Hi everyone! I’ve been listening to the Three Point Perspective Podcast for a few weeks now (obsessed!) and this is my first post on the forum. I don’t know if Introductions are a thing here, but they have been in other forums I’ve taken part in so I thought I’d start off by saying hello.

My name is Veronica Mui, I’m coming from a traditional art background, no college art education though. I got married young and have three kids 10 and under. I ventured into illustration about a year and a half ago and am figuring my way around, working towards a consistent style, building a portfolio, learning about the business and how to create a book. My first love before art as a child was writing, so it’s been wonderful to start writing again and express myself that way, but I still have a lot to learn.

I’m excited to meet new friends here, especially now when restrictions in America are keeping people from gathering like usually (I miss my art people!!)

I’m obsessed with Jessie Wilcox Smith, Alphonse Mucha, Komako Sakai, Taro Gomi, Ludwig Bemelmens to name a few inspirations.

I’ve been an oil painter for years and really hit a rut when I when to my first illustration class and was encouraged to try watercolor...whew, that was a mess I fussed with it for a year before I realized I just didn’t enjoy it. So I chased printmaking and found monoprinting which is just fabulous so I’m exploring and pinning down what exactly it is that I love making - what moods, what poses, what lighting, what colors, et.

I would love to see your work and where your inspirations come from, or if you have images that show how you built your style over time, that’s absolutely fascinating to me. I recently found an incredible illustrator who I really admire and scrolled through his instagram feed (which was LARGE) and it was so interesting to watch his progression over the course of three years - you could basically watch his voice become clearer and clearer and see what he decided to follow and what he chose to drop.

Feel free to share your work here showing the progression of your artistic voice, with or without images of your greatest inspirations!

Here are a few of my recent pieces.

Here are some earlier works

And two of my biggest inspirations, Jessie Wilcox Smith (whoops, it was pointed out to me that this is Elizabeth Shippen Green, not Jessie Wilcox smith , how embarrassing, I should pay more attention... thanks, friend!) and Komako Sakai

Just finished this piece up.. posted it in my first post introducing myself on this forum before I realized there was a post like this...sooo....I’m gonna leave it here too because I love looking over artists shoulders

@dafoota Just wanted to pop in and give my two cents here because your comment hit home for me. I began my illustration journey about a year and a half ago and became increasingly frustrated - my style wasn’t coming together, I wasn’t able to finish a full illustration that I was satisfied with and even when I tried to tackle something more simple like just a character it was a fight! I did start wondering if maybe this just wasn’t the right fit for me, maybe I was just bad at illustrating. After a lot of navel gazing I finally realized it was the medium I was using! I had, without realizing it, put myself into a box - I am a traditional artist and traditional illustrations are done with watercolor. I was pushing away the things that were truly calling to me - what had been exciting me recently was printed artwork, collage, and mixed media! I was terrified to try those because I had no experience with them and was so scared that I would fail...But once I set watercolor aside and pursued the thing that was exciting (and frightening!) me, I found the joy in creating artwork again and that joy has been fueling me to keep going for the pure fun of creating! Try to pinpoint what gives you the most joy in the creative process, and think about what things are most important to you at the core of your being - what do YOU have that YOU want to share with the world. What feelings do you want your artwork and your stories to give your viewers. I realized that I want to share comfort, acceptance, mystery, joy, gentleness....Maybe a lengthy reply, but I hope some of my blathering helps! Best of luck to you.

Hi! Thanks for this info. I did see that category when I selected which one to look at from the drop-down menu...But when I went to make a post, I didn’t see an option to post into that category - it just gave me the option to post to ‘artwork’ without any other options under that. Am I missing something? Thanks!

Hi Everyone , I’m looking for input on my work so far. I’ve been working on finding and exploring my voice for the past 6 months and it would be really helpful to hear your thoughts if you don’t mind looking them over for a moment.

What I’m looking for:

• What is one strength you see in my work and one weakness
  *Which piece was your favorite and which was your least favorite
  *What feeling (if any) do you think of when you look at these

Thanks so much for taking the time to read this and look. I’m loving being part of this forum - you’re thoughts and artwork are inspiring!

Veronica

@Dima-Eichhorn I like that she’s got tattoos

@Elliot thanks! It took failing at what I thought I would be good at (watercolor) to try something I thought I was terrible at but that looked like fun. Now I’m just trying to chase the joy and let my skill catch up in time. Looking forward to seeing what you are working on

Loving this, looking forward to seeing it in color

@hakepe I feel the same.. even if he had a real issue he went about it in completely the wrong way - gave no opportunity for a discussion with the artist and just went straight to blasting loudly on the internet. It really made me angry considering the trend to ‘cancel’ people online - no consideration for the possible repercussions of his actions in the case that Mr. Parker is found at no fault (and I do believe he is at no fault)

@jsnzart thank you absolutely our kids are our models! And I’ve run into that exact thing already because one of my kids grew long legs and arms before I was finished drawing a book I was working on all the more reason to work faster. I’ve found it helpful to think about the feelings that I want my pictures to convey, not saying I’m there at all, but it’s something I hadn’t thought about before that radically changed my choices recently

@KajsaH thanks for sharing, I’m loving this mood idea one. I’m all about moods might have to give it a try

Hi everyone, so I have a question that’s just been burning on my mind recently which has to do with references. I used to pull a lot of reference from google, but beginning this year I stopped and only used photo references that I had taken myself, the worry being that I don’t want to share or publish (omg) finished images from references that weren’t mine...
Recently however, in making image boards for story ideas that I have, I began making Pinterest boards which naturally led me to sketch from those images again. Now, my question is, is it ok to pull reference from images that aren’t yours if you change things - clothes, hair, etc, and use the reference mainly for the pose? I wouldn’t even ask this if my style leaned towards cartoonish, but it doesn’t, I tend to draw fairly realistically. The expectation would be that these would be published images.
If it’s a resounding NO, I would love to hear how others go about getting their references for publications etc if they draw in a realistic style. I’m expecting that I would need to hire models and pose them, which I’m really not looking forward to if that’s the case that sounds like such a pain...I’m a good artist but not a good photographer ‍️

Thanks so much for any tips and information!

Oh yea, I love where these are going! I like the redesigned guard, so cute. I can really picture all the little diggers, and love your explanation for the seaweed hair, feels like you really know the world. Can’t wait to watch you flesh this out more

Same! I went back and tried again and my menu is the same - can only view it but unable to select to post there as it’s missing from my drop-down menu. I use a tablet, not sure if that makes a difference or not.

@Lee-White ( I understand if you’re too busy to reply to this, I just noticed when I went to start a new topic that there was already this topic on this class so I figured I’d post here)

I LOVED listening to this class and of course thought “oh man, I’m prepared now!” But it was still a struggle when I sat down to do the class work ...I really am not good at concept! BUT I do feel like I have a new perspective and new methods to try and I just need more pencil time.

This is my first try at creating an illustration for the “They knew this storm was coming. The little boat was tossed like a rag doll” sentence prompt.

I will post the other thumbnails later if I can find them, but sadly, they’re not much different. I need to work on doing more thumbnails because I find that once I have an initial idea I tend to stick pretty close to that, it’s hard for me to shake it and think up another one.

I really didn’t like the first finished image (the smaller one on the left) because all the colors were muddy and just ran together...The second finished one I don’t love either - I like the girls face/shoulders, and the colors in the sky...I don’t like her pose (Shouldn’t have followed the reference photo so closely...), why did I put a duck in the boat?? And why is it also yellow?? Omg. What a mess..Everything is running together again and the boat isn’t reading at all (why did I make that blue too??). I find it difficult to separate things using color, I need to take a class on that if there is one as well.

At least this made me create an entire image (even if I don’t like it) because I don’t get that kind of practice enough. I will probably do this over again several times and try doing more thumbnails...

Looking great! Your lines are so straight, it’s so satisfying to look at. It will look great painted - keep posting!

These prices sound fair to me, not too high, not too low, at least a good place to start and see if they’re generally accepted

Looks pretty structurally sound to me! I see it’s shrinking towards the sky also, really good job, keep working on it! I’d love to see your progress if you want to post how it’s going

I think this looks great! I love how you kept the shape and size ideas in the top corner. My favorites are the prince and the digger - that digger is so cute haha I’m hoping the story is about him/her, I wanna know more about that character! And of course the guards size is impressive - his shape actually reminds me of the robot from big hero six and the unimaginary friend picture book

Thanks for that Braden! You’re right, I don’t see very many spots of darker values - I’ll work on including more, thanks for your thoughts, I really appreciate them!