Introduction

Hello everyone!
My name is Ondrej Mrstny. I'm 22 and I come from Czech Republic though currently live and study in Denmark. I am a beginner but very enthusiastic digital artist. I do it during free evenings, when I don't have to study or am not training somewhere. Once I would like to become an Illustrator for fantasy books/games/movies or whatever in that theme though I will be doing a lot of concept art for now as I need to practice my fundamentals to be able to make decent illustrations...
My other activities besides school and art are training and coaching Parkour and Fitness, playing table-top games and eating FOOD!..
Art has been a part of my life as far as I can remember. When I was a kid I was always more creative and skilled than any of my mates around me and I imagined myself being a professional artist when I grow up.. I didn't only draw a lot, but also did music. But as my life continued and everyone kept telling me that it's not something I could make a living of and that I should do something more "useful", it slowly became just something that I live with, but it's forgotten. I kept drawing, but usually only in school when I didn't really want to pay attention to Mathematics or Physics haha
2 years back I started playing with Adobe Illustrator, because I saw some tutorial for it on youtube and liked it a lot. I made few vector paintings with my mouse and started watching more and more videos seeing people paint awesome stuff in Photoshop and other programs. I already knew that that's something I want to learn as well, so a week later I already had my small cheap Intuos Creative Pen Tablet by Wacom and started practicing.. I mainly watched Marcs tutorials and then also some Sycras. Never stopped watching speedpaints.. I made my first 3 paintings, which I was pretty proud of back then, but then stopped painting for a year because of difficult life situation and lack of time. Had to save money for studies, so I studied and did almost full-time trainer at the same time.
Now I moved to Denmark and started painting again motivated as never, watching more and more stuff and reading art books in my spare time... and getting involved in the community..
..Aand that's why I'm here. I would like to help others as well as learn a lot myself! Though I don't have much spare time when studying abroad and working to survive, I want to improve as much as I can every day so I could one day become a proffessional artist and live my dream life.
If you guys have read it all, I clap for you.. didn't think I'm gonna write so much and don't know if anyone is going to read it I'm glad I can be part of this awesome community. Big thanks to Marc Brunet for doing this all for people like me. CYA ALL AROUND AND HOPE THAT SOME OF YOU MIGHT LIKE WHAT I MAKE.

WARNING: ..my Art Blog is going to be a little more personal stuff, but if you don't like to read about me, you can always just skip it and see my art..

ENTRY No.1

My very first digital paintings which I did 1,5 years ago. Those were the only ones that I did before I got "too bussy" to continue painting and stopped digital painting for more than a year. During that year I also managed to break my neck and be so lucky to survive my death while doing freerunning.. didn't make me stop doing it though

1) The Sun God
This one was made when I tried to learn drawing head front view using Marc's yt tutorial and then overpainted it all while exploring Photoshop blend modes haha

2) Green Dragon Guy
I painted this one following Marc's tutorials on painting with values and coloring with gradients. I appologize for also doing the very same composition, but hope he doesn't mind it since it was just a practice for me and my result is just so much worse..

3) Vampire Wrrioress
While doing the lineart it was supposed to be an Elven Wrrioress, but after throwing some colors I played with CB tool and ended up having a Vampire instead

and then I also tried to make a background for it which kinda sucked but will share anyway so you guys can have some fun...

ENTRY No.2

So the following ones are my eye quick-sketching practice and two of my finished works I did right after I started the digital art over again and reminded myself of how to hold a pen.

1) Eye-sketching practice
figured out I need to learn how to paint eyes and went to practice it with some 2min sketches

2) Beach Girl
Yes I am a man and I always liked drawing female characters and sometimes even naked women. I've decided to show this painting because it is a style which I really like - in my opinion it feels like something between real and animated look but more towards animated. I also like to make eyes a little bigger than they would normally be, sometimes even like anime-sized.. Note: even when this painting has no sexual intension I decided to hide some parts in case some children would wander these forums...

3) Crazed Mage
This is a painting which I did at the same time when I joined these forums. It shows a mage character possesed by his magic. Have to admit I was pretty lazy with the backgroud.

ENTRY No.3

I've been asked by my friend ,who has already been developing and writing a story for couple of months with a goal of turning it into short book or comic, to help him visualize some of his characters. He offered me just some little snack money in return, but I took it anyway cause it is a great opportunity for me to practice in this field. It is going to be around 6-7 main characters and later maybe some weapon design and/or environmental concept, which will be one at a time appearing on my Blog (with his approval ofc). Since I don't have a time limit for these and with my lack of free time I don't really know when, but they will..

Feedback and/or Tips are always welcome!

Here's the first one:

ENTRY No.4

Life goes on and I happened to find myself in the middle of examination period. That's the main reason for not being much active lately. Second main reason is that I've found a new part-time job which is great since me and my girlfriend are not going to die of hunger haha, but he bad side of it is that I have less and less time and don't even get much sleep since the job takes place four days a week 2am - 7am which is just crazy to handle. If anyone reads my self-chatting here, just wish me luck and in the meantime check out a little bit of my art practice..

All that I am able to do these days when it comes to the art is just some quick sketches. Right now I am focusing on imagination drawing - drawing quick poses without reference and minimum detail. Still a lot to improve but I feel like I am on the right track to get these even faster and better. Here are some that I've just made..

Looking forward to when I'll be able to post something more interesting haha. Cya

Hi @aika. Thanks for the feedback! Appreciate it.
With the photobashing tip, do you mean my last sketches or just sayin it is an over-all good idea to try it?

ENTRY No.5

So here's what happened during the last two weeks. First of all I passed all the exams.....
eeeey Secondly my winter holydays started and I couldn't be more happy to finally have some free time.. more specificaly a whole month (if I don't count going to work where they didn't give me break even for the Crsitmas heh). Anyway, this means I'm hopefuly going to be more active now.
I am soo looking forward to finally join the ART WAR. I've been thinking about the character that I am going to make since it was announced and now is time to put some ideas onto paper (not an actual paper though - i prefer doing everything digitally)

Now to post some art of mine..
Here is second of my character concepts which I introduced in ENTRY No.3.
This one was a little harder to make and took more time, but at the same time I am more satisfied with the result. It also includes a little weapon desing and the initial sketch.

Radzi_Igo_Concept.jpg6400x6400 2.74 MB