Tuesday, January 26, 2016

Emerging from My Chrysalis


I've been a social hermit for more than a month. But lest you tut your tongue and warn that my life's been a-fritterin', I've actually been incubating and metamorphing inside an art school chrysalis. I feel like I'm at the point in a movie where the heroin emerges after a training, soul-searching hiatus with superhuman powers. I hope.

Now don't roll your eyeballs when I mention SVSLearn.com yet again. No doubt my husband is ready to move on from my constant info-dump about 30/3 rules, inclusion shadows, spotting bean shapes and all sorts of other high-fallutins. But that team knows its stuff and generously shares it with the masses for a very small cost. (And no, they aren't paying me to say this.) I finally understand why I've felt dissatisfied about some of my work and what I need to do to improve it. Now it's time to apply what I've learned. Future posts will likely refer to much of this new knowledge in my constant quest to achieve better results.

Starting with the illustration above. Here, I've worked to create a focal point using light and shadow more effectively. I know that this boy would stand out more with a colder, darker background. But since I wanted to keep it light since the (unfortunately-true-for-my-family) subject matter is rather lighthearted, I tried not to overdo it. What do you think? Does it work?