After completing my rock sketch work I wanted to see the next chapter of Feng Zhu’s class on YouTube and what he says about turning those sketches into concept art. I know in his last episode he mentions to do a lot of drawing of the same thing/ subject again and again, however with the time frame I have I need to speed my process up and learn the next process of how to turn a natural form or whatever the subject matter is in to concept art.

Here is the video. It is an hour long video so please skip through.

In this video what I thought was really useful, was the use of doing thumbnail drawings. This form of drawing helps you to sketch faster and get maximum detail in small amount of time. Also the artist is making conscious decision when he is sketching these turtles/ tortoise. He explain that for beginners it is better to draw a subject that is on its side profile, that way you have less foreshortening and the perspective is forward and focused, this is to keep it on a basic level and easier for beginners to draw. He is also drawing with pen or a medium that you cannot rub off, because when you make those mistakes while drawing, those mistakes will encourage you to keep those marks and use it as texture and detail, it is also to help the artist from being perfect while doing these thumbnail drawing because it is for you to just quickly draw and lay out the main composition of the subject.

In this image you can see that the artist has drawn the animal primarily on its side profile, given exception for few.

The artist also draws his concept art design in a thumbnail process, so visually he can get the concept down and work with the idea of how the animal, in this case a rhino turns into a form of transport for humans to go fishing on or to use the animal like a armoured vehicle for a worrier.

 

To achieve the concept design the artist does refer to secondary images of people riding on camels, horses, donkeys and other land animal that humans use for transport. Using these images the artist achieves his design.