A redraw from last year

LauraA

@lizardillo Yes, I both have done mentorship sessions with Giuseppe (and continue to do so) and I understand exactly what happens with the time (and the extra emotional and logistical demands that life throws us). I thought I was the slow one!

AngelinaKizz

Can I ask about the mentorship? I looked him up, and the opportunity looks amazing. At what point would you suggest seeking out mentorship? im pretty new to illustration and digital art, but ive been a professional photorealistic artist for many years.

PenAndrew

@lizardillo Liz you should definitely add this to your website, It is such a strong piece of illustration.

lizardillo

@AngelinaKizz I think he has people on his mentorship at all stages of their career so I think it’s just when you feel you would like that extra bit of support. I took the plunge as I feel I had got to the stage where I just couldn’t get any further on my own. I had been drawing and drawing for a long time with no real direction (apart from the SVS prompts) and I just needed someone to take a look and guide me a little. I had paid for a couple of portfolio reviews with different people (AOI and Inkygoodness in the UK) over the last year or so, which I found helpful before taking the plunge into this.

In the mentoring sessions Giuseppe went through my portfolio website to start with and told me what was good, what was not that good and where the gaps were. He then gave me a series of challenges such as ‘an illustration with 2 or more characters, interacting and showing emotion’ and then we review what I have done in the next session. It’s a bit like a critique, but with a bit more advice, every two weeks. There isn’t any interaction between the hourly face-to-face video sessions, I just get on with it. I do feel like I’ve not took full advantage of the opportunity as I’ve struggled with a piece that I spent far too much time on and didn’t turn out well in the end and also I have been a bit slow from time/emotional issues (not illustration related), but hey, that’s life isn’t it!

It wasn’t cheap so I took advantage of the illustration Department Black Friday sale in November and scheduled my mentor sessions to start in January.

If you are not sure whether you are ready to invest in a mentorship at the moment then I suggest having a portfolio review first. They are very insightful and can help you see where you are at the moment with your art. It’s a one-off thing rather than a long commitment but still very helpful.

Hope this helps, sorry I’m not very good at explaining things clearly.

lizardillo

@PenAndrew thank you. I’ve put it up on my website

PenAndrew

@lizardillo Great. I hope you will also sell this as a print later!

AngelinaKizz

@lizardillo thanks for the thoughtful reply! I’ll hang tight for a bit, keep building my portfolio and see where things are at around Black Friday! I also just started university for illustration, and I’m hopeful to see more growth to come with my upcoming classes.

lizardillo

@AngelinaKizz no problem, glad to try and help. Starting university for illustration sounds exciting. You should hopefully get lots of feedback and support from your course so perhaps that may work as a kind of mentorship too? Sometimes universities work with mentors so it may be worth asking if they have anything like that you can take advantage of? Don’t get put off thinking ‘I’m not ready yet’ though. You’re always ready to learn new things, it doesn’t matter what point of your career you are at. Your previous work is an advantage to your new direction. I’m still quite new to pure illustration, I’ve been a graphic designer for 20(ish) years so I’m still learning too.

lizardillo

One more redraw. This time my birdbox/food hut image. The feedback for the original image was that the food hut was ok but the birds were 'disappointing'. I thought it would have been a quick fix to change the birds but it seemed I merged some layers in the original to get over the layer limit in Procreate, so I just did an entire redraw.

My technical style seems to have changed over the past year. Not sure if this is a good thing or not. I was trying to simplify but I have gone the other way it now looks more fussy and rendered. I've spent the past few years working vector in Illustrator so I think I had got used to the 'clean' look if that makes sense. I think I like it but there's nothing really unique in the look and feel of it.

It's my last mentor session on Thursday so the style question is something I am going to ask about.

Any opinions very welcome as I'm in a bit of a transitional period with style direction at the moment (it's going all over the place) and a little unsure about it. I'm sure it will continue to evolve but it's not quite there yet I feel.

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Thanks
Liz

Patricia Dishmon

@lizardillo said in A redraw from last year:

I was trying to simplify but I have gone the other way it now looks more fussy and rendered.

Maybe you can be a bit more clear on what you want to simplify. It's kind of funny that you were influenced by vector art but ended up going in the exact opposite direction!

lizardillo

@Patricia-Dishmon

I’m thinking of trying to simplify my technique so I have a kind of ‘process’ that I follow. I think I am trying to find a style where I’m not spending ages messing about with new texture brushes like I have here but still have a natural textured feel. I keep getting a bit carried away with texture brushes and it’s made the image a bit ‘murky’. As I’ve not really nailed it down yet it means that I keep getting inconsistent results in final images. The latest redraw is my most ‘rendered’ image I have done so far I think so I’m not sure whether to pursue this style or it’s a bit too textured.

This is an example of my vector illustration for merchandising (t-shirts etc.), it’s just line, colour, multiply shadow and overlay highlight layers. I think I’m starting to overwork images when I’m drawing in raster so I’m trying to find a balance between the two.
https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5d040585d5050e00014cf33b/1582385071135-NDJGI499B52GUE17N891/landrover-tshirt-beach%2Bcopy.jpg?format=2500w

I think I would like to be a bit more ‘Cam Kendell’ but with some added texture. But at the moment I’m flitting about between styles and artist influences too much and creating a right mixed bag of stuff.

The more I try to explain it the more it doesn’t make sense!

I think I’m having a mid-life crisis at the moment

PenAndrew

@lizardillo Yes much better.

Kristen Lango

@lizardillo I just want to say that I think you're really brave for doing redraws of your previous work - I find it very difficult to return to the things that I made and didn't meet my expectations. Well done!

lizardillo

@Kristen-Lango thank you so much. It was a bit of a gamble to whether it was worth doing but I am so glad I did it. As a learning process I've found it a lot easier to try and improve by using an existing image than start fresh. The comparisons are a lot easier to see. It also meant I could relax a little without that extra layer of complexity that new concepts add to the situation. This may not be the best way of doing things but I have enjoyed it.

Patricia Dishmon

@lizardillo It makes total sense! I went through a similar thing recently. I had to sit down and sort through my brushes. Getting rid of the ones I rarely used really helped me streamline my process. I've got it narrowed down to like three brushes that I use for rendering.

How would you go about adding more texture to the vector images? I haven't worked with a vector program for a looong time, and to me, the textures always looked inorganic. I feel like nowadays there's actually a way to work around that issue, right?

PenAndrew

@lizardillo I really like this image and it reminds me of surf shops in Cornwall. You could adapt the bird to each region of the country, or animal for different countries.

lizardillo

@PenAndrew thank you I like surfing (well, bodyboarding, I can’t surf!). We like to go to Croyde in Devon when we can. I like the idea of adapting the animals. This is a design that I did a few years ago for a company that sells illustrated Land Rover and other automotive merchandise globally but it’s still active on their shop so I can’t change it at the moment. I still find it strange seeing people in other continents wearing my designs

PenAndrew

@lizardillo Wow, that's so cool.

lizardillo

@Patricia-Dishmon Texture is a bit tricky in Illustrator. After being a life-long user of Illustrator (bit of an exaggeration but you get the idea) it's really started to feel clunky to me lately. Affinity Designer seems to have a lot more features for adding texture more organically to vector as it has both vector and raster layers. I'm not sure if the texture comes in as raster though as I've not tried it out. I bought Affinity a year or so ago and have not used it much yet as I just went crazy using Procreate and nothing else! I'm thinking of either moving over to Affinity or Clip Studio for illustration, it's just getting the time to get my head around a new programme.

PenAndrew

@lizardillo Skottie Young uses Clip studio for his comic illustrations.