Killing my ego

[post-mortem ego]

I've been lurking here for a while, finally got the motivation to post. Anyway, hello, you can call me ego I guess and I'm 21 years old. I'm originally from Norway, but have been living in England for the past 2 years; recently moved to Scotland in order to start my first year of studying Computer Arts at Abertay University (although it's not my first year of Uni; had two failed attempts before, one in linguistics at the Uni of Oslo and one in Games Art and Design at the NUA). Aside from art, I have an affinity for languages (having attempted to learn multiple in the past; Japanese is my best non-Germanic language, and I'm taking Chinese classes at Uni) and worldbuilding, and tend to read about history, anthropology and psychology. As far as art goes, I like stencil art, surrealism, chiaroscuro, the sublime, animation art, and a bunch of other things. I also grew up with comics, and it's probably my favourite narrative medium along with games.

I started tracking my hours, working towards that 10k goal, when I started Uni earlier this year, so yeah. Got the idea from someone else's sketchbook on here, although I can't for the life of me remember who it was nor find it right now. Currently at 46 hours out of 10k.

I have had some pretty big problems with... art ego I guess, in the past (and the present, but to a much lesser degree), hence the sketchbook name. But yeah. Like a lot of other people I want to become a concept artist. And as cliche as it sounds, it's more of a *need* for me than anything else. Which is probably not a great thing, oh well.

I'm currently working on learning digital painting in Photoshop CC (mostly with ctrl+paint, although it's part of my Uni classes as well), doing a series of challenges (draw 100 things in line, then the same 100 things but painted, currently I'm doing eyes), and I'd like to start doing a design challenge as well.

Anyway, this is some recent stuff in chronological order:










Most of my studies are traditional since we have a lot of life drawing at Uni, but they're a bit hard to upload since I don't have a scanner/decent camera atm. But yeah. Here's hoping I'll actually keep posting.

Critique is super appreciated, please rip my work apart!

[Anton_Fort]

Welcome to the CD. That's the start. About eyes - do not use as a reference eyes with a make-up, it's better for you now that eyes are clean. Geometry looks good but try to be more accurate cuz your sphere is not really a sphere. Also try to keep your studies more clean from random brushstrokes. Keep struggling, enjoy your time, work hard.

[post-mortem ego]

Welcome to the CD. That's the start. About eyes - do not use as a reference eyes with a make-up, it's better for you now that eyes are clean. Geometry looks good but try to be more accurate cuz your sphere is not really a sphere. Also try to keep your studies more clean from random brushstrokes. Keep struggling, enjoy your time, work hard.

That's a good point regarding eyes. Not sure how I didn't realise that. Do you have any advice regarding having less random brush strokes? It's something I'm really struggling with and can't quite figure out beyond going over it with a soft brush to blend them. I'm completely new to painting in Photoshop (used SAI and CSP before which pretty much blend for you), so yeah. Thanks for your comment!



Haven't been doing as many serious studies as I should have lately. Mostly traditional life drawing and then this:



Uni work. I've got 3 projects at the moment, all of which I had to make up my own goals for. Since I want to do concept art/visdev, I'm doing concepts for a character, creature (mount) and environment for the first one. So this would be the mount. Thinking of doing something a bit mechanical, not sure how exactly to do it yet; I kinda know what 'feel' I'm going for though.



Fox studies from today. Started losing focus around fox number 4, which is ... an annoying problem. Need to keep doing eyes.

[post-mortem ego]

More eyes. 56/10k hours.