Building my first portfolio, feedback much appreciated

[gineticz]

hey fellow members of Conceptart,
My name is Gin, currently a student in my final year of recieving a BA in 2D Animation. 14 months ago, i recieved a copy "Drawing on the right side of the brain" and only realised that everything i thought i knew about drawing, was infact very wrong. So here i am now, a complete infant in the world of art, learning everything from scratch again.

After graduation, I'm hoping to join the field of concept-art.

i am currently working to build a online portfolio, but before i start on the website aspects, i want to ensure that i have atleast a few strong pieces.

Here are a few pieces that i have selected. Any form of feedback and tips on improvement are much appreciated.

Thanks in advance.


An idea of a bird & octopus hybrid. (latest wip as of 02/03/2012)


The girl in kimono and her pet kyubii (09/2011)


Skater girl (06/2011)


Life drawing class (04/2011)


Sketch (04/2011)


Babies Vs the general (2010)

[Hitsu//San]

I think is for the best that you keep refining your art before starting to do a portfolio. There are a lot of points that you need to work on, first two points are anatomy and knowledge of your tools (digital painting as i can see). There's more than that but i think those are the main points for now.

Oh and this is important, you need to search what really concept art is for and what a concept artist do in all the aspects of this job. So many people dream about being a concept artist but very few of them don't know what this mean, be sure not to be one of those

[bytheoak]

It's good that you mentioned having strong pieces before getting into website creation. Most of your work here looks unfinished. The closest to being finished I would say is the kimono girl, but there are issues with the anatomy, fabric structure, and lack of a consistent light source. The face is the best part and looks like you used a reference, which I strongly recommend doing for all of your paintings unless you've spent years studying from life. The fox should share the same light sources as the figure, right now it looks like it is pasted onto the image.

Keep drawing, learn more about photoshop tools, do life studies or photo references, work on your designs until you feel strongly about your work and if you think it will get you hired, then worry about a website. Good luck in your studies

[gineticz]

hitsu//san and Bytheoak, thanks for both your time and feeback.

@hitsu//san
i understand what you meant by working on anatomy, but didnt quite get "knowledge of your tools", would you be able to go in abit more on that subject please? aplogises if it's abit of a nobish question. oh, i have done some research on what is required of a concept artist, but at the moment i feel that i lack in every aspect of the fundermentals, of which i'm trying pick to up right now before moving onto any form of concept pieces.

@Bytheoak
yeah, i started to realise the importance of using photo references. alright, i'll defonately redo the lightings and try get all my pieces finished. =)

once again, thanks alot to both.

[look]

Here's my two cents:
1-avoid using air brush/soft brushes. They may seem to make shading easier, but the same time forms tend to get lost. Try start drawing only using hard round brushes, only use the airbrush/soft brush for slight touching up at the final stage.
2-avoid using the color black and white. The black should only be used in the darkest spots, which should be very little. And white should only be used in the brightest high lights. Your paintings should still look great without the black and white, only using the two colors sparingly and only in the final touch up.

Keep it up, you'll be surprised how fast you can improve.

[Hitsu//San]

It's not a noobish question, it's very legitimate, i'm pretty sure every professional knows at least one trick that some other didn't know in Photoshop. It's not simple like using watercolors and looking at what happens on the paper to learn how to use it correctly over time. Actually you don't have an idea on how to use photoshop to paint. You can surely pick up a color and put in over where you need it but it doesn't work like that. First of all you need to learn what value separation is, after this it's quite simple to use some colors to do illustration that looks good. The final step is to know every aspect of light behavior but it will take years, don't think about that right now, focus on basics. After you've learned what value separation is all you need to learn is how to setup and use your tablet with you favorite software (and it's photoshop, for me painter it's much more advanced in terms of configuration that you might get lost pretty easily so avoid any other thing unless you learn how to setup your brush at least).

If there's something else i didn't mentioned or i forgot just ask and i'll try to answer as soon as i see it