Help - Too many unfinished drawings!

miguelnarayan

Hey all. I have a problem with unfinished drawings, it may sound silly but after realizing I couldn't afford Art Center or FZD as a graduation in concept art, I borrowed some of my friend DVDs with Feng Zhu, Scott Robertson and Syd Mead and they helped a lot, I already knew the foundations of how to draw and I was happy with the workshop results, 80% of what I made was scrapped but the rest of the concepts I found worthy of take them to a refining level and add to a portfolio later.

The problem is that I still don't know how to paint well to finish my concepts, and even though Syd Mead does offer a lot of insight, I'm stuck.
I have around 15 drawings/line drawings that I like a lot and I'm undecided between keep doing my personal art or join this http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php/274760-LevelUp!-Online-Workshop-Reviews
Should I draw a few more, and get into color a lot later? I noticed in FZD they only get into color around term 3.

stickadtroja

dont throw money on that hoax called conceptart.org. i dont have any experience with it, but from what i read, its very shady at best.
isnt there free alternatives available? like getting in a skypegroup or google hangout and have those people push you to finish stuff? thats what i would do myself, if you are paying for something on the internet in 2016 you are doing it wrong. i guess gumroad and those tutors sites are an exception.

Muzzoid

Before we can offer any real comment we need to see your actual drawings. Looking at your portfolio, there isn't anything in there that i can judge your skill level at drawing in order to give some help.

MagicSugar

miguelnarayan said:

The problem is that I still don't know how to paint well to finish my concepts,

If you're starting out I recommend focusing more on levelling up your design skills, how you search and process photo references, anatomy, presentation, etc.  Hand rendering or painting the traditional way (with no digital shortcuts) will take you years to train yourself before you level up into pro level.  Start with a simple technique for now, see samples below.

If painterly illustration is your preferred style, it will take a lot of commitment.  Best way to go about this path is to have experienced mentors to coach you up.  

The guy people mention a lot from conceptart who started with zero skills and became a master painter, he actually went to an atelier, a school which he paid for his own money or free labor (in exchange for training), where experienced painters raised his skills.  He's not 100% self-taught.

Colorizing versus painterly:

Bioware lead concept artist Matt Rhodes style for example does more colorizing than painting:


Calum Alexander Watt, concept artist Alien: Isolation

miguelnarayan

I'm on my last year of art & design college. Not focused on concept art. I will post what I have done later, I'm working up to it, I don't want to feel my motivation to drop or to feel too proud and start being lazy, should the comments about what I have be good or bad/critical, but I understand now it may be hard to make a review in order to help me with this next path.

MagicSugar

stickadtroja said:isnt there free alternatives available? 

One self-teaching technique anybody could try to do to raise their art IQ (minus the dollar cost) is to do studies.  Pick a sample art from an artist you like and try to reverse engineer the art (values, harmonies, possible photoshop techniques used, edge control, scientifically true lighting versus stylized lighting schemes, etc.) to at least understand what and why the particular art appeals to you.

Gheromo

Have you tried ctrlpaint.com? 

Two Listen

Seconding not throwing money into anything from CA.org.  MagicSugar's advice is also sound, resonates with me anyway.

Regarding your issue, I don't think putting money into any classes or tutorials is going to be your answer.  Not that it can't be part of the answer, most knowledge can be valuable, but it sounds to me like you just need to study hard, and hammer the hell out of something for two months.  I don't think there's a line in the sand that you'll cross after taking some classes where you can suddenly say, "Yes...yes, I get it!  I can now finish paintings."

"Finishing" something is perhaps...a difficult goal to understand.  Finished for someone a couple years into study might be 10% progress to someone who's been living art for a couple decades.  I used to think I had this problem - because damn did I have a ton of sketches and nothing for a portfolio, but later came to accept that my limits were simply short of that "finished" quality I'd see in the art of those who inspired me.  I had to acknowledge that to me, "finished" did not mean "done", it meant "comparable to the people whose art is always kicking my ass".  And that I simply wasn't capable of finishing something in that manner.  Wasn't any way around the problem other than to sit down, spend weeks "finishing" something to the best of my ability, and then line it up next to the art in my reference folder and cry a bunch tear it apart studying ever aspect of it that I could.  And then try to push that piece further.  ...still have a long way to go mind you, probably won't ever stop feeling that way.

Guess if I had one bit of advice I'd say don't rush things.  You'll see a bunch of tutorials or references encouraging you to get things down quickly, might be tempted to get into some speedpainting to learn the "tools", etc.  But I think it's important to keep in mind, you need to know how to do something once in order to try doing it fast.  If you need to spend weeks or longer on a single piece and you're really hitting it hard, that's probably better than having 50 sketches and "speedpaintings" that you didn't really study and learn from.

Wendy de Boer

If you're uncomfortable painting, and as a result you feel overwhelmed trying to paint a nice drawing you made, perhaps it's too big of a step to take at once. You could try some tiny paintings first, such as a study of an eye. Then as you progress, you can slowly increase the scope of your paintings.

miguelnarayan

Thanks guys, you're very right on the anti-speed painting methodology, I started painting, mind you, I'm repainting it for the third time! I'm finding very zen-like to spend an infinite amount of time in it, no rush, I guess you're very right on coining what is finished and what isn't.
I should start small next time, as Wendy suggests too.

By the way, why does everyone hate CA.org? Just curious!! I don't have the experience about them but I always saw some cool artwork from Massive Black. Not important, I guess, thanks for the encouragement, I'll take my time and start painting everything, not a point to have thousands of pretty sketches and not taking them a step further.

Pain

"An artist never really finishes his work, he merely abandons it."

Bletzkarn

Sounds like it may be an issue in your workflow. Generally a sketch follows as:

Rough line ; Refined Line ; Colour Base : Colour Value pass 1 : Colour Value Pass 2 : Texture : Highlight ; Colour Correction etc

miguelnarayan

Actually a teacher of mine told me the same thing, I just really need to sit down and think before I draw or decide what to do. Write my goal down and how will I reach it. It seems to work better! I need to practice thinking more! heh

Muzzoid

miguelnarayan said:

By the way, why does everyone hate CA.org? Just curious!! I don't have the experience about them but I always saw some cool artwork from Massive Black. Not important, I guess, thanks for the encouragement, I'll take my time and start painting everything, not a point to have thousands of pretty sketches and not taking them a step further.

Lots of drama including legal stuff that led to a split of massive black and CA.org which includes not paying people profits from tutorial videos, and a ton of other messy stuff.

But yes what people have been telling you is correct. You need to train your intentionality and base level skills. Stop drawing on auto pilot, slow down and be intentional with everything you do.

miguelnarayan

Thanks, Muzz. I've noticed I know the stuff, fundamentals, etc, I just draw on auto pilot a lot and my auto pilot doesn't know as much as I do. hehe. Priceless advice, thanks everyone for hopping in

Muzzoid

I'd suggest stop saying you know your fundamentals. You can't "know" your fundementals, it's a constant uphill battle where there is always more to learn and you can always get better at it. You "know of" the fundamentals, and are currently are an early stage of improving at them.

One common misconception people have is that there is a difference between active drawing and drawing on autopilot. We ALWAYS have things we are doing on autopilot, this is normal and necessary. If you are practicing perspective your lines are on autopilot, and if you are practicing line-work your perspective is on autopilot. Instead what we need to do is intentionally train our brains to do the correct thing when on autopilot, and your issue is you have not done this. Just because you are aware of vanishing points does not mean your intuition knows how to use them, instead you need to sit down and intentionally train for at least 2 weeks for any particular skill, which is about on average it takes to form a habit, which as far as i can tell are not significantly different from intuition in the neo-cortical sense as far as i can tell. .

I hope this makes more sense.

miguelnarayan

https://www.tumblr.com/blog/myartscraps
Some of the studies I've done...
Do you guys think I should master a subject, say perspective, then characters, then environments, etc? At the moment, I'm doing a bit of everything at once, and don't really master anything. I feel I have too much theory not enough practice