I want to be an illustrator, and create vision.

[Danioover9000]

   I think I'm finally confident in saying that I have a strong purpose in drawing. I've been training myself for a number of years, not perfectly consistent daily but put in the mental effort to draw in different ways and with different mediums to the point I can sometimes skip sketches and go straight to rendering in semi realistic. In fact I've found that I have very strong visualization skills such that I can visualise view in 3 dimensions and more, on top of having a musical ear and some ability to mentally map my body.

   My general purpose is still understanding life, to be a creator and contribute to the world through images that makes people imagine and reimagine stuff. My specialized purpose is gonna one day be me as a writer and artist, maybe a comic artist that's gone indie, with my domain of mastery as something like digital art/analogue, and ideal medium is pencils and pens for the affordability and accessibility.

   Anyone here who's an artist, that specialised to images, any tips and tricks breaking into the art field of images?

[Danioover9000]

   Nobody here does art?

[Someone here]

Hey man 

Art. To me is something undefinable .what you should want your art to show  is a piece of yourself  Something we can all relate to; a memory, a song, a poem, art should make you feel something. Art is a gift, a tool we can use to hide beauty in ordinary places and things. If you want to  broaden your understanding of design and the world that art is beyond your  knowledge and experiences..start taking courses and classes. If  your love for creating burns so bright and deep within you then you should be determined to find a career path that will allow you  to explore the world of design and art every day. 

[flowboy]

@Danioover9000  A friend of mine is a successful artist. He spent years drawing for sometimes 16 hours a day until he reached a high degree of mastery. Getting more clients over the years, I believe he makes art for games amongst other things. Now he is 22 years old and also employs other artists, built a company that gets requests from clients which are then distributed amongst his team. So now he has a steady source of income whether he feels like working or not and is basically financially independent at 22, able to work or not work whenever he wants. He travels the world and does a lot of personal development retreats and stuff, which is how I met him.

[flowboy]

On 16/06/2022 at 8:50 PM, Danioover9000 said:

any tips and tricks breaking into the art field of images?

Since I can't directly answer this but I would be able to ask someone who knows, I can already tell you that you should probably provide more information regarding

1. all the things you are currently doing in order to break into the art field of images
2. more precisely defining what the success criterium is for 'breaking into the field'
3. your view on why what you are currently doing is not working/sufficient

 

[Danioover9000]

@flowboy

On 6/29/2022 at 11:42 AM, flowboy said:

@Danioover9000  A friend of mine is a successful artist. He spent years drawing for sometimes 16 hours a day until he reached a high degree of mastery. Getting more clients over the years, I believe he makes art for games amongst other things. Now he is 22 years old and also employs other artists, built a company that gets requests from clients which are then distributed amongst his team. So now he has a steady source of income whether he feels like working or not and is basically financially independent at 22, able to work or not work whenever he wants. He travels the world and does a lot of personal development retreats and stuff, which is how I met him.

   That sounds nice. I take it that this person funneled most of his/her free time and energy into creating images? Does he do character or environment design? And basically, at some point became an art director?

[Danioover9000]

@Someone here

On 6/20/2022 at 1:40 AM, Someone here said:

Hey man 

Art. To me is something undefinable .what you should want your art to show  is a piece of yourself  Something we can all relate to; a memory, a song, a poem, art should make you feel something. Art is a gift, a tool we can use to hide beauty in ordinary places and things. If you want to  broaden your understanding of design and the world that art is beyond your  knowledge and experiences..start taking courses and classes. If  your love for creating burns so bright and deep within you then you should be determined to find a career path that will allow you  to explore the world of design and art every day. 

   I don't recall, but I remember some video on atomic habits, and the author laid out three levels of the habits that make success, which are:

1. outcome driven.

2. Process driven.

3. Identity of the self, enmeshes with said targeted activity.

   For example, a person wants to become a writer, starts off goal oriented, does all the self-help techniques, from visualization/positive affirmations and other hypnosis types of techniques, to make the outcome very clear, specific, big, and attractive to generate motivation of some level. At some point in journey, it becomes more process oriented, the writer is more interested in smaller techniques that chain up, combinations of sets of techniques and aspects come together. Finally, after years of doing/taking action, self-image becomes more identified with ideal role, almost second nature.

   Is this what you were referring to, at a deep level?

[Danioover9000]

@flowboy

On 6/29/2022 at 11:47 AM, flowboy said:

Since I can't directly answer this but I would be able to ask someone who knows, I can already tell you that you should probably provide more information regarding

1. all the things you are currently doing in order to break into the art field of images
2. more precisely defining what the success criterium is for 'breaking into the field'
3. your view on why what you are currently doing is not working/sufficient

 

   Here's sort of my mission statement, plus actions I want:

Generalized purpose: Understanding life and the world of shapes and colors, to become a creator, and contribute to the world through recreations of different aspects of it with my spin on it.

Specialized purpose: To become a graphic designer, and design both environment and characters, from concept art to full illustrations. Ideally to be an art director later, if not then to be a cover artist, pencil sketch, inker, story board maker, writer, or colorist or editor.

Domain of mastery: drawing manga to anime type of subjects, games as well.

Ideal medium: pencils or pens.

ten-year mastery plan:

Top ten values: competency, understanding, consciousness, creativity, independence, uniqueness, excellence, health, beauty, enlightenment.

top 5 feelings: serenity, happiness, excitement, confidence, creativity.

top 5-character strengths: appreciation of beauty and excellence, curiosity, love, gratitude, hope, kindness.

Zone of genius: Video gaming, chess, visualization, drawing, story making.

[Jacobsrw]

On 17/6/2022 at 4:50 AM, Danioover9000 said:

   I think I'm finally confident in saying that I have a strong purpose in drawing. I've been training myself for a number of years, not perfectly consistent daily but put in the mental effort to draw in different ways and with different mediums to the point I can sometimes skip sketches and go straight to rendering in semi realistic. In fact I've found that I have very strong visualization skills such that I can visualise view in 3 dimensions and more, on top of having a musical ear and some ability to mentally map my body.

   My general purpose is still understanding life, to be a creator and contribute to the world through images that makes people imagine and reimagine stuff. My specialized purpose is gonna one day be me as a writer and artist, maybe a comic artist that's gone indie, with my domain of mastery as something like digital art/analogue, and ideal medium is pencils and pens for the affordability and accessibility.

   Anyone here who's an artist, that specialised to images, any tips and tricks breaking into the art field of images?

Nice! That’s a great way to combine your skill set. I think we can at times forget just how many unique attributes we have that can be integrated into our creative work.

I aim to combine my love for for literature (philosophy) with my love for realistic art. I’ve started making surrealistic designs on digital which I’ll be morphing quotes and passages into. I think this may turn into book style collections with passages underneath each piece describing them.

From my experience and from observing other fellow artists social media is a key resource. Especially Pinterest and Instagram since they are the image heavy platforms. Making artist pages and posting your work and it’s process is definitely a good start.

Edited September 22, 2022 by Jacobsrw

[Space]

On 16/06/2022 at 7:50 PM, Danioover9000 said:

   I think I'm finally confident in saying that I have a strong purpose in drawing. I've been training myself for a number of years, not perfectly consistent daily but put in the mental effort to draw in different ways and with different mediums to the point I can sometimes skip sketches and go straight to rendering in semi realistic. In fact I've found that I have very strong visualization skills such that I can visualise view in 3 dimensions and more, on top of having a musical ear and some ability to mentally map my body.

   My general purpose is still understanding life, to be a creator and contribute to the world through images that makes people imagine and reimagine stuff. My specialized purpose is gonna one day be me as a writer and artist, maybe a comic artist that's gone indie, with my domain of mastery as something like digital art/analogue, and ideal medium is pencils and pens for the affordability and accessibility.

   Anyone here who's an artist, that specialised to images, any tips and tricks breaking into the art field of images?

This is a fairly old post, are you still looking for advice? I'm a professional freelancer illustrator so I should be able to offer some useful pointers.

My first question is, what kind of illustration do you want to go into? Because there are a lot of different fields under 'illustration', and each one requires a different set of skills and knowledge. For example, concept illustration, comic art and editorial illustration are all completely different. You need to get really clear on this because you need to specialise in one area, at least in the beginning. 

Once you know what kind of illustrator you want to be, you need to go all in on that obsessively and then 1) start deliberately practicing the skills associated with that line of work, and 2) do lots of brief-based projects to build up your portfolio.

Your portfolio of work is the only thing between where you are now and getting hired. That portfolio needs to be catered to a particular line of illustration, it needs to show that you can respond to a brief successfully, it needs to have a consistent and coherent style and in general it needs to be very high-quality work. A portfolio should be around 10-20 pieces of work, depending on the type of illustration.

Edited September 22, 2022 by Space

[flowboy]

18 hours ago, Danioover9000 said:

@flowboy

   That sounds nice. I take it that this person funneled most of his/her free time and energy into creating images? Does he do character or environment design? And basically, at some point became an art director?

He spent 12-16 hours a day drawing for 4 years. He does character design, basically draws monsters for a living, now also employs other freelancers to draw monsters and takes a cut, makes a few thousand a month passively that way now, on top of the assignments he actively works on, which he obviously gets to be picky with now.

18 hours ago, Danioover9000 said:

Specialized purpose: To become a graphic designer, and design both environment and characters, from concept art to full illustrations. Ideally to be an art director later, if not then to be a cover artist, pencil sketch, inker, story board maker, writer, or colorist or editor.

Are you creating an imaginary barrier between yourself and some far-away identity, such as you being an "art director"?

What does an art director do?

Does he get assignments and then organise other artists to work on those assignments with him as a team? (I'm guessing)

Then do that.

Boom, now you're an art director.

No one is going to give you the title, you have to put the castle together yourself and then crown yourself king.

[flowboy]

18 hours ago, Danioover9000 said:

provide more information regarding

1. all the things you are currently doing in order to break into the art field of images
2. more precisely defining what the success criterium is for 'breaking into the field'
3. your view on why what you are currently doing is not working/sufficient

This is why I asked these concrete questions.

What does it mean to you, to break into the field? This is just an expression.

Does it mean being an art director?

What does being an art director mean to you?

Is it someone who gets creative assignments and works on them with a team?

If it is that, for example, and I'm just speaking in terms of what it means to you:

What is the difference between that and what you are doing?

Because if that is what you want to do, you could go get an assignment and go put some freelance artists together to do it with you, and become an art director in one day.

Provided that you already have the contacts.

I would suppose that perhaps what you're missing is contacts, networking.

Knowing people in companies that need art, knowing lots of freelance artists that trust you.

But that could be me projecting, since it is my weakness which I have to work on.

I tend to be shy about what I do, and introducing myself to people who might need my services, or know people who might, is scary, therefore building contacts has been the one glaringly obvious thing that I have omitted doing.

So what's the concrete difference between what you are doing, and what the person who you want to be is doing?

Is it skill?

Is it contacts?

Something else?

 

 

[flowboy]

In general, I think it is good to not only do what everyone else does, for example: yes an artist should have an instagram and a portfolio on artist websites, but literally every artist has one, so you're in high competition there if your only touchpoint is online.

People like to hire people from their own network, if they qualify.

Even if I've seen someone face to face only once, that person is a lot more real to me than just a digital profile.

If the world is trending towards using social media to get clients, stand out by doing the opposite: meet lots of people face to face.

[Danioover9000]

@Jacobsrw

On 9/22/2022 at 0:21 PM, Jacobsrw said:

Nice! That’s a great way to combine your skill set. I think we can at times forget just how many unique attributes we have that can be integrated into our creative work.

I aim to combine my love for for literature (philosophy) with my love for realistic art. I’ve started making surrealistic designs on digital which I’ll be morphing quotes and passages into. I think this may turn into book style collections with passages underneath each piece describing them.

From my experience and from observing other fellow artists social media is a key resource. Especially Pinterest and Instagram since they are the image heavy platforms. Making artist pages and posting your work and it’s process is definitely a good start.

   Nice! Sounds like you would be going into graphic novels, or visual novels if you combine the literature philosophy with realistic to surrealistic images.

   In your case, is it more about writing or the image making?

[Danioover9000]

@Space

On 9/22/2022 at 1:22 PM, Space said:

This is a fairly old post, are you still looking for advice? I'm a professional freelancer illustrator so I should be able to offer some useful pointers.

My first question is, what kind of illustration do you want to go into? Because there are a lot of different fields under 'illustration', and each one requires a different set of skills and knowledge. For example, concept illustration, comic art and editorial illustration are all completely different. You need to get really clear on this because you need to specialise in one area, at least in the beginning. 

Once you know what kind of illustrator you want to be, you need to go all in on that obsessively and then 1) start deliberately practicing the skills associated with that line of work, and 2) do lots of brief-based projects to build up your portfolio.

Your portfolio of work is the only thing between where you are now and getting hired. That portfolio needs to be catered to a particular line of illustration, it needs to show that you can respond to a brief successfully, it needs to have a consistent and coherent style and in general it needs to be very high-quality work. A portfolio should be around 10-20 pieces of work, depending on the type of illustration.

   Yes, I am still continuously looking for advice.

   If I absolutely have to pick one above all, then it might be likely comic art. because honestly in my free time I draw comic like characters and environments and have more visual experience and memories with that style, also thanks to playing video games I can also draw like that. It would be nice to get into concept art as well, because I can gesture draw quick character and environments.

   When you say brief projects, you mean something like short stories, or small projects?

[Space]

3 hours ago, Danioover9000 said:

@Space

   Yes, I am still continuously looking for advice.

   If I absolutely have to pick one above all, then it might be likely comic art. because honestly in my free time I draw comic like characters and environments and have more visual experience and memories with that style, also thanks to playing video games I can also draw like that. It would be nice to get into concept art as well, because I can gesture draw quick character and environments.

   When you say brief projects, you mean something like short stories, or small projects?

There are skills that cross over between comic art and concept art, but again, I would suggest picking one and going all in on that. And concept art is a pretty big field, there are lots of different type of concept artists e.g. character art, environment design, landscapes, building interior design, creature design. All these fields have cross-over skills but in my experience you'll find people specialising in one or two of these areas and basically nothing else. So you'll need to pick something that you enjoy producing most of the time. 

When I say 'brief' I don't mean short or small, I mean 'a set of instructions given to a person about a job or task.' Same spelling, different meaning. In every professional context, unless you're a fine artist, you're working to a brief or a specific set of requirements from the client or from your art director. As opposed to just randomly creating whatever work you feel like. It's really important you get good at responding to briefs because this is essentially all you do as a professional. They also provide an opportunity to create lots of finished pieces of work, rather than just lots of sketchbook stuff or half-finished work.

But these briefs don't have to be set by a client or someone else, you can just create your own mock briefs. It's basically all I do outside of professional work. 

Here's a website that provides mock briefs for artists https://fakeclients.com/ But of course you'll need to cater the briefs to your line of work.

Edited September 23, 2022 by Space

[Danioover9000]

@flowboy

On 9/22/2022 at 2:44 PM, flowboy said:

He spent 12-16 hours a day drawing for 4 years. He does character design, basically draws monsters for a living, now also employs other freelancers to draw monsters and takes a cut, makes a few thousand a month passively that way now, on top of the assignments he actively works on, which he obviously gets to be picky with now.

Are you creating an imaginary barrier between yourself and some far-away identity, such as you being an "art director"?

What does an art director do?

Does he get assignments and then organise other artists to work on those assignments with him as a team? (I'm guessing)

Then do that.

Boom, now you're an art director.

No one is going to give you the title, you have to put the castle together yourself and then crown yourself king.

   Nice, your friend sounds like he's doing well for himself, or herself.

   I'm not sure that I'd call what I did to myself as a constructed imaginary boundary, but I do have a timeline of myself, and I could see events going forward and backwards from this point, like a complex ruler that truncates in the past and in the future. So, this specific timeline, I see myself as a millionaire artist with lots of energy, confidence and proactivity, that is being an art director, or some other role in a studio making art. I was viewing each role in first person for a while, detailing those experiences, and I then switch to 3rd person viewing, increasing the distance and time from that ideal goal, to create motivations to bridge that gap from now to there. I don't see myself being an art director within 1-5 years, without behaving in manipulative and shady ways, but I see that if I kept on improving my skills, I would be closer to that in like 10-15 years later.

   I'm an introvert, and leading people isn't my skillset, nor am I am interested in commanding around people. The image and other techniques generate motivation for me to keep on practicing art, ideally, I would be solo or freelance earning 6-7 figures.

[Danioover9000]

@flowboy

On 9/22/2022 at 2:57 PM, flowboy said:

This is why I asked these concrete questions.

What does it mean to you, to break into the field? This is just an expression.

Does it mean being an art director?

What does being an art director mean to you?

Is it someone who gets creative assignments and works on them with a team?

If it is that, for example, and I'm just speaking in terms of what it means to you:

What is the difference between that and what you are doing?

Because if that is what you want to do, you could go get an assignment and go put some freelance artists together to do it with you, and become an art director in one day.

Provided that you already have the contacts.

I would suppose that perhaps what you're missing is contacts, networking.

Knowing people in companies that need art, knowing lots of freelance artists that trust you.

But that could be me projecting, since it is my weakness which I have to work on.

I tend to be shy about what I do, and introducing myself to people who might need my services, or know people who might, is scary, therefore building contacts has been the one glaringly obvious thing that I have omitted doing.

So what's the concrete difference between what you are doing, and what the person who you want to be is doing?

Is it skill?

Is it contacts?

Something else?

 

 

1. For me, breaking into a field would be to have so much value, mastery and skill that I would simply stand out, on just those skills alone...ideally.

2. Might be, but being an art director is into the future, 20 plus years. Right out, working as a team leader is difficult for me. Maybe, for example, I want to build an epic visual novel that's take me, if solo, 10 years to complete, or in a team, 5-8 years as I want iit to be extremely good and worth the purchase in stream, and I'm gonna be mostly in charge for the aesthetics, the character and environment art and the entire story, but if I still suck at coding other aspects like music, mini games, then I can delegate when necessary. That's what I sort of mean.

3. big obstacles for me, are the finance and contacts and networking, among others.

 

[Danioover9000]

@Myioko

3 hours ago, Myioko said:

Hey, not really answering your questions here but I saw this video this morning and thought this might be something you'd be interested in or find helpful (pencil drawings and drawing fundamentals)

 

   Yeah, I know this guy! He's pretty good at drawing forms from imagination and making them believable. That might be for later, but I'm thinking more like being a Mangaka, like the guy that made Berserk or something to do with graphic novels or visual novels, for example.

   Or a cover book artist.

[Jacobsrw]

On 24/9/2022 at 0:04 AM, Danioover9000 said:

@Jacobsrw

   Nice! Sounds like you would be going into graphic novels, or visual novels if you combine the literature philosophy with realistic to surrealistic images.

   In your case, is it more about writing or the image making?

It’s probably more about the images implicitly conveying the ideas through their appearance. Although I would like to experiment and see what the balance would look like. Here’s an example of a recent custom digital art piece that I’m working, in progress. It’s called ‘Seeing into Myself’.

Mm I haven’t really considered graphic novels. That’s an idea..I think I’m far too slow in my drawing and the books would takes eons to complete haha

I’m interested to know will you be aiming to break into the illustration field through freelancing or some other business model avenue?