Hi! My name is Jenner, 23, a freelance illustrator from NYC. I really love storytelling through art and geared my portfolio towards a splash art style. I am currently working on a card game project, and my end goal is to be an illustrator working for video games. Recently I started branching out to different parts of Illustration (environment, prop, key) and I am enjoying the diversity. I am not too sure if it helps with the coherence of my portfolio to have different focuses, so would love to hear some advice on that front! My portfolio: https://www.artstation.com/thejenneralchen

Anyone interested in horror art might want to check out the Dark Art Society. It's a podcast done by Chet Zar who has done work for the film industry, with the band Tool, and is known for doing oil paintings of monsters. He interviews a lot of other horror artists on the show about their careers and work, and there is a lot of discussion there and in the affiliated social media communities surrounding dark art and its merits.

Love the art you shared. Especially the one with the crocodile creatures. I noticed someone else suggested adding color to your work if you haven't already, but I thought I'd add that I've also seen a lot of artists who stick to monochrome or black-and-white work experiment with adding metallic accents like gold leaf, gold inks/markers/pens, or metallic watercolors. Thought I'd bring that up because you might find it fun to experiment with metallic accents if you haven't already. You can look at some of Tim Von Rueden's prints on Etsy (vonnart) to see examples of what I'm talking about. ABZJ Harding's Deviantart Gallery also has a few examples here and there of metallic accents added to black-and-white or limited color palette work.

Let's see what the community wants. We were planning on keeping this category clean with only official challenges, but if there is enough interest in allowing user created challenges, I'm ok with it. I can just pin the official ones to the top. Let's VOTE.. Reply to this comment with your thought!

I've been obsessed with Austin Osman Spare recently, and there's a passage from a book I was reading called The Static Alignments on Spare's school of draughtsmanship that has some of his advice to students. I think it's relevant. First, "Riding a bike for the first time is very tiring, and with Art it's just that." Which makes me think of your comment about getting frustrated at how long things take. The idea I think is that if you keep at it, you'll get through the frustration. Spare also had the following recommendations, direct quoted list from the book: 1. All the practice you can get. 2. To be an enthusiast and obsessed with "ideas" however vague. 3. That real knowledge is always first felt and whether it becomes more knowable or remains vague doesn't affect your work. 4. Your effort (now) should be towards realism (you will always interpret your way) and towards satisfaction, e.g. to do your best. 5. You never will be satisfied or do your best -- no one has but their great accomplishments are through the effort and constancy towards perfection as they saw and felt it. So...in summary, my response to this problem based on the art advice of Austin Osman Spare is to practice your art of choice a lot, and every time you do it just try to do your best, whatever your best is.

Part of it is that a lot of social media artists are doing it full time. Either they make all their income through things like commissions/freelance projects, social media promotion, online/convention sales, or they are supported by a spouse who pays the bills. Others have a part-time job not related to art but therefore still have a lot more time for art. Also, some of it will be multiple photos of the same piece throughout the whole process of creating it, shared on different days. Some of it is older work they're sharing or re-sharing. I've also known some artists doing webcomics or other work where they actually spend a lot of time "getting ahead" so to speak, where they have a backlog of work at the ready for social media posts as a buffer if they don't meet their posting schedule for their webcomic or social media, so that they still have something to post. Some will also save time by automating their social media posting process. There are ways you can schedule posts in advance to post automatically on certain days, so part of it may be good time management, in that maybe they spend one day a week doing things like planning out and scheduling social media posts so that an automated system will be doing all their posts for them throughout the week while they work on more art.

I dedicated an entire class to copyright for my undergraduate students. In ranges from differences in leasing and selling work all the way to piracy and copyright infringement. Here's the summary info I supply them with. It’s a good idea to have an understanding of copyright law as an artist. Be you a painter, illustrator, photographer, designer or, art student. Knowing your rights and how you can or can not use other’s images in your work is essential knowledge for working artists. Basic Copyright For Work You Create The minute you create any work for your own use (whatever that use may be), you own the copyright. You have the right to reproduce the artwork, copy it, display it and use it for financial gain. You also have the right to stop someone who copied your image from using it. If you create a painting and sell it, the buyer owns the painting and you own the copyright.* If you create a painting for an employer/client who is paying you to create it, The painting and copyright belongs to the employer/client.* If you create a painting on commission for a client the painting and copyright belong to the client* If you allow a company to publish your work/s (e.g. in a magazine, calendar, etc.), you are licensing the work to them. The original work and copyright usually still belong to you but, this depends on the agreement you signed with the publisher. In the EU and the USA the duration of copyright is 70 years beyond the life of the creator. This can vary in different circumstances and from country to country. *Unless stated otherwise in an agreement. Usually a signed legal document. Common Questions Q: Can I use someone elses image in my painting (or, for reference)? A: No. Mostly. If you take an image and use that image to make one that looks like it, you have infringes on the owner/creator’s copyright. However, if you use that image as a source of inspiration for your own work and, the result is your own unique image, you are not infringing on the owner’s rights. The safest option is to use your own images or, public domain images. Q: Can I make copies of images for my own personal studies? A: Yes. Even though you are making a copy of a copyright image, because it is for your own personal use, there is no copyright infringement. This falls under the “fair dealing” and “fair use” exceptions. You can not sell these works for profit. I recommend not including these in portfolios. Q: Do I need to use the © symbol on my artwork? A: No. But, it can be useful in preventing what is called “innocent infringement.” A situation where someone who is unfamiliar with copyright law require legal defense for unknowingly infringing upon the owner’s copyright. Q: How do I use the © symbol? A: © 2014 Jane Doe. All rights reserved. Something to think about Let’s say you are an artist who makes their living from the art you create. You spend the better part of a month working on on a piece of art. You then add images to your online portfolio and put it up for sale at a commensurate amount for the time and experience that went into it’s creation. One week later you stumble across an online store selling hundreds of copies at an affordable price. How does this affect you? How does this make you feel? How do you imagine musicians, game developers and, other creatives feel about piracy? Myths About Copyright Mailing a copy of your work to yourself. The US Government Copyright Office states that: "The practice of sending a copy of your own work to yourself is sometimes called a “poor man’s copyright.” There is no provision in the copyright law regarding any such type of protection, and it is not a substitute for registration" 1. References 1. http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-general.html Research and Information Sites http://www.copyright.gov/ http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ40.pdf - Copyright Registration for the Visual Arts http://www.visualartcopyright.com/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substantial_similarity

The easiest ways to avoid copyright infringement are to take your own reference photos, use reference photos taken by family or friends with their permission if you know any photographers, or purchase royalty free photos from sites like Photobash for reference. Some artists also sell photo reference packs, I'd just review said artists' individual policies on photo use. There are sites like Paint My Photo where you can find free reference photos, don't think they even require attribution so long as you follow the site's rules. Has been awhile since I've used it, but I think they require your art to be traditional, not digital, and you have to post your artwork as a reply to the original photo on their site. Just be sure to review their policies if you go that route. You can also use multiple photos from a Google search or what-have-you for reference of your subject so long as you don't copy any of the photos directly. Say you're drawing a crow, for example. You can look at multiple photos of crows from different angles with different types of lighting to get an idea of the shape of a crow's body, maybe even do a few quick studies from different angles that you don't share, just to get a better sense of the body structure, then you come up with your own composition. No attribution necessary so long as you're using a wide range of photos for general understanding of the anatomy without directly copying.