Drawing / Sketching / Digital Painting

Rob_Anybody wrote:

Decided to change up the hands to actual articulated fingers rather than copping out and doing clamps. Also wanted to make some changes to the way the arms were structured. I think it looks better.
IMAGE(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/pukt41e8o1oumrm/domebot_23.09.17.jpg)

IMAGE(http://www.reactiongifs.us/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/clamps_futurama.gif)

I'm champin' for a clampin! I was channeling that a bit originally.

ALERT. ALERT. Inktober is upon us again. DO NOT PANIC.

IMAGE(https://media.giphy.com/media/NviswhEj82Vr2/giphy.gif)

I never get through a full list, but I'm going to be aiming for at least 10 drawings this month. If i can get those done I'll consider it a success...if I can push past that and do more, even better.

Here's the official list...

IMAGE(https://static1.squarespace.com/static/58faa30ee6f2e151cda11af0/t/59b807c0e3df28877c9105d2/1505232840681/prompt.jpg?format=750w)

And here's the one I decided to go with...

IMAGE(http://68.media.tumblr.com/8d41f8d2e521a751e893dc74f3d89664/tumblr_oe18tftKua1u24do3o1_1280.jpg)

Participation is MANDATORY

Spoiler:

It's not mandatory

I may try to participate digitally with my tablet. Probably not every day, but it looks like a fun project to attempt.

Any of our artists here have aphantasia? If so how do you manage it/around it with your creative process and your art?

I don't have aphantasia and in fact since I have taken a color theory class, all my concerns about my vision have been answered thankfully. However, I believe my chief creative process will work with people with aphantasia.
First I write down a bunch of random things. I pick three of them like say waffles, blue jeans and power plants.

I then scour google images for interesting pictures of each. Once I have a handful of pics of each, I look for one of each that may do something exciting or I feel inspired by the combination of.

I usually make vehicles/robots/aircraft but that isn't required for this. From there I sketch out the idea and CG model it.

If I had aphantasia, I would add the extra step of chopping up the source pics into pieces and then use those pieces to mix and match collages of the pieces.

There is also the random vector art program Alchemy: http://al.chemy.org/ that you can use to generate shapes to build concepts off of.

krev82 wrote:

Any of our artists here have aphantasia? If so how do you manage it/around it with your creative process and your art?

Wow. I had never heard of that before now. I think I must have the opposite, I have to visualise things in detail in my head. I wonder if it has something to do with people who navigate by street name vs landmark.

Was hoping to get more of these done by now, but been feeling really down recently and finding it hard to muster up the motivation.
Here's "Long" from the Jake Parker list.
IMAGE(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/o7a0m8saa1aipt6/inktober_05.10.7.jpg)
Was going for the "Long way away, but so close" kind of vibe. That just out of reach, but lost adrift kind of deal. I don't know how successful it is.

You rock Rob!

Yeah, nice!

I've had a couple of failed attempts at my next inktober sketch so I'm falling a bit behind. Third time's the charm though!...?

If you're interested in finding an online artistic community, I recently joined a couple of Mastodon instances and, holy smokes, it's a hotbed for creative folks. If you're curious but even a little confused about Mastodon, I am happy to help (and credit DamnableBear for finally getting me over the hump). Here's an art-focused Mastodon instance.

I'm going to get back to sketching/drawing and may finally get a modest digital setup working.

Cause I like tech stuff more then practicing drawing here's a black friday deal for a drawing tablet. 400$ bucks, not a bad option if a cintiq is too pricey.

IMAGE(https://ssl-images.newegg.com/ProductImage/Original/A2SZ_1314293746928271471nqRI8AIzj.jpg?w=1024&h=768)

link

Reviews are decent not perfect though.

I was just looking at reviews of more-modest tablets, after pinging the crowd on Mastodon for tips. IHateDRM posted this Wirecutter review which narrows down to the Wacom Intuos Draw and Huion 1060 Plus. The Draw is something like 3.7” x 6”, while the Huion is more like 6.25” x 10” for about the same price, around US$80-85. My favorite review of the Huion is this one.

Also, you may wanna give http://mastodon.art a looksee. It’s a Mastodon instance focused on artistic folks (though it’s of course free to all).

I've really let the bug to return to sketching grab me and have enjoyed a few YouTubers. Ahmed Aloori is one of them. In his two-part poses video series, he repeatedly discusses using the bounding boxes for figure drawing and I know it's fairly standard but there's something about his presentation that makes it click for me more than ever before.

Also I like his bit on making faces, and it's of course a nice excuse to watch pleasing faces come together. Not...not like that you sickos.

And now the idea of studies and warm-ups and daily sketches all fit my brain. I think it's been an attitudinal/brain-weasel issue that is subsiding. Which is pretty sweet.

So got myself a sketchpad and colored pencils because I wanted to get back into doing some art. I saw the Christmas picture I made a few years ago that I handed out all over the place at my Aunt's and thought "I can do better than this".

I cannot do better than that... yet. I sketched out 2B with a Santa hat and after evaluating the lower half of the body and struggling with the chest region, I determined I suck at drawing women and need to model them more. I am also awful with feet. In fact, if it's legs, then I'm pretty bad at it unless it is more loose-fitting pants (y'know, like the kind guys are socially expected to wear) or styled like Mega Man or something. And even then...

So I decided to just color it in to see how I am with colored pencils after about, ooooh..... honestly the last time I earnestly used colored pencils was high school, so... yeah.

Hoping to put together better works as time progresses.

IMAGE(https://orig00.deviantart.net/1a83/f/2017/335/e/b/2b_x_mas_by_ccesarano-dbvepon.jpg)

I went to a board game conference in Philly a week or two ago, and attended a panel about board game artwork. One of the artists there had me double-thinking my digital tendencies: he mentioned the permanence of ink on paper, which is how he prefers to sketch... and then he scans into the computer to color. It had me thinking... are we digital sketchers training ourselves toward "undos" rather than toward getting a line as right as possible? Even with a pencil... is that training toward erasures? I know drawing with ink pens would result in a whole lot more paper in the recycle bin for me, but it was still something I found fascinating to think about.

When I studied animation in college one of the earliest pieces of advice my professor gave me was to throw away my pencils and only sketch with pens and markers. And when we did figure drawing we used conte crayon and they encouraged us to use our erasers as little as possible.

In retrospect I think that was excellent advice. I learned to draw with confidence, and to put down exactly the kind of line that I wanted the first time. I learned to plan my drawings in advance, and how to best structure them as to preserve as much of the gesture as possible. I learned how to live with "happy accidents", and realized that permanent mistakes often led to creative solutions that I wouldn't have found otherwise.

I've never done digital drawing or painting. If I ever get the money together I'd love to try, but you can bet I'll be using the "undo" as little as possible. It drives me nuts to see twitch streams where people undo a simple line a dozen times over just because it's a bad habit.

Yarp. I've been sitting in on some of the life drawing classes from other college courses at UNI and I've been pretty much trying to stick to pen-only. Trying to break away from obsessing about getting everything exactly right and never bloody finishing anything!

dRailer wrote:

he mentioned the permanence of ink on paper, which is how he prefers to sketch... and then he scans into the computer to color.

Also Yarp. That's my preferred method of working too - hand draw in ink first, then scan and colour in photoshop. (or physically with watercolours over the ink drawing if it's on suitable paper).

I prefer to ink digitally since none of my pens give... well, honestly? Give that sort of "brush stroke" look I tend to like and want to go for. I might try it more now, though, so I can create an outline that looks better with colored pencil.

I have mixed feelings. Maybe once I get better at proportions but for myself I'm gonna try and get back to basics first with a pencil. Then we'll see about weening myself off of erasers and undo.

The reason I love charcoal so much is that the eraser is just another brush

I scanned in my picture for CptDomano's Secret Stan gift before sending it off. Gonna embed it behind a spoiler-tag because I dunno if it'll be huge.

Spoiler:

IMAGE(https://pre00.deviantart.net/42a5/th/pre/f/2017/349/1/0/little_witch_academia_christmas_by_ccesarano-dbwt2in.jpg)

I was a lot more happy with how this turned out. I had actually sketched out a Yakuza one for him with the protagonist singing into a karaoke machine and the due with the eye patch hiding behind the tree. I did better on the faces than expected, but proportions and poses were still wrong.

This one's not perfect, but I was able to find enough images to suitably model the characters off of and as a result they don't look too disimilar. Perhaps too tall, but otherwise a good approximation of Trigger's own style. I had gotten a 72 pack of Crayola colored pencils thinking they'd be a good cheap and fast option, but honestly I'm not at all pleased with them. I've pondered digging my old prismacolors out of storage but I know they take up more space.

I think I should probably practice with some fan-art. I used to sketch all the time but rarely colored, so I like the idea of getting good at coloring now as I get used to sketching again. Maybe I should do some Phoenix Wright characters next?

EDIT: God dammit, now that I'm looking at it there's two parts of Sucy I forgot to color.

Yeah, Crayola's stuff is pretty bottom of the barrel as far as quality is concerned. You're better off with...pretty much anything else, really.

My kids just both squealed in delight at your LWA picture. Just thought you should know.

ccesarano wrote:

I had actually sketched out a Yakuza one for him with the protagonist singing into a karaoke machine and the due with the eye patch hiding behind the tree. I did better on the faces than expected, but proportions and poses were still wrong

My dude. Please take another crack at this one and let me see it. I would love to see a Yakuza sketch

I recommend following Modern Day James on YouTube.

anyone tried a Samsung book 2 with s-pen yet? looks to be getting great reviews as a digital art tablet.

anyone tried a Samsung book 2 with s-pen yet? looks to be getting great reviews as a digital art tablet.

Let us know how it goes Guinea Pig ;P

Broke the sketchpad back out today because I had some obvious-in-hindsight inspiration for practicing body proportions and female anatomy without feeling like a pervert: cosplay photos. Nothing of the super fan-service end, either. Just costumes and postures that allow the female build to stand out in some fashion.

What I learned is that I actually need to 1) look at that YouTube video on how to draw faces, 2) start doing some still-life portrait/profile sketches of faces, or 3) stop simplifying or shooting for accuracy and just do the face in my style. I really gotta get back into the habit of light lines as well. My poor art teacher spent so much time trying to beat the cartoonist outta me and it's back with a vengeance.

Regardless, my sketch of Zelda from Breath of the Wild and my reference photo for comparison. This was a rough one for a few reasons, one of which being I didn't get the perspective right. She looks more straight from the side rather than at an angle. Second sketch was Tifa Lockhart using Princess RiN0a as a reference. Even though the face on this one is also meh, I feel a lot more confident in how it turned out.

Think I'm gonna try something with color next week. What's interesting is how often I felt – especially with the Tifa sketch – that I was going to have these super long legs that don't match the rest of the body, but in the end everything actually looks rather fine. After a few more I might see how I go working on a character without reference just to see if I really did pick anything up.

I like those stylized takes on the source. You rendered them nicely without overcomplicating anything. Nice work!

@ccesarano - did you see this anatomy poser program I listed earlier?
https://store.steampowered.com/app/7...

I would also recommend looking up Bridgman to get an easy grasp on heads:
https://www.amazon.com/Constructive-...