While looking for some videos that could help me draw better on Youtube, I found a guy named Dave Greco, who’s an artist and a game developer, and he’s been doing concept art for 14 years professionally. He has a lot of videos, which tackle the topic of drawing, but this video in particular caught my eye. The way Dave drew his drawing on the video was really intriguing and fresh to me. The way I drew my drawings was vastly different, so it felt like that video opened new doors for me and I’ve noticed a big improvement on my art, when I started doing the same thing he does.

Dave Greco. (2018). Character Concept Art Tutorial. [Online Video]. 17 May 2018. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tMagqFKQ9E&index=3&t=525s&list=PLbcywHdwkAlhjfvjpmQ0QY8_GzjoJiFxP. [Accessed: 14 December 2018].

Now that the keyword project has ended, I would like to take a look at the work that I’ve done and try to reflect on it. I’ve created artworks with some variety of mediums and while I could’ve experimented more, I believe that this is enough for me, as experimenting with more unorthodox methods wouldn’t have been as useful, simply because I’m certain that I will always spend  the most of my time on digital software and traditional means, because I enjoy it very much and that’s where the money is, at this day and age.

The first work I want to take a look at is this Illustrator piece of a stylised solar system. It wasn’t really planned, because I wanted to move on to making another digital painting. The idea to make a solar system illustration came from a Youtube music video I was watching. I can’t recall what video it was in particular, but I do recall that it had some sort of space themed background and I thought to myself: ‘Hey that looks cool, maybe I can make something related to space!’. This project was about your chosen keyword and you visual interpretation of it, so the difficult part was to relate my artwork to the word. Realisation hit me, that since I have to visually represent the warmth of the sun, why not take the Sun literally and that’s what I did. I really enjoyed working on this piece, because it stands out so much from the rest of my project’s works and it was a great practice with Illustrator

Today, I would like to talk about a work that interests me in particular. It is an artwork called ‘Ruler’ by a Chinese artist Wang Ling, who also goes by an alias’ wlop’. The piece depicts Jeanne d’Arc, a Japanese animation ‘Fate’ character, based of the heroine of France and Wang’s take on it. The main focus of the artwork is , of course, the Jeanne herself, holding her spear and two of her soldiers standing behind her. In the anime, this character is a ruler, which Wlop takes into consideration, and visually conveys this with the expressions on character’s face. This artist in particular, puts the most of his effort into the faces, accurately portraying emotions and you can clearly see that Jeanne is full of determination, but at the same time you can see the hint of sadness, perhaps, because even being in charge of the army is a huge burden on her, not to mention the whole country’s fate relying on your shoulders. The emotions are clear to see and even if you look at other works of wlop, you can see that all of them convey emotions concisely, you can tell what’s going on and the mood of the piece immediately. That’s one of the reasons why I like Wang Ling in general, but the ‘Ruler’ is the absolute best of his, when it comes to that. It is those subtle hints in the facial expression that makes it.

The thing, that makes the artwork particularly interesting, is the fact that Wlop manages to make the work really messy and sketchy, yet at the same time very detailed and full of life. That is not something just any artist can achieve. Most of the artists strive to make their art as clean as possible, but Wang does it slightly different and that is the charm his works have. If you take a look at the armour Jeanne is wearing, you can see, that the colours aren’t blended and they’re blocky, put together on top of each other, yet look stunning and realistic. This shows the artist’s expertise in drawing the materials. In my opinion, when it comes to armour, no one beats this man and ‘Ruler’ is the artwork I would show people who doubted that.

Last thing, which catches the eye is the use of colour and the contrast between them. Wlop tends to use cooler colours for the background and cloth, but when it comes to armour, you notice that it shows an impressive array of colours being reflected from whatever the wearer is standing in front of. Now even though, bland colours are used in the piece, if you focus on the face, you are greeted with a lot of warm tones, which enhance the emotion he’s trying to convey, in this case it’s the determination and sadness. Warm tones and detailed face, make the ‘Ruler’ a pleasure to look at and this contrast between the colours is why the piece is my favourite.

As a designer, I must look at other professional designers, who are successful at what they are doing and how could I learn from them, so here are a couple of designers that inspire me. The first designer that I want to look at is Jason Chan. Jason is a senior designer at Riot Games, who, on his website describes himself as a illustrator who specializes in sci-fi/fantasy and young adult novels. He has taught private lessons on concept art and has lectured on a ton of international conferences. His concept art is amazing and he’s the sort of artist I strive to be. His works are clean and visually pleasing.

That’s only 2 of his countless designs and all of them are just as stunning as the other. He loves what he does and he gets paid huge amounts of money for it: That’s the kind of job I’m aiming for once I’m done with my studies.

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton