Art Year in Review 2016 by Ram Studios Comics

Well another year in the books and it went by all too fast. Now it is time to reflect and make some well needed improvements to my art. I am decently happy with some of my creations of this year but I have also found some real chinks in my armor. I don't want to sound negative but I feel it is an integral part of growing one's art abilities to find our flaws. To fix something you must first acknowledge it's presence. And it is easy to look the other way when our work is less than perfect. A bad habit to get into if you want to improve.

So here are some of the things I will be working on this year and what I see wrong with my current work. First and foremost I will be focusing on my proportions. Exaggerating features is common in comics and science fiction illustrations but it must be kept in check or your art will border on the realm of amateurish. So to hone my skills and perception in that arena I will be doing lots of figure drawing studies. I don't think there is any better excercise for that problem.  Unless I can get my hands on one of those machines from the Matrix where you can just upload the data to your brain box.

The next thing I want to improve this year will be my knowledge in adding colors. I think a few of my pieces came out nice but my ability with the coloring process could be much better. I am confident with the application of the colors and digital painting but I need to know more about moods, color balances, color theory, and all that jazz. I have always enjoyed creating the line work the most but now it is time to grow past that.

And finally, I want to improve my backgrounds and compositions. Drawing cool characters is great but you can't bring them to life without amazing backgrounds. So I will be doing lots of studies where I break down the composition from all my favorite comic book panels. Don't worry, I won't steal any bodies work. I will just study the work and figure what my scenes are lacking.

There are lots of things I can complain about when it comes to getting better at my craft but I don't want you to think I am an unhappy camper. I am extremely grateful for where I am at with my skill set. I just really want to be the very best that I can. So I am excited to learn all that I can in 2017 and I will do my best to share that process along the way. So if you enjoy comics like I do, please stick around! We can learn together.  ;)

Robert A. Marzullo
Ram Studios Comics
http://www.ramstudioscomics.com