~zeldaricdeau

Earlier I was thinking about what "art skills" I wanted to work on. There's so much beautiful work on dA, and I hope that one day I can produce work at the same level. There's skills I know I need to develop: some more basic than others, some directly tied to certain techniques and tools. There's a whole hell of a lot of them, and Lord knows I will never become a master at any of them, but I'd like to try.

I'd like to (in no particular order):

improve my ability to define form and volume using color
improve my sense of composition
improve on my typographic skills
improve my 3D texturing and rendering skills
improve my ability to use texture in illustration
develop both a painterly and an anime-esque coloring style that I can execute in less than an eternity
be able to make realistic looking vector images
be able to make photorealistic photoshop images

"You expect to do all that?!" I hear you ask. Well, no I don't *expect* to. I just hope to some day. Two different things

PS-
On a totally random note, I'm sitting here watching "The Fountain" for the second time, and I'm feeling like I'm about to cry again. This movie gets to me. I've never seen anything in a film that's beautiful in the same way that this movie is beautiful when Xibalba explodes.

Edited to add my club icons:



also currently participating in 's contest!

Wow!

I signed on about 30 minutes ago to find that I had 32 messages, most notifications of faves on my 2 major Snape pieces! I guess joining a club is a very good idea if you want to get your work seen. I'll try to get around to thanking everyone individually soon, but a big thank you here as well!

This comes after a pretty productive night of sketching. I spent 3 hours just sketching whatever popped into my head last night. What popped into my head included Snape (quite frequently and most involving Lily), Harry visiting his mom and dad's graves, Phoenix (aka Jean Grey), KOS-MOS (from Xenosaga), and Kefka (Final Fantasy VI). I may upload the sketches as scraps later on. A few may well make it into more evolved pieces. We'll see.

On another note, a have a few older works I'd like to add. Some scrappy stuff, some costume designs, some set designs, some more sculpture. Can't decide if I should add my graphic design work here since I have my website for that (whenever it gets up and running-*sigh*). I'm realizing (again) just how hard it is to represent sculpture (especially the large/installation/interactive kind) in photographs. Compared to the experience in real life, a photo is almost like a shadow of a sculpture, indicative of general shape but little else and potentially very skewed.

Now an excited member of:

PS - I'm putting my mood as "zest" because it represents, in general, how I feel, but also because I am overly amused by calling any state of being "zestful."

The problem with deviantART is that there are too many damn good artists on here. It's enough to make your head explode!

I get online to check my profile, with the intention of working on a sketch or two, only to end up spending an hour browsing through other's art that's so good it makes my own efforts seem futile. I'm especially amazed at the speed with which so many people can produce work and often without the use of a reference. How many times have I seen someone's gorgeous, fully colored in a painterly fashion, detailed piece only to read that they did it in 6 hours. I'd be lucky to get something half as good in 20. It really does boggle my mind.

Yet, I know it's a good thing. It's inspiration if I choose to look at it that way and a challenge to get better.

So, here's to the long, long road ahead of me.

I'd better pack a few years worth of meals.

-ZR

Still wanting to join

Can never have too much Potions Master Love.

So, this is my first deviantART journal entry. I've been coming here to ooo and aaaah over some magnificent work for a few years now and though I've always considered myself an artist--or at least someone who liked to mess around with pencils and paper --I've (obviously) never posted anything. Frankly, I forgot I even had a publicly viewable page! However, skipping over here today I noticed that I had several comments on my page from artists whose work I have favorited (is that a word?). Why don't I have any work up yet? Good question! I hope to remedy that here in the near future as soon as I can clean up a few old files.

And to all those I favorited ... you're welcome! You guys do great stuff!

-ZR