Abyillus - Portfolio Critique

jww1994 2021-07-17 19:12:56 UTC #1

Hey all, I was hoping you fellow members of the community would be able to take a look at my portfolio and give me some harsh critique about what you like about my current work (such as a common element that positively catches your attention and would like to see further rendered,) what you don't like and what you think I need to improve on.

I'm mostly looking for this critique before going in-depth with my journey through the Art School program so I know which chapters to focus on to bring my short comings up to par with areas I'm more comfortable in. (Meaning while I plan to go through the entire program and all of it's chapters, if there's a chapter you think I might need to spend less time on compared to another that I should invest more hours into for practice.)

You can find the link to my portfolio here: genobyportfolio.wordpress.com

Thanks again, and good luck to all of you in pursuing your own art dreams!

Edit 1:

After replying to Brohawx, I felt like I should list this in the main body so it's easier for people to find so they can reference things they might want to know.

What is your favorite text book?: I think this is probably the hardest question for me to answer, but I think the one I like the most would probably be Colour and Light by James Gurney, albeit none of the examples I have posted would demonstrate the things I've learned from that, since I only recently started applying it to miniature painting as I've been trying to come to understand colour and form a little better.

What was your favorite master to study: Leonardo Da'Vinci is for sure my favourite classically trained master and he's the reason why I wanted to take up art when I was younger. Outside of Da'Vinci, I think I would say my favourite master is Anders Zorn. I also really admire gothic sculptors, just not one specific sculptor.

Who is your favorite artist: In modern digital artists I would say I do like the works of well, Marc Brunet, Paul Kwon, Adam Duff, Anthony Jones, Akihiko Yoshida and Hideo Minaba to name a few. I can't really pick one of them to say they're my absolute favourite because there's elements that they all do that I love, but if I had to choose from that list I think I would have to pick Adam Duff because his artwork tends to really lean into the gothic horror look I personally enjoy.

The College Program I mentioned being a graduate from in my Art School Journey post didn't focus on one thing in particular and would really best be described as a program that lets you learn the different elements of making video games, ranging from teaching you how to do pixel art to doing 3D modeling work, more so aimed at trying to promote graduates to pursue being indie developers. In hindsight, I learned some things I wouldn't have learned otherwise, but it did nothing to really help me grow as an artist.

The fields I'm most interested in are Concept Art, Illustration and 3D modeling/sculpting.

Edit 2:

Adding a google doc link for further reference of range which can be found here: https://photos.app.goo.gl/9Yzoig7GdznRnxg89

LesleyCarol 2021-07-17 23:16:40 UTC #2

Hello and welcome! I'm glad you decided to take your art more seriously and grow with Art School community!

Since you want harsh critique I'll start off by saying that school did you dirty and wasted your time. I'm sorry you spent 3 years there with no feedback or honest critiques. They should be ashamed of themselves because you still have a ways to go.

It looks like you're very creative and you have a lot of ideas, but the presentation is lacking a little. I noticed you had a napkin drawing on your portfolio and that doesn't really read as professional. If you showed steps you took to develop that idea further and cleaned it up into a finished character design then I think it would be a bit better. Overall the portfolio is lacking some organization and professionalism.

I can't say much for the 3D work, but for the 2-D work, the basic fundamentals (form, perspective, anatomy, etc) needs more attention. You have some cool concepts but some of your lines are too scratchy and your shading doesn't make the objects look 3-dimensional. Also, there isn't a variety of texture in your designs.

I love the skull with the fire coming out of the eyes. I did a paint over to show how you could push your ideas with a little more detail and knowledge of form and lighting. I didn't have that much time so it's really rough. Ignore the teeth.

This may not be the style you're going after, but getting a better shape of the skull and really conveying the idea of fire can really push this.

I would come in with the mindset of completely starting over. I think you would benefit from every lesson and should take your time to soak in the material and practice as much as you can. A lot of us are willing to help you and we often do paint overs for each other and share resources.

brohawx 2021-07-18 04:27:37 UTC #3

Agreed.

Okay so. Think of this as a safe space. I think you came to the right platform.

Everyone here is really helpful and really cool. And wants to learn. They have a passion to learn.

You need to take down everything that was an assignment.

I think you need to start absorbing the culture of video game illustration and concept art and know the difference. Don't focus on the games themselves focus on the process and technique. You need to pick if you are going to focus on 3d or 2d as a career, because they are very different.

Start buying Spectrum Annual and learning recent scifi/fantasy artists and the stylistic trends.

You need to listen to the Draftsmen podcast on your preferred podcast platform. Start from the beginning and watch a few of Stan Prokopenko's how too videos on youtube too.

Start studying the golden age of illustration in america starting with Howard Pyle and his students. Read about them and do case studies of their pieces. You will learn so much about how our modern illustration techniques are born from them.

You said in your art school place holder post, that

I have no real training as an artist beyond the fundamentals such as perspective, form, colour theory, and most of what I've learned has been through trial and error, reading text books or watching online content creators such as Marc.

You mean they've been told to you.

I dont see perspective or form theory applied to your drawings. Maybe that blue armor set. I'm not counting the 3d as perspective or form. Color theory also lacking.

Can you draw yourself in the mirror using just two values?
Can you draw 100 perfect cubes with no arbitrary convergence?
What is your favorite text book?
What was your favorite master to study?
Who is your favorite artist?
I am not trying to be an a**hole. I am asking these questions because it looks like you made a website with all the content you made for 4 years and these questions are all first semester things you do in art school and I see none of them.

I see you like pixel art, there are art theories and applications you can use here pretty quick if you like pixel art. There are many styles though. https://lospec.com/pixel-art-tutorials

Go to artstation.com and look at trending 2d and 3d artists. Those are people who are being hired and YOUR competition. Go onto arstation.com and get on the email list for new jobs posted every day you'll get the alert at midnight. Do not apply right now. See the descriptions and see what they are looking for to see what not only you need to learn, but replicate.

If you want more critique or how too lets start off with a figure drawing. Set yourself an hour and a half timer, find an anatomy reference for drawing with one light source with a dynamic or standing pose. Adhere to the timer strictly. Post it here WITH the SFW reference and we can help you with learning quick sketch anatomy and shading! No prob.

jww1994 2021-07-18 23:04:30 UTC #4

Thanks for the response!

To give a bit more information that is lacking in my "portfolio" A lot of the content that is posted in there was picked out from a lot of other pieces of work I did as part of the College program I took, which did cover things such as figure drawing, perspective drawings and other introduction to art skills, and were just not post on the linked website because my art teacher at this program deemed them "un-necessary."

I could post a lot more pieces that I've done which would demonstrate my skills further for sure, such as posting my google drive link which does contain a lot of other pieces I've done, which I think may have been the better choice here because as you've pointed out there is some things missing in the examples I do have on the wordpress page.

To answer the questions you asked in this post though here's my answers!

Can you draw yourself in the mirror using just two values: If you mean something akin to what you would do for a half-grisaille painting I haven't done one of these yet but I do plan on doing one of these. I have done some self portraits where all I used was a mechanical pencil and a blending stump at first, then did some acrylic painting behind it to frame the portrait better and I can post that if you would like!

Can you draw 100 perfect cubes with no arbitrary convergence?: I would say yes. Part of the College program I did we did a lot of on paper white boxing, which I've used vanishing points and lines to make sure they were correctly foreshortened and "square" but I can't say I can do it without the guides which I think is to be expected for the most part.

Thank-you for the brutal honesty you've given, and I wouldn't consider you being an asshole for it since I did ask for harsh critique after all!

The pixel art was more so because of game projects I had to do while pursuing my degree, and while I do like it I'm personally more of a fan of 3D works, hence why there's also a bunch of (albeit not great) 3D models as part of the website!

If there's any more questions you have that you can think of that would help you better gauge where I am, feel free to ask them of me and I can even supply you with a more trimmed down version of what else I've done in a google drive or something like that

jww1994 2021-07-18 23:18:35 UTC #5

Thanks for the response!

It is because of how I felt robbed from the school that I'm taking this course to further build up on what I feel like should have been taught.

The napkin drawing I agree doesn't read as professional, and I mostly slapped it onto the site because I felt good about the design, and I should really only include it as part of a break down process to show the sketch before refining it digitally, so I'll take that as a way to improve that piece!

Anatomy was one of the things I've felt like I've struggled with for a while, and still struggle with because I started off wanting to just be a weapons and armor concept artist so I didn't practice the human form to much (whoops) until I discovered I really liked 3D modeling and Sculpting as well. I think you can sort of notice this in the armor set I drafted over a figure, and the potato gun looking concept I have on the website.

For the skull drawing I agree I should have pushed it further than it currently is, and your paint over is helping me notice some of the areas of improvement I can do to it!

Much like my response to Brohawx below, if you'd like a link to more of my work outside of what's on that website feel free to ask, what's on the wordpress site is more cherry picked pieces.

Thanks again for the critique, it's greatly appreciated

brohawx 2021-07-20 18:19:28 UTC #6

Cool! All cool stuff!

That's awesome. I love all three of those. I chose the second one to try and master, and have dabbled in all three.

I'm sorry that school kind of yanked your focus around a lot. But the most important thing to find is what YOU want to do. It was a year into art school before anyone asked me that. Learning the techniques will demystify some stuff for you and decide which one you want to master.

Your portfolio focus, as you said, was to help us tell you what you needed to focus on in Marc's school. I read past that and looked at it like a regular portfolio critique for work.

I would just do all of it honestly. Soak it all in. Really nail down perspective with no guidelines, composing with value and color theory, and finally a system (of which there are a reliable few) of anatomy for artists and a system that lets you compose illustrations, or in other words 'construct' projects.

Design is a whole other area of theories and applications which once you learn the first things mentioned above till you dont have to think about them you can start designing well.

The training you will receive for drawing and painting as an artist is always training either your eye or your hand. Your artist eye is your taste, your ability to spot errors, to see compositions and how they effect ones mood. Your artist hand is your confidence in application in your tool of choice, your accuracy in stroke.

Your whole life you will find they are always one ahead of the other. They work together. But when you start seeing more errors in your old work you have developed your eye further. Or errors in others works. Or develop a change in taste. When you start making correct and confidant marks in your process you have increased your skill of artist hand.

I asked which is your favorite to study. Maybe I should have said copy. My bad. I see a few of your da vinci studies there.

If I'm looking at your assignments from school I see none of your copies I guess they didn't have you copy anyone for drawing purposes since their focus was indie game dev more or less.

A copy lets me know you are developing your eye for errors. And if it looks Identical I can see you have worked really hard looking for errors and developing the right side of your brain and systematically breaking down an image.

((( A side note : Davinci would be insane to copy. I've tried a few times myself but Everything he did was some type of experiment after his classical training he got bored and tried things a hundred different ways. If you look at some of his line work he does these crosshatch lines perfectly across the ENTIRE page one by one and changes the pressure of his QUILL PEN to shade some of his heads and figures like he is feeling a topographical map on the page from his brain. That's not a system I want to even start. I got stuff to do lol. End Side Note )))))

If you started to copy some Zorn pieces you could hardly do any worse because he's pretty great.

Keep up the hard work and I can't wait to see your development.

jww1994 2021-07-20 20:26:26 UTC #7

I plan to go through the whole course still yeah! I think how I worded this may have been not entirely correct. While I do plan to go through the whole course still, it's more so me asking if anybody has noticed a chapter that I wouldn't have to spend as many hours on practicing compared to another chapter.

Yeah, because as I later mentioned we didn't have much time to do master studies so sadly the only ones I have of Davinci are the ones you saw. His method of sketching would be absolutely bonkers to try and copy I agree, which all I've really copied in some little sketches here and there are his cross-hatching more than his full style.

The main thing I do like about Zorn though is the Zorn Palette, everything seems so organic and life like so when you introduce some colours outside of the usual Zorn Palette it stands out as a great pop colour and focal point!

Thanks for the feedback, and likewise to you!