Need Some Direction

[GenesisLoop]

Hi everyone,

I've been doing Dave's realistic orc painting tutorial and have gotten quite stuck. I'm very new to digital painting and the lack of knowledge has left me clueless about what to study to improve my rendering skills. I somewhat understand where to put the mileage in drawing but I'm lost when it comes to digital painting. This has left me unmotivated to render out the rest of the piece as this is maximum quality I can achieve currently. Any and all critique, criticism, guidance etc. is invaluable.

Thank you.

[xelfereht]

Hi everyone,

I've been doing Dave's realistic orc painting tutorial and have gotten quite stuck. I'm very new to digital painting and the lack of knowledge has left me clueless about what to study to improve my rendering skills. I somewhat understand where to put the mileage in drawing but I'm lost when it comes to digital painting. This has left me unmotivated to render out the rest of the piece as this is maximum quality I can achieve currently. Any and all critique, criticism, guidance etc. is invaluable.

Thank you.

ok, some goals to work towards.
where do you want the viewers eye to start, then how do you want it to travel around the image, are you keeping the eye form going off the page
*use contrast in value, colour, detail level, and so on to achieve this
use visual shapes to act as arrows to lead the eye around as you decide

are there a good variety of visual shapes types and sizes
are there moments of detail that make the image worth more than a glance
Is the lighting serving the image as far as story and displaying the forms that best show off in this case, your character

as well as that stuff theres also more things specific to the type of illustration and purpose so i reccomend having an idea of where youre shooting for subject matter, purpose and quality of finish

for this i reccommend making a mock port folio, fill it with a bunch of images from artists you like but also closest to what youd like to be able to paint like.
once youve got that in front of you. you may have some clues as to what particular things you need to study.

if you want some help with that, make the mock port folio. maybe 20- 30 images, make them into a pic, show here and maybe i can help you figure out some things to work on and how to do it.
for making the mock folio, the program pure ref is great, can download it for a once off donation,  super useful for reference boards

hope that helps

[GenesisLoop]

Hi everyone,

I've been doing Dave's realistic orc painting tutorial and have gotten quite stuck. I'm very new to digital painting and the lack of knowledge has left me clueless about what to study to improve my rendering skills. I somewhat understand where to put the mileage in drawing but I'm lost when it comes to digital painting. This has left me unmotivated to render out the rest of the piece as this is maximum quality I can achieve currently. Any and all critique, criticism, guidance etc. is invaluable.

Thank you.

ok, some goals to work towards.
where do you want the viewers eye to start, then how do you want it to travel around the image, are you keeping the eye form going off the page
*use contrast in value, colour, detail level, and so on to achieve this
use visual shapes to act as arrows to lead the eye around as you decide

are there a good variety of visual shapes types and sizes
are there moments of detail that make the image worth more than a glance
Is the lighting serving the image as far as story and displaying the forms that best show off in this case, your character

as well as that stuff theres also more things specific to the type of illustration and purpose so i reccomend having an idea of where youre shooting for subject matter, purpose and quality of finish

for this i reccommend making a mock port folio, fill it with a bunch of images from artists you like but also closest to what youd like to be able to paint like.
once youve got that in front of you. you may have some clues as to what particular things you need to study.

if you want some help with that, make the mock port folio. maybe 20- 30 images, make them into a pic, show here and maybe i can help you figure out some things to work on and how to do it.
for making the mock folio, the program pure ref is great, can download it for a once off donation,  super useful for reference boards

hope that helps

Thank you for taking your time to reply, I'm extremely grateful. I'd very much appreciate the help if you are able to, I've made the mock with 20 images. However, I'm unsure if it needs to be more focused on a specific style of painting.

[xelfereht]

Hi everyone,

I've been doing Dave's realistic orc painting tutorial and have gotten quite stuck. I'm very new to digital painting and the lack of knowledge has left me clueless about what to study to improve my rendering skills. I somewhat understand where to put the mileage in drawing but I'm lost when it comes to digital painting. This has left me unmotivated to render out the rest of the piece as this is maximum quality I can achieve currently. Any and all critique, criticism, guidance etc. is invaluable.

Thank you.

ok, some goals to work towards.
where do you want the viewers eye to start, then how do you want it to travel around the image, are you keeping the eye form going off the page
*use contrast in value, colour, detail level, and so on to achieve this
use visual shapes to act as arrows to lead the eye around as you decide

are there a good variety of visual shapes types and sizes
are there moments of detail that make the image worth more than a glance
Is the lighting serving the image as far as story and displaying the forms that best show off in this case, your character

as well as that stuff theres also more things specific to the type of illustration and purpose so i reccomend having an idea of where youre shooting for subject matter, purpose and quality of finish

for this i reccommend making a mock port folio, fill it with a bunch of images from artists you like but also closest to what youd like to be able to paint like.
once youve got that in front of you. you may have some clues as to what particular things you need to study.

if you want some help with that, make the mock port folio. maybe 20- 30 images, make them into a pic, show here and maybe i can help you figure out some things to work on and how to do it.
for making the mock folio, the program pure ref is great, can download it for a once off donation,  super useful for reference boards

hope that helps

Thank you for taking your time to reply, I'm extremely grateful. I'd very much appreciate the help if you are able to, I've made the mock with 20 images. However, I'm unsure if it needs to be more focused on a specific style of painting.

ok cool, thats not too far off what my board would look like 
So style wise, maybe youre looking at being proficient in 2-3 ways. realistic render, line with strong colour, and some loose expressive strokes stuff. cool

thematically weve mainly got varying depths of fantasy, definitely character first work

and function wise weve got
portraiture, bit of full body concept, character illustrated in context with environment, bit of hero shot kind of cover or poster work i would put the frazetta stuff in and story driven illustration.

now having broken that up a bit, maybe from here you can think about those and which ones you have a currently stronger desire for..
do you have some direction as far as current goals for your future work wether thats dream jobs at certain companies or developing something for yourself or being freelance or book covers and so on?

from there we can go towards portfolio planning and work back from there
but if you can give me some thoughts so far that might help. maybe let me know what about some of the images you chose appeals to you and how attached you are to certain subject matter, what else you have a joy for
(for me i worked out for instance, id like to be good at painting girls and dragons)

if you were to be great at painting some particular subject matter what might it be?

[GenesisLoop]

Hi everyone,

I've been doing Dave's realistic orc painting tutorial and have gotten quite stuck. I'm very new to digital painting and the lack of knowledge has left me clueless about what to study to improve my rendering skills. I somewhat understand where to put the mileage in drawing but I'm lost when it comes to digital painting. This has left me unmotivated to render out the rest of the piece as this is maximum quality I can achieve currently. Any and all critique, criticism, guidance etc. is invaluable.

Thank you.

ok, some goals to work towards.
where do you want the viewers eye to start, then how do you want it to travel around the image, are you keeping the eye form going off the page
*use contrast in value, colour, detail level, and so on to achieve this
use visual shapes to act as arrows to lead the eye around as you decide

are there a good variety of visual shapes types and sizes
are there moments of detail that make the image worth more than a glance
Is the lighting serving the image as far as story and displaying the forms that best show off in this case, your character

as well as that stuff theres also more things specific to the type of illustration and purpose so i reccomend having an idea of where youre shooting for subject matter, purpose and quality of finish

for this i reccommend making a mock port folio, fill it with a bunch of images from artists you like but also closest to what youd like to be able to paint like.
once youve got that in front of you. you may have some clues as to what particular things you need to study.

if you want some help with that, make the mock port folio. maybe 20- 30 images, make them into a pic, show here and maybe i can help you figure out some things to work on and how to do it.
for making the mock folio, the program pure ref is great, can download it for a once off donation,  super useful for reference boards

hope that helps

Thank you for taking your time to reply, I'm extremely grateful. I'd very much appreciate the help if you are able to, I've made the mock with 20 images. However, I'm unsure if it needs to be more focused on a specific style of painting.

ok cool, thats not too far off what my board would look like 
So style wise, maybe youre looking at being proficient in 2-3 ways. realistic render, line with strong colour, and some loose expressive strokes stuff. cool

thematically weve mainly got varying depths of fantasy, definitely character first work

and function wise weve got
portraiture, bit of full body concept, character illustrated in context with environment, bit of hero shot kind of cover or poster work i would put the frazetta stuff in and story driven illustration.

now having broken that up a bit, maybe from here you can think about those and which ones you have a currently stronger desire for..
do you have some direction as far as current goals for your future work wether thats dream jobs at certain companies or developing something for yourself or being freelance or book covers and so on?

from there we can go towards portfolio planning and work back from there
but if you can give me some thoughts so far that might help. maybe let me know what about some of the images you chose appeals to you and how attached you are to certain subject matter, what else you have a joy for
(for me i worked out for instance, id like to be good at painting girls and dragons)

if you were to be great at painting some particular subject matter what might it be?

I'd say I have a desire to do more story driven illustrations involving characters with some environment. Future goals wise, I'm aiming to pursue a freelance career in concept art but with an illustrators' toolkit so to speak. I'd also like to do some comic related things mostly just for myself.

On the topic of image choice, I lean heavily towards  character illustration as I highly value the capturing of human emotion.Specific works like Moebius' Hendrix and comic stuff appeal to me in that they are bizarre concepts illustrated uniquely. Dave and Frazettas work is very visually appealing to me as Dave has detailed rendering and Frazettas' story is immediately noticeable. The portrait work I've chosen appeals to me as its done uniquely and is more focused on style than realism.

Regarding subject matter, exaggerated expression in poses and faces is something I want to be able to do well. To complement that I also want to be able to paint clothes and armor well.

[xelfereht]

alright thats a good bit to work with,

so what i would then suggest is concept out your portfolio to come,
since your quite close to my own directions
this is how i personally approach it.

Much as i can i work in series, i think its good practice for developing skills for consistency

Ill put some visuals to maybe help show what i mean..
I split things up for one into personal IP and existing IPs

everything i make has skill building motives behind it
first section is my characters, i think of it nowadays like collecting figures except i just draw em cos i cant afford real collectibles- working on rendering, anatomy, some costuming, working well with reference

down from that got some portraiture that aims beyond just a 1 to 1 of the reference
woking on portraiture obviously but also have the chance for texture and story telling withing a characters look
some dragon portraits, i think making nice dragons is pretty hard and few people do it in a way i enjoy so
i have many dragons i havent been able to paint to the look i want yet.

(i have heaps of unfinished paintings and just as a personal thing i plan to finish most of them as my skills catch up to the idea i was trying to hit)

under that are some character stuff based on existing ip
purpose being to create a distinctive yet cohesive set with pose variation and working with varying levels of reference
some of these characters have allot of existing images some very few, so its an exercise in adapting existing characters

the mortal kombat portraits again for portraiture and adapting existing designs and also having the secondary use for exposing my work combining it with something that has an existing fan base that can eventually bridge people to my personal work too

below that ive got some adaptations of classical paintings
its like doing master copies while also ending up with something new, they can be great for learning

then ive got what id call poster, book cover type group shot things
i enjoy composing characters like this and its something i want to be good at. lots of visual juggling, push and pull to practice here.

and what i dont have much on show is the more total illustrations ive painted because im not satisfied with them
but theyre coming

i aim to make some that would work for card art companies and do some splash type work for potential game stuff.



next thing.


i think about time and being able to put things out so, i categorize further into
master illustrations, only calling it this because theyre the ones i plan to spend hundreds of hours on and not done till its as i want it to look haha

illustrations that will take in the 10s of hours, based on complexity and rendering level.

single or 2-3 session illustrations maybe upto 6 or 7 hour type work

and speed pant type things more like 40 min to 3 hours type

----

the longer form ones are the ones i really want to nut out and make something grand, the mid range are like just long as its cool and looks finished, these 2 levels are for the rendering practice more towards realistic kinda stuff and developing understanding of form, light, texture, composition, leading the eye around the page, pushing and pulling values to get a good read

the shorter stuff caters more to drawing skills, conception, experimentation, warming up, not feeling like you ever finish anything, studying specific things like gesture or expression

so i have work of all levels going at the same time.

---

ok! so i suggest from here, flesh out your mock port folio into a few categories for the type of illustrations you would imagine would show what youre about/get the type of work youd enjoy
have maybe 4-5 in each category to get a good idea of what that category is.
once you can see that in front of you... the next part is to begin replacing the mock port folio with the real deal

maybe by this point youl have some ideas for illustrations you may want to make
sketch out some that you plan to be long works that youl invest time in

when you are working on these, get stuck.. then get un stuck by developing your skill for self critique
and also you can ask people like me if youre unsure even what is stuck or not as successful as youd like.

hope that helps