If you want to improve as an artist, illustrator, or designer, one of the best ways to make progress is to have your work critiqued... and I don't just mean making something and then asking your best friend or mom what they think. Seeking out honest feedback from an unbiased party allows you to get valuable insight on the things that your doing well and the places you need improvement (not just a "wow, you're so talented" from someone who loves you). I recently had my work critiqued by Art Prof, an online learning community for artists. The had one of the instructors, Alex, critique my Rip Van Winkle piece on their youtube channel.
I thought that Alex had very constructive and well thought-out things to say about my work. I'm going to take his feedback and use it to rework elements of my illustration (stay tuned, I'll keep you updated on my progress).
Since graduating from college, I've found that getting feedback on my work has been a lot more difficult. School gives you that built in group of 10-30 people who you see two times a week and know exactly what you're working on. Once you're out on your own, it's a lot more Challenging to find people who are intimate enough with your work to offer useful feedback and who you trust to show unfinished pieces. If you're in the same boat as me, here are some tips on places you can find critiques:
And if you want to hear more about the benefits of critique, along with some advice from industry professionals on how to make the most of critiques, check out this episode of the Three Point Perspective Podcast.
This is a series of illustrations I created based on the Folktale Week prompt list put out in November of 2018. The idea was to create and post one illustration based on a folktale every day for a week. Instead of picturing the more popular European folk and fairytales, I wanted to make pieces based on North American folktales. In American folktales, subjects are rugged and wild; cowboys, lumberjacks, pirates, and outlaws. At the time the Americas were being settled, the world had a very negative association with witches and magic. Because of this you see much less of a focus on witches and spells. Instead, American folk tales portray people with larger than life personalities and great senses of adventure.
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I have always admired full-page children's book illustrations where the illustrator is able to cleverly incorporate the white of the page into the picture. I feel like sometimes I tend to over-illustrate, filling every square inch of the page with color and line so, recently, while I was working up ideas for the Prairie Writer's and Illustrator's Day illustration prompt, I challenged myself to try and incorporate more white space into my illustration.
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I created this sketch of an older couple as part of an assignment for a backgrounds class I took through SVSLearn. Around the time that I started the class I began to stream my art on twitch so i was able to capture a lot of the process as I worked through this illustration. Here's a little behind-the-scenes look at my illustration
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