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John Avila
•
3yr
added comment inZorn Palette Portrait Demo (LIVESTREAM)
What helped you most to learn painting?
John Avila
•
3yr
For me an uncommon inspirational source is weirdly documentary photography or street photography. There are a lot of photographers that capture bad kids, or troubled youth and for me it is compelling as it gives so much emotion and story in a single image, it is a great example of visual storytelling. Photographers such as Justine Kurland, DuBois, Lewis Robinson, Mark Cohen, Sophie Day etc...
I think most artists struggle with their art being forgettable, our main goal is to create a portfolio that studios will remember. What do you think contributes to a painting being memorable or something that sticks with you?
•
3yr
I think the best way to explore this question is to work somewhat in reverse - rather than looking at what makes a painting memorable, let's think about what can make a piece forgettable. There are so many different kinds of art and artists out there, but what we can say about all of them is that they each have some specific purpose, or goal in mind. Something that we're trying to achieve - something we've either done successfully, or not.
In my view, what tends to make a piece forgettable is not whether it succeeds or fails at that intended goal, but rather whether the person producing it had one in the first place. Without a driving purpose behind a piece, it's easy to meander down side paths, to become muddy and unclear as to what a piece is really trying to achieve. Because, after all, it's not trying to achieve anything.
Of course, there are all kinds of things artworks can try to achieve. I personally am more familiar with illustration and concept design - with the latter, the purpose is basically to convey a design to another with enough clarity that they will be able to take it and use it to produce something, either a 3D model, or perhaps something physical. It's not about creating a pretty picture, but rather about doing a job. In some cases, concept art may be used to help people brainstorm and generate more ideas as well, in which case it may be more vague and explorative, but this purpose is something that always has to be kept in mind. That's actually something I delve into more deeply in the course I just released here on Proko - "The Science of Deciding What You Should Draw".
With illustration - which was what I spent a lot of my personal time doing, before Drawabox took off and stole all of my free time away - I tried to focus on the idea of storytelling. I wasn't always sure what story I wanted to tell when I started a piece, sometimes I only had little bits that I knew I wanted to explore, but as I worked on it I'd constantly be thinking about the narrative behind it all. I especially enjoyed creating illustrations that could perhaps be interpreted in multiple ways, and that gave the viewer plenty to latch onto on their own, to tell their own story - but these were all still things I was consciously considering.
It all comes down to the idea of control. We can allow a piece to steer us along on its own, which isn't inherently a bad thing - but at *some* point we need to take both control of the choices we're making, and with that, responsibility for the result. We are not passive participants, and I believe what makes a piece memorable comes from the artist taking an active role in how it unfolds.
John Avila
•
3yr
Hi Jeremy
I'm really early in this "art" thing. I'm a 16 year old highschool student and would love to be a concept artist in the future like you Jeremy. I would also like to do my own Sci Fi projects on the side. I know there is so much to learn and it could be overwhelming at times, what are things that I must improve on that I'm probably missing, how would you approach on learning them :)
Hi John, the paintings are really good. Try not to always have the center of focus be in the middle (where it is on the 3 of your 5 paintings), trying to add a bit more area of focus and have that area look more finished. Go in and clean up the rendering and edges. Right now everything looks "rough" and a bit unfinished. By bringing one area into focus will really help.
Wow, your work is really cool already! Look into atmospherical perspective, that will give an immediate boost to these! And look into value checking ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-K6H2OdBVlE second tip on this video of Marco Bucci vid) that will pop your characters!
Really cool work! I wish I had done these when I was 16!
