And yes, I think this is a good place for us to improve and grow!Hey, I'm Jeszika - I recently graduated from college with a degree in chemistry and the realization that there was no way I could stand to work in a lab for the rest of my life. I also realized that all those long hours and sleepless nights cramming for tests year after year, were hours I was not painting and writing. So, I decided I had to get over my idea that artists needed real jobs to support their art habit and learn to make a living at what I loved.
I have been a fine art oil painter for about a decade, but I intentionally tried to stay far away from illustration because as a child I was raised around very academic art views - that illustration was not 'art'. So I tried to purge my art of anything that could be considered illustrative so I could be an actual artist, even though as a child one of my main interests was scifi and fantasy illustrations.
In the last few months though, I had a sort of enlightenment - that there are thousands of artists making a good living at their trade - and a huge percentage of them are illustrators not fine artists. By returning to what I loved, I also would be part of an industry where artists can actually make a living as well. My goals are to do work that falls into 'imaginative realism' genre - though it seems I do have a style that shows through that isn't always perfectly realistic. But I am just starting and excited to see where I end up!
So, I have set out to teach myself to paint digitally, and to create a portfolio over the next year of scifi/fantasy illustrations. I have found that I am esp weak in proper planning of an image - thumbnails, sketches, value sketches etc and it costs me literally hundreds of hours in repainting and trying to fix problems halfway through the painting. I also feel very weak on perspective compared to my other skills as an artist - so I am excited to take the classes here at svs and improve on all these things over the next year!
Also for those interested - here is my deviant art: http://jeszika-le-viathan.deviantart.com/