Sulphur's Portfolio Review Thread :)

[Sulphur]

This seems like fun :cheerleader:

Age: 18

Goal: To be a creature designer/artist :D Would love to be a concept artist, but I'd also enjoy doing wildlife art/pet portraits to fill my wallet. I want to be able to create pieces that are emotionally interesting, so I enjoy playing with humour :) I want to one day create serious, convincing art like James Gurney, and silly, fun art like Paul Kidby.
In the short term I'd love to improve my animal anatomy, particularly with dogs.

[Andrew Sonea]

Nice stuff here. A few thoughts:

1) You have a bit of a reliance upon reference. It is quite obvious which images are copies of photos and which are done without reference. I think that you would do well to find a bit of a balance between the two. Use reference, but don't simply copy it exactly (like in the second image, or the last three). learn to use it as a REFERENCE, not as a thing to replicate perfectly. It should only be a starting point, or something to look at in a problem area. It seems to be restricting your imagination/creative part of the pictures. Especially for concept art, you need to be able to come up with interesting ideas on your own.

2) Study anatomy more. Study both human and animal anatomy, and learn it throughly. This will be necessary to reach you end goal. Do you have Terryl Whitlatch's book? I think it would not only be a huge inspiration to you, but also would show you how knowledgeable you must be in anatomy if you want to be a creature designer. Goldfinger's book and animal anatomy is particularly good.

3) Brush size. To me it looks like you are using nice large brushes at first (good!), but when painting fur suddenly switch to the smallest brush possible and do a million tiny strokes. The result doesn't read very well. I would recommend practicing gradually moving to smaller brushes, and practice layering more strokes in varying directions for fur (since fur is and hair is layered in real life). I think the best handling of brush strokes in terms of both size and stroke efficiency is the second image, which is done very well (although see my first point about that image).

Overall, a good start. I think some heavy studying and some better applications of these studies will make you reach your goal a few years down the line.

[Sulphur]

Wow thanks so much Andrew! :D

I never really noticed I was that reliant on reference, but now you told me it seems obvious I lean on them too much. You've motivated me to do some imaginative work!
I don't have Terryl's book but I do have it on my Amazon wishlist! :heart: This (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Atlas-Animal-Anatomy-Artists/dp/0486200825/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_b) book of anatomy just arrived in the mail, it doesn't look like it has as many animals featured in it, though, so I might have to get the one you mentioned too at some point (:
And thanks a lot for the tips on brush size/strokes! I'll bare this in mind next time I start a piece. I think if I had been more aware of this when I painted the Crash Bandicoot piece he wouldn't have such weird fur :P

Thanks again for taking the time to post :)