I looked through my gallery and my photoshop files over the last year or so to try to figure out my greatest artistic weaknesses and noticed several things:
Dull subject matter:I rarely paint pictures that aren't more than a chick staring out into space. This is probably because this is my comfort zone for painting, so I really need to step outside it. Must work on including full bodies, narrative elements, and backgrounds.
Perspective:I'm not good with complicated perspective and have great difficulty drawing to a view point that is not to the natural eyeline. The first thing I did to combat this was roll around on the floor just now, to see what things look like from low down, and stand up on my desk, to see what they look like from up above. I think it actually helped.
Composition:There's only really one image in my gallery that shows any compositional thought at all. Everything is flat and depthless and taken from a natural eye-level view point.
I don't finish paintings often enough, and often give up when difficult:You can't see this from my gallery, but I have a ton of unfinished files, mainly because I get to a point where I realise I've made a horrendous mess of things and give up because it's too difficult to fix it. It's always why I don't submit much, because I give up on things I was excited about when I realised I've screwed them up. I also don't have much work that looks finished in general, maybe only three or four pieces, because there's just not enough going on in what I draw to make it look like a finished illustration (back to point one again).
I think most of these problems come back to the fact that I don't spend enough time, if any, thumbnailing concepts, or even thinking about what I'm going to draw before opening photoshop and scribbling. And then my base sketches, if I have them, are really hasty and poorly thought out, with just gestures for difficult anatomical bits. So, that's what I'm going to be focusing on for a bit.
Um. Anyway, if you have any other weaknesses you think I should be working on, please tell me.
Sta.sh
