The Signs

Perhaps one of the most overlooked thing is not knowing what you really want. If you are just at your first step, here are some signs that will help to tell whether you have the natural mindset to become a concept artist.

1. You are curious about the things around you, science, architecture, history, fashion, etc. Although it would be nice to be curious of every possible topics, two or three would be sufficient sign for a start.
2. You have the tendency to create and invent new things, whether it’s a theory, mechanism or story. When you let you your imagination go wild, you feel good, that’s a good healthy sign.
3. You are a visual person. You don’t really like to write, you can visualize things better than memorizing text words by words. You enjoy looking at pictures, scenery and paintings that amaze you.
4. You are relying much on intuition to judge certain things rather than logic. But if you have experienced betraying your own intuition for some logical explanation, and found out that you are right if you were to only trust your own intuition. That’s a big plus for any artist as well.

The Skills

You can practically start with little skills, but it is essential to know what general skills you’ll be needing to become a good concept artist. You may want visit the tutorials page, in which links have already been neatly categorized from beginners to advanced for you convenience.

Alternatively, I recommend you to read the Hints and Hacks For Doing Conceptual Art in the Video Game Industry by Paul Richards, found in the tutorials page.

The list below are the typical subjects we learn and study, the orders are nothing but if you start from the top to bottom or somewhere along that line, it should ease up your learning curve in my opinion.

• Anatomy
• Perspective
• Life/Still-Life Drawing
• Drawing & Painting w/ Reference
• Color Theory
• Light Theory
• Drawing & Painting from Imagination

The Options

Going either these two ways is fine, they both have their pros and cons. It’s important to know what choices you may have to attain whatever goals you want. I recommend you to check out the introduction part of the beginner section in the tutorials page for more opinions about these options.

1. School
   PROS: Being in school will put you in the same group of people, I believe in synergy happening in like minded place. I don’t think it’s competition, but it can push you to be better. At the same time, you will have access to their utility. My school has tons of book collection, I visit the library often to make use of the money I paid for the school. Some lecturers can guide you when you are in trouble, the best part is, you can try to sneak in to some classes off your course, and learn what they learn.

   CONS: You could possible be stuck in a competitive mindset, which is bad if you compare your standard only within your school. You need to aim for the industry standard to make it through. You’ll also be tempted to get good result in school, but often the portfolio you have from school isn’t enough to get you off the ground in the industry, they don’t want just student level. Cause when you start fighting for the marks, you know that you don’t have time to do your own studies.

2. Self-taught
   PROS: Able to teach yourself is about your learning skill. If you have great learning ability, you can go further than anyone that needs to be led. You will know how to identify your problems and find solutions. Because you are on your own, and without influence from any formal art education, your mind set can easily fit to the real industry standard. You’ll learn to get and receive feedback from real pros, and possibly gain more online exposure for the amount of time your spend in any community like conceptart.org or cghub.

   CONS: You will always have this doubt whether you are on the right path or not especially for beginners. At times you feel that you just want to give up or losing motivation, but that’s what we are here for.

Remember, there is no book that can inspire or motivate everyone, it’s the person who reads it. It all depends on you, and what you choose to define yourself. That’s as much advice as I can give to make up your mind. So go forth and choose to be great!

To clear some misconception about concept art, a good piece of concept art doesn’t necessarily need to be a nice illustration. Concept art consists of two major elements, the ‘concept’ in which the idea or back-story of specific subject that might relates to the world of the story. And the ‘art’, which depicts the ‘concept’ with aesthetic design that will appeal to the production’s target audience, however still maintaining and supporting its underlying ‘concept’. Therefore, good concept art is when both ‘concept’ and ‘art’ can provide the highest entertainment value to the final production.

Skill Set in Concept Art:

These required skill set in general helps to complete a task in concept art, but the strength of each skill may vary from one artist to another and it’s what uniquely define each concept artist.

• Concept Idea
  Communicating concept can be done literally, verbally or visually. Sometimes a rough concept will be given, and concept artists are responsible to refine and developed the concept further. This often requires an in depth understanding of the specific subject, in order to achieve believable concept to the audience. Concept artists normally should have good general knowledge of everything especially science and history, therefore artists who have great curiosity about our world can surely create good concept .e.g. A car that only levitates on water by using anti H2O (water) molecules.

           
  _{Concept art by Daniel Dociu} 

• Design
  Designs come from the artists’ visual vocabulary, and it needs to match the concept perfectly. Because lines, shapes, colors and other elements of design are able to give a certain feel and mood to the audience, concept artists need to bring out the right mood with the right elements of design, and at the same time still conveys its underlying concept. Sometimes the purpose of design can be pure aesthetic, however this kind of design usually can lack of its functionality and believability, hence may often look out of place. e.g. The design of a special radio that was invented by a scientist whom is heavily influenced by art deco in the 1920′s will have an art deco feel to it rather than the look of our modern radio.
  

           
  _{Concept art by Mathias Verhasselt}

• Sketching
  The skill is used to visualize certain concept quickly especially in the earlier stages and where the concept is in exploration phase, concept needs to be solidified as quickly as possible before going for more refine designs to prevent the development of the project from going backwards. Which can usually be solved by increasing the quantity of concept exploration.  Concept artists could utilize any type of medium like pencil or pen drawing, marker sketches, digital speedpainting or mixed media so long as the concept can be explored and communicated in the most effective manner with the shortest or specific time frame. e.g. Enemy spaceship that comes from another galaxy could be refined to enemy massive battle fleet that comes from another galaxy with insectoid creature being the dominating species of its world.
  

           
  _{Concept art by Mikko Kinnunen}

• Presentation
  Artist do not usually present their art like corporate people, since painting by itself should speak for itself. Also when the design can work without much explanation, it will add a lot of value to the narrative part of the production. Therefore, concept artists need to rely on their drawing and painting skills which includes the understanding of form, light, personality and other nuances, to bring the art where it can be presented, intrigue and convince the art director. Depending on the time given to the concept artists, the level of presentation varies but often more time was given for the finals as the art can be used for marketing and prints purposes. e.g. Rendering the final character, dark warlord, designed for a dark genre game in colorful and flat toon tone won’t help the directors to fit it in their mind, even if the design and concept is good. In the end, some else will be assigned to continue the development of that concept as the final.

           
  _{Concept art by John Wallin Liberto}

Subsets of Concept Art:
As general, concept art consists of these subsets. Each can be a specialization because the knowledge required of each subset is too broad and can be very different from one another. Large studios generally tend to have concept artists specializing in each of these subsets, so the artists may focus and have the time to do their niche researches in order to strengthen and provide unique concept art to their targeted audience.

• Character/Creature Design
  Anatomy, fashion, culture history, personality, the animal kingdoms, habits, lifestyle… All comes in handy for a character and creature designer.

           
  _{Concept art by Cole Eastburn}
  

• Environment Design
  Artist who does the environment concept art have slightly different knowledge than the others subsets, for example culture history, weather effects, environment condition and its effect, general science, advanced understanding of light…

           
  _{Concept art by James Paick}

• Key Art
  Illustration that conveys a specific shot or frame of the production for its lighting, mood, colors and angle. Therefore the artist has to have good illustration skills and sometimes speed, understanding of cinematography, photography, light setup, stagging and composition…

           
  _{Concept art by Maciej Kuciara}

• Props/Vehicle Design
  Sometimes  complex prop and vehicle may have transformation or conversion. In order to explain the mechanical movement frame by frame for the animators to understand how it moves, the artist has to be able to visualize real mechanical function which requires some knowledge about the industrial parts. And whether the object is animate or inanimate, designing an inorganic object requires much different aesthetic sense, the artist has to study and draw substantial amount of inorganic stuffs to grasp the beauty of inorganic shapes. Industrial design in short is a close subject to this subset.

           
  _{Concept art by Feng Zhu}
  

I’d like to write the history of concept art soon. If you find this article is useful, you can subscribe to receive the updates.

Here’s a graph from alexa. Tumblr vs DeviantArt:

By just looking at the graph, you can see that tumblr is growing more and more and deviantart is… It’s sad to see this, as I first started out with deviantart, I naturally hope that it will have substantial growth for artists. But it ISN’T HAPPENING guys!

The good thing about DeviantArt is that it offers artists who do art to share and discuss about their art, for this very reason, the site got a good startup and people just wanna join the community. However things get more complicated as they try to add more features which confuse new user about the purpose of being in deviantart. First, it’s not comfortable to have an account as an art appreciator, or one who does not produce art, since you have a gallery, and empty gallery could mean you are being viewed as someone unimportant. Secondly, the site doesn’t have a good featuring system. Honestly speaking groups helps a bit, but it’s far from their integrated system, I still see many good arts are being buried by the massive art. The daily deviation system is just limited, and I’m quite disappointed to look at them sometimes, even some art featured by some member is better than what I can find in the daily deviation. Bottom line is, it’s hard to get noticed in deviantart.

Now Tumblr on the other hand, is not an art site to begin with. But I’ve noticed there is a paradigm shift within that site, more and more artist have gone to tumblr because it can be a very good micro blogging platform for artist, and easier to gain more exposure. Before I go on to that, let’s take a look at the top 10 tags in tumblr as today’s date. And if you just look at it everyday, you will notice that about 80% of the popular tags are related to art. I think you get the picture.

And if you are someone who only appreciate art, do you want to join deviantart or tumblr, which one would be more comfortable for you? And if you looking for some exposure, tumblr can provide you more exposure to larger demographic, not just artists. If people like you work, they will reblog or like it, and it will spread like wildfire. Your work in deviantart however, will only get noticed if you have substantial watchers, and appears in someone’s fav. In tumblr, you don’t have daily features, but result can be more transparent and less biased, that’s what I like about it!

If you are convinced by the statistics data here, I strongly urge you to start an account in tumblr. You can still keep you deviantart account, but know that it’s capping your potential in getting more exposure.

I’ve just started at tumblr too, check me out at randize.tumblr.com Shoot me if you have any question in tumblr or deviantart or any comments, if you have created new account do tell me so I can follow you.

1. Atlas of Human Anatomy by Stephen Roger Peck

   Stephen loves to compare the details of each structure, like how long is the humerus versus radius, how big is the pelvis versus skull. Which helps us artists a lot in remembering these fine but important details. There really isn’t much reference in poses or different angle of specific structures, but the text where it explain how all these structures works, and how certain structures accentuate the final look, poingting out the landmarks etc, are invaluable information that other books don’t offer. These underlying principles could help you remember and understand so much more. And if you are a fan of golden ratio, in this book, you’ll get to know more about how it relates so much to our anatomy.

   _{Click the image below to purchase it.}
   

2. Dynamic Anatomy by Burne Hogarth

   If you love the original Spawn comics by Todd McFarlane, then you’ll definitely gonna love this book, he was a direct apprentice of Burne Hogarth. However this might not be your kinda book if you are looking for direct reference to copy for actual use. The primarily usage of this book is to embed those muscles structures into your head, because all that exaggerated forms and colorful muscles helps you to remember and memorize the muscles easily than any other book. After studying this book, I could literally see through human muscles, no kidding. But be aware that your anatomy style will look similar to Hogarth’s after studying it for awhile, not a bad thing actually if you like the style. The style will gradually shift to your own, but the knowledge remains in you.

   _{Click the image below to purchase it.}
   

3. The Best of Bridgman

   It includes Bridgman’s Life Drawing, The book of a Hundred Hands and Heads, Features and Faces. All three for the price of one, is that worth it or what? Now what’s special about Bridgman is that he emphasizes the anatomy structures in basic forms. When we learn to grasp complex forms (muscles for example) in basic forms, it’s easy to manipulate that forms in different angle and reproduce it from imagination. This basic principles of seeing things in simplifying manners also allows you to understand how light affects the shading on the forms. Hence helps you a lot, in shading and painting.

   _{Click the image below to purchase it.}
   

If you did purchase any of these books or you already have it, remember that studying is not copying, one must analyze the things that are being studied and make use of whatever that was gain. It doesn’t help you at all if you have copied it for 10 or 100 times but still don’t know what you are going to do with it.

Your light source is one of the major things needed to be considered before laying down your brush on your canvas. Without virtually setting up the light source, it’s easy to make major mistakes in rendering believable and readable form. Here are 3 sources of light you can choose immediately for your painting subject.

1. Window Light

   Light entering from ‘window’ often is soft and cool, as contrast, has warm shadows. It’s one of the easy light setup because of its simplifying effect and consistency.

   
   by Carl Bork

2. Candlelight and firelight

   The temperature coming out from candle, fire and such lights are all yellow-orange in color. Because they are not like sun light, the light is generally weak and cannot travel far, which tends to have only small area of light and strong shadow (if there’s no secondary light around), but it creates an instant focus to your subject. Very easy to use, and can be dramatic as well.

   
   by David Zolan
   

3. Hidden Light Sources

   This isn’t back light or kick light, but sources of light that comes from outside your canvas. A lot of a time, we can forget things that we can’t see outside of our canvas, keeping this in mind, we can still put in some light that’s not in, but “in-effect”. (e.g. The old Sci-fi movies tends to use a lot of this light setup) The important thing is not to limit the potential of your painting, which can be greater if we just explore beyond the norm sometimes.

   
   You can see at the bottom right, light source is warm, where the whole should have been cool. Nice light-warm contrast isn’t it?

Of course we can choose to play games, watch youtube or facebook to ‘kill’ some time, but if you really want to ‘save’ some time, why not improve your drawing skills!

Here are the 3 things that you can quickly do.

1. Gesture Drawing

   Pixelovely’s Figure and Animal Drawing Training Tool
   You need a both good instinct and memory to be able to draw quick gesture drawing. At the same time drawing quickly allows you to draw more, this means you’ll get to be exposed to a lot of images that will automatically become your visual vocabulary as you draw, especially when your artistic instinct is well attuned to your need, you brain will easily absorb them. Very useful if you want to improve you drawing from imagination. The link above allows you quickly draw something, you don’t get to choose which to draw, but it’s better because it’ll force you to just draw.

2. Life Drawing

   Whether it’s life or still, just draw anything you can see. You can draw your own hands, own feet, people, objects…  The advantage in drawing life is that you get to see your subject in different dimension, studies have prove that your memory retention improves when you observe from life than on paper or 2 dimensional view. Only rule is not to be picky and just draw. The more you think, the less time you have, the less likely you’ll want to draw. Do a random blindfold pick, and draw it! The principle above still applies too, except that you won’t necessarily be in front of  computer, and that doesn’t stop you from drawing.

3. Chaos Drawing

   If you are feeling like designing something, try scribbling some shapes or line and make something out of it. Just like guessing the shapes of the clouds in the sky, you can do the same with your scribbles or doodle. Don’t try to make out what you have in mind, instead make something that you see, there’s a difference there. This exercise can be really hard for some people, most probably because the lack visual vocabulary to guess. Let me explain that further, you can’t see an emu if you haven’t seen one before, this is why visual vocabulary is important. So the wider your visual library is, the more things your can see.

The point is to stop looking around and just do it! Make use of what you can find immediately, this is also one of the best way to kill procrastination. And more importantly, the more you draw, the more you grow.

I used to believe that one first needs to be a master before thinking about popularity, so I literally locked myself from outside and just do what I want. When I learnt about marketing, my whole perception about this changed!

Do you know there are more moderate quality product out there that are equally or more demanding than the best product in its category? Think about a more famous product, you can almost guarantee to find a higher quality, similar product, yet it is less known.

So will the best quality product triumph in the end? The answer should be obvious.

I’ve conducted personality test against artists, and the results unanimously show most artists to have introverted personality. This is the gift, as well as the curse of an artist. We are connected more through our work, but less through people in which makes artists naturally bad at marketing themselves. While all these famous product that we know, market themselves like no tomorrow.

No, I’m not trying to say that you shouldn’t do your best in art. But if you were like me, you might want to rethink about how you should build up your name. Which is essential in building your career, as what we usually hear, it’s not how many people you know that matter, it’s how many people know you!

Here are some common mistakes that we artists like to do but preventing us from marketing ourselves naturally:

1. Don’t Like to Socialize

   No one will know remember who you are and what you do, even if you are just a moderate artist, talking and connecting with people will increase the chances of people knowing you. Go to events, get out from your comfort zone and talk with people, if you don’t know what to talk, focus on what you can help for others. Every first few steps are not easy, but you can begin to ‘run’ after a few trial and error.

2. Love to Compare Our Quality

   We often think we are the best, when we see other artist can be potentially better than us, we’ll try our best to find mistakes. Just to prove that if we are able to find some mistakes, we are better. It’s ridiculous to do such thing, it not only jeopardizes our opportunity to connect with other artists, it really brings you no benefit other than self gratification. Let’s learn to support, motivate and congratulate each other.

3. Not Good at Expressing

   As artists, we cannot escape from getting opinions, critiques and reactions from others. Learn to be patient, and respect their opinions, doesn’t mean that you have do what they say. So learn when to take things seriously and when not. If you can connect well with your audiences without letting your ego take over your emotion, you will get better impression from them. Chances are people will talk about how good you are, words of mouth can be your the best marketing media, you don’t want to blow those chances.

Click here to go to the page.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

I used to brag how fast is better, while it is certainly is true for some reason, but it doesn’t mean that being slow and enjoying every moment you can spend in art is worse. In order to gain speed, sometimes you have to sacrifice something. Or, you simply have to be better! Below are some common exercises that can help you become faster at painting.

1. Learn to Use Limited Value to Convey Structures

   Every form can be simplified into the basic values, you can work with 3 – 5 tones to show the structure convincingly. If you can, try to avoid smudging and blending. The purpose of this exercise is to prevent yourself from going back to the color picker and brush setting, so you can better focus on painting the structure and really understand how light effects on it. Once you get the hang of it, you simply do not need to guess how to render the object, you’ll be painting believable structure naturally.

   
   By Craig Mullins

2. Learn to Use Color Palette

   Personally I’m not a fan of color palette, but for exercises purpose, it not only helps you to understand which color scheme to use, but also helps you to memorize the colors. Study paintings with great colors to build your own set of palette ‘vocabulary’. After doing it much, you could just pick any colors you want, and will know what colors suit and look the best. No more guessing and making the wrong choice.

   

3. Smart Layering Usage

   I often heard people suggest to use as much layering as possible. While it offers huge advantage in flexibility, the more layers you have the harder for you to control, since you would have to click the layers you want to paint every time to make that changes in that particular layer. Versus just a single or few layers, you don’t have to be bothered doing that as much, it’s a trade off really.

   For practices and personal art, I tend to use the single layer painting concept, which emulates the traditional way of painting. But for professional work, I’ll keep the layer as few as possible and organize them by naming. If you do that, and if you are using Photoshop, you can use the Move Tool and right click the element you want to paint and select the layer you want from the menu. Especially useful when you have tones of layers. You can group layers too once you find that the list is too long.

   

4. Use textures

   Texturing is known to add details to your painting. However use it wisely, take care of the perspective especially and use the right texture. You can easily find texture at Google Image but don’t forget other site like Picassa, Flickr and other textures site. Download and keep those you use regularly too, to save the time surfing for the same image. Note that texturing can only make your painting more detail, doesn’t necessarily gives you the best painting, but saves your time to paint it. Use it to your advantage, even a painting can be use as an overlaying texture.

   

5. Use custom brushes

   The function of custom brushes is almost similar to textures. Generally our painting subject doesn’t go far beyond to what we usually paint, so I’m not particularly fond of huge collection of brushes, although I must admit I do tend to have quite a number of brushes. But the point is, if you do not know how to use all the brush, it can only hinder your progress in picking and choosing the brush you want to use. Bottom line in this is, build your own set of brush that you can really be familiar with. If you have the right brush set for you painting, it can really save you the time to look for the right texture since painting manually does offer you a whole lot control.

   

6. Customize Your Workspace

   Set shortcut keys as well as how you workspace looks like. Don’t let something distract you from painting. When I learn digital painting, my workstation was a 15″ laptop, and in order me to get the highest possible surface to paint, I set shortcuts to photoshop Navigator, Layers, Color picker and Brush Setting. That way I can hide and show them whenever I want. If you can get a second monitor get it, it saves your effort to switch between windows just to looks at some reference. You don’t have to follow what others do with their workspace, the most important thing is it works better for you.

   

7. Use references

   As much as I don’t encourage myself to use reference in practices, because it blinds my weakness and covering my armature, yet I can’t stress it enough with the right reference, you can be so much accurate and more faster at painting. Just don’t let it control your art, which means if you have to fit your art to conform to the reference you have, the reference is controlling you. You can study the reference for it’s anatomy, lighting, structure, wrinkles or anything, but don’t copy it exactly. It’s not wrong but if you think about the long run, just how many references can you find to make the art that you want, exactly? Do yourself a favor, and build the right foundation.

   
   * Obviously not a painting, but shows you some idea to use reference to create the art you want.

These are a combination of good armature plus tool mastery, if you haven’t yet known about the 2 stepping stones that stopping you from creating the art that you feel you want, I highly recommend you reading ‘The Secret of Drawing from Imagination‘.

* This tutorial is specially dedicated to LiewJJ!

This article will be a lot deeper than those you can find online, but if you want to understand why sometimes we can’t achieve what we want, it will explains you the two stepping stones that you will need to leap over in order to create whatever art that you desire, successfully. No matter it’s a painting, drawing, sculpture, you name it.

Let’s give a quick glance at the diagram, this is a general process of making an art. It mostly starts from any idea or concept generated from our brain which then manifest itself to the final result through execution, painting, drawing or any form of art. For example, when you want to draw a pink elephant, you visualize it and then draw it on paper.

The red parts in the diagram are the two things that preventing you from making the exact result that you want. Namely:

1.  Armature -The base that holds your vague visual to be more tangible
   You can also call this the skeleton of you work, like animals, their skeletons are the main frame that holds the structure together; In portrait, the grid is its armature or skeleton; In environment drawing, the perspective lines are its armature; In another words, it’s the knowledge or template that simplify the complex image in your mind, so that you can easily transfer and translate that thought onto paper or your choice of media.

   Our memory doesn’t allow us to take so much information in one visual. This is our workaround to this problem, simplify it so you can reconstruct it. How to simplify it? With the right armature of course.

2. Tool Mastery – Skills that you need to control your tool the way that you want
   This is self explanatory, the only thing that I want you to understand is, there is a difference between what shape you want, versus how to make the shape you want. The previous being the armature, and the later being the tool mastery. So long you understand the difference between then it’s fine, you may skip the example below.

   For some concrete example to make it more clearer, using color pencil and crayon gives you two different feel and look, however if you can make the gradient or the color that you want, it makes no difference what medium you choose. This is your tool mastery, using the tool you want to the way you want. I used to hear people saying, become one with the tool, I hope you now understand what it really means.

To make the art that you have in mind, or from imagination, you must first conquer these two obstacles. For more information on how to identify your missing armature, stay tune for the next updates or you’ll see the related post below when I’ve written and posted it.

Merry Christmas everyone, God bless and prosper!

* This tutorial is specially dedicated to TazAndMe!

This is a simple case study to show you how 80-20 rule can simply evolve to 60-30-10 rule in your composition.

1. Let’s first look at how the value distribution is plotting the graph in the luminosity channel. If you have yet understand value distribution, I suggest you understand that first before continue on. You may find the related post below, look out for 60-30-10 rule blog post for its brief introduction if I have not yet written a topic about value distribution. Or use the search function at the side and find ‘value distribution’.

2. The mid tone that I use is only approximate 60% so this graph maybe incorrect. However the thing that we wanna look here is the deviation of this graph against the 80-20 rule graph. There really isn’t much difference, even the painting itself. You don’t need me to convince you that it’s easy to translate to a more detail painting without losing the composition armature that you have built.

3. What I did with this image was leveling the peak of the dark value and the first peak of the light value, thus the result you see. You may want to ignore the color here, I should have remove the hues, it’s making a huge leap in visual. So, consider this without any color. The luminosity channel is showing you what again looks like the above graph, but as you can see, the deviation is multiplied from the last. It’s showing stepper depression, translating the graph into English, it simply means more details.

4. Now this is the same exact detail as the last, but with the correct placement of the value, which mean those are the greys you see in the final painting, without the dark and light values. Essentially, it’s just the squashed version of the last graph. I’m showing you this because of the next graph, please read on.

5. Notice when you add the remaining values, the graph is just a stretch version of the one’s above. If you look at the 3rd graph, you can almost see the similarity. Which entirely mean that the composition rule here hasn’t change much at all!

The conclusion that I wanna share to you for this case study is that, it’s easy to make the progression from 80-20 rule to 60-30-10 composition rule. This could mean two things:

1. If you aren’t comfortable with 60-30-10 rule yet, stick with the simplify 80-20 rule. You’ll naturally make the progression soon, and it’s possible.
2. Drawing a 2-tone-sketch, which could also be a black and white sketch, is fast. If you could produce as much 80-20 sketches, you would have higher chances of getting  the best composition for you painting. Very useful for practice and experimenting for the very reason that it’s, fast.

We are blessed at making art.

We do anything in the name of art.

We selflessly devote ourselves to make art.

We are willing to sacrifice for art.

We will never give up on art.

We only talk with art.

But if you want to be rich as an artist…
- Insert your solution here -

Learn business! The art of making money!
Without the knowledge, how can you possibly maximize your profit!?

Some of you probably have heard of the rule of third, triangles, Fibonacci spiral, golden ratio, symmetry, radial composition and etc all of these common composition rules are closely related to the arrangement of the subject or the elements of a painting.

This uncommon 60-30-10 rule is a bit special, because it’s about a painting’s value distribution and not so much about the arrangements.

What is value distribution? I believe this topic deserve a topic itself, but for simplicity’s sake, let’s just do a brief introduction.

Try to break a painting’s value into 3 tones, you get light, medium and dark value.

If you have good “artist’s intuition”, you can feel the balance of the value distribution, too much or too little of some value is just not right. Normally using the 60-30-10 rule, which means applying 60% dark, 30% medium and 10% light on your canvas or the reverse, can give you the best balanced look.

To round up this rule, here are some painting examples from my best inspiration, Craig Mullins. 60-30-10 rule can also be applied in color distribution, spacing or just anything you feels right, remember to rely on your “artistic intuition”, rules are not meant to be followed blindly!

* This tutorial is specially dedicated to ReneAugustus!

Warhammer 40K – The Tyranid Outcast

And the wip shots.

Cardinal Richelieu at the Siege of La Rochelle, Henri Motte, 1881

How many times have you felt mad, or absolutely unhappy when somebody gave you critiques? And you ended up in a bad situation that you had wished only if you were calm enough and did not engage with the argument in the first place. First of all, I need to let you know why it’s not entirely your fault.

Think of it as a war, as much as people would like to help you to improve, not everybody knows how to do a proper critique. What they are wielding are sharps swords and dangerous weapons, most people did not realize that, and it’s no wonder why people can get hurt easily.

So how do we protect from ourselves then? Our patience is similar to our defense wall, the higher it is, the harder it will get breached. In real war, you wouldn’t wanna be outside of your wall, but enemies are smart. They lure and provoke you out, in order to get you in defenseless and vulnerable position.

I’m not implying that people want to attack us, but the fact that we are being lured out from our defenseless position exposes us from attacks, that’s when we lose control.

 ”The lesson here is to build your wall as high as possible, don’t let yourself in defenseless position. It’s important to find a friend that can support you because you don’t want your dream to be crushed before you get to the level you want.”

For my next post, we’ll discuss about how to give a proper critique to others, so that it feels supportive, rather than offensive.

Often when you try to refine your speedpainting or sketch into more refined piece, the result of finished painting tending to feel overworked or missing something comparing to your speedpaint is a common problem.

How could a more finished work losses its quality after being worked on so much? These 3 points helps me to improve my chance of getting the finished look that I want, hopefully it can help you as well.

1. Never refine everything in your painting

   It’s very tempting to refine every single details you can, especially when you really can, and more so the process is indeed about refining vague visual, our mind couldn’t refuse to do just that involuntarily. Refrain yourself from turning everything into sharp and detail rendering, especially the edges, because edges tend to be soft in our peripheral vision, refining everything would destroy the quality that you originally have in your speedpainting. A good rule of thumb is to only refine the focus point or subject matter. If you’d like to know more about edges, have a read about it in Richard Schmid’s Alla Prima.

2. Preserve and enhance the Hues

   Refining speedpainting requires you to overpaint some shapes, this could easily lead to the lost of hues if not carefully done. Digital painting can easily replace any pixel on your canvas as opposed to traditional medium which adds on to the pigment. Due to the lost of many colors, although the finished painting looks structurally clear and smooth, the dull color could take a lot of its life away. This is also true in real photo, color pick any area, you will notice that the variety of hues in every pixel is vast. I found out using textured brush or mingling color helps to bring the life back a lot, but I believe overlaying some image on top also could help.

3. Structures have to read clearly

   No matter how vague a visual look, the value should always be clear. Even the visual around our peripheral vision can read objects clearly for us, so we can’t run away from good understanding of light, we have to give a believable value reading. But don’t get this mixed with the first point, having a good readability in structure doesn’t mean that you have to refine it sharp and clear. Remember the point here is to give believable value reading, as long as it can still help you to communicate your idea, you don’t have to condemn it being too rough.

The origin of Ymgarl is a mystery, the reason for its lost of psychic link to hive is also unknown. Makes me wonder what made the hive mind abandoned these creature. This illustration shows an internal war, an evolved Ymgarl with higher intelligence, establishing its psychic link and commanding genestealers to fight against the Hive Mind. The rest is your interpretation.

Work in progress… Oh do correct me if I get the concept wrong.

Luckily I did progress shots for her, now I’m able to show you guys the process of this work. It took rough a week, juggling with my other works at the same time. If you have any question regarding the process, feel free to ask!

Alas, I’m thinking to frame this! One of my proudest work. Never thought I’d do this kind of work tho. haha
Hmm.. would be cool to hang something that you like on your wall, don’t you think?

So, you want to draw your own portrait, or your favorite celebrity portrait? On this page, you will learn a tool in 10 minutes or less, that will allow you to draw right away or improve you portrait drawing dramatically.

The tool that we will learn, is called the grid system. It’s nothing revolutionary, it was already popularly used during the renaissance period. Truth is, this technique can be applied in any subject, not just portrait. But portrait needs very high accuracy in the drawing, that’s why the grid system is more relevant to this subject.

Cut the chase, let us begin by picking any portrait you’d love to draw. How on earth do we draw this? Where do we start?

1. Draw the grid and try to frame it nicely, keep it simple.
You notice that the grid in the first pass (green) is kept in square. Why? Because it’s easy and precise. Try to draw a perfect square without measuring the width and height, if you can get that right, good, but if you can’t, that means you have to train your intuition right. It’s not easy, but it’s possible.  I’ll give you a hint, believe in yourself, and practice to hear your intuition. Trust me, you’ll get there.

2. Tessellate the grid further at the area with details.
Divide the width and height into half. Why half not two third? Again, because it’s easier to precisely get half. As the squares are cut into smaller pieces, they can help you focus each shape better, allowing you to get more accurate with the details. Look at the 3rd step, you’ll know what I mean.

3. Translate the grid onto your canvas.
Now draw the exact same grid, size doesn’t matter but proportion has to be the same. You’ll just need to draw squares and divide half, simple if you have strong intuition, hard if you measure every single length, my advice, don’t choose the later.

4. Draw the shapes within the grid.
Look carefully within the grid, especially the lines and shapes that are touching the grid, see where they begin and end, look how the gradient tone in the grid too, then draw exactly like that. If you find the detail is too much within the grid, go back to step 2. The next thing you know, you have your drawing done! Congratulation! Now go get you pencil or tablet or whatever and start drawing!

Once you are comfortable with this method, that means you have trained your intuition well, good job! You may use the following technique, it’s also a grid system, but instead of drawing squares and divide halves, you draw slanted lines and dividing in whatever ratio that you can handle.

This simple grid, I call it ‘armature’ allows you to save lots of time in constructing the grid like the example above. Using this armature as the base, you can quickly construct the other invisible grid in your head and draw it out. Your armature doesn’t have to be this way all the time, some times different armature can be easier for you, be creative.

And this is the actual way how I did this, the above sketch is the same version, I just overlay the grid on top. I know he doesn’t look like Hugh Jackman, I haven not drawn portrait for more than 3 years. You need to rely a lot on your intuition with this technique. The first method is slower but more precise, try your own method too, there’s no right way as long as you get your foundation right.

Yes, I also admit that I’m not the best artist out there, but, with enough practice, I’m sure you can do better than me!

 * This tutorial is specially dedicated to AdyDay!

Here’s your character request.

Name: Septira
Class: Oracle

Before I begin, is there any way you want to portray him? Can you talk more about your character? Maybe his background, what he likes/hate to do? Anything…

I will draw him in my style, but if you have anything in mind, do tell. If not, tell me too, so you can green light me to roam free.

Why does most people think that it’s hard to judge an art? How can art be subjective to everyone?

Image courtesy of newyorker.com

We all tend to perceive things differently. As an example, a teacher asks her students to draw a cat, at the end of they day, no cat drawings will look exactly the same even though the instruction given to every student is the same! As simple as it sounds, yet it amazed us to think that most people always assume everyone thinks like us. I know that I am no exception sometimes.

Image courtesy of The Comics Curmudgeon

We are all brought up differently, exposed to different cultures, different circle of friends, watch different kind of shows, receive different advices, have different experiences, every slight differences shapes us to have different belief. With or without our knowing, our belief defines our perception towards the things we see, hear, touch, smell and taste. Just because someone says it tastes sweet, and it’s so happen we like it, doesn’t mean he or she likes it.

By now you probably asking what has this got to do with art?

Before I answer this question, allow me present these questions and I hope you could take a moment to answer these too. Imagine you make an art, does it matter if everyone likes it? Does it matter if no one likes it? Does everyone seek for beauty? What is beauty? If you follow what I have said before, you’ll know that not everyone will have the same answers to the questions. But most importantly your answers to these questions is your belief that shapes your art. And to answer the first question, your belief is the defining trait of the things you create. And if we care about the output of our art, this should be something we should look into at.

Think about it for a moment, when you believe that your art isn’t about everyone liking it, logically you may be doing art specifically for a niche audiences. Or maybe you are just expressing how you feel. No matter what, our beliefs will guide our actions instinctively or consciously congruent to what we believe. Like wise, Peter Parker would never let a crook go about his way after experiencing the great lost. To do something out of our belief will seem irrational to us.

Image courtesy of HPC

But if we could still do art without a defined belief and still enjoy making art, why do we really need it actually? I do not mean it’s wrong, and I’m sure that we all should do what we love. However as a professional artist, it’s our duty to keep consistency in our work, our results usually derived from the beliefs we hold. Beliefs that lie deep within us are unclear to us, we may or may not get what we are actually looking for, so it’s only natural that we fail to achieve it at some times.

With defined belief however, we will not be influenced that easily, when something defies our beliefs, we will challenge it and do what we think is right. Pablo Picasso did not start and continue doing Cubism art by chance, it’s because he believed in something and wanted to challenge the modern thinking of art, he had his reason.

Allow me to show you a simple scenario, if I believe that the red color is the most beautiful color, I would naturally paint my painting with as much red as possible, base of my belief, more reds means more beautiful. You get the idea, of course whether red is the most beautiful color is entirely a whole new debate. But it shows us how important it is to be careful about our beliefs or to be conscious about our beliefs, otherwise we could be wandering in the seas of red and still think we are safe. If our belief is good, and if we can execute and achieve that, there’s absolutely no doubt that we can produce that great result every single time. To a professional artist, that consistency means a whole lot from a hobbyist.

So how do we define a good belief? Let me stress that I, personally do not believe there’s one true belief in art, but generally there should be a few beliefs that could define you as one of the exceptional artist. And I digress that this is only how I feel about this. Being a perfectionist for example may not help me become a good artist, but perhaps it does for some people.

Image courtesy of danineteen

To tell you more about a good belief, I remembered a story told by one of my respectful lecturer, Aik Sern, about a professional wedding photographer. He is so good at taking photos for lovely couples that won him several awards for his work. When my lecturer asked the photographer how he could have made such success, he said, “The most enjoying part about taking photo for newly weds is the experience of social interaction that you get to see between the couple, I’m just there to capture that beautiful moment and present the gift to them.” It’s such a humble comment yet the message manages to stick in my mind until now.

Anyway if you notice from the line he was saying, he had already shared about the belief he holds, very clear and concise. The photographer believes that by capturing the moments allows him to create beautiful art. It just so happen that the social interaction between the newly wed couple is one of the beautiful moment he enjoys to see most, thus naturally becomes his best genre.

What does that tell us? That if we could capture the most beautiful moment, we could produce the most beautiful photo? That we could be the most famous photographer by doing so? Maybe, but imagine if we do not have any belief at all, what difference would that make? What do we really stand for? Again my point is not asking you to be like him, but to challenge your own belief.

Image courtesy of Jason Palmer

By just knowing his beliefs, we can easily study and understand how he observes things, what makes a moment beautiful, what makes a great gift and so on. These are all the defining traits that make the photographer we mentioned earlier on to be that successful. After understanding, challenge your own belief, see whether your current belief can achieve something equivalent or greater. Certainly there are more beliefs that can make one be more successful in their career. I hope by now we all can see now how good beliefs can significantly affect our art.

To sum it up, we have talked about the examples and importance of having good and concrete beliefs, how beliefs can shape the ways we perceive at the things we see, hear, touch, smell and taste. And if we could understand the belief of a successful artist, it would be evident to us how they manage to strive for the consistency in the quality of their work. Looking it from the hindsight, it is almost a good belief, is also a good formula for making great success in art.

Besides creating great art, we are also embarking on a journey of self-understanding, challenge our beliefs in search for the ultimate belief that defines us as one of the extraordinary artist! We all can be great if we choose to be!

Image courtesy of teenormous

Thanks to my friend, Chien Yih, for proof reading this article. I’m still learning to write.

I’m happy, content to have done this, quite satisfy with the translation process from rough concept to finish. And I think I have confident this time to repeat it again. Although I’m not satisfy with the outcome I wished to achieve… it’ll be my next goal to achieve that standard next time.

Alas, win, lose doesn’t matter.

Closeup:

Concept Revision

God of Fate
For every fate he lays upon one being, he faces the same fate. He finds good people and reward them with fortunate fate, in return he receives the same fate. In order to punish bad people, he has to punish himself. In other words, he gets what he gives. However he does not have the free will to lay any fate he wishes, only through limited selection of the “fate” which grows from his body. To grow new “fates”, he has to use the old one. When the foolish Gods’ War ravages the land, bad “fates” becomes his ultimate weapon. With greed and evil grows stronger each day, it’s even harder to use up the good “fates” in exchange for new “fate”. His only hope is to rely on good beings so that he may relinquish all the good “fates” for the bad. He deeply desire for that one day when the world is once again, restore its balance.

His favorite quote, “Karma’s a bitch!” I’M KIDDING HAHAHAH! Interesting tho.

Concept revision:-

Goddess of Hope
Out of her own control, she will give hope to those who believe in themselves, and despair(losing hope) to those who fail to believe in themselves. The goddess concealed herself in a mountain with her pet which can prevent the direct effect of her power onto all living things, even so her power still leaks by a fraction amount. (That’s why people can live stronger as long they see hope, those who do not will likely be in despair.)

One who receives blessing from the Goddess, will have the absolute “power”. (A dying mortal can live again if he has the strong will; A mere mortal can do anything that he believes is possible; A God who gives up can die) As the war ravages the world, Gods and mortals come to seek for Hope. Only one with the strongest will get chosen, for the power he shall gain, will be the absolute hope… or despair.

I added her pet, which helps to nullify the goddess power. I’m gonna design her pet and full body next. Omg I still have another god to work on!

The thumbnails below includes wizard, fighter, assassin, witch, and princess. Which clearly as seen, all are sexy with hourglass body cutting, tho it obviously doesn’t help to bring out the “hope”. I enjoy drawing them anyhow. haha

In terms of the costume fashion, being majestic can only show the godly part. So to conclude this stage, the only way I can think of, to portray “hope”, is thru storytelling  in the final illustration with the demonstration of the goddess’ abilities and history. Also the expression is especially important, so the right facial design and makeup will help to achieve our objective here. Which is what I will explore next.

Rounding up this, I’m writing a brief story for our goddess.

Prologue: The Mountain of Hope
Long ago, at the far end of the world, was a small but peaceful village, guarding their mountain, which was sacred to the them. They had always believe the blessing from the mountain, because of their strong belief, no disaster nor disease had ever triumph over them. For as long as they still believe, there is always hope…

Their legend foretold that, “There will be time, when all hell break loose, that even the gods will turn themselves against one another, but for as long as you still believe, you will see hope as you have always have. And this will be a great hope, for all who believe, a new beginning.”

However, due to the technology advancement, most of the descendant failed to uphold their duty as the protector of the mountain and the prophecy which was thought to be ridiculously far-fetch. Seemingly more hope can be found beyond the mountain, they traveled away, seeking for their new beginning.

When finally the prophecy came half true, no one knew it was coming. Almost every mortal have lost all their hope, fighting against the gods only adds to their demise. And to the very few who doesn’t give up hope, they search every single possibility that could bring any hope… there is always hope.

Goddess of Hope
Those who seek hope will find hope; those who lose hope give up hope. This is the influence of the goddess, involuntary effects of her mighty.

Her close presence may bring absolute hope or despair. By keeping her distance away, it could still save those who are despair in hope, so they might be able to find hope again. To keep mortal safe from her direct influence, she confined herself deep in the mountain, even tho her overwhelming power still leaks around the mountain area. But only those who seek absolute hope from her can release the seal and attain the unknown potential from her influence, realizing the last half of the prophecy.

So far, I like 1, 6, 7 and 8. As I mentioned earlier, I’m going to explore the close up design, especially the face.

So here are some of the concept I’m applying to my gods.

Core Concept
Every curse that lives within us is a blessing. It’s ironic yet fortunate, depends how we look at it.

Application to my gods.

God of Fate *Possibly the last sketch
For every fate he lays upon one being, he faces the same fate. He finds good people and reward them with fortunate fate, in return he receives the same fate. In order to punish bad people, he has to punish himself. When Gods wage war amongst themselves, it’s obvious that one do not need to be a God to know his fate. Anyone would kill this God first to make sure nothing stands in their way.

Goddess of Hope
Out of her own control, she will give hope to those who believe in themselves, and despair(losing hope) to those who fail to believe in themselves. Without knowing or believing the existence of the Goddess of Hope, one would still be under her influence by a fraction amount. One who comes in contact with the Goddess, will have the absolute “power”. (A dying mortal can live again if he has strong will; A mere mortal can do anything that he believes is possible; A God who gives up can die) As the war ravages the world, Gods and mortals come to seek for Hope. Only one with the strongest will get chosen, for the power he shall gain, will be the absolute hope… or despair.

I’m not sure whether my Gods will be the one powerful GOD that shall defeat all other gods and determine the future of the universe forever more, as cited from DWV’s introductory. It’s kinda contradicting to my concept, since their parts play more of supportive role than power. Anyhow, I believe power is subjective, hope that we all have different view on power, that’s what make our world fun.

Some referenced, some from imagination.

I hurted my hand painting these, but I feel happy. Am I masochist then? hmm…

Studies during Chinese New Year, focused on the fabric forms, brush strokes and form simplification.

Keeping these principles in mind:

• “You are not only learning to draw but to see.” Glenn Vilppu
• “Remember, do not copy, but analyse the model.” Glenn Vilppu

It’s really weird that when we know something, we like to assume that we have mastered that knowledge, myself included. I had these principles with me 3-4 years ago, but I’m still making this mistake over and over again.

Constantly reminding myself the basics that I have yet completely mastered. Do more studies Randy! You won’t know it until you have done it! Happy Chinese New Year! woot oh yea, these are studies of Gerome’s painting.

Study on this genre, Victorian era. Did a lot of research, putting lots of images into my head before I can start to imagine the world in my head. 2DArtist Feb 2010 has an article about Steampunk which helped me a lot in terms of breaking down my focus in analyzing a particular direction of any genre. Because I always encounter of having too few images with my way of doing research, like when I wanna do steampunk, the keyword I would use is only steampunk images, in fact what I should be researching are victorian furnitures, fashion, article about steampunk myth and bla bla bla. With these information forms in our head, that’s when the images start kicking in to our head, we called that phenomena inspiration, it’s a manifestation of incubated ideas in our head. Without those, there will be none.

Here’s the list to help identifying and study any particular direction :

• Era – The year in which the event took place, roughly have some historical background to the subject we want to study.
• Culture – The fashion, belief, religion all play significant roles in determining the influence of the designs.
• Technology – Embrace their philosophy of science in that era, and design thru their point of view.
• Mood – Some genre are more suitable in particular mood, deviating from the common traits is a dangerous move. So I’d be extra careful about this.

Bottom line is, don’t wait for inspiration to come. Go look for it!
P/S This is an unfriendly reminder for myself. heh

After frustrated with my other fail painting which will not be shown public for you safety, I did a study after Schmid, using Jaime Jone’s brush set. Beautiful painting, sorry I ruined it, bad color + drawing, but made me realized how important it is to master edges, an important element of a good painting.

A quote from Richard Schmid about edges, “In our ordinary everyday seeing we are not usually conscious of hard edges in our peripheral vision, which is why they seem unreal when scattered throughout a painting.”

Schmid claims that Sargent and Zorn had different approach in dealing edges, hmm exactly what did he meant about that?

Teaser for my group’s project. Credit goes to Jonathan Chong, Wong Yong Taik and Jason Pua for their contribution. Even though it’s not quite to the standard we strive for, but I’m proud of this product. Thanks!

2011 budget, service charge increases from 5% to 6%.

Hmm.. Will it help the development of our country? Maybe.

Relevant making our country to a high income country? Definitely not. If it cause inflation to lower income families as middle incomers increase prices to boost their profit margin, I’ll be damn…

Sketch with my friend, Chien Yih. I’m still working on my research, can’t focus it while there are so many tasks in hand. Need to be stroooongaaaah! YAAAAH~

I have spent almost a week plus getting this site up and running, finally it’s all done ready to go! I learned heaps of CSS and div skills to customize this wordpress theme. Big thanks to http://www.webdesignerwall.com/tutorials/building-custom-wordpress-theme/

Even though it’s lacking a lot of personality comparing to v1, I’ve grown to like minimalistic design a lot. And the other important reason to why I revamped the whole site is to implement a blog. Really need a place where I can put down my thoughts about art and really analyze them. This can bring my understanding to a whole new level, rather than just having a mental note about something.

In summary, my blog will provide grounding for my:

• Case Studies
• Researches
• Sketches
• Works

Maybe you have some list to add, no?