I'd appreciate some advice.

[Shorinji_Knight]

My goal has always been to do art professionally. The problem is that I sometimes feel like a hack. I'm not sure what people are seeing when they look at my art. I get mixed reactions. I've been offered some work in the past, but nothing major and so far I've always turned it down.

I would like to start actively looking for work now, so what I want to know is am I on a pro level yet? If not what's wrong? I don't care if you are harsh... I just really want to know.

Thanks

Phillp

My portfolio and website links are in my signature.
But here's a sampler...

[Nrekkvan]

Hi Phillip.

I will be harsh. Because I see you do put a lot of effort into these.

http://fc00.deviantart.net/fs71/o/2012/023/8/4/84daa7b5ff47446fbe6a9f526cfe3534.jpg - lets take this picture from your portfolio.

Perspective - very wrong. The cat, the roof floor and the closest building is one perspective, the girl is another and the distant buildings yet another. 3 different perspectives instead of one. You need to figure that out, it will look horribly unrealistic even to people who don't realize what's wrong. You can use a reference, perspective grids, even a simple 3D render for starters, but you do need to learn it eventually.

Colors - not unified, blue sword sheath is blue. You need a variety of both hue and saturation. Study colors and their relations to environment / lighting.

Design - and this is the toughest one. I just don't think the picture would be cool, even if all things mentioned above were correct. Girl looks like some wild heroine from the 80's sitcom. The cat looks like an afterthought, just chillin there. The sword looks like out of a cosplay. What do the 2 characters represent? There needs to be some depth, some story behind, if you want it to success as a standalone illustration.

I checked other paintings as well, they often suffer from same weaknesses. I would also suggest you to have at least a few pieces with much more polished finish, in terms of rendering. Think about soft / hard edges, too, otherwise it's a chaos.

I do like a lot of your costume designs on your characters and you show a great deal of enthusiasm, best of luck to you, take care.

[JeffX99]

I second Nrekkvan's observations. I also agree you have potential. I would recommend some real attention to process in your work and as much study from life as you can fit in - figure, still life and landscape. A better understanding of fundamentals will take your work to the next level. Good luck!

[J Wilson]

I think your drawing skills are more advanced than your painting skills, but I think it's clear you haven't been practicing from life, or using reference. You should. I think at your level, you should be doing studies every day still, spending at least 50-75% of your art time on them.

In addition to the problems stated above, one of the things that popped out to me was everything had the same sort of matte, soft approach in painting. This is probably from not enough experience painting, and not enough observation about how different types of material reacts to light.

Some of your concepts and designs have cool ideas behind them, I just think your art skills aren't there yet.

[J Wilson]

I think the dragon head/lizard is your best painted piece, and I'm sure it's because it's the one where you painted from a good photo to get the details right. This tells me you have lots of potential, but are maybe just afraid of using reference.

[Shorinji_Knight]

This helps a lot! Thanks guys. I could tell something was off, but I just wasn't sure what I needed to do about it. I've always have been a pencils guy only dabbling with painting every once in a while. I just last year started concentrating on the painting side of things. So I guess it shows that I just 'how to draw the marvel way' almost everything.

I appreciate all the feedback, this gives me some more direction with my work.
Thanks