Challenges and Contests to improve your skills!

"We all have 10,000 bad drawings in us so the sooner you get them out the better!" - Walt Stanchfield

If you're an artist their is a 90% chance you've heard this before in school, from other artists, in many many many art books... it's everywhere. It's true. Not everything you draw is going  to be your masterpiece. Not everything your favorite artist ever drew was a masterpiece. It takes work to get to be a great artist, it takes practice.

Contests and Challenges are a great way to hone your illustrative skill!

They're also a pretty good way to network. I recently read that the difference between a starving artist and a paid artist most often isn't artistic skill, but networking ability. We all know it's true. You can sit here and post the best art in the world to your blog, deviantart gallery or facebook page and never get a single commissions or visits. If people can't find you, they'll never hire you.

One place to get your artwork seen is "Illustration Friday." It is fairly well known, and has a huge variety of illustrators that participate. It also hosts an illustration forum for creative inspiration and camaraderie!  Speaking of inspiration, you'll definitely find a lot of it if you browse previous weeks!

Anyways, my first actual entry (done on time) is up! The theme for this week is "Silent." When I mentioned this to my friend, his first thought was "Silence is Golden, Duct tape is Silver." Well that was all it took, I couldn't resist a more... frightening take. I hope you all enjoy Silence!

A new site to find a challenge!

Just a small post to update you guys on a find I just made. I'm probably a bit late to the party and half of you already know about this little gem, but just in case you don't!

Illustration Friday!

I discovered this site last night as they were wrapping up their weekly challenge with the theme 'stripes'. Unfortunately, I discovered it an hour before it ended, and so was not able to formally enter it, but I still cooked up a fun Illustration!



This also represents one of my new vector illustrations. This was created in Illustrator in probably 4 hours, I'm just learning! About a half hour of that was in Photoshop inking the original for live trace ;)

The next one (announced today) is silent! You will see an illustration for that in a later blog.
I've completed this, My illustration for silent!

Learning Vector for Stock Illustration

I've signed up to sell illustrations with iStockPhoto. This of course means I will have to switch over to Illustrator because they require vector and the filetype to be ai. This means learning a whole new workflow! I'll admit this seems rather daunting, and Illustrator is no breeze to learn. However I'm plugging through a lot of tutorials and I think I'll have the hang of it soon.

Reasons I chose iStockPhoto

• They have been around a while and I don't see them going anywhere in the near future.
• Someone I respect and admire has already chosen to sell designs there.
• After asking around they seem to be honest and reliable.

Signing up

To sign up for iStockPhoto you must pass their test. It's a pretty simple readthrough, if a little long, but important. You read through it and you answer the questions. You can have the page open on another tab if you need and look up the answers directly. They want to make sure you know the info. If you don't, and you upload something incorrectly, they'll reject it.

After passing the test you then have to submit THREE examples. I've made two of my 3, but they want to see very different styles, so you should put careful thought and consideration into it.

Vector Gator Love

Here is one of my examples

I'd love any critiques you guys have!

"Reimagine Yourself" Art Competition, Win autographed Tony DiTerlizzi merchandise!

Tony DiTerlizzi "Re-Imagine Yourself" Art competition!

I currently operate the facebook fan page for Illustrator Tony Diterlizzi. When I first joined facebook one of the first thing I did was look around so that I could "become a fan" of my favorite artists and illustrators. I found many there, Gris Grimly is really active on his! I looked though, and Tony just didn't have a page! So I made one. It was the first page I created. I now run one for myself and a couple for ventures I am working on. I've been trying to keep up with it, and it's been growing in size. I post fairly regularly updating when he updates his blog, or when an event is coming up, book is released (WondLa 2 is coming out soon!), or anything else of interest. Well one day, I happened to notice that Tony is among those who "like" the page. He sent me an email thanking me for running the page and then sent me a ton of good stuff (most autographed) to give away! Well I was pretty jazzed, and came up with (naturally) an art contest!


Anyways, the "Re-Imagine Yourself" art competition requires participants to "Re-Imagine" themselves as a character in something illustrated by Tony. (Spiderwick, WondLa, Planescape etc...) I received a lot of amazing entries, and I want to share them here.

To vote go to http://www.facebook.com/TonyDiterlizziFan and click like! Then click on the entry that is your favorite, and cast your vote! Voting has ended

I will be adding artists' websites/blogs/gallery links when I receive them.

Celina Guajardo

Ernesto Lomeli

Jason Karecki

WINNER: 3rd Place

Lisa Anchin http://lisaanchin.com

WINNER: 2nd Place

Sarah Elizabeth

Wendy McDowell

Ray Mera

PaulSapkowski
Winner: 1st Place

Aren't they amazing? Let the artist know what you think! Check the page out. They really deserve some appreciation for all their hard work.
http://www.facebook.com/TonyDiterlizziFan

I will be giving away more prizes, so if you keep an eye on it you might just be the winner! :)

Commercial Art: Business Cards and logos

I do occasionally create art for practical reason. With the exception of game art this is probably the most likely type of thing a person is looking for when they contact me. I thought I wouldd post a couple examples of something I've done lately.


Here's a bizcard I made for a local handyman. Isn't he cute?

Here's a couple Sun and Moon logos, I entered for a contest. I did not win (Someone provided a better typography) so these illustrations (and the text if you chose) are for sale if anyone is interested.

The sun/moon dichotomy has always been a favorite theme for me :)

Art At your Feet and other nonsense

Art at your feet was a blast. It only sprinkled once, and we (my sister and I) managed to keep our art dry! For those of you who haven't been following the blog, last year we were rained out!

There were lots of amazing pieces entered in, though many were reproductions. I completed a completely original piece inspired by "The Tell Tale Heart." My square featured Poe himself as the narrator, and Virginia Clemm as the body below the floorboards. I thought it appropriate considering her impact on his life. Her illness and her death, had such a profound effect on his life and works. In the background are the three "officers of the law" peer down upon him with a lantern. Around the outside edges were key lines from the story.  I tried to keep it rather PG since it was a family event, people were definitely mixed, but they all seemed to appreciate the detail and originality. I had a wonderful time creating it!
 

I've been helping to remodel my mothers new house, and that has really drained a lot of my time. I have created a lot of charcoal and ink pieces, but haven't been creating too much digital work. I will try and post some of my traditional work here in the next few weeks! Here's one example, a painting I made for a friend for her wedding.

Contests

I signed back into digital point and am having a little fun in the contests circuit. It's been a while since I entered them, used to be a lot of GD stuff. I found one good illustration contest though, this is my entry!

I brought the dragon indoors as well, so I'll be working on the body over this labor day weekend!