New Year's Resolution

Alongside the usual 'must get fitter/more productive/drink less' kinda promises that will ultimately be broken in the near future (though I swear i'm going to get at least part way through the P90X program if it most likely kills me), what should be my most achievable goal in 2013 is to try and keep a more active web presence. This means more updates to this blog, and trying to respond to comments and posting more on the other sites I'm on (CGHub and deviant art being the prime at the moment).

So as it's aaalmost 2013, here's a quicky to start with, just a quick bit of character bust fun for a friend, of her character Ramah, desert prince and werewolf (focusing on the former).

Oatley Academy continued

Okay so a bit of an update regarding OA. I'm 5 weeks in thus far, and barring this week's homework I've not actually drawn *anything* yet. An odd thing, for a painting online course. I've drawn *over* a few things, and decided on my Audacious Accomplishment for the course overall (almost). My thoughts this far:

This isn't the kind of course that will teach you what brushes to use, what techniques will make you a better technical artist -  if you're after something that will teach you how to paint digitally or traditionally in some fashion, there are more apt courses out there for sure. What this course has given me so far is an excuse to actually step back and think properly on what I want to do.

The Art Order has recently posted a great set of self assessing questions about your portfolio that tackle the similar kind of issues that have cropped up in this course so far (click here for link). But Chris has a very unique way of looking at art that I think is very healthy. This course isn't about finding your style. It's about giving you the building blocks so that you should be able to work in *any* style, on any kind of subject with any kind of story. This allows you to put your own style aside and just focus on the story.. about what's important in a painting or illustration. I really, really love this style of approach. It makes you question why you do what you do. Am I just doing this style of work because I'm too afraid to really jump into something better? I work a lot with very 'pretty' subject matter. My work is always on the lighter side, barring a couple of pieces. I love working with soft feminine subject matter, but I have a yearning to do something darker.

I love Brom's work. I love his innate sense of elegance even when he's drawing the most messed up creature you can think of. It's not the kind of unwatchable dark art that some horror artists delve into that becomes uncomfortable. I love the contrast he can get with this style, blending beautiful women and strong, handsome men with unusual designs and gothic horror. I'd love to get that style of approach in my own work, but I suspect my work by the nature of me, will be a little softer, maybe a little sexier than Brom's, with a few more tentacles. I'm almost imagining Brom's aesthetics with a Rebecca Guay/Mucha twist. The idea of that being who I am to the art world is hugely intriguing.

THIS is what this course is giving me. Focus. A goal. I've always loved dipping my toes in any number of styles and stories. I love fantasy and modern day stuff almost equally, and working on Transformers is giving me a real sense of how awesome sci fi robot design can be. But this course is also making me realise that I'm sort of diluting myself by doing so much of this kind of stuff. It's really beginning to burn that wide warm arcing sunbeam into a firey laser. And putting me alongside others who want the same thing, but are coming at it from a totally different point of view. All of which is super healthy for any artist. Add to that the fact we get a crit session with Chris every month where we get to sit and watch him crit a bunch of work from every level of skill. I've had one session thus far and it's definitely got me thinking already.

All in all, there are a myriad of courses out there, but I'm being more and more pleasantly surprised by this course the more I put into it. I always thought it would be good, but there's a tonne of new angles on art that it's giving me. Roll on the coming weeks!

Aaand just so you have a visual reward for reading all that, here's some doodles and a character rough that I'll probably go rethink in the long run.

Oatley Academy and a finished piece!

So I recently signed up for the Chris Oatley academy, as a birthday present from my lovely boyfriend .  I thought I'd post my thoughts on the experience here as the course goes on, to give those who might also be interested an idea of what to expect.

For those who don't know, Chris Oatley recently worked for Disney as a character designer, among other things, and quit his day job to pursue an online learning academy for artists. His website is something I'd only recently stumbled into a couple of months back via a couple of links on twitter and I've found a lot of the information posted in it to be inspiring. He does come at a lot of stuff from an animation background, not surprising given he worked at Disney, but all of the information can be used regardless of the artistic field you work in. One of the things that really appealed to me is Chris' apparent desire to really want to connect to other artists and to want to help them personally -  one of the reasons he's doing an online course, rather than a book with his knowledge, is the interaction with those who want to learn. He can be a little rambling and often comes across as distracted, but I find that quite endearing -  testament to the fact he's human too, and maybe doesn't want to spend his whole life editing posts.

The course is called Painting Drama -  and focuses on colour and composition as tools to craft really in depth story telling images -  the kind that have an emotional impact on the viewer. I've had some success with this (if number of favs is anything to go by), but I often feel like I'm inconsistent with my ability to really push emotion, maybe because I'm too busy thinking about the rules of art, rather than simply focusing on the story at large. So, a week in and I'm already starting to rethink how I view my art, and thinking on what I really want to get out of my art (weirdly something I don't do much -  I'm  more of a 'hey lets paint this cause it's pretty yay!' person). 

The price is pretty reasonable too -  under $500, and that currently gives you access to 2 years worth of monthly live meetings to discuss student's work with Chris himself and access to all the posts and links he puts up in his Secret Lab, which you get access to as one of the Academy's students. The course work itself consists of 12 weeks worth of lessons, which can be done at your own pace, and all the live sessions are, I believe, recorded and put up for you to watch if you can't attend -  the first ones to take place are actually doing so over 2 days at different times, so internationals like myself aren't blearily rubbing eyes at 3am, with work the next day. All in all, it sounds  like it should be a good deal, but I will keep you posted!

And here's my latest posted piece, Soul Spark -  my own character, Kana, dragon prince.  You can also find this on my new Illustration Portfolio blog too... which will just be images without the ranting I do here. :)

Some cool art links

I confess this is more a post for my own good, but thought those who follow might find some of these interesting. They are in no particular order at the moment, but I've found all of them useful in some way shape or form. These are just the ones I've found most recently, hopefully I shall keep this post updated as I find more cool stuff. :) Do feel free to share any awesome links you guys have too. 

The best inspiration I can show to anyone who doesn't think they have what it takes to draw and paint amazing pictures. All it takes is perseverance, an ability to recognise your own mistakes, and knowing what to do to correct them (and if you don't know, get on sites like conceptart, CGHub or CGTalk).
A video of 9 years of artwork progression from the guy I knew as MindCandyMan on conceptart:
http://vimeo.com/29510470

Valve's amazing DOTA 2 character notes:
http://media.steampowered.com/apps/dota2/workshop/Dota2CharacterArtGuide.pdf

A great look at colour theory, broken down into smaller bitesize topics: 

http://www.worqx.com/color/index.htm

And amazing detailed anatomy resource:
http://inspirationalartworks.blogspot.co.uk/p/anatomy-images.html?zx=221461580a6ecab3


A storyboard artist from dreamworks, a great look at character and anatomy in more stylised character work.
http://radhowto.blogspot.co.uk/


Overview of cloth and folds:
http://www.mightyartdemos.com/mightyartdemos-bradley.html

Linran's thoughts on light and colour, using the RGB slider:

http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=148355

A great colour gamut masking tool:
http://www.livepaintinglessons.com/gamutmask.php

info on Gamut masking from the Gurneymeister: 
http://gurneyjourney.blogspot.co.uk/2010/04/gamut-masking-tool.html

Seargent's painting techniques: From James Gurney's awesome blog: 

http://gurneyjourney.blogspot.co.uk/2009/02/sargents-painting-notes.html

And the full pdf they came from: 

http://goodbrush.com/misc/painting_lessons/sargent_notes.pdf

A great little tutorial on light and form:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=V3WmrWUEIJo
All of this guy's youtube vids are worth watching to be honest - he breaks stuff down very simply. 

A trophy arrives!

My Share One Planet trophy finally arrived today, some months after finding out I'd won first place in my particular category, against some fairly stiff competition! As a reminder, here's the piece that won, That Moment. It's a really awesome trophy, worth the effort I put in for sure, and I'm proud to have it on my desk a work currently! It's pretty weighty too, which is a great sign. I whole-heartedl, encourage everyone to consider taking part if they run the contest again, it's for bringing awareness to two great topics, the conservation of endangered species, and the validity of digital art in the fine art world at large, even taking into account that no final prize or prize money was awarded. 

Heads and things

Couple of quickish head studies, bout 2 hours a piece and the somewhat failure from imagination that made me realise I needed to do the studies :D









And a quickie piece for CGHubs character forge, Persephone.




And some costume thumbs for my pirate character Eidy.

Zangarmarsh

Here's one of my latest - World of Warcraft fanart. I adore Zangarmarsh, it's my favourite zone, and the first place my current boyfriend took me when we hooked up online. Call it a first date, if you will, but there's something magical about the area, even compared to all of the other amazing areas in the game. So I've meant to do this piece for a long while; my boyfriend's Paladin, Mikhail, and my Hunter, Arython.

Here's the finished piece and a few work in progress shots for those who enjoy them. Final piece was around 6000 pixels high and done with the intuos 4 and CS5.




WIPS: