help with Concept art books

[Classix]

hello and thank you for viewing my post, i am so new to concept art it is unreal, i have been studying website design at college for 2 years and now since i left i have had a sudden change of career and i am really inspired by concept art, i was wondering if you legends could help me out by suggesting any good books to get started on? i recently bought 3d game textures : create professional game art using Photoshop, and this book is all well and good but it does not teach you how to create the actual begining sketches,so i went out and a bought a few books on drawing. I bought : Landscapes and Buildings by Ian Sidaway,Drawing and painting fantasy figures by Finlay Cowan, Fantasy ladnscapes and cityscapes by Rob Alexander, The complete idiots guide to drawing by Lauren Jarrett, and they are all good and starting you off and i am learning various techniques and tools but i was wondering if there are any books that are based on creating concept art? :\


i am a big lord of the rings fan and dream of creating gorgeous scenes and landscapes which is why i bought all the books on that topic :)

thank you very much :)

[Zilant]

I don't think so.
(note the cautious emphasis, as this a case of the blind leading the blind)

I asked something along these lines just recently, in my backwards sort of way, and the answer seems to be: you shouldn't be actively striving to make something look "concept-art-y" but rather learn to make something as realistic as possible, and derive your own shortcuts after you've gotten the realism down.

I think it helps to think Concept art isn't in it's own special catagory because there's anything specific to the execution of it, just that it requires heavy conceptualizing before the pencil ever hits the paper. That's why concept art is so bafflingly varied, there really isn't a standard to speak of, just a bunch of artists capable of realism trying to create an image with a given set of critieria under the gun of a corporate deadline.
(umm, right?)

...
Unless you were wanting know less about the overall look of things, and more like "How do I make a Modeling Sheet?". I don't know the answer exactly, but I'm sure somebody's put that kind of information out there.