iqew

Hey Dennis,

I had another look at your latest art and I must say that you're really improving, keep it up! Your latest photostudy is quite amazing it shows that you have both anatomical knowledge and also know the techical part about digital painting. However, you seem to have a tendency to use a soft brush very often when it comes to rendering and/or using a low oppacity for the brush. I highly recommend that you do some more photostudies and ONLY use hard brushes (not a single soft brush anywhere) and only at 100%!! Also, do NOT use ctrl+z and NO eraser. All of this should happen on only ONE layer.

This exercise comes from traditional painting and is damn difficult. The reason why you're using a soft brush and such things is because it makes work easier. However, when you look at current masters of digital painting, you will notice that none of them is using a soft brush as their main tool. That's because it's absolutely not necessary and only makes sense in some little parts. However, DON'T understand this is "you never ever use that soft brush again", I just mean that you include 2-3 studies each day with a set timelimit from yourself in your daily routine.

When it comes to learning concept art it's a good exercise to set up a clock and see how much time you require per painting. It makes time consuming methods and parts of your routine very obvious and most artist can improve a lot in time management quickly with this method (we use it in-house, too).

It's great that you're doing many sketch sessions and only focus on the important lines, definitely keep that up, it's a must! Also, it's really great that you do both photo studies and paintings from your mind. However, I think that your skills are good enough to specify your photo studies. This means that you don't just randomly pick some beautiful photographies from now on, but focus on certain light atmospheres (direct light, bounce light, diffused light, natural light, artifical light sources etc.) to get a better understanding of how light works. The same would go for color studies. You can also start with learning color theory and do some specific exercises belonging to that.

The last thing I noticed is that you're mainly drawing very fit people, which most people do. It's great to see all the anatomy, the muscles and all of that, but don't just exclusively draw and paint those. Have also a look around for very big women and men to see how their body fat sits on the body. Draw some normal people, some body builders and some big people.

However, in total you're definitely on the right track, you don't have to worry about that and you're clearly improving! Keep up the good work!

Best wishes
Kjell

You're very welcome, anytime!

No monetary rewards.

I do :p

Yep, you have some good stuff in your gallery!