Learning to Become a concept artist

Hey Guyz. How you doing? I want to become an concept artist and dont know where to start. Please help me out by telling me the basic training to take. Anything like books,dvds free training , evertything is welcome. I dont even know how to draw. So also take into consideration this also.Forgive me if i am posting it at wrong place and thanks in advance.

FZD School of Design YouTube Channel <— Lot of Concept Art advice here
Ctrl+Paint
Enliighten

Also, to add since I accidently hit reply too early. The biggest bang for your buck with drawing is learning perspective. Gnomon Workshop has several DVDs that cover it. There are a few Andrew Loomis books that cover it too.

There is a thread on ConceptArt.org by MindCandyman that is really inspiring as he goes from total noob to professional oil painter - unfortunately the site seems to be infected with malware at the moment. If they clear it up I’ll link it later.

Thanks for the reply. I will check the sites as soon as possible

Thanks for the reply. But can you really tell e like the road map of learning procedure to be a concept artist like in which sequence should I start learning…It would be much appreciated.And for the record i dont want to be a hardcore concept artist ,I Just want that I can develop some ideas on the paper and then make them in 3d.

Step 1. Study known artists and their artistic style. Try your hand at copying their work.
Step 2. Perform object studies(Google images: Object Study). Learn how forms and shapes work in real life.
Step 3. After years of building your skills, you will be able to form plausible shapes purely from your imagination.

Try not to put the cart before the horse. Sites like cghub.com showcase work that is the culmination of thousands of hours of artistic study.

Just try to draw what you want to draw - post it on art forums and people can point you to things you need to work on. Work on those things, post up another picture, rinse and repeat. The more you do it the more you’ll learn and better you get.

As greyoxide said, getting good at it just takes a lot of practice and time - like getting good at pretty much anything does.

You can also check out http://conceptcookie.com for a growing list of tutorials.

If you really don’t know how to draw and are starting right at the bottom, than I would highly recommended that you give Andrew Loomis’ Fun With A Pencil a good try. I could recommend a ton of books and videos, just check out my signature and you will know why, but I think it is also important to start at a level that you are comfortable with. The danger of trying out advanced tutorials and books is that if you fail to get the same quality that you see in some of those videos it can quickly become discouraging.

Andrew Loomis books have now been reprinted by his estate. I got them along time ago on pdf but I have read that the reprinted books are really of a high quality and worth getting. I will probably get them in hard copy when the time comes but right now I am busy with Bridgeman and Michael Hampton’s book.

If you really want to become a concept artist than be prepared for some serious hard work. I have my 500 bad drawing thread in the traditional sections going and its taken me two years to go from 0 - 100 my pace has gone up and I will probably be able to do about 100 drawings each year now. But this is serious hard work.

I can’t believe I forgot to list that. I even link to it in my sig. :confused:

Thanks all for replying. Especially. I cant believe my question was worth jonathon’s attention. I agree with tyrant monkey that trying advanced tuts at a beginners level is really frustrating. But I think i figured out a way to start in concept world by your advice. thanks all for replying

Best concept method for me…
Use Ctrl +print screen, open paint or gimp etc, Ctrl+V
or paste as new image etc
then draw on what you have to start with, or on top of a another layer that is your source materials etc, or even different iterations of the evolving concept, so you can roll back etc
Hope it helps =)

A lot of those links I posted aren’t advanced tutorials and they do cover the basics. Here is an attempt at a structured list of things to get you started:

  1. Linear Perspective - You need to know at least the basics of perspective, because it’s one of the few things you can’t compensate with reference and it’s also one of the few areas in art with hard rules. Stick with just cubes at first, but slowly move on to tackling ellipses, simple rounds, and complex rounds.

  2. From there, you can go through this playlist. You’re trying to learn Constructive Form. Which is basically just using the simple shapes we learned doing perspective to assemble more complex geometric forms. Essentially being able to draw something like an entire cup in perspective.

  3. From there move on up to trying tosimply complex objects into faceted planes. When you see advanced artists draw a face, and they seem to just know where to place lines like magic - they’re actually calculating in their minds this as they draw. This is something you basically spend the rest of your life mastering.

Also mix in some fun things with the exercises. If you don’t draw fun things, you’ll get burnt out and won’t do it. So after learning Linear Perspective try drawing your house, a castle, or your favorite video game console. Something to show yourself that you can draw. After you have even just a little of that confidence, it makes it far easier to learn new things.