@Coreyartus It's interesting to read about all of these different sub-groups under the umbrella of "books with pictures." I've found wordless graphic novels to be fascinating for a number of years now, and it's great to see those featured along with the rest on this list. Thanks for sharing these reads!

I try to remember if comic book artist Don Rosa used to be an architect or a civil engineer. Anyway, I have a collection with all his Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck comics that includes a lot of comments about how he made them. And he keeps mentioning how much he used the skills he learned for technical drawings in his other career for his comics. So there's an inspiring example.

It depends on what you want to do of course, but going from architect to illustrator seems rather logical to me. Me, I'm educated as a language consultant while also working as an illustrator. It's a weird mix, but even there I've found ways to strengthen one career using the skills from the other.

@StudioLooong extremely helpful! Thank you for taking the time to do that!

@JerrySketchyArt thanks

@ShannonBiondi and @Susan-Marks these are great examples of plans to help those who are easily distracted/diverted from an intended goal!

I saw this thread earlier in the week and thought I would document my process for the fun of it. This is usually how I operate except this time I've decided to forgo inking. I think it came out pretty well.

1: Rough sketches, I knew I wanted to draw some sort of fishy person in a medieval society so I got to doodling. I may blow these all out if I have time. I chose to go with the second fella from the left.

2: I then blow up the rough and pencil (all digital; ipad pro; apple pencil; procreate) some details. My next step would usually be to ink but as I said, I'm trying some new things out now that I have a better understanding with color.

3: Flats! I also break everything down into layers, there are 26 in this piece and alpha lock them. This way I can freely color with big strokes on each "object" without having to worry about the rest of the piece.

4: Color! This took the most time but was also the most fun. Color is still pretty new to me, I've spent my entire career avoiding it or using pre-made color palettes with really no idea WHY they worked. Thanks to @Will-Terry i finally jumped into the water.

5: I then brought the piece into Photoshop for some touch ups.

fish-knight-process.jpg

Overall I'm happy with the final piece, it's just something for instagram that I spent too much time on and doesn't really fit into any portfolio but I was glad to get the color practice in and learn some new things.

Fish-Knight-Final-low.jpg

You could have your portfolio filterable by keywords if your website allows. That way someone looking can click 'comics' and it would filter out everything and leave only the comic based work. This way all your work is still in one place, but people viewing the work can quickly get rid of the stuff they're not looking for

Hello and welcome, @Passion-Hart! I've been looking for a similar class, and would love to take something like that when made available.

Incidentally, I just came across this on svslearn.com today.: https://www.svslearn.com/news/2019/7/2/how-to-draw-drapery-and-folds

Apparently there's a new class coming on this topic! 😍

In the meantime, @Coreyartus' book recommendations sound really helpful.

I love your work, @NessIllustration and I love the rotating headers. I happened to click when you had a kind of adult 'homecoming' time image of maybe two travelers reunited? It was so different from your usual kid-lit style that I thought I was on a different site. I'm not sure about that piece in the the header because it is so distinctly different in tone and subject matter. Otherwise, I love the simplicity of the site, and might point you toward using sans serif fonts throughout (rather than serif up top and sans at the bottom). Best of luck!

I don't use the smudge tool so much, but if you mean blender brushes, Kyle's "Round Angle Smooth Blender" and the "Dry Blender" are in my Favorite Brushes folder.

Hi @aprilshin and @animatosoor ! Thank you both so much for the links. I totally wish I could take the live book cover class. Maybe some day... As for now, some of the links you sent, animatosoor, have been helpful to me! Thanks again!

I give most of my characters big white eyes with little pupils because I really like to play with increasing the pupil size to make a character scared or excited or pointing the eyes in different directions to make them look derpy. I forget where but I heard one person say dot eyes were "very European" while the bigger eyes were more American. I'm not sure what to make of that.

I think it all comes down to the personal preference of the art director or publisher looking at your work and what is popular at the time in whatever niche market you are playing to. If one art director says that your style of faces looks old fashioned, maybe that just isn't the art director for you. If 15 art directors tell you the same thing, maybe it's worth looking into the industry that they work in and what style of work is being published, then you have to decide whether you want to adjust your style of drawing or pivot to a market where your art fits better.

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Thanks for all the very interesting posts and views on this. I realised something in the conversation about the legality of this situation between @Lee-White, @JerrySketchyArt and @davidhohn.
As a non professional artist, I think about the image as an image alone, based on some form of inspiration or not, because I’m just drawing for the challenge and as Lee said, the experience. I have only participated in one DTIYS and all the other work I create is my own original content, and I don’t do anything with it after I’ve created it, (meaning I don’t sell it - yet😉). Because of this I think I haven’t ever been in a situation where I have needed to consider the circumstances from an IP perspective. That’s the key that was missing for my morale compass I think. It’s odd that I didn’t realise that because I’m also a writer and the IP and plagiarism factor is always very firmly in mind when I’m writing and I’m so paranoid about the possibility of having my ideas stolen that I will never discuss them with people in public.
(Sidebar-this isn’t arrogance because I think I’m the next Neil Gaiman or something, it’s just that these days, everyone is a writer with the ability to publish their work, and ears are everywhereeeeeeee, so it’s a matter of caution.)
The point that was being made about blowing kisses and lassoing the moon, falls under the umbrella in the written world as “general knowledge” I think. You can use general knowledge ‘ideas’ in your writing, things like Shakespeare was the worlds best writer, or Australia has many dangerous animals, or the sky is blue, etc, fact or opinion I think but not sure on that one, without having to reference the idea because it’s generally known. I think that is kind of the same idea that @Lee-White was getting at.
Anyway, this has been a very interesting discussion and I’m really grateful for all the views and thoughts you have all shared.

@lmrush That's awesome! Thanks for sharing!

Hi @Ryan1106 Welcome to the forum!! I've been a member for a while but have only recently started being active. The forum is a great place to discuss things with other artists. And I love that there are really advanced illustrators as well as beginners on here. It makes it a very encouraging and inclusive environment to share your art! I'll start following you on Insta and hope to see lots of your work on here 🙂

@Marsha-Kay-Ottum-Owen I'm totally going to check that out! Thanks Marsha!!

Btw, I really like your little fairy. I think the tip @hannahmccaffery was spot on and made a big difference to making it pop more. Well done!

@MichaelaH thanks! I didn't see it at first because on the phone you have to scroll to the right 🙂

@Phil-Cullen said in Cover letter or no?:

My format for emails is who I am, why I'm emailing, what my background is, what I like about them and sign off with how I look forward to working with them. oh and either a link to the website or attached low res samples whatever their requirements are.

That's a great place to start and pretty close to what I was thinkin'. Thanks 🙂

@burvantill
Don’t have one yet 😛 but when I do I’ll reach out to you 🙂

@KathrynAdebayo Thank you. I will scan it with a real scanner and make sure it's cropped well 😀. Good eye 😉