I started drawing images on Microsoft paint using my mouse back in 2011. Over the years I have bought Wacom and Samsung tablets along with buying better art programs. When I was younger I didn't really look up art o the internet so I didn't have a standard to reach. I though I was good. Then in 2011 I came across DeviantART and suddenly felt like I was rubbish compared to all of the art other people had done. I looked up to many people and began to try and catch up with them. Here are a few videos of my improvement in digital art over the years.
You can see my techniques improve after a few years.
November 2013. My first youtube video. I had a little practice and had bought paint tool SAI and a Wacom. The anatomy is wrong and the blood is a bit excessive lol.
December 2013. I got a bit better but the wolfs face is still a mess and the colouring isn't great either. I had to re-draw this picture because my computer crashed.
September 2014. The anatomy got better but the poor wolf looks like its struggling to walk. Also it was my first time trying to make the fur more realistic so the style looks a bit odd.
September 2016. My anatomy has improved a lot and there is less blood and more structure.
Its hard to make speedpaints but hopefully I can post more in the future!
Friday 10 February 2017
Thursday 9 February 2017
Getting your art seen
Its certainly not easy being recognised. There are a lot of people who want to get their art seen by a large audience. But here are a few ways that may help you get there.
1. Entering competitions.
If you can manage your time then you could submit multiples entries to multiple art competitions. Certainly don't force yourself to make something because that never work. If you try your hardest, your work will be displayed and you could win a prize for it too. The only problem that I find with art competitions is that the judges have different opinions on what is good art in their eyes. So you could spend hours on a really detailed painting and not get anything for it. A good website for art competitions would be: http://www.artistsnetwork.com/category/competitions
Also if you are interested in manga and want a chance of getting your own book published in Japan or featured in the weekly shonen jump magazine then you should go here: https://medibang.com/ + https://medibangpaint.com/en/ (free art app)
The best part is that the medibang staff will translate your comic into another language for you and their competitions give you the chance to send your comic to a proffesional editor and win money.
2. Social Media
Using social media is a good way to show off your art and hopefully attract people and customers. You could post pictures on facebook and make your own art page, post your art on instagram, upload it to medibang, DevianART, Patreon, etc. The last 3 mentioned are websites designed for artists and there are many more. It helps when the website has a smaller community because it is easier to be recognised in a smaller crowd. For example, DeviantART is the internets biggest online gallery and many people use it across the world. Of course this means that they have millions of people to compete with so it is difficult to been seen amongst the crowd and there is a very high standard of art on there. Even people who are very good at art may not get noticed.
Art is something you can start at any point in time. Many people think you need talent but talent doesn't really exist. It's just the result of lots of practice and concentrating on your faults and fixing them. So practice is all you need to get better and definitely challenge yourself. Many people go for the easier things to make or draw but you really need to try something harder. If you keep drawing stick men, then you will become a master at drawing stick men. If you try and draw a realistic cyborg dragon then you will eventually become good at drawing realistic cyborg dragons. It will take longer to get good at but it's worth it if you want to turn your art into something bigger.
So try different forms of art, find the one you like the most and start making stuff!
1. Entering competitions.
If you can manage your time then you could submit multiples entries to multiple art competitions. Certainly don't force yourself to make something because that never work. If you try your hardest, your work will be displayed and you could win a prize for it too. The only problem that I find with art competitions is that the judges have different opinions on what is good art in their eyes. So you could spend hours on a really detailed painting and not get anything for it. A good website for art competitions would be: http://www.artistsnetwork.com/category/competitions
Also if you are interested in manga and want a chance of getting your own book published in Japan or featured in the weekly shonen jump magazine then you should go here: https://medibang.com/ + https://medibangpaint.com/en/ (free art app)
The best part is that the medibang staff will translate your comic into another language for you and their competitions give you the chance to send your comic to a proffesional editor and win money.
2. Social Media
Using social media is a good way to show off your art and hopefully attract people and customers. You could post pictures on facebook and make your own art page, post your art on instagram, upload it to medibang, DevianART, Patreon, etc. The last 3 mentioned are websites designed for artists and there are many more. It helps when the website has a smaller community because it is easier to be recognised in a smaller crowd. For example, DeviantART is the internets biggest online gallery and many people use it across the world. Of course this means that they have millions of people to compete with so it is difficult to been seen amongst the crowd and there is a very high standard of art on there. Even people who are very good at art may not get noticed.
Art is something you can start at any point in time. Many people think you need talent but talent doesn't really exist. It's just the result of lots of practice and concentrating on your faults and fixing them. So practice is all you need to get better and definitely challenge yourself. Many people go for the easier things to make or draw but you really need to try something harder. If you keep drawing stick men, then you will become a master at drawing stick men. If you try and draw a realistic cyborg dragon then you will eventually become good at drawing realistic cyborg dragons. It will take longer to get good at but it's worth it if you want to turn your art into something bigger.
So try different forms of art, find the one you like the most and start making stuff!
Tuesday 7 February 2017
Famous artists today
Many people know about the famous artists of the past but do they know the famous artists of today?
Here's a few examples of the artists today.
1. Vik Muniz
Vik muniz has been working with scientists to create microscopic works of art. He uses bacteria and sand to create pictures. Each picture is etched onto a single grain of sand under a microscope.
2. Willard Wigan
Another micro artist is Willard Wigan. He is well known for creating sculptures inside of the eye of a needle. He has carved St.Bartholomew's church out of a grain of sand, painted it and then placed it inside the eye of a needle.
3. Banksy
Here's a few examples of the artists today.
1. Vik Muniz
Vik muniz has been working with scientists to create microscopic works of art. He uses bacteria and sand to create pictures. Each picture is etched onto a single grain of sand under a microscope.
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| http://www.thisiscolossal.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/sand-3.jpg |
2. Willard Wigan
Another micro artist is Willard Wigan. He is well known for creating sculptures inside of the eye of a needle. He has carved St.Bartholomew's church out of a grain of sand, painted it and then placed it inside the eye of a needle.
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| http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2010/03/25/article-1260569-08DCEAE4000005DC-728_634x286.jpg |
3. Banksy
Banksy is an anonymous artist from England who combines dark humour with graffiti and stencils. He has done his pieces illegally but they are very good. He is also a political activist and a film director of unverified identity. His works have been featured all around the world and people have made attempts of selling his art and leaving the bidder with the problem of removing the picture from the wall. Banksy also managed to open up a "Bemusement park" called Dismaland which got permanently shut down in 2015.
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http://i.huffpost.com/gen/2556874/thumbs/o-JPS-570.jpg?5 |
4. Yoskay Yamamoto
He is a self trained illustrator who uses an urban theme from his home in California and mixes it with traditional Japanese themes. This idea was created when he moved to the US at the age of 15. By doing this he has created a balance with past and present art. He makes paintings, mixed media sculptures, toys and installation works.
Sunday 29 January 2017
Making Stunning Artworks
Many of the stunning pieces of art found in books, art museums and the internet have captured peoples imagination. Something about them just stands out and they can be visually stunning with their good uses of colour, light, shading and emotion. A lot of skill and practice has gone towards creating them.
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| http://moreearn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Ellen-Jewett-unique-sculptures-artwork-animals-11.jpg
This is a clay and wire frame fox by Ellen Jewett. It is covered in detail and wouldn't taken a lot of concentration to shape. Also planning the placement of all of the details would've been difficult.
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This is a very colourful piece that has been painted onto a wall. Even the bottoms of the trees were included to connect the painting with reality. Something like this would've taken hours and hours to make. Spray painting is especially difficult. Especially when you need permission to paint of a wall. Most of the time you could be limited to large pieces of paper of cardboard.
One of my favourite artists, known on Deviantart as Grypwolf is a self taught artist from Finland. They use digital art as their main media and is very well known on the internet. Their artwork is highly detailed and professional.
They can do cellshading (one below) and highly realistic drawings with soft shading.
They have had years of practice with shading and lighting. Along with learning to anatomy of the animals they draw and humans. The way the lines are drawn are neat and capture the emotion perfectly. It is surprising how hard it can be to drawn emotion.
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| http://grypwolf.deviantart.com/art/Jieknga-519373917 |
Thursday 26 January 2017
Model making and digital art
Model making and digital art have gotten big roles in the movie, videogames, animation and advertising industries. Digital art has also become a very popular hobby for many artists. Here's some info on them.
Sculptures/Model making
Some people like to make sculptures, These can be made out of clay, stone, wood, resin, upholstery foam etc. This is a good skill for making figurines for franchises or mask making. It is also a skill that is used to create vehicles and monsters to help film makers and video game companies to visualize their ideas. This form of art takes a lot of 3 dimensional thinking so you can build the figure in your head and then create the figure in real life. This can be messy and VERY time consuming, so sculpting isn't for everyone.
Digital 2D Art
Digital art is one of the more recent forms of art. It is more technical than your ordinary pen and eraser. Erasing mistakes and creating symmetry is easy but actually drawing perfect lines is something that is difficult. It is also not a cheap hobby with buying the right drawing program, a fast HD computer and a decent tablet for drawing with. Although I simply use a Samsung galaxy note 10.1 2014 tablet along with a €3 drawing app called artflow. The drawing tablets that don't have their own digital screens are the most affordable and the most used. It takes a lot of practice to improve your hand eye coordination so you can actually draw properly! You will start of drawing like a frustrated penguin but eventually you will get better with practice. Digital art can be very rewarding and is used to make the fantasy art that you see on game advertisements and much more!
Animation
Animation is using multiple drawn pictures to create movement. This is primarily done digitally but a few people still do it traditionally with paper and pencil. Animation is something that a few people may want to do but do not have the patience or time. Each frame is very similar to the last so you feel like your drawing the same picture over and over again. 40 frames can create a 4 second animation. This can vary a little depending on how smooth you want the animation or how quickly you make the animation move from frame to frame. The slowest part is colouring all of the frames in with the right colours. Then a small amount of shading is added to make the animation a higher quality. They don't add too much shading though because that would take to long and it is the final step in colouring in animation. Animation studios have teams of people animating and a landscape artist to make the backgrounds using acrylic paint. There are animators in Japan called "Sakuga." These animators animate entire scenes on their own and are payed a huge amount of money. They create very high quality animations too since Japan has a huge animation industry. 5 minutes of animation will take a Sakuga way over a year to finish.
Sculptures/Model making
Some people like to make sculptures, These can be made out of clay, stone, wood, resin, upholstery foam etc. This is a good skill for making figurines for franchises or mask making. It is also a skill that is used to create vehicles and monsters to help film makers and video game companies to visualize their ideas. This form of art takes a lot of 3 dimensional thinking so you can build the figure in your head and then create the figure in real life. This can be messy and VERY time consuming, so sculpting isn't for everyone.
Digital 2D Art
Digital art is one of the more recent forms of art. It is more technical than your ordinary pen and eraser. Erasing mistakes and creating symmetry is easy but actually drawing perfect lines is something that is difficult. It is also not a cheap hobby with buying the right drawing program, a fast HD computer and a decent tablet for drawing with. Although I simply use a Samsung galaxy note 10.1 2014 tablet along with a €3 drawing app called artflow. The drawing tablets that don't have their own digital screens are the most affordable and the most used. It takes a lot of practice to improve your hand eye coordination so you can actually draw properly! You will start of drawing like a frustrated penguin but eventually you will get better with practice. Digital art can be very rewarding and is used to make the fantasy art that you see on game advertisements and much more!
Animation
Animation is using multiple drawn pictures to create movement. This is primarily done digitally but a few people still do it traditionally with paper and pencil. Animation is something that a few people may want to do but do not have the patience or time. Each frame is very similar to the last so you feel like your drawing the same picture over and over again. 40 frames can create a 4 second animation. This can vary a little depending on how smooth you want the animation or how quickly you make the animation move from frame to frame. The slowest part is colouring all of the frames in with the right colours. Then a small amount of shading is added to make the animation a higher quality. They don't add too much shading though because that would take to long and it is the final step in colouring in animation. Animation studios have teams of people animating and a landscape artist to make the backgrounds using acrylic paint. There are animators in Japan called "Sakuga." These animators animate entire scenes on their own and are payed a huge amount of money. They create very high quality animations too since Japan has a huge animation industry. 5 minutes of animation will take a Sakuga way over a year to finish.
Sunday 22 January 2017
History of Art
The earliest form of art are from the Paleolithic period. This is when humans hunted and gathered food. They would create cave paintings to tell stories about their hunts and what happened. Pictures of animals and humans can be seen on these cave walls. They used burned bones, charcoal or ground calcite mixed with animal fat to make paint. They would use a hollow bone as a tool for spraying paint. They would place paint inside and then blow through the bone. Cave people would place their hand onto the wall and then spray the paint onto their hand. This leaves the print of their hands on the wall.
Then in the Neolithic period, people started to farm. They created cave paintings but with humans and animals shown living in harmony. They also used more advanced materials for craft such as jasper, quartz and amber. Later on it moved to the metal ages. Iron swords and spears were created and decorated with copper.
The pyramids of Egypt are another form of art made when the Egyptians were still around. These massive structures contain sculptures and shine made out of gold and other materials. The walls have writing and pictures drawn into them. They would create sculptures and statues to honour their Pharoah.
The pyramids of Egypt are another form of art made when the Egyptians were still around. These massive structures contain sculptures and shine made out of gold and other materials. The walls have writing and pictures drawn into them. They would create sculptures and statues to honour their Pharoah.
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_art#/media/File:All_Gizah_Pyramids.jpg
Then came the Renaissance which was a very important time for Art. Famous artists from this era include Michelangelo, Leonardo Da Vinci and Raphael. People now understood anatomy much better because they were aloud to dissect donated bodies. Paintings became more realistic, perspective was added, soft shading (sfumato) and more natural backgrounds were used. Compared to medieval time painting where the more important people were bigger compared to the other people in the painting and perspective did not exist. The backgrounds were made up of man made objects and places. The people in the Medieval painting also had no emotion on their face and there was little use of shading and lighting.
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Monday 16 January 2017
Hello!
My name is Kate and this is my blog on the geography of Art. Art is something made by humans since the dawn of time! Art can be an activity or a material object. Today there are many forms of art so there is an art for everyone!
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