Becoming a self-taught concepet artist from scratch

Hi guys :slight_smile: I’ve been into digital art for some time now and I decided recently to get more serious about it. I’m really counting on your constructive advice. I’ll try to post at least short exercises as often as possible. Below I’m uploading 2 short pieces of work (about an-hour-of-painting each). I’m used to taking my tame (a lot of time…) to finish one painting, so I figured setting myself a time limit might help to speed up my drawing/painting pace a bit. They are neither detailed, nor complex, my goal was stricty to convey the general idea and climate in a short period of time. First one is a scene from Paperman, the other one was just something I was experimenting with and used my imagination. Thanks in advance for all your help :*



On my computer and another one, the second image is almost completely black, even with my screen brightness up to max
In PS I need quite a bit of adjustment to show any kind of detail. Not sure what you are seeing or wanting to see


Good point, thanks :slight_smile: Next time I’ll have that in mind. I must admit that the idea was not well thought out. I’m just fond of gothic atmosphere and was aiming at practising how to create a natural whole, instead of parts put togeher.

I loved Paperman - it has to be one of my favourite short movies. You captured the shading style perfectly, and I like depth-of-field use. Meg’s left eye looks a little distorted, but it’s not so bad. (:
The second image is hard to see because it’s so dark. From Richard’s lightened image, it seems that the perspective of the car doesn’t match the scenery? Other than that, perhaps selective darkening of just the edges would work better for the image?

One last thing - you might have seen them already, but ‘Feng Zhu’ makes some really good videos for aspiring concept artists. (:
Good luck!



http://bit.ly/S79qul

Good start now keep on drawing. I am also learning how to draw and paint by myself. It’s a very tough road to travel so be persistent. On the second drawing with the carriage I would watch the contrast like Richard pointed out it’s very dark and difficult to read what is going on. I would also add that you need to keep your perspective consistent the road shows one horizon while the carriage seems to indicate another. Also use some atmospheric perspective make the trees in the foreground the darkest and with the most contrast between them and the other elements of your picture, the darkness and contrast should be reduced as you go to the mid and background planes of your picture.