Back into learning concept art after 15 years

[Abrodos]

Hi everyone! I'm David Abrodos, a former ConceptArt.org member back in the 2000s. I've been a sculptor for a few years, I'm now a high school teacher using concept art to teach the art basics to my students, and I'm also starting to work as a VR video creator. 

I've wanted to create digital interactive environments for a long time, tried unity and blender without success, so now I want to start with the basics. 
I looked up a few photobashing tutorials, and, after all these years, suddenly everything seems a bit more accessible. 

So here I am, on 2025, trying to get into the digital artist path again! I feel that now that AI is eating up all the creative work we used to do, all the human-made art is becoming more valuable than ever, maybe not for the industry but for us artists and humans.

No more talking! Here are my first pieces of the year! I'll be very very grateful to get critique on the block city one (the others are just random sketches to pass time). I kinda started without any aim on the city one other than to make a professional looking environment, and the perspective looks way off but also not, or maybe the problem is the composition.

See you in a few days!

[Abrodos]

A couple new works from yesterday! Procrastinating by making art. It had been more than 10 years since I did a mirror self portrait!

[cgmythology]

Nice to see you back at it! Great start here, some really nice colors! It's gonna be a lot of fun to see you progress even further, so please keep posting and sharing!

[Abrodos]

Thanks! Quick reply here. I just had an hour to draw yesterday.  Tried a bit more photobashing, got confortable with big brushes but still can't get the sense of depth. I think I should be doing life studies instead of just working from imagination.

Have a good day!

[darktiste]

I think imagination is a great place to start getting back and figure out what as change since you last visit doing art by choosing to work from imagination it will show you and us how much there is for you to learn but for that you need a certain artistic eye and understand of artistic concept. But studying is perfectly ok to but being able to copy something doesn't translate to understanding how to do work from imagination sadly there as to be a mix. I just think imagination as the most room to show you where your priority really are at right now. But it really up to you to find out what subject matter you are into and decide if you are still interested by those subject matter.

To much imaginative work and you will have weak fundamental.

To much study and you will leak the ability to work outside the box.

[Noone]

Heya David, welcome, and good on you for jumping back into a new art adventure.

I have some advice for your environment piece, and perhaps in general. The piece is far too busy with sharp photographic textural detail overlayed on top of surfaces without being properly integrated. I think it is very important to stick to getting the basic values and lighting correct, making sure the perspective is working and clear, before going in and popping photos over everything. I think you haven't resolved the building on the left in terms of its structure so it feels confusing, and the perspective is not correct. Here's a very quick paintover to demonstrate that simplifying everything tonally first is preferable before adding too much detail. You have used pure black on the value scale quite a bit, and generally this adds too much contrast and isn't particularly accurate in most lit environments, which generally have some level of ambient and bounce lighting in play. You can always use a slightly chromatic dark, that isn't pure black.

Compositionally I felt it needed some elements to connect the two sides of the buildings, these are the walkways. In design terms also think about the shapes you are using. Using repetitive shape motifs can help suggest cultural or engineering principles that give your location a type of unity. I also repeated some similar shaped angled buildings in distance, instead of just using generic photos of buildings. The design comes first, then you can embelish with photos.



In general, I think you should probably aim on learning how to paint with values first, and getting your scenes to read with the right lighting, depth, perspective first. Then you can integrate colour into your work, and once you are creating solid believable environments with the basic fundamentals, then look at how you can use photos to enhance the work.

I made a free "course" on environment design a long time ago now. It is still free on youtube. I got great feedback on it. It might give you some things to think about and practice.

Environment Design Rocks

There is also a related thread in the mentoring section here on the forum if you look for it that shows the students work and some critiques.

And yes, observational and foundational studies are likely going to help you more at this stage.

Hope this helps.