[quizzler]

In my discussion thread, "How can I become a working graphic artist?" HawkOne responded by suggesting I post some pics here for review. Well, here goes.








These two are from a series I did based on a scene from the movie "Great Expectations". (The website I have them on is due for a major overhaul, so don't anybody look there.)

[ June 13, 2002: Message edited by: quizzler ]

[ June 13, 2002: Message edited by: quizzler ]

[fuel_99]

if you drew this first one freehand then you have a good eye for proportions but a terrible painting technique and color sense(sorry).

you seriously should work hard on your painting technique.

[Socar MYLES]

Hm...well, if it really is graphic art you're interested in, and not illustration, the style you're using here is unlikely to meet with much success. It's just far too muddy.

The bold lines of her eyes and eyebrowns, and the sharp whitish highlight where the sun comes through the girl's hair in the first picture--those are the only parts that are working well from a graphic-design perspective.

The rest of the painting is just too blotchy and muddy, and there's way too much gray in there, especially in "transitional" areas (between her hair and her face, around the edges of her brows, et cetera).

If you want to get into design and graphic art, the main things you need to work on are strength of line and form, effective use of colour, and composition. These are also the areas where these images need most improvement.

Your style, with some technical work, would actually lend itself pretty well to illustration--but not to graphic design.

[HawkOne]

Hello there,

I have been summoned it seems ...

[ Edit / First of all I had to remove a bunch of nice emoticons and a bunch of text-formatting, because this UBBoard 6.04b seems to count them as separate images, stupid crap ... hopefully it will still be read as I intended it to be. ]

I would have to agree with what has already been said, on first look, judging from the pictures you provided, you have a good grasp of proportions as said by fuel_99, the choice/use of colors could definately do with some work. Also try quadrupling the resolution/size you work at. I disregarded your plea of not visiting your about to be overhauled website though, and I'm glad I did ... because it probably shows your abilities in a more honest light and as far as I'm concerned, so I can try to give some useful advice, and also because I think some of them are better than your own picks.

I'll put some of them in here to illustrate what I'm talking about, if you REALLY object to that after reading this, I'll remove it, no problem ...


Nice work, looks like it's traced, but the main motive is still IMHO better than your own examples, mostly because there are no garish colors to take away from the overall impression.


Nice style, the womans face is pretty neat, you seem to have a little "hooter-fetish" problem going on though and the anatomy of those is really not following the "style" of the image ...


Pretty OK cartoony style, I've seen a LOT worse featured as prominent magazine illustrations, maybe this is your way to go ?


The girl in the centre displays that nice style again, develop it further you should, yes ! (Yoda says)


The girls face is good, aside from garish lipstick of course ... that contributes to killing this image ... heheh ... by the looks of the rest of the image that is where you spent the time ... ( who want's to draw guys necks anyway eh ... heheh) maybe crop the image to just include the girl with some empty space in front of her face ?


What I gather from looking at your other pictures, is that you've been a naughty boy, trying to run without learning to crawl first; i.e. there is such a huge difference between some of your images in both their form/outline and the choice of colors that I am strongly suspecting tracing has been going on. BUT, that is OK though, I don't mind, it is a great way to learn, but it also means you're gonna have to do a whole lot of work before you are able to make things without overly relying on precise reference (which will usually make you a much more versatile illustrator/artist than when you are "constrained" by the resulting "stiffness" of meticulous tracing of photos and a desire to make things easier).

As far as I'm concerned, the 2 pieces you chose to show are not your strongest pieces. Your valiant attempts at creating "photoreal" illustrations are still at an early stage, and will take a lot of work to bring to a "sellable level". The B/W pieces you have are nicer, because you don't seem to have not mastered using colors right just yet. Your "wrong" choice of a handful of very saturated primary or secondary colors is just very indicative of a beginner.
Unless you are extremely confident in your colortheory knowledge and know what you're doing leave the primary colors for other tye work. (Check out Oblagons work in the Speed Painting II thread, a light/color master, right here at Sijun, a joy to behold)

Your "non photoreal 2D cartoony style" is by far your best quality as far as I can tell by the work on your site. It could be nurtured and tuned with a lot less effort than the months/years you would have to put aside for mastering the style you presented here ... It still needs a lot of work though, but in this particular style, saturated colors are normally OK or at least more acceptable, although regular color theory still applies.

As for your career choices, Graphic Design is really an entirely different beast from Illustraton. Rarely do you see people who are equally proficient in both areas and use it well. Many will argue this of course, but as far as I've seen, it seems to hold true in most cases.

Allow me to give a half-assed, surely disputed , summary of what some of the differences are, just in case you didn't already know.

Graphic Designers spends most of their time thinking about choosing/placing graphical elements such as type/text, imagery and flat areas of color and their interaction with each other, and it really is something quite technical, more textbook and theory studies, and being able to make a good decision, it is really mostly learned in some sort of academic form, either from books, or from a school of some sort. A school will teach you maybe 70% (50%technical - 20% artistic) of what you will need to know about in the 3 years before you graduate, the rest of your career will slowly give you the rest. What is required from you of traditional art as a Graphic Designer is usually limited to instructing an Illustrator or Photographer or fellow designer about the concept you would want them to produce, sketch out some suitable poses of a short round asian girl with a particular type of clothing for example and then let the illustrator take it from there. However, designers who are also good illustrators are doubly valuable (at least) to any client or employer.

Illustration however is more etheric (if that can be said), less textbook and more "manual labour" (i.e. practice practice and more practice) and not so easily defined, and to be proficient in a highly realistic style you should probably be prepared for graduating with maybe 30% (10% tecnical info - 20% artistic) of what you can in the 3 years provided in a course, and then spending the rest of your days trying to achieve the rest on your way to perfection ... many artist/illustrators say they will likely never be as good as they would like. Illustrators who work fast and consistently, develop an attractive unique style and/or a great reputation are again doubly valuable (at least) to any client or employer.

From what you have on your website, I'd say that you will probably be required to take a so-called "Foundation Year" before a school will take you in for let's say a Illustration BA Degree course. The minimal amount of Graphic Design displayed on your site needs a lot of work, and will also most likely require you to take a Foundation year. But if you have something more hidden up your sleeve, you might be able to enter a BA course directly.

Good advice ? I hope so ...

There are better more qualified people than me on this board however, let's hope they come along and join in too ...

[ June 13, 2002: Message edited by: HawkOne ]

[quizzler]

Thanks for the comments, HawkOne et al. One quick side note: At one point my monitor lost a bunch of its reds (or gained a bunch of greens), and I was unaware of it for a while. After replacing the monitor, I noticed a bunch of the pics from that period were way too red in general, but I kind of shrugged it off when putting the pics up. (Next time, I'll look at filtering out the excessive reds.)

So, my liney-cartooney pics work better than my attempts at photo-realism? That does a number on my compass. Oh well. Good thing I'm heading for school then I guess. Do illustrators work pretty steadily?

I'm open to other comments as well.

[Socar MYLES]

Yeah...there's a lot of work out there for illustrators. There's more work up for grabs than there are competent artists to do it in some areas, like fantasy/sci-fi RPG illustration...companies that print that type of stuff are always on the prowl for illustrators.

You can also take on as many small independent commissions as you feel like doing. You get virtually NO recognition for that kind of work, since it doesn't appear in print most of the time, but it's a good way to line the coffers.