Loosening Up

Does anyone have any good tips for trying to work in a looser, more concept art-y style? I always find myself trying to be really precise and controlled as I detail and work and I'd really like to loosen up a bit, figure out some other brushes and so on.

sometimes I squint or just let my eyes lose focus. There's probably better/more specific advice from actual concept artists.

I think you should try to do your next piece by experimenting with different brushes at the beginning before you put down any fine details. Just shapes and values to get a feel for the picture early on, that way it will stay looser I think, then you can slowly add as much detail as you want.

The best advice I can give Rebecca is too simply just... well... loosen up, ha. You need to be willing to erase or paint over everything and anything until you're satisfied or see interesting shapes to build off of. It helps to be really really fast at painting because then you keep that energy of starting something rough and that flows into the rest of the image. If you tend to be precise and detail a lot than I can probably assume you don't start with paint or don't start with large brushstrokes. Try to take some time during the day to just explore with your paint programs features and work in a way that you've never ever worked before. It might help to try painting something in your comfort zone, but starting a completely different way. So if you usually start a portrait with line and then color, instead start with large brushstrokes and in greyscale then move to color.

This will keep you loose and out of your comfort zone, also it will make you adaptable. Some things are better to start with fine details, some things aren't. But if you don't try different methods you won't know when exactly to use them

Something I'm trying to work on is to be bolder in my lines. Just hitting the canvas hard and with forced confidence. I think that is helping to get some level of fluency in my painting.

One of the things that I've been doing on my sketchbook is using a very light copic or prismacolor marker and roughing in shapes very quickly. I will only spend at most a minute on a sketch/figure/pose before I move onto something else. Then I'll tighten things up later.

I've done the same thing on a tablet and is helped a lot to keep things moving.

Honestly, I need to loosen up when I think too much or am too hard on myself by comparing my work to others, and this process for me helps.

One thing I do is just use one type of brush and I find the chalk types to be good for this set at just one size, 50% opacity or so and pen pressure on, and one color (I go with black since my thing has been greyscales lately.) My line work is my line work and I just generally like working that way, but I try to build up my forms this way with as large a brush setting as I can manage and it helps me to problem solve tough spots. My stuff isn't pretty like a concept artist's, I'm no where near that level, but it does help me be more accurate in the long run I think at least The important thing is to remember in digital work you really are NEVER limited by your 'mistakes' so why not just go nuts?! Most often it's more a mental technique than a straight up 'this is how you do it with these tools' thing.

BTW, for what it's worth, I thought you incorporated a very nice loose quality mixed with just enough focused detail in the right areas on your piece for Cancer