What should I be when I grow up?

Well. I'm a 3rd year student now. Which means that next spring I will graduate with a BA hons degree. Yay. But still not so much yay. That means the time has come again for a gap in my life. Now I have to figure out what to do, how to get into the art market, how to get a job, if I should try to do something in Iceland or live in some other country. I was planning to stay in the UK for another year since my boyfriend was still there, but we broke up so all of a sudden my plans are different. 

I'm doing a CV assignment at school right now where I also have to research the job market. I'm kind of stumped. There are so many jobs and still so few. I'm not sure what I should try to apply for, what I might be best in, would it be illustration, concept art, digital art, storyboard? Or something else entierly?

One of my problems is that I haven't specialized in one thing, but that's kind of the Icelandic way to go, because most artists here are jack of all trades. But even then, the chances of getting something to do in Iceland are slim. 

So my dream right now would be to get some work in Europe in a game or movie company where I could work in concept art, illustration or some kind of promotional work. That is going to be hard I'm sure, the market is so competitive and I feel like most artists are supposed to know a lot about animation and 3D modelling as well. Which I find kind of unfair since learning to be a good illustrator is hard work as it is. But I was planning on adding some 3D skills anyhow while I'm at school. But yeah, after looking through all these jobs I feel like I might have my little toe where they have their heels. So maybe there is a chance that I could get into some company as the "lowest" artist of the low. But even if I would have to serve the other staff coffee for a year but be given a chance to draw for a good company I wouldn't complain...much :)

And just for fun, because I like having pictures on my blog, I took the first picture that google came up in the following:

Concept Art

 

(no author credits on site)

Illustration

(By Wes Watson)

Digital Art

(By M.R.M)

Storyboard

 

(By Kenneth Chan)

 

Went home to Iceland for a bit

I had to go home to Iceland for a while.(family reasons)  I'll be back in the UK in the beginning of December. It's always good to go home though, see my family, hug my dog and take a look at the beautiful scenery that we Icelandairs take far too often for granted. It's clear that winter is here in Iceland, the sky is thick with clouds, it's chilly and the beautiful mountains are shrouded in mist. This will actually be a great time to use the chance and take some reference photos for my school project, which I had to halt a bit while I'm here.

 I realised that I wish I didn't have to work over the summer, or need money at all, I just want to take a backpack, a tent and my sketchbook and colours and walk through the wilderness of Iceland this summer and just draw all day. It would be wonderful. Maybe if I'm lucky I can take a few weeks off and do that. Well if it won't rain all summer like the last couple of summers, that would be great.

When I get back to school I'll have to get busy to catch up all my homework. I'll have to hog the cintiq tablet at school then. Also I want to do some screenprinting if I have the time. I love printing like that, it's so much fun. They have a really good printing studio at the school and many other printing mediums I haven't tried becore. It should be a treat.

Here are just a few sketches from my other projects that I didn't chooce as my main, but I think I'll do some of the pictures anyhow.

Fairy tales

I'm writing a dissertation for my university class. My theme is about the original fairy tales and how Disney has chaged them through the years with their animated movies. It's a really interesting topic and yes I know it's not very original, a lot of people have written stuff about similar things. But I find it interesting and my tutor likes my theme so it's all good. The only problem is that the dissertation is only 4,000 words, and I have so much material that I could write a much longer dissertation. Maybe I'll just write another one to give my mind some peace and quiet. 

I have read through a lot of interesting topics on fairy tales and their meanings and the same with the Disney movies. I lot of them are quite interesting but in a few books I feel the author is really reading too much into things. Kind of Freud ideas and such. 

I also think I might have ruined Disney "princess" movies for me forever. I can't really "unsee" what I have researched and read about now. I mean, I already knew of some flaws in the movies but now there are quite a bit more I can't unsee. Still love the animation behind it though. But on the other hand, all this research has made me love Hans Christian Andersen even more. 

Not too long until I have to hand in a disseration summary so I really need to start tying the texts together. 

How does digital painting work again?

I have been getting a litte nervous about starting painting my project images. I have always been self learned in digital arts and was quite comfortable with it a few years back but put it to a rest while I was learning Illustration since the focus there was only traditional methots. So now I have been trying to make little sketches when I have time where I'm trying to find my style and method again in the digital arts. It's hard going back when you have been working with only watercolour and coloured pencils for 2 years, basicly. But I think the sketches are helping me, I feel like I'm getting the feel of this again and getting at a least a little bit more comfortable. The other problem is of course that I am very used to using lineart in my images and I decided that I would not do that for this project, so yeah I hope I'll get there in the end.

Couple of my evening sketches: 

Looks like I'm blogging again.

Well then. Since I never seem to keep to one website I have gone back to this one. 
I have mostly been using Tumblr for blogging but I don't feel like writing much there, so I though I would reopen this blog. 

For those that might come across this and don't know me, well then I'm an artist, probably an illustrator and am from Iceland. At the moment however I'm located in the UK and am studying digital painting for a year. 

I have no idea where I will be in a year from now. I know I want to start working, I want to get some experience. I'm really interested in concept art and illustration for games and movies but on the other hand I also love classical illustrations for books, card games, book covers and more. (and comics, but they are a pain to draw for long) 

So yeah, you can expect me to post work in progress here from school and personal project and probably some birds and silly stuff in between. 

Just to get things started, here are rough sketches for some of my digital paintings I'll be doing at uni.