Even with a 30+ year career as a working professional, I still approach every opportunity to level up my craft with a sense of enthusiasm and delight. However, I've come to find that the learning I'm doing now is profoundly different from the learning I did when I first started as an artist, illustrator and storyteller.
Asked for advice by younger artists, I'm often very poor at giving good, actionable feedback when it comes to the 'pixel pushing' part of creating images - I have little to offer the kids these days who are all just SO GOOD! Instead, I find myself sharing insight into the more cerebral aspects of the process; concepts that I don't believe are taught nor mentored enough. Here, I break down ten key aspects of the creation process that I think about as I strive for an image that's not just well drawn, but also evokes a clear narrative - along with some internal mechanisms that keep me energised until I can call something 'finished'.
1 ZOOM OUT
I'm guilty of this myself: I get so excited about an area of the painting or drawing that I get lost in the experience of rendering, but in the end it doesn't really contribute to the intent of the final image. I had to develop an internal mechanism which reminds me to contextualise an area I'm working on, and apply it to the bigger picture; this helped me to evaluate how much time and resource to devote to each part of the drawing.
2 STEP AWAY
It's common to toil away on an image for so long only to lose track of what's working and what isn't. This is an opportunity to take a break to clear your mindset. I'm often working on multiple drawings at any given time, in various stages of completion. This has led me to solutions that I simply could not see originally, now that I'm looking at it again with fresher eyes.
3 LIGHT SOURCE IS KEY
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Denne historien er fra October 2022-utgaven av ImagineFX.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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Jan Wessbecher
Dominic Carter talks to the visual artist about creating his own comic and why sketchbooks are great for creative experiments
Kyounghwan Kim
The Korean character concept artist speaks to Dominic Carter about staying open to ideas and the value of drawing regularly
Slawek Fedorczuk
Dominic Carter talks to the concept artist about what keeps him motivated and the advantages of using physical sketchbooks.
Raquel M. Varela
Raquel is inspired by magic, fantasy and fairy tales. She loves designing female characters from distant worlds. \"My greatest reference is Loish's art, thanks to her I learned to draw the movement and fluidity I like to convey.\"
Estrela Lourenço
Estrela is a children's book author and illustrator. Her work is influenced by her background in character animation and storyboards for clients such as Cartoon Network, and she channels comic strips like Calvin and Hobbes.
Daria Widermanska
Daria, also known as Anako, has been drawing for as long as she can remember. Inspired by Disney and classic anime, she loves creating new characters and often finds that a single sketch can spark a unique story.
Allen Douglas
Allen has been painting professionally since 1994 for the publishing and gaming industries. Inspired by folklore, he distorts the size, relationships and environments of animals, and calls his paintings 'unusual wildlife'.
Thaddeus Robeck
Thaddeus has been drawing from the moment he could hold a pencil, but it was the 2020 lockdowns that gave him the time to focus on honing his skills.
DRAW FASCINATING SYMBOLIC ARTWORK
Learn how JULIÁN DE LA MOTA creates a composition from his imagination with a focus on crafting figures, volumetric modelling, and light and shadow
First Impressions
The artist talks about his journey into the mythological world