06-21-2016, 08:32 PM
I am going to chime in as a working pro.
1. This existential angst thing we all put ourselves through before we make it is crazy. You realise how crazy when you've come out the other end of the first part of it ("making it AS A PRO") and realising you just went through the easy shit. I'm serious. This thing that you are going through now, believe it or not is actually the easy stuff, because all you generally have to deal with is uncertainty of skills, and the practicing to make them better...it's that simple.
Wait till you have to support yourself for real on the art and you have no gigs, bills up the ass, and you are faced with chucking it all in to clean toilets after having gone through the hell of self-teaching for half a decade or more. But you are a pro right? Everyone says so. Yeah not nice. This all means you should take every step you can to make it easier for yourself in your own attitudes and mind.
One thing I think will help is this: Attributing art as the only means to happiness + success is a ridiculous notion, so do not stake your entire present happiness on this one hope for the future. It is a terrible way to live. Just do the art because you enjoy it, and yeah sure keep in mind your goals and be accountable to them, but don't fuck yourself in the head more than you need to by giving this angst more crucial importance than it needs. Seriously ask yourself why you feel this bad, if art is something you supposedly enjoy? When I did this (someone gave me the same kick in the ass I am trying to deliver to you now and I listened), I realised I was making myself miserable, and it didn't have to be that way no matter what state of development I was in. It took me 7 months of time of not doing any art at all to figure that out. Every single major pro I have talked to has told me "don't sweat the time, don't drive yourself nuts" and when you feel overwhelmed get back to play with your art. I totally agree with them.
One last thing about making it to pro is, it is still just another fucking job, believe it or not. You provide services, people pay for it. It ends up being about contracts, deadlines, customer service, scheduling, billing, marketing, things that have little to do with drawing fairies. You will exdperience being bored stiff by the work, dragging your feet, taking longer than the half hour lunch break, and dreaming of your own projects before too long. The learning curve on the business side is also pretty steep but few take it into account beforehand. I personally quite enjoy that side but I think not that many people out there are really well prepared or are capable of doing it long term to be honest. I think freelance takes people and chews them up and spits them out at a healthy rate. You gotta be fucking tough and flexible and more than that you have to be disciplined. Better start forcing that discipline into yourself early is what I wish someone had told me haha.
2. Don't make art the only way you can derive your identity. It's just not true and leads to stress and angst. See point one above. Instead, get engaged in the world around you, follow your interests, experience things, reflect on them...then bring that back into your work because it is enjoyable for you to do it. That's what doing art is anyway really, a reaction to living...isn't it?
3. Yes, I think your characters and portraits and skills still need work. I mean we all need to work on stuff, and the idea that there is a "hard" skills barrier is a little ludicrous, as certainly it is different for everybody, but there definitely is a point where you sense that you have crested the skills barrier. Eventually the opportunities to get that validation did start coming in from outside, but that doesn't mean you suddenly stop and say "oh I've made it...yippee" Not really.
For you I still see too much airbrushing and perhaps a little more control of edges and form needed. Sometimes your rendering is phenomenal but then it is interspersed with some much lower quality stuff and the contrast between those two sometimes within a single piece makes it look fairly disjoint and amateur-y. The overall look isn't quite there. "Too airbrushy" in general also is what comes to my mind. I think you could spend a lot more time on facial and figure structure and construction in perspective. Practice the construction phase more than the rendering phase for a while...ace that first. But improving all that is just about focused practice and taking on critique. That's the easy part.
I will now be honest, so don't take offence at my words, but that goofy stylisation you have going on with a lot of your portraits where they all look like they have some form of Down's Syndrome, I don't see as working for many people in a marketable commercial sense. I am NOT saying that you should stop doing this, nope, if that's what you want to do who am I to tell you otherwise.
But you should realise that working for clients they will want you to do stuff that looks like a whole bunch of other stuff out there, and not much out there requires heavily distorted caricatured faces like that. It's the reality of commercial work. Just learn to do regular faces really really well bro.
Eventually, you can become known for doing your own thing and style, and people start to come to you for that, but yeah generally you will have to cut your teeth on a bunch of generic looking stuff. Doesn't mean it can't be insanely fun, it definitely can, so you don't have to feel like you are selling out or anything. In fact this whole concept of "selling out" is totally ludicrous. Go the way you want, and if the way you want involves wanting to paint art for money, which affords you time to do things more personal to you...would you call that a sell out, or just being smart? Yeah get rid of these built up notions of what a true artist is...just do work you want, and be SMART about it.
In general digital portraits...there is probably not a huge commercial market for. Perhaps you could start your own little side business doing that for locals off live sittings or photographs, and eventually get some income from that, but then you actually have to start doing them for real and marketing it, and I think you have to be more realistic to life, or be good at recognizable caricatures, rather than a generic distortion of all faces in the same way. There is little additional design work in most of your portraits that I would say allow your work to be picked up for character design jobs. So perhaps think about doing more design and showing the character behind the character, rather than it just being a rendering exercise of a face.
4. To get jobs you have to apply for them. Period. To apply for them you need a folio. Period. dA is not a good folio. Use artstation if you must use a generic art website gallery. AD's specifically hunt on art station often for artists now. There may be the odd lucky bastard out there who gets inundated with gigs when they first start on the strength of one piece alone, or they have been doing it long enough that they have a good return client base and rep. But the truth of the matter is if you don't have a dedicated folio and apply for jobs (especially for freelance) and send your stuff out and make connects and do good work over and above what is expected of you every time, nobody will give you one on a platter. That is totally wishful thinking.
A third to a half of my time is spent on researching potential clients and marketing my shit to them, doing contract work and business related activities. A third to a half, and I still have dry spells! In fact you could say my entire first year is like a big dry spell, that I only now seem to be coming out of...but who knows for how long.
ok blah blah. Basic list.
Stop overthinking/angsting more than necessary. Just keep arting (unless a break is what you need, then take a break). Attack your weaknesses. Be engaged in things you enjoy outside of art. Have fun with your work. Set honest realistic goals about what kind of work you want to do and then work steadfastly towards them. Create a folio, and start cycling work into/out of it. Start sending out and soliciting work, when you feel you are ready. For the love of all koalas, learn the business side of things as well and instill some hardcore military style discipline into your routine now...or yeah...it won't be pretty.
1. This existential angst thing we all put ourselves through before we make it is crazy. You realise how crazy when you've come out the other end of the first part of it ("making it AS A PRO") and realising you just went through the easy shit. I'm serious. This thing that you are going through now, believe it or not is actually the easy stuff, because all you generally have to deal with is uncertainty of skills, and the practicing to make them better...it's that simple.
Wait till you have to support yourself for real on the art and you have no gigs, bills up the ass, and you are faced with chucking it all in to clean toilets after having gone through the hell of self-teaching for half a decade or more. But you are a pro right? Everyone says so. Yeah not nice. This all means you should take every step you can to make it easier for yourself in your own attitudes and mind.
One thing I think will help is this: Attributing art as the only means to happiness + success is a ridiculous notion, so do not stake your entire present happiness on this one hope for the future. It is a terrible way to live. Just do the art because you enjoy it, and yeah sure keep in mind your goals and be accountable to them, but don't fuck yourself in the head more than you need to by giving this angst more crucial importance than it needs. Seriously ask yourself why you feel this bad, if art is something you supposedly enjoy? When I did this (someone gave me the same kick in the ass I am trying to deliver to you now and I listened), I realised I was making myself miserable, and it didn't have to be that way no matter what state of development I was in. It took me 7 months of time of not doing any art at all to figure that out. Every single major pro I have talked to has told me "don't sweat the time, don't drive yourself nuts" and when you feel overwhelmed get back to play with your art. I totally agree with them.
One last thing about making it to pro is, it is still just another fucking job, believe it or not. You provide services, people pay for it. It ends up being about contracts, deadlines, customer service, scheduling, billing, marketing, things that have little to do with drawing fairies. You will exdperience being bored stiff by the work, dragging your feet, taking longer than the half hour lunch break, and dreaming of your own projects before too long. The learning curve on the business side is also pretty steep but few take it into account beforehand. I personally quite enjoy that side but I think not that many people out there are really well prepared or are capable of doing it long term to be honest. I think freelance takes people and chews them up and spits them out at a healthy rate. You gotta be fucking tough and flexible and more than that you have to be disciplined. Better start forcing that discipline into yourself early is what I wish someone had told me haha.
2. Don't make art the only way you can derive your identity. It's just not true and leads to stress and angst. See point one above. Instead, get engaged in the world around you, follow your interests, experience things, reflect on them...then bring that back into your work because it is enjoyable for you to do it. That's what doing art is anyway really, a reaction to living...isn't it?
3. Yes, I think your characters and portraits and skills still need work. I mean we all need to work on stuff, and the idea that there is a "hard" skills barrier is a little ludicrous, as certainly it is different for everybody, but there definitely is a point where you sense that you have crested the skills barrier. Eventually the opportunities to get that validation did start coming in from outside, but that doesn't mean you suddenly stop and say "oh I've made it...yippee" Not really.
For you I still see too much airbrushing and perhaps a little more control of edges and form needed. Sometimes your rendering is phenomenal but then it is interspersed with some much lower quality stuff and the contrast between those two sometimes within a single piece makes it look fairly disjoint and amateur-y. The overall look isn't quite there. "Too airbrushy" in general also is what comes to my mind. I think you could spend a lot more time on facial and figure structure and construction in perspective. Practice the construction phase more than the rendering phase for a while...ace that first. But improving all that is just about focused practice and taking on critique. That's the easy part.
I will now be honest, so don't take offence at my words, but that goofy stylisation you have going on with a lot of your portraits where they all look like they have some form of Down's Syndrome, I don't see as working for many people in a marketable commercial sense. I am NOT saying that you should stop doing this, nope, if that's what you want to do who am I to tell you otherwise.
But you should realise that working for clients they will want you to do stuff that looks like a whole bunch of other stuff out there, and not much out there requires heavily distorted caricatured faces like that. It's the reality of commercial work. Just learn to do regular faces really really well bro.
Eventually, you can become known for doing your own thing and style, and people start to come to you for that, but yeah generally you will have to cut your teeth on a bunch of generic looking stuff. Doesn't mean it can't be insanely fun, it definitely can, so you don't have to feel like you are selling out or anything. In fact this whole concept of "selling out" is totally ludicrous. Go the way you want, and if the way you want involves wanting to paint art for money, which affords you time to do things more personal to you...would you call that a sell out, or just being smart? Yeah get rid of these built up notions of what a true artist is...just do work you want, and be SMART about it.
In general digital portraits...there is probably not a huge commercial market for. Perhaps you could start your own little side business doing that for locals off live sittings or photographs, and eventually get some income from that, but then you actually have to start doing them for real and marketing it, and I think you have to be more realistic to life, or be good at recognizable caricatures, rather than a generic distortion of all faces in the same way. There is little additional design work in most of your portraits that I would say allow your work to be picked up for character design jobs. So perhaps think about doing more design and showing the character behind the character, rather than it just being a rendering exercise of a face.
4. To get jobs you have to apply for them. Period. To apply for them you need a folio. Period. dA is not a good folio. Use artstation if you must use a generic art website gallery. AD's specifically hunt on art station often for artists now. There may be the odd lucky bastard out there who gets inundated with gigs when they first start on the strength of one piece alone, or they have been doing it long enough that they have a good return client base and rep. But the truth of the matter is if you don't have a dedicated folio and apply for jobs (especially for freelance) and send your stuff out and make connects and do good work over and above what is expected of you every time, nobody will give you one on a platter. That is totally wishful thinking.
A third to a half of my time is spent on researching potential clients and marketing my shit to them, doing contract work and business related activities. A third to a half, and I still have dry spells! In fact you could say my entire first year is like a big dry spell, that I only now seem to be coming out of...but who knows for how long.
ok blah blah. Basic list.
Stop overthinking/angsting more than necessary. Just keep arting (unless a break is what you need, then take a break). Attack your weaknesses. Be engaged in things you enjoy outside of art. Have fun with your work. Set honest realistic goals about what kind of work you want to do and then work steadfastly towards them. Create a folio, and start cycling work into/out of it. Start sending out and soliciting work, when you feel you are ready. For the love of all koalas, learn the business side of things as well and instill some hardcore military style discipline into your routine now...or yeah...it won't be pretty.