Photography & Digital Art,Art & Design,Visual ArtJUL 7, 2023

My Art Journey: Here Are 25 Of My Illustrations, Each Of Which Represents A Milestone I Have Crossed As An Artist

The period is post-school, I'm sitting on my bed as usual, bored, directionless and burnt out. The wave of relief that comes just after the slog of exam season has almost finished washing over me, no longer present to drown out the slew of thoughts and feelings only now bubbling to the surface, disrupting the still pool I was trying to create for myself….questions begging to be answered. The questions that most young minds face. Who do I want to be? Why do I want to be that thing? How do I be that thing? When do I even start?

How did I tackle ANY of those questions, you ask? Well….for a long time I didn't, not for a long time. I was drowning in those thoughts when out of the blue, a single droplet, a small urge lost to the vast sea that is growing up, resurfaced. The need to create. I looked back through my school notebooks and found that combatting the endless tides of algebra and theories on reality were…doodles. Little robots, trees, and men of magic and myth all trying to tell me something. A lost world, hidden in my subconsciousness.

They'd finally succeeded; excited at this potential direction, I took out a blank sheet of paper and started to doodle again. Ideas, once a trickle, now gushed forth, eager to be realized. The dry desert my mind had become was suddenly watered, growing lush and fertile as I eagerly consumed tutorials and literature on how to further this long-forgotten skill. Each one of these paintings represents a milestone I had crossed in my art journey. Whether it be in style, technique or mindset. I'm still growing as an artist, but I’m confident that I've answered at least in part SOME of those questions that threatened to drown me those many months ago.

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#1 Sky Whale

72points

I am an engineering student with a passion for design and art. I'm always trying new things and believe that my most powerful tool is my ability to learn from my environment and others. I'm in a constant state of learning and improvement as I learned early on that if I can't be the smartest I'll just learn from the smartest. Creativity, art, and design have always been in my blood, design lends form and structure by providing a process whilst art is an expression of my soul. To that end, if ever the time came to adapt my skillset to a new profession I'm more than equipped.

#2 My Neighbor

65points

#3 Cats And The City

54points

The most challenging part of the creative process is picking an idea and getting started. As the most enjoyable part is ideation (ironically) then new seemingly better ideas keep popping into one's head making it difficult to settle and get started. This can often lead to mental exhaustion and never actually starting a project.

#4 A Peaceful Place

52points

#5 Is The Future Really This Dark?

49points

Inspiration needs to come from everywhere. Anything can be interpreted in any number of ways. I can stare at a rock and imagine an entire other world. Maybe the rock is a strange creature that uses the rock as a disguise to ambush its prey. It could be that the rock is a new planet with an otherworldly shape due to a strange new set of physics we've never discovered. And the ideas go on. One needs to be on the constant lookout for new ways of interpreting the world. And I must say it's never boring when you have that paradigm.

In terms of influences for my style I'd say other artists who I admire such as Toni Infante, Kan Lui, and shows such as Arcane have really impressed me with their incredible art styles.

#6 Water Mage

42points

#7 Contemplation

39points

From my artwork I want people to take the spark to explore new possibilities. I want people to find the structure in the lighting and composition and use that structure as a foundation to then explore the new concepts I'm trying to convey.

A major design principle is consistency and familiarity with a dash of something new. The most profound things are most prominently conveyed through contrast. If we have a new concept yet mostly everything we see in the picture is easy to interpret such as the lighting and environment then the person has more mental capacity to interpret the new concept and is spending less on working out whether someone is a rock.

#8 Wait... Was That A Dragon?

39points

#9 Heavy Is The Head.... I Mean, It's A Rock, So...

38points

Especially in today's day and age with the advent of AI, I think it's prudent to remember that our artistic ability is in our ability to interpret our world through more lenses than anything else. Create a process, and learn the fundamentals such as drawing, lighting, composition, and shapes as this is what will help you build your foundation. This is essential because you can't build a new innovative house if you don't know how to build it in the first place. Learn from observation and practice. Then constantly try and interpret the world In different ways, look at anything, and make a story from it. If you create a process we can work faster and more efficiently and evade boredom or "artists block".

I've started a new journey through product design and adapted my art process into creating 3D renders and models, you can check my portfolio here!