A lonely cosmonaut wakes up in outer space without any idea how he got there.

[PolarisCastillo]

Hey there!
I just joined ConceptArt an hour ago but have visited the site frequently. Now that I've gathered a fair amount of work I thought I'd finally join to show you guys. Here's one series I'm working on, I'll post more later or make a new thread (or, you can find all my work on my website: www.PolarisCastillo.com)
Anyway, feedback & review and any comments welcome, please!

You can catch me
and more of my work
on Facebook: www.facebook.com/makeLovetomeinSpace

or my website: www.PolarisCastillo.com

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[Hitsu//San]

I think your work is cool, very personal, very art related. Where do you want to go with your art?

[PolarisCastillo]

Thanks! I'd love to illustrate book; children's, comics, storybooks/picturebooks, etc. and other medias such as album covers, poster art, conceptual art for films/shorts, you know, just get all around with it. Lately I've been doing the art gallery run, but I'd love to get into more well known & established galleries.

I don't have a real strict, specific destination in mind, but I'd simply love to illustrate for/with other artists and maybe someday establish myself as a vision many can relate to because I feel I really have something to say, you know what I mean?

[Hitsu//San]

I know how you feel, that's why i told you are very art related and i asked you where do you want to go with your art because i think you don't know yet what illustration is all about. If i'm paying you to do a job and i told you that i want a candy world with unicorns and soft pink bunnies can you express yourself?

[PolarisCastillo]

Sure, but I'd also ask for more specifics other than just content. Such what is the tone, the emotion, setting, etc. so that I can better express using certain colour palette, composition, camera angles, etc. and I'd give you my take on it.

[Hitsu//San]

Ok then the very next question is can you become commercial with your paintings or you will keep your way to go? If you've noticed most of book covers are commercial paintings or graphic design or much more common matte paintings... can you do it?

[PolarisCastillo]

Yes I can and I have, actually I'm in the middle of creating a Dario Argento-like old school B-movie poster right now for an award winning film.

[Hitsu//San]

Great, then you have to show us that stuff in order to start talking about what to improve and the direction you need to take for pushing your career, this things you posted here are too personal to talk about corrections or theme or composition.

[PolarisCastillo]

Is this site for more commercial illustration only? I was not aware

[PuppyKitten]

Polaris, don't worry. Hitsu seems to give this advice a lot. He feels that the only way to break into the market is to be more commercial, but the truth is that you need to create a portfolio that represents the jobs you want. If you create a fluffy bunny portfolio, you'll get those kinds of jobs. If you want to get hired for dark, moody, but understated drawings in traditional media, then you better fill your portfolio with them.

You do NOT have to be a jack of all trades if you're awesome enough at what you do. That doesn't mean you don't study everything and practice going out of your comfort zone, but it sounds like you do that already.

If you want to illustrate children's books or fantasy novels or something, then take Hitsu's advice. But you can put those images in a different portfolio than this series.

As far as THIS SERIES is concerned, I reeeally like some of them. I like the concepts. Definitely something I would look for on album covers (they remind me of the cover of Deja Entendu, an album by Brand New). I wonder if you could communicate the helplessness and isolation without the text, though. I know what you're trying to do, but astronauts are a powerful image and I think you could communicate the same thing without spelling it out if you played more with compositions and lighting. Unfortunately, the images without the text aren't as strong as the ones with it (to me), which tells me that when you aren't setting a mood with text, you struggle with your theme.

I feel it's a problem of execution more than of vision. Paying more attention to your values, compositions, perspective, and rendering will help you. Your astronauts don't have to be as polished as Jeremy Geddes' astronauts, but the "sketchy" style could be done better.

[Hitsu//San]

My advice is not to choose a price and put you up on a shelve, but for my experience you can't judge or critique personal art in any way without going... personal. The problem is when you're doing a very personal piece of art and you're very satisfied with it and you love it and then it comes your customer and tells you that your drawing is completely useless for him and no one is going to understand it. Now, there are multiple ways to do things, the best one is to let your client know why your kind of personal art is good for the task (trad: why his thoughts are completely wrong , can happen) but in general you better be flexible because at the end of the day this is a job and someone is going to pay you to do something specific and you better be prepared.

This is why i try to bend the topic to commercial stuff, of course if someone is saying that the goal is to be an illustrator for commercial stuff. And this is why i learned to never talk about personal art without knowing the artist and why he do those things (i've studied in a fine arts high school and then in a fine arts academy btw, not alway been on a shelve ^^).

Hope this helps!

[PuppyKitten]

The problem is when you're doing a very personal piece of art and you're very satisfied with it and you love it and then it comes your customer and tells you that your drawing is completely useless for him and no one is going to understand it. Now, there are multiple ways to do things, the best one is to let your client know why your kind of personal art is good for the task (trad: why his thoughts are completely wrong , can happen) but in general you better be flexible because at the end of the day this is a job and someone is going to pay you to do something specific and you better be prepared.

Oh definitely, I don't disagree with that. Even if a client is hiring you for your personal style, he/she will probably want changes and you have to be ready to make those, for sure (unless you're a gallery artist who ONLY does personal pieces). But the expectations the client has and the changes he wants will be somewhat dictated by what he liked about your portfolio pieces. So make your portfolio as close to the work you want to do as possible, without boxing yourself in completely.

[PolarisCastillo]

Thanks for the comments, guys. Definitely helpful & what I was looking for. It actually makes me want to go back to the drawing board ^_^