Books On a budget

So for those of you that don't know I am a huge book nut. I love all types from instruction manuals like drawing, and painting to software to fiction.

Not only do I have a wall of books but several other bookshelves . A series of ImagineFX magazines in the closet. And people always ask me how I afford all of them. First I buy a lot of old used books on amazon.com. You can get a lot of them for under $5. Your software books like 3ds max and Maya haven't changed that much for the basics. There are still a lot great sections in most of the books.

They talk about relevant techniques that are current like box modeling, edge looping and more. The these books are great starters to learn software.

Drawing books are so many and honestly there is a lot of junk ones out there. I love this book because it's a highlights the basics.

I also check out  Half Price Books for some hidden gems. And I look for sales.  Live model books just had a huge mark down on slightly damaged books so I filled in my collection of missing books.

So you can do it all on a budget.

Now I just have to read them all :)

Style Vs. Learning

I often am asked about how to get your own style. I think that one of the things that we don't understand as new artists is that style comes with knowledge. It is dependent on the information we learn and from where we learn it. If you learn your anatomy from a anime book, your style will be influenced with it. If we learn from classical paintings it will be influenced. All style is a collection of knowledge. The more knowledge you collect, the more you define your style.

Personal Site: http://richardblumenstein.com/

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Working on Art contest

Working on the @ArtStationHQ ancient civilizations contest, these are just some in-progress shots