Fine Artist that likes feedback.
scw55
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Hello, my name is Steve and I am a Fine Artist.
I graduated doing a BA (Hons) degree in Fine Art.
Since I am not quite sure what I would like to do in the future, but I enjoy having creative freedom, my goals is to improve at being a fine artist.
I had interest in becoming a conceptual artist for a video game company or that sort of industry. However I no longer have that interest since the style of artwork in those industries are not like what I do. Also, I thought my strong dislike for drawing people would be a hindrance for fantasy concept for human characters.
I enjoy being unique. I think that is evident in my art work. What I am working at the moment is producing work to market. I'm basically establishing myself as a self-employed artist. I think that my unique imagery is highly marketable due to the common subject matter of birds (people like fluffy and feathery animals) and how I present the image. I have a 'niche' as it were which is great as I do not need to compete with many artists. However, with regards to 'fantasy' art it can be quite a difficulty as some people have a preconception of what "fantasy art is", and my artwork is not "that".
I've been practising art my whole life as I've always enjoyed mucking around with materials for enjoyment. It was only 5 years ago when I studies an Art & Design course for college that I realised this is what I want to do with my life. Technically then, is when I became an artist (according to a tutor at that time), but it has only been 2 years since I graduated from the Fine Art Degree.
The artists I admire are M C Escher (which past tutors found surprising as his work is very clean and crisply finished. My work is not that), Van Gogh, Picasso, Franz Marc, Kyffin Williams (yes, I am Welsh), Peter Prendergast, The Concept Artists for Blizzard, The newer illustrator for the Discworld novels and Quentin Blake. At the moment, I am exploring how to depict birds in an abstract manner. Mainly because I find producing photo-realistic drawings and paintings dull, and also exploring the abstraction aspect means I get to experiment with Psychological aspects to my imagery. Since there seems to be barely any artists solely depict birds abstractly, I had to 'pick and choose' from various paintings and artists to gain ideas and inspiration. But I guess that's a healthy artistic habit anyway.
I enjoy working in Oil, Water soluble pencil, marker, pencil, pen, ink, acrylic and three dimensionally with crafts, clay, found materials and plaster of paris.
These series of paragraphs are just me describing myself before I ask you kindly for feedback.
My current on-line art portfolio can be found at:
http://scw55.deviantart.com/gallery/
There you can find finished work, rough drawings, photography, and general random things I have done.
I'm asking for feedback because I found it very hard to find anywhere on the internet that could give me any. Deviant Art hasn't been helpful due to the shear volume of work on the site. It makes visitors to your work low. And if they do visit, they probably won't comment. If they do comment, the comment is along of the lines of "I like that". I do enjoy complements. But complements don't help me get a better understanding of any problems with the piece of work.
I would be very grateful for any feedback or advice. I have felt like a black sheep in any art community I've joined.
I graduated doing a BA (Hons) degree in Fine Art.
Since I am not quite sure what I would like to do in the future, but I enjoy having creative freedom, my goals is to improve at being a fine artist.
I had interest in becoming a conceptual artist for a video game company or that sort of industry. However I no longer have that interest since the style of artwork in those industries are not like what I do. Also, I thought my strong dislike for drawing people would be a hindrance for fantasy concept for human characters.
I enjoy being unique. I think that is evident in my art work. What I am working at the moment is producing work to market. I'm basically establishing myself as a self-employed artist. I think that my unique imagery is highly marketable due to the common subject matter of birds (people like fluffy and feathery animals) and how I present the image. I have a 'niche' as it were which is great as I do not need to compete with many artists. However, with regards to 'fantasy' art it can be quite a difficulty as some people have a preconception of what "fantasy art is", and my artwork is not "that".
I've been practising art my whole life as I've always enjoyed mucking around with materials for enjoyment. It was only 5 years ago when I studies an Art & Design course for college that I realised this is what I want to do with my life. Technically then, is when I became an artist (according to a tutor at that time), but it has only been 2 years since I graduated from the Fine Art Degree.
The artists I admire are M C Escher (which past tutors found surprising as his work is very clean and crisply finished. My work is not that), Van Gogh, Picasso, Franz Marc, Kyffin Williams (yes, I am Welsh), Peter Prendergast, The Concept Artists for Blizzard, The newer illustrator for the Discworld novels and Quentin Blake. At the moment, I am exploring how to depict birds in an abstract manner. Mainly because I find producing photo-realistic drawings and paintings dull, and also exploring the abstraction aspect means I get to experiment with Psychological aspects to my imagery. Since there seems to be barely any artists solely depict birds abstractly, I had to 'pick and choose' from various paintings and artists to gain ideas and inspiration. But I guess that's a healthy artistic habit anyway.
I enjoy working in Oil, Water soluble pencil, marker, pencil, pen, ink, acrylic and three dimensionally with crafts, clay, found materials and plaster of paris.
These series of paragraphs are just me describing myself before I ask you kindly for feedback.
My current on-line art portfolio can be found at:
http://scw55.deviantart.com/gallery/
There you can find finished work, rough drawings, photography, and general random things I have done.
I'm asking for feedback because I found it very hard to find anywhere on the internet that could give me any. Deviant Art hasn't been helpful due to the shear volume of work on the site. It makes visitors to your work low. And if they do visit, they probably won't comment. If they do comment, the comment is along of the lines of "I like that". I do enjoy complements. But complements don't help me get a better understanding of any problems with the piece of work.
I would be very grateful for any feedback or advice. I have felt like a black sheep in any art community I've joined.
scw55 on
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Posts
Are you using references? It seems like you have the right idea, but I'm getting the impression you might be trying to paint solely from memory. There isn't anything wrong with that, but if you're looking to improve, use LOTS of references. Even if it feels like you're doing the same thing over and over. Try different lighting, colors, shapes, and environments -- you may surprise yourself. One thing that people forget is, even though we will encourage you to draw from life (the boring stuff), we aren't telling you to stop having fun! Continue painting what you want, but just do your best to challenge yourself. Find your threshold and push past it little by little (:
TLDR, draw from life, study how light interacts with basic shapes.
last months enrichment thread might be helpful
http://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/172670/feb-monthly-enrichment-simple-shapes-light-and-form
Important principal to pull away from this is there is no form without light. Doing some monochromatic still life paintings (oil for example) will help you to see light and dark shapes that give objects form. Eliminating the additional factor of color will help you to identify these light and dark shapes when you do move on to a color painting.
If I wanted to explore expressing volume I would construct a physical object that has volume. I don't know if that arrogance or nativity, but that's just me.
But, that egg was something I produced before for a 'social contest' of drawing a Pokemon egg. That egg is for Archen. But producing that image it gave me an interesting thought. Why do Pokemon egg have the design of what they'll hatch into, and not real life animals? I think that might be something I could investigate if I have a geek streak in art. Drawing Pokemonised IRL animal eggs. I would then have to decide if the IRL 'young' was the first evolution or just 'young' only evolutions.
I'm 90% academic art knowledge with barely a 10% practice, so your stuff is already leagues ahead of me. But I really don't see why you would want o avoid looking at volume simultaneously with what you are working on.
I don't enjoy spending hours on producing a photo realistic drawing of an object. I do not have the patience to sustain it.
I think with regards to still-lives, perspective is very effective at describing 'volume' (where I like to think of it as form).
Sometimes the subject I am drawing is too busy. For example, if there are plants, the numerous branches and leaves might be overwhelming. Or maybe there are myriads of minor details. In those circumstances I try to record the vital aspects of what I see. Or pretend the complications don't exist.
I think, I need to find the object interesting to enjoy drawing it. If I don't enjoy drawing, I get frustrated and the quality of my art work suffers. Also down to the medium.
I was going to make a point, but I'm not sure what it was. Something along the lines of, volume isn't relevant to the work I am doing at the moment. However, if I start to produce imagery which would benefit from a believable form, then I would exercise form-drawings. Thank you for the suggestion. Thank you for the complement.
Doing non-representational or abstracted work is a perfectly valid way to go about art, but that doesn't eradicate the need to push yourself to do things you don't find fun to push your art forward. All of the artists you list as influences have technical prowess that required study of some sort. You'll want care and attention to the quality of materials, a very thorough and open understanding of color theory, and a respect for the basic building blocks of painting.
I've met many studio artists who did not care to realistically light a figure in their paintings, but would equally spend the time preparing their canvas with gesso and smoothing it down with wet sandpaper to a surface was so fine that when they laid acrylic on they could make a perfect field of color. If you are to look at a James Kirk Patrick You can see naivatie, but not sloppyness. If you are going to look at a Guy Yanai you can see minimalism, but not misunderstanding.
Being afraid of frustration makes me fear that you don't have the patience, or the desire, to try things outside of your comforts and pursue avenues that perhaps seem foreign. If you cant sit down to study volume, will you sit down to study anything? Will you put 20 hours into a color wheel? Will you sit and toil with a media until you find perfection? Critiques will not help you if you do not desire, at least a little bit, to sacrifice comfort for the sake of growth.
I mean none of that to be harsh. I just want you consider, realistically, why you are here. Feedback is not generally something you seek when you want to keep just doing whatever you want, and so if you want a productive response from the boards, you have to be game to do new things.
Just because I do not want to study volume at this time does not mean I do not want to do potentially anything else.
I listen and consider all feedback I am given.
However, since all suggestions for improvement is to do with volume, it simply makes me feel like everything else is utterly perfect.
I'm actively exploring material and colour when I work. I am not stagnating.
Perhaps I am in the wrong medium. I have always felt closer to being a crafter. The two paintings I am producing have stained-glass properties.
Perhaps I should point out, that the first 6 paintings in the thread were produced during an era of runtness and immense hatred.
First painting was produced off a drawing off a graphic. I like producing paintings from crude sketches because I am interested in the abstraction that derives from 'Fax Machining' images. Maybe if I said that at the start... the flatness thingy might be less of an issue.
I think we are more implying that once you have a firm grasp of volume working on your other aspects will be faster and more enriching. Think of art like a three legged stool. Right now you have two legs at varying degrees of 2-3 feet, and one leg at around 1 foot. You want to get the stool to be perfectly level, able to stand on it's own, and be approximately 13 feet tall. While pushing the two legs you are farther on is definitely a good call for long term, it will increasingly make your stool more and more tilted.
I see no reason to switch your medium unless you aren't wanting to work with this one anymore, but with anything in life the three legged stool analogy applies. Fastest way to both improve AND have things that are pleasing to look at and can stand on their own as you work higher is to be balanced in your improvement.
This seems to be the crux of people's crits on the work so far. You want to explore depicting birds in an abstract manner, but I would argue that you won't be able to, unless you can depict birds representationally first.
Don't take this the wrong way, but I think any attempts at psychological aspects and abstraction will not be apparent in the work, because of a lack of impact - if people here point out the lack of volume as the main gripe, it's because it is a fundamental part of what makes the 'read', the illusion of three dimensionality, the imagination of light, form, and an object that feels tangibly real - this isn't to say there are no other issues, there are. It's just that this sticks out the most. I'm not saying you should make your work more representational, I'm just suggesting that if you want to work with abstraction, and have work that is interpretational, you have to understand how to make it representational first, everything else will come later. I firmly believe that you have to know the rules, or even have mastered them, before you can break them in meaningful ways.
You said you have no interest in showing an object of volume, fair enough. But I'm not convinced. Because you do paint volume in your birds (only no. 4 is exempt), just in a way that isn't uniform or coherent. This hurts your work. That's why people asked you to paint an egg - not because you don't show volume, but because you do when you claim you don't want to.
That's just my opinion, though. I'd love to hear input on how your work has been selling or has been received, as I'm totally out of the loop when it comes to what the market is after nowadays.
I love the impasto technique used on the birds. My personal opinion, however, is that the backgrounds don't always match up with the foreground images. They just don't really seem to go together. The backgrounds almost look like they were drawn by a different person, possibly because you'r painting techniques were different there. That's my 2 cents, anyways. But in any case, I really like the impasto birds. That's one of my favorite methods of painting (but it can be expensive since you use a lot of paint!).