that I decided it was time to make a change. Still, it hasn't been easy being a stay at home mother to two very young children and get art in, but if Brad Rigney can be a stay at home dad and do work for top clients like Massive Black then I can find a way!

Maybe I need to create a crazy schedule like this guy. What I like most about it, is that he always puts time in for studies to keep learning every day. That is something I yet to do- once I start on a commission it is usually my only project until it is completed. But by following a schedule like this I might be able to work a couple of projects at once AND still get in some practice speed paintings.

My next problem is speed. I want to be able to make a decent income doing this but I can't get in enough projects in a month to make it work yet. I know that part of it comes down to how much I charge for my services, and with time that rate will increase. Until then, I need to draw draw draw and push myself to get past working on details at an early stage.

My last steampunk piece is a great example of how NOT to do a piece. I started out planning to make a very soft elven maiden drawing for Exotique 7's call for entries. I soon realized that I can't do uber soft like Melanie Delon and it was time to do my own take. Problem is, it took me nearly 20 hours to get to that point and I had only worked on the face. Then I decided to take it in another direction and spent countless other hours trying to fix artistic problems that should have been solved early on in the thinking process. All in all, the piece took entirely too long. During that time I could have been working on another concept portfolio piece (these pretty characters are fun to do, but they aren't your typical commercial type of art). Sometimes it's best just to move on and get to the next project like . Oh well, lesson learned.

I'll be creating my own schedule here soon and try to stick to it! So how do you balance art and life?

The sincerest form of flattery perhaps? Copying vs Reference

As many of you probably know, there is a well known fantasy artist who recently was accused of pasting elements of several other peers works into her own and painting over them. This artist has since sold these images in her books. Now this news did interest me as I was a fan of her work, but it interests me even more as one of the artists she is now accused of stealing from. Whether her affirmation that she hand painted everything is true or not, it did get me thinking that perhaps this is a great time for healthy discussion about the use of "reference".

Now there is a large divide in the world of art. Those who happily use reference images they find online and those that shun the practice. In case you wondering, I put myself in the "happily uses online ref" category. Let me explain why.

I define reference as some sort of imagery, whether perceived naturally or through photos/videos, which is used to help draw/paint/sculpt a new piece of art. Referring could mean a quick glance to establish a similar mood, color combinations, or to brush up on creature anatomy, or it could be in depth copying with methods such as "gridding" where the image looked upon is copied almost exactly. (Tracing is a different method and involves copying and pasting, projecting, and painting over other imagery and is another discussion altogether).

Now the debate isn't so much about either method, but whether or not the person using said imagery happens to have permission to use copyrighted images for reference or tracing/painting over. The answer may surprise you. Under most copyright laws in the world, as long as the imagery created is a "derivative" work and not a copy, it can be used as reference but copying and pasting someone's work into your own without permission is a much more dangerous practice. However it is important to mention that what is allowed under law is not necessarily looked upon with acceptance in prominent art communities.

Now I had a professor in college who does commercial art for clients based in California including Disney and other big name movies. As someone in the field, he explained to us that art directors don't care if you don't know how to draw a turtle from memory or not, if you have a project due at the end of the week you had better have an anatomically correct rendering of a turtle. Say there are no turtles around- you had better humble yourself and find some online reference. So how do you use online reference and still feel good about yourself at the end of the day? I find the key element to all of this, is to what extent you refer to something.

Referring to me, means looking at something, learning from it, and making something new. It means creating something similar with different angles and perspective, lighting, or mood. It's okay to look at online reference, and even other artwork. For example, below I have two images, one a reference image I used to create the other.


Character by ~akizhao on deviantART


Elven Concept by `lithriel on deviantART

Now if you look the images are almost identical in mood and color combinations but they are entirely different in every other way. This type of referring is usually called inspiration but it is reference all the same.

The best way to use exact reference, as my professor explained, is to build up your own library of stock photos, or buy them online if you must refer to something directly. No amount of reasoning can save your hind end should you use something copyrighted and get your publisher sued.

Now there are some times when copying directly can be a good thing, like when doing master studies. However studies are used for learning and not for making money. Even fan art, which I have done my fare share of in the past, can be a fun release provided you give credit where credit is due and don't profit off of your work.

So where do you draw the line with reference?