I am going out of my mind

[brink]

I need some help guys! I am starting to build my portfolio for college :teeth:. The only problem is that I can't get my ideas on paper! I have so many but they all come out like crap (crap= the opposite of how I see them in my mind). After hours of frustration I figured it out! 1) I know nothing about perspective (I am all self taught, and I am trying to ween myself of direct references) 2) Me + Figures = ........bad and lastly 3) I don't have a personal style. So I was wondering if you guys could give me some advice on what to do? like are there any good books, and what should I do after I read them. OMG I have know idea I were I was going with that lol. So as you can see I need help so I would love some!


thanks

[Jason Rainville]

Normally I'd say it would be a good idea to work on practice rather than portfolio, but seeing as it's for college I'm assuming you don't have a lot of time? or is this for next year?

I'd suggest posemaniacs.com for help with the first two. I never truly understood what was wrong with my figures until I realized I never applied perspective to them.

[brink]

yeah I am going into my senior year of high school so I kinda need it soon

[Seedling]

Click the "Concept Art 101" link in my sig for assignment ideas. There is also a post in there about what should go in a student portfolio.

[Justin.]

Do still lives, that solves pretty much all the problems.

As for perspective, just do about 10 billion boxes in perspective. Different parts on 1, 2, and 3 point perspective. Eventually your brain will say "oh I get it."

[Elwell]

If you already knew everything, why would you want to go to art school?
On the other hand...
If you don't know anything, why would you want to go to art school?

I think we definitely need to see some work.

[Coinpurse]

Elwell beat me to it.

What I don't understand, is that if your not comfortable with anything you do in terms of art at this stage, why bother pursuing it at all? The likeliness of other students with general knowledge (the simple basic stuff you learn in highschool) will not be your only competiton. It's hard to tell whether or not your even prepared to step into an art college. Lots of people decide that their going to jump into it right after they get out of highschool, and a good portion of them do in fact drop out sometime before their second or third year if even that. I'm not saying that everyone does, but a good portion (35-40% at the very least) do.

If your planning on going to college, you should be prepared. The last thing you want to do is waste 10's of thousands along with your precious time, unless of course you have an art scholarship or something similar.


Now, not many artists are comfortable with their work. I'm not even satisfied with my own, and we all can improve one way or another (Professionals included). But you should at least know the basics of perspective and composition before you think about making such a commitment. Personally, I don't think anyone can give you any advice with decision making until we see where you are in terms of artistic ability. But if you feel you don't have a decent grasp of such artistic principles, maybe you should stick around the forums and grow as an artist before you step in. There are lots and lots of members here that are going that same route, and have done in the past. I know many who didn't know squat when they graduated from highschool, they didn't step into college until 2-3 years after putting lots of "real" dedicated study into the basics of art. I know this has nothing to do with what should go into your portfolio, which leads me to another question: Are you taking a portfolio class in highschool? usually they prepare you for this kinda stuff.

[joelhinxman]

to me those three thing you put up are all things you would learn or develope in college so dont worry tooo much about them now. the first 2 are good to practice at any time. but the 3rd will take years and years for most people so thats not something you should be worrying about or some that ya can really learn.

but yea i think we need to see some art

[Jonas Heirwegh]

1) First learn perspective, I can't find anything more important then perspective when you learn how to draw.

EVERY object, animal, human whatever has perspective obviously, so when you start to understand those basic perspective rules you will have a less harder time to draw something from your mind. Dont get me wrong, just learning the rules of perspective will get you nowhere, you have to draw boxes and other primitives. Then draw some more complex shapes in perspective, etc..
And when you do that do it GOOD, I know its boring to measure all those points and connect them, etc but being precise is necessary because when you dont use those heavy perspective constructions you will get better at guessing. Your loose sketches from your mind will improve tremendesly!

And I think this is the key to improve really fast in the beginning and most people tend to think "ow I know the perspective rules, I can draw perspective I just need to apply those rules, easy.." You have to do that boring stuff, there is no way around it really.

2) learning how to draw characters, etc is something I think about alot lately.
At first I didnt really use perspective on my characters, I just drew what I saw in life drawing class, etc..
But now I started to learn how to draw heads with some perspective construction and it gave me alot of insight really. They are far from perfect proportion wise but the perspective of the face is really getting alot better.
So again perspective was the key. I see quite alot of people in illustration(in my country at least) learn it by copying it over and over again without that perspective construction, eventually they can do it pretty darn good after a few years...
I believe that you can learn it alot faster with perspective.

For most people on these boards this will be logical but they learned anatomy through brigman, loomis, etc and they teach it the same way with perspective(primitives).

3) Dont worry about getting a style, everybody has a style. You'll develop a style automaticely.


Long post and I dont even know if I answered your questions good ;)