A different approach to landscape studies
Hello all! It's been a couple weeks since my last post and a good couple weeks. I've been busy around the house with fix it projects and I've recently taken up a freelance job so much of my art time has been spent doing client work. This actually marks my first real "art" job so I'm very happy to report that I am currently living (very meagerly, but still living) completely on earnings from my art. This is the beginning of surely a long long road of art making into the future and I'm very happy to have taken some of my first steps into this as a profession. Hooray!
This is an exercise I've decided to take on as a new part of training my art brain to remember and use things I've learned from the studies I try to routinely do. Above is a screenshot from a panned video I found on instagram from a friend. I really loved how green and lush everything was and enjoyed the shapes of the hills so it was a fun one to study.
After taking a stab at doing a proper study of the environment the next stage is to try and replicate a new scene from imagination using the previous study as the "learning" phase. I've been thinking very seriously that I'd like to lean into the Ghibli style of painting. I will still not be able to help using color variety and painting approaches from other master studies, but I think going toward Ghibli for the sake of expressing my own projects is actually a good direction for me.
After finishing this last painting I really do feel like I've learned maybe just a little bit more by repeating this painting with a new idea. I got to play with Ghibli styled tree shapes and now there's a little town in that valley which was a totally fun idea. If you're wondering how to take your studies to the next level I'd highly suggest trying this out!
What kind of art practice do you do to keep things fresh?
That is beautiful painting Erik, to show perspective and also paying attention to the source of light and working on shadows is very well done! You are in our today#s Magazine together with other Professional Artists :)
Why thank you! :D Stoked to be a part of your most current magazine!
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First of all, it's nice that you can spend more time on your art. Enjoy your first real art job :) I hope you will earn a lot, but I'm sure you will have fun working no matter what. I'm unfamiliar with digital arts, but I'm interested in it. It was very explanatory for me that you showed your technique step by step. In this way, I got some idea about the process. It was amazing to see the transformation of the drawing. I really liked the cloudy sky, the position of the buildings and the arrangement of the hills :)
Thank you for your kind comments and interest! I don't know if I will earn a lot with my first art job, but at least I'm earning a living doing art and that's what matters! I've spent about 10 years now working my way toward this goal of going independent and working from home so it's a huge step for me and hopefully the first of many. I used upwork.com and was able to find a client relatively quickly, there's definitely lots of work out there for freelancers!
Because this new practice is a bit new for me and it's really difficult for me I wasn't able to lay out some of the stages this painting took. I'll try to remember for next time if you are wondering how to approach digital painting. It's kind of like acrylic in my opinion. I've started to use softer brushes to get more gradients and blending brushes to soften edges but besides that, you can still put down a pretty good layout like you would with acrylic using digital. A lot of professional artists say not to get too bogged down with all the features and stick with the round brush to start and I think that's pretty accurate. I don't think the fancy brushes help me, they actually make me waste time because I often don't know how or when to use them. Just a thought though, playing with brushes is a lot of fun!
As you said, the most valuable thing is to be independent and achieve your goal of working from home. Besides, you earn a livelihood, I think that's a pretty good start. It's great to have opportunities for freelancers like the site you mentioned. By the way, thank you very much for your sincere comments and explanations about your drawing :)