Scribbles, sketches, and WIPs

Thanks Ky! C: Here's a more recent wip:

(might be the last update in a while; I need to write papers for school and Sai doesn't like the size of this file... but I'm really liking how it's coming along!)

...additionally, you can see a comparison between my first attempt at this picture and the new version here! I am so much happier with the new one... I never really liked the original painting xD;;; (did I mention that this thing is a repaint...?)

Duskglass: Aaah it's even prettier now!

Selini: Love all your Gaia art! How do you always come up with such interesting poses? No two are ever the same, I really admire that... and Syne is coming along nicely. x3

OKAY SO awhiles back I drew this for Mlen, and then ended up hanging onto it til now.

@Vare: O-Oh my~~~~ Ohmyohmyohmyohmy~~~~!
(I am SO glad I was lurking like this! <333)
THANK YOU!!!! <333 (Best Birthday Gift EVAR!)
I-I MUST REPAY YOU SOMEHOW!!! I MUST!

Everyone on this forum is so goood~~ I'm SO jealous!

Aww don't worry about that! Happy birthday! C:

been poking this thing!


(they are siblings :> )

Ahhh~! Precious babies! <3

For about half a second I was like GRAAAH I HATE YOU AND YOUR TALENT GIVE IT TO MEEEEEE. But then it passed and I was more like UFUFU and fell in love with your art instead. Everyone is so talented. I love you all your art.

Strange of you poke a piece of paper, Dusk. :O

I completely agree with Mashi!!! >w< <33

(and Vare, I will find a way~~
You did get your other piece from the Draw the OC Above You Thread right?)

That is so freaking adorable, Duskglass. I love your character designs. <3

Mlen wrote:

Strange of you poke a piece of paper, Dusk. :O

I thought that was how it worked??

Mlen wrote:

(and Vare, I will find a way~~
You did get your other piece from the Draw the OC Above You Thread right?)

I did! :D It looks great, thank you!

varethane wrote:

I thought that was how it worked??

^ isn't that what everyone does????

Paper? What is this paper you speak of? Is this the mythical substance I have heard of where ctrl+z and ctrl+t do not work?

varethane wrote:

I thought that was how it worked??
I did! :D It looks great, thank you!

As long as you got it, I'm happy~~ <3

No wonder I am not as good as you guys! I've been doing it the wrong way! Time to go on a journey for paper!!!

.....what does ctrl+t even do? xD;;;;

spoiler: even when I do digital art, I make a drawing in pencil first. (see here, which turned into this-- I literally paint right over the sketch.) I don't know what it is but it always comes out better that way... I know that a lot of people have trouble with the hand-eye co-ordination (or lack thereof) in digital? you're looking at a screen and your hand is moving around on a tablet somewhere else, which is counter-intuitive to what your brain is used to doing. But really, everyone works differently-- you need to find what works best for you. (though I'd still recommend doodling on paper in pen/pencil. do it every day for best results!)

Ctrl+T is free transform which is magical when adjusting sketches. It's digital voodoo. You can adjust the size and angle with a wave of your fingers of any portion of the drawing.

Your drawings do often seem to have some of the marvelous charm of pencil which I always seem to lose. Although the nice texture you added is all digital and I want to eat it too. You get used to using a tablet and barely notice the hand-eye thing after a while. I upgraded to one you draw on directly recently anyway. I think most people find hand drawn things more charming, but I get tired of my markers dying and am running out of room under my bed.

It may help that I deliberately left the pencils visible xD (with the Conor picture I decided I'd covered them too much and duplicated the pencil layer and pasted it on top of the painting-- so some of the shadows and lines in that one are in fact fresh, unaltered pencil.) I like the sketchy grubbiness of the scanned sketches; it has a sort of organic quality that no digital brush can truly emulate. I discovered sort of by accident (here; I left the pencils in out of laziness) that keeping that 'sketchy' element makes the painting seem a lot more alive.
(There is actually a SCIENCE thing going on here, having to do with how your eyes work-- a crisply rendered illustration looks 'stiff' because your eye can only perceive a small amount of detail at a time, so your brain registers a piece with detail everywhere as Wrong.)

Here I made a couple closeups of the Conor picture! (these are at 100%zoom.)

^this one shows the pencil thing best; I also made one of his face.

...I'll confess I don't use tools like transform very often... perhaps I still think too much like a traditional artist xD

Heh that reminds me of one of my favorite art teachers who would tell us not to get rid of any of our lines but to leave them in. His explanation was that it helps to make the drawings look more three-dimensional. Of course that was for nice messy sketches rather than your situation. I will ponder on the idea of selectively adding more detail to certain areas of a piece in order to give the eye a focal point.

I don't think you really need to use free transform since you automatically draw things to fit in the first place. XD I draw everything everywhere when I'm sketching and then make it fit later.

Mashimizu wrote:

Heh that reminds me of one of my favorite art teachers who would tell us not to get rid of any of our lines but to leave them in. His explanation was that it helps to make the drawings look more three-dimensional. Of course that was for nice messy sketches rather than your situation. I will ponder on the idea of selectively adding more detail to certain areas of a piece in order to give the eye a focal point.

That is a really good way to get lively sketches; I had a teacher who wouldn't let us use erasers on any of our drawings, which sounded horrible at first but we got used to it quickly (I rarely use erasers anymore, except when I've inked something and need to do away with the sketch entirely; recently I've started doing my idle doodles in ballpoint pen instead of pencil, and knowing that every mistake I make is going to stay is oddly... freeing?)

It's helped a lot with my confidence when I'm putting down the lines themselves, which is cool because I do love me a nice clean, bold stroke.

(On one of my recent illustrations here, I actually did the underdrawing in red mechanical pencil and then shaded over it with regular pencil; I didn't erase a single thing during the entire process, and when I brought it into Photoshop all I did was add a single layer of colour overlay and a couple layers of texture (I didn't do a single part of the actual drawing on the computer).

I think it's a pretty common teaching mechanism. Whatever you are doing, keep doing it, because it is obviously working for you. Confident lines are definitely a good thing.

It's strange but when I do draw on paper because of being trained that way I don't use the eraser that much now that I think of it...I use it more for blending than I do erasing. I usually draw so lightly at first it isn't necessary if that makes sense, with pencil OR pen. Plus if I draw on paper it is usually just for myself so...if I don't like the drawing it just gets a big angry face drawn on top of it. I understand what you mean by leaving mistakes being freeing. I wish I was better at drawing freely, because then I think I would draw more than I do now.

And yes...you are another one who has a nice traditional feel in a lot of your work. It's lovely (if you can call a man being torn apart lovely).

I do the same thing, Vare. Kinda helps that I write my class notes in pen. It does feel freeing whenever I draw in ballpoint pen. It also helped me maintain a variety of pressures for when I color in marker and such. :3

This was part of a video game proposal for class~ It's nothing compared to everyone else's work, but considering the stress I feel right now, I say that it's a miracle I was able to do this...

Mashimizu wrote:

I don't think you really need to use free transform since you automatically draw things to fit in the first place. XD I draw everything everywhere when I'm sketching and then make it fit later.

haha, I think this comes back to the traditional art thing? I've trained myself to not need to transform things because usually I couldn't if I wanted to xD;; (the most I'll do with digital is change the size of the whole image-- with Conor I didn't scan the sketch big enough to fit a 300dpi tabloid picture so I used the transform option with locked aspect ratios to scale it up.)

Your art is cute Mlen. You're working on a video game project in class? That sounds interesting/fun. Sorry you're stressed.

@Dusk- I see. Thank you for sharing your process with me I enjoy seeing how others do things so I can attempt to steal their technique.