I think I know what you mean, but I'm not entirely what I need to do. Also, I was trying to factor in the lantern as a light source too.
Alright, I'll give that a go soon. Thanks. :smallsmile:
Printable View
Another note, Diego - and anyone else who's curious - is that linework looks incredibly flat all the time. You need shading to add curvature. I'll illustrate with a commission I had done by the lovely Kojiro:
Sketch
Linework
Flats
Shading
Notice how flat the linework is compared to the sketch. I've found that extremely rough sketching with a 50% density pencil actually works well for getting things look natural and curved. And without shading, see how flat the colour work looks. Maybe seeing the stages of this will help you :smallsmile:
When linework isn't done in uniform lines, it actually manages to look rather well. A sketch certainly has its share of "sketch-shading", but when linework properly emphasizes surface edges with different-thickness lines, it looks fine too.
I still prefer sketches though. :smallsmile:
No new thing today yet, just finished the Kira Darkclaw pic. For a given value of "finished", since I'm still no good at large backgrounds. Oh well.
Link. (the PNG was 12 megabytes in size...)
edit: Oh wait, there was this silly thing too:
I've yet to make a good design for fillies in this style.
Yeah, I see what you mean. I'm not really used to drawing in that sketchy style though. That's something else I'll have to practice.
That's a great looking pic, Sean! (P.S. Have you ditched the heal/hurt game altogether now?)Quote:
Originally Posted by Sean Mirrsen
Day 152. Took another crack at shading that picture.
And since I didn't feel that was enough, I also did a quick Apple Bloom.
SpoilerDear Princess Celestia,
Today I learned that doing my lineart directly on the sketch layer leaves me with lots of tedious erasing of lines later on.
Your loving admirer,
Diego Havoc
http://i70.photobucket.com/albums/i9...oom-day152.jpg
Ack! That belly. What did I do? D:
Also, flat snout is wrong, but kinda cute.
Hm. I've hit a bit of a conundrum. On one hand, I should post the thing I made today as proof that I made it. On the other hand, what I've made today isn't something I should be posting, let along making. The options seem to be to either post it anyway, or quickly cook up something innocent-looking and post that.
It's... not any worse than the Cherry Pop image I posted (speaking of, here's some more cherry pop), but I somehow don't think it's something I should be proud of doing.
Besides, I'd prefer not to post it until the whole series is done. :P
edit: @Diego Havoc: I think the picture looks pretty good right now. You should probably submit it already, the deadline's practically here.
Yeah, true, but I think it's good enough now.
Ah, don't feel like you have to proove it that you made it. We'll believe you. You can post it whenever your series is done (whatever that is).
Or you can PM it to me. I wouldn't mind seeing :3
Arg! Ya got me, pardner! :smallbiggrin:
Thanks! And yeah, I already decided this morning that I might as well send it.
EDIT:
Oh, and I didn't get much drawing time today, some here are some scraps for day 153
xoxoxoxoxo
Yesterday was busy as all heck, so my new thing for the day had to be reduced to a half-hour sketch. Didn't even have time to post it. Touched it up a little today, here it is:
New thing for today still undecided. Maybe another one of Southern Sky, or maybe Thanqol's Mask in a compromising position of some sort... I don't know yet.
edit: and yes, the edit button is useful. It'd be more useful if editing at least lit up the topic as unread though.
That "nonpressurized" sketch is cute. Something I'd expect to see in a good children's book of some sort, I think. The watercolor face, slightly less so.
edit2: I guess I can post that image I made after all. Who knows if the series is even going to get done.
Parental Advisory, Content Warning, I'mNotSureRibbonsCountAsClothing
It's still a colored sketch, so I'm posting a resized version where all the phase one crosshatch isn't quite as visible. I might give it a detail pass later, but don't hold me to that.
(if you want a version without the bows... no such luck for you. :P)
xoxoxoxoxo
xoxoxoxoxo
Well, I don't think there'll be more science like that, exactly, but this was supposed to be a part of a series, so there might be more things like that later on.
---------
New (postable) thing for today, prompted by the Ponythread Skype group:
No, I've no idea what Napoleon actually looks like.
I'm having a surprisingly difficult time making that choice; not sure what that says however you want to slice it...
I've been curious - your line art reminds me style-wise of something I've seen before but can't really place. Do you have any big influences in that regard, or have you sort of found your way to the current style via trial and error?
The pony-ponies look solid! I'd be curious to see more.
Hmm, is this the Skype group that grew out of the IRC channel? If it is, I really need to get on there sometime... Folks keep having shenanigan-ventures without me.
New thing for today:
That's Southern Sky, if anyone doesn't remember.
Old things worked on today:
Fluttershy is pretty even without color (that's a job for tomorrow):
Old things worked on technically yesterday:
Derpy is best present. Still a small sketch, redrawn upscale in the works now.
xoxoxoxoxo
Ooh, she is pretty! And she looks a little bit sad too. She could use some belly rubbings to cheer her up :3
Her neck looks a little long to me.
---
I've still been drawing, but my heart's not really been in it lately. It'll be obvious from the quality of my art.
Day 153. Did some animation work, then scratched out some half-assed pony faces.
Day 154. Also animation, plus some wings.
Day 155. Snake! It's a snake! Oooooh it's a snake!
Spoilerhttp://i70.photobucket.com/albums/i9...ake-day155.jpg
Yeah, I couldn't be bothered to finish the scales. So sue me.
Day 156. Twilight Sparkle. Had no enthusiasm for this at all.
Day 157. Big Macintosh. Made his head much too large at first, ended up having to scale it down. Male pony proportions still throw me off.
Day 158 (today). Human arm. Attempted some hatching for shading. Don't feel that I learnt much from this though. Ignore the hand.
xoxoxoxoxo
Aye, that's an inevitable side effect. With the semi-realistic-ish proportions I try to go for, I just can't have a long-legged but short-necked pony. I mean, they are grazers originally, they have to be able to reach down a little. With the way their spine is located, their necks should be at least as long as their torso is thick to be in any way anatomically appropriate. That's how it seems to me, at least.
I've sort of been feeing that too lately. Maybe it's something in the planets' alignment? :PQuote:
---
I've still been drawing, but my heart's not really been in it lately. It'll be obvious from the quality of my art.
There aren't many things I can advise you on, because my way of drawing is decidedly my own, and I'm not sure you could apply it even if I described it. Mostly it involves making use of basic knowledge of anatomy and mechanics. Also, thinking in heads for proportions. Some base structural components like the skull, the ribcage and the pelvic area can be defined as circles or near-circular objects of easily comparable size, and then the body outlines can be drawn between those.Quote:
Day 153. Did some animation work, then scratched out some half-assed pony faces.
Day 154. Also animation, plus some wings.
Day 155. Snake! It's a snake! Oooooh it's a snake!
Spoilerhttp://i70.photobucket.com/albums/i9...ake-day155.jpg
Yeah, I couldn't be bothered to finish the scales. So sue me.
Day 156. Twilight Sparkle. Had no enthusiasm for this at all.
Day 157. Big Macintosh. Made his head much too large at first, ended up having to scale it down. Male pony proportions still throw me off.
Day 158 (today). Human arm. Attempted some hatching for shading. Don't feel that I learnt much from this though. Ignore the hand.
Spoiler
If you want to learn how to set up your characters to look like the show designs, you could try starting with drawing character rigs over show screencaps, and then gradually moving from copying the character design over the rig you've drawn to manually replicating the rig elsewhere and redrawing the character then. Sort of tracing by proxy. Make note of how head size correlates to chest and pelvis size of different designs, make note of leg lengths for different designs as well. I did something like that at first too, so maybe it'll help you. Of course, then I moved on to my own designs...
----
So, I haven't been posting here for the last... two days, I think. Been busy, and not in the art-relevant sense either. Still, I did do a few things, even if not all were great.
The day before yesterday, I colored the Fluttershy sketch, and was decidedly unhappy with it.
Needs cleanup. Lots and lots of cleanup. And better shading. I really think I should stick to sketches for the really pretty pictures until I get the hang of the tricky lighting like this.
On that day I also drew the beginnings of RD's picture in the Pony Presents series, but was also rather unhappy with it. Which is why the next day (yesterday), I've redrawn it from scratch.
I tried to color it, but was once again unimpressed (I keep getting RD's color palette wrong if I go by memory..)
And that was that! I'm sort of slowing down, which is to be expected. New thing for today still pending. Let's see if I manage to pull off Rikki-Tikki-'Tavia...
Day-before-yesterday's Rikki Tikki 'Tavia sketch, if you haven't been around Ponythread to see it:
Link
Yesterday was devoted to trying to do something about the Rainbow Dash pic in the Pony Presents series. A little redline experiment revealed a rather fundamental problem with the proportions, so I'll be abandoning the pic as it is, and redrawing it as something better.
Link
The proportions don't look bad, specifically, just not what I am aiming for. I separated the complete section I'll be redrawing so that it'll be available on its own.
Link
Today, I drew a pie chart.
Link
I tried to add a front view to the chart, but either something's fundamentally wrong here, or I am worse at drawing projections than I thought. I lean towards the latter.
Link
It's just nowhere near as pretty as it's supposed to be...
Sean (and everyone else in this thread) could you post links to your pictures rather than embeds? I don't have a 4000px monitor so every time I open one of your spoilers I stand a chance of having to scroll to the left to close it and then open it in a new tab where I can view it properly. The annoyance makes me less likely to check art here at all.
Thanks :smallsmile:
Partly because of that (on my laptop, especially, I simply do not have the resolution to deal with mystery spoiler boxes), partly because everything I've got to say goes into my own drawthread, partly because my expertise is very limited, and partly because people don't commonly ask specific questions. I'm usually lurking though.
Kicks thread.
Well, work is over for me and the summer indulgence has begun. So I'll be drawing more often and participating in this here thread and trying to make useful comments. Once a day drawjust like the old daysjust like I tried before.
Late responses are late, but I wanted to respond to some stuff anyway...
You heard'em, let's light this city up!
Spoiler
Late reaction pic is late,
Link
A doodle of a women with a tommy gun! And a Rattata head! Because, light up the city leads to the tommy gun and the noise leads to the Rattata and... Nevermind.
It mentions boobs! Burn! Burn it with fire! Think of the children!
To respond to all your more suggestive work, I can't say that I'm personally that interested in seeing ponies in such position(s), but censuring something so light seems kind of a bit much. Regardless, they look nice.
And that was some nice Cherry Pop! The drink I mean! The drink!
But how often *do* you get these type of requests? :smalltongue:
I luv that story! Nice one!
Could you be presuaded to revist it, but from a more dynamic angle?
On proportions, the neck is too long. I know you said that ponies evolved from grazers, so the neck should be able to reach down and munch on those grasses. But it's still aesthetically too long, a long neck is just not as cute as a short one. A long neck and a large head, even less so.
Cartoon and cute aesthetics say that a shorter neck would look much better. And remember, ponies aren't designed just from horses, but foals (Google image examples,1, 2). Maximizing the cute. Which have shorter necks then they do have legs and have to spread their forelegs to eat very short grasses. And bodies which are not as long as mature horses. That's why even if the show proportions are cartoony and abstract, they still look nice and cute and somewhat correct.
On the mechanics side, the neck would have to be a lot more muscular to support the large head anyway. A shorter (foal proportions) neck would work better.
On the sci-fi evolutionary side, I do not see why the ancient proto-ponies have had to come from grassland grazers specifically. Perhaps unlike equestrians on earth, they are less specialized to survive in a grassland environment, eating leaves on both shrubs and grasses, thus removing the need for a neck which is as long as their legs (they can always spread the forelegs to chew on the grass), remember, deer and related grazers also have shorter neck to leg ratio, in matter of fact, perhaps Pinkie's prancing/bounce means that ancient proto-ponies were a mixture of horse/deer, jumping over fallen logs and uneven ground in a forest like environments as well as grassland, this would explain why a longer neck and longer body would be a bad idea. And overtime, instead of evolving toward modern earth horses or deers or some other specialized herbivore they instead started to evolve higher intelligence and magic. Their larger heads and brains making a long neck a impossible adaption, and their necks even shortening a bit to support the head.
Day 61-66, or "I'll post more! Don't go slow pony art thread!"!
Spoiler
Link
Well, this one is far, far behind the deadline, but I cleaned it up a bit (But it needs some more cleaning) and I added the highlights today.
Things I learned:
I was having a lot of trouble with the highlights. Clean, or simple, highlights like I generally used just didn't work right. Then today it accorded to me that the characters were in a foggy bay and the light source was actually composed of multiple smaller lights. Naturally the reflective highlights on the characters had to be somewhat disjointed to take note of this effect. I'm not sure how good it looks, but it looks better then it did with the other highlights, so yay I guess. Still, I think I went a bit overboard on Citrus's leaf hair highlights, will have to play with it.
Also I learned that clean up is a pain, but useful and fun.
I want to finish this one by Friday so I can get back to my AJ pic. And then back to Samurai Equestria.
Also I was coloring faces! Historical-light faces!
Long live KingUtherArthurWilliamAlfredRichard, actually never mind.
Link
I'm somewhat pleased with this one as it was a coloring experiment, the very brownish red color scheme I seeded off a Byzantium fresco(?) especially for the face, so I can't claim I did it from memory. Still, it taught me a lot, so yay. Facial structure is off, but that's a work in progress. Same as the next one. They are not supposed to look realistic, still cartoony/abstract. But still, they aren't supposed to look like this off either! I need to work on that.
Link
This other one of Alexander is more boo, but whatever, I'll post it anyway. This one I tried approaching it using more white like the background it is on, but I don't think it turned out too well. I'll try again later. And the expression is horrible, I need to work on more open mouth type facial expressions. As well as everything else.
Bluh, I've been terrible about posting here lately. Some of that is because I'm far away from my tablet and scanner, and most of the rest is because I'm still wrestling with huge and obvious flaws in the current project.
Once I hammer those out and have something worth progressing on, I'll be sure to post it for second opinions, along with some long overdue comments on other folks' work.
Anyone serious about learning should go read these books ASAP.
Hi, drawing-branch-of-ponythread!
http://i.imgur.com/LSM9w.png
Following discussion in the main thread, this pony is intended to represent the thread in an 'ask ponythread' tumblr. Could I ask for any further advice on improving this pony? (I've had quite a lot of help already in the IRC channel, but I thought I should post it here in case there's anything I've missed.)
Hope you come back soon!
Will keep the thread from becoming too stale, since I have more time for art these days.
I was looking for a good anatomy book, will read them all, thanks for the references!
The design is nice and the body's fine, but the main thing which could probably be improved is the head I would say.
The head seems a bit too wide, and the left eye should be smaller, since it's further away from the viewer. As it is now, both eyes are practically the same size. Compare it with Twilight's head in this.
I doodled over it to show you what I mean, it's rough and I messed up the size, but a picture is worth a thousand or something. Take all this with a bucket of salt. Eye, ear, and head size and so on would depend on your own personal pony style, it's just the lack of foreshortening with the eyes that is a bit jarring. If you fix the head I think the image would really improve a lot.
I hope this was helpful, rather then random blabbering.
Day 67-68, or "Waves and Lights".
Spoiler
Link
Things I learned,
It's all in the contrast(!), before in the picture I posted awhile back the colors were all dark and splotchy, there was light but it was subdued and closer to grayish. It made the whole picture look dirty and dangy. But by just following Diego Havoc's advice and lighting the city up, not only did the city look better, but the character's colors looked more distinctive, even if I did not change them that much at all, only playing around with the shadows. The base colors stayed the same. It's all in the contrast between the darkish characters and sky and the lit up city.
I lit up the city even more, by adding more lights on the water and I also added distant subdued lights to hint at distant buildings in the fog.
On the water I approached the waves like little mountains. Not sure if this is the correct way, but it is what it is.
Now all it needs is one last clean up round and that blasted fruit needs to be colored in some more.
Thank you for the advice, and especially for the drawing! You're definitely right about the head shape - even though it's there in every still I've been looking at, I somehow failed to give that eye proper foreshortening, and now I see it, it just looks weird :smallredface:
Here's a work in progress. I'm having trouble getting the pupil size and positions to not look terrible, and the shape of the left eye may well change again... probably best to leave that until morning by now. The head should be more proportionate, now, at least.
Thanks again to everyone who's looked at some version of this and given me advice.
I'm glad the comments helped!
On pupil size and position, I must admit I'm not very good at that.
However, to nit pick, in ponies the iris oval is almost always slightly more elongated vertically on the top then the pupil oval. 1 2
I would elongate the iris oval on the top and also increase it's size just a tad bit.
Thanks! :D
I just wish I could do art a bit faster!
Nothing to post today, I did draw a bit and worked on the picture and a side project a bit but my attention was divided today. I'll post something tomorrow.
My own deadline for the picture to be finished by flies by again!
I'm slowly sinking my teeth into this mass of material. There are some great insights there, though largely having nothing to do with drawing ponies. :P But I guess the methods shown can be adapted to anything. I'm especially interested in scene composition methods there, can't wait to try them out.
...in the meantime, I've been rather lax on my "one new thing per day" task, though I do my best in regards to doing at least some drawing every day. Most of the new things I did draw have been posted on the main ponythread, but I'll repeat them here for the sake of completeness. Plus one I didn't post, which is the first in the lineup, and the one I've been tinkering with, which is last.
Link (Random pegicorn structure chart)Spoiler
Link (Ponythread-chan in the playground)
Link (Random thing)
Link (My OC, Southern Sky)
Link (Derpy Hooves pic in the Pony Presents series)
xoxoxoxoxo
Hi, everyone* here --
Looking at the considerable number of unfulfilled requests in the ponytar thread, I went and did one I found interesting. Now that I have finished it, however, I looked at the request post and found my design did not quite meet the requester's specifications and refs. Well, I tried my best, but now feel anxious about posting it, so I felt I should post it here first.
One of the hardest parts about ponifying established characters from other media is deciding on their coat colour, I think. One needs to pick a colour that looks good, but also fits the personality of the char. The requester suggested a light pink or white coat colour, (similar in colour to the dress the original char wore), but I chose a darker shade of her mane because I thought it looked better.
I did all the "inking" and colouring with the XP version of MS Paint, so please excuse the pixellation. I really need to try another, superior application soon. Just having *layers* would make it much less time-consuming. Well, I work with what I know, eh?
Link to the "raw" version.
Link to the same image resized with Irfanview
Hours put in: around 6?
*(Or should I say "everypony?")
Also:
@Bakuel: I really like your Day 67-68 pic- especially the buildings.
Also2: (Because I spent more than half an hour nitpicking on this post)
@flyingchicken: I'm not sure how to say this, but I would worry about what the rules say regarding the eighth and fifteenth pics from your last post. (I've read your art thread before, I liked the eccentricity of your doodles).
xoxoxoxoxo
See, I did say I thought it was difficult. :smalltongue: I'm not surprised that I didn't get it right on the first try. Basing coat colour on the colour of the character's clothes just seemed strange to me. Well, I also didn't closely follow any reference when I coloured it. I'm pretty new to Touhou; the main pull to the series for me is the awesome music. I haven't yet immersed myself in the fandom. It is intimidating in its enormity. Kinda like MLP.
Here it is again, correctified (I also replaced the hair colour with something with a little more purple hue.):
Link
Just figured I'd let you all know I'm still around, lurking. I'm still doing the draw-a-day thing, but frankly I haven't produced anything I feel like posting.
I really just want to stop. Every day I put off drawing until later and later because I don't feel like doing it. When I do, I do something half-arsed, usually just another pony body because I can't be bothered with anything more complicated. I also did a couple of traces.
I dunno. I'm not enjoying this. I want to stop, just for a few days, but I'm afraid that if I do, I'll never be able to pick it up again. But I'm not really learning anything or improving right now either. What should I do?
Oh, and Bakuel, the night time Tropius pic is looking very good!
SpoilerThanks again for the advice! How does this look now?
Edit: Changed it again somewhat.
http://i.imgur.com/8qQgj.png
Previously this post had:
(This was an earlier version, maybe I should try again from there? Not really sure)
Edit: Following advice from the IRC channel, I need to make significant changes. Spoilering these.
xoxoxoxoxo
Here's the latest version of the ponythread pony. Thank you again to everyone who has helped me improve this. This should now have correct proportions, and generally be much more accurate to the show, but I'd be very happy to receive more advice! :smallsmile:
http://i.imgur.com/NPLDo.png
Thanks! :smallbiggrin:
That's some good stuff, your doodles are always so lively! I really like the halfling/hobbit(?) design in your work in progress. I hope she gets colored.
On the nudity thing, I don't think non-pornographic artistic nudes will bring down the ban hammer unless it's excessive. But I would stay away from showing the genitals.
At least I hope you keep posting them, I like your nude sketches. Not in that *way* but there generally interesting and fun to look at.
SpoilerO Tom Preston, your art is mediocre, your panel layout unimaginative, your character concepts uninspiring. All this would be forgivable, if you were just another guy focusing on improving. But your popularity is most mystifying.
Looks nice, the new color is better.
On the color thing, most anime/cartoon/comic character designs have somewhat defined and specific colors. I can't imagine her base color not being pink. Sure it may be just her clothes' colors, but those clothes define her. :smalltongue:
Alright, I know you probably don't want my advice and you should do what you think is right and so on. But I have to throw my 50 cents in the arena.
Or whatever.
Diego Havoc,
SpoilerTake a break! No, this is very, very important. You need to take a break.
There are plenty of stories of artists, amateurs, professionals, and masters who have gotten burned out and abandoned their craft. What was done before out of passion, love or simply fun, started to be done only out of obligation, either to a schedule, clients/fans, or what have you.
This can only lead to resentment.
Don't feel bad for taking a break and you shouldn't worry about not coming back. If you have ever enjoyed drawing or making art, then you'll come back when your ready.
You've been doing the daily draw for a quite a period of time and should be proud as it is quite a achievement. Personally I find it admirable. However, there are three reasons why you shouldn't feel bad taking a break. (Bare with me here)
First off the reason you started it was presumably to get better and/or for fun. If you aren't getting better and you aren't having fun anymore, then perhaps it's time to stop and take a break. While I think a daily schedule and deadlines are useful and have a place for some, they can be done to excess.
The second reason you should take a break is that, speaking from personal experience, taking a break from something can actually help you learn in the long run. After taking a week or so off, I find that I can look back on my old art with fresh eyes and see the flaws in it much easier. Then I can go about and try to improve. I find that the only thing during these breaks I tend to forget is unconscious bad habits. It might seem contradictory, but my biggest jumps in skill have actually come about after half of year or more "breaks". I hope you don't take a vacation from drawing for that long, but you shouldn't feel ashamed for it.
The third reason is related to what flyingchicken said, find something to inspire you. If, for instance, you feel fresh and enthusiastic about ponies and you can't help but think about ponies and imaging ponies, then it is easy to keep up a daily draw for a while. But if you find your inspiration to draw wane, then it's best to just take a break and look around. As flyingchicken said, look at other artists. amateurs, pros, masters or what have you.
But don't forget to just observe the world around you, the greatest and most original inspiration is reality.
Forgive me for the rant, but I had to say it. I apologize.
Thank you! It's taking forever and a half to finish though!
I need to work on being clean in the beginning so I don't have to spend so much time cleaning up later, this will be the biggest lesson I'm taking from this one.
@Bryn
It looks much better! I cannot find any nit pick worthy things about it. It is very show accurate.
I hope this isn't the last time you make anything pony related!
I'll post something tomorrow (I said that last time, herp derp). Mostly I've just been cleaning up the same picture, there really isn't much to show or tell. I'll edit this post if I doodle something up.
I feel like I should be the voice of cold authority here and say that you should keep going despite this. I have been, many times, in a relative funk with regards to my drawing. I half-ass things and they come out half-assed. I lose motivation and other demands take up my time and a cycle forms. It's easy to quit.
When that happens, don't quit. What you should do is something fun.
Bust open SAI and grab a bunch of random brushes and spin all the dials and settings and GO NUTS. Splash colour around! Switch layer settings and texture details. Try to paint something weird and ephemeral, like a night time sky, or the ocean, or the surface of the sun. Don't worry about all the petty details like proportions or consistency or any of the hard, grindy, technical bits. Just let yourself off the hook and play with it. See what you come up with.
Painting - not drawing, painting - is absolute fun. You'll learn so much in the process.
I'm going to be doing an experimental picture of Hoity Toity tomorrow. If people are interested, I could talk my way through it and what I'm doing.
Here's the sketch layer.
What's going to be experimental about it?
Also, I have been drawing things, but mostly it's things I'm not entirely happy with. Trying to practice drawing pony heads, I think I accidentally stumbled into a previous generation, for instance. I should really try to start using references. Can't trust only my memory any more.
I saw this style here, with the really thick, solid black sketchy outlines and I'm going to give it a spin and see if I can get it to work for me.
Ooh, that's interesting. I might want to try that myself sometime.
If I may offer an opinion, this sort of sketchy-outline style works best for characters in action-inclined scenes, because the slightly chaotic lines imply some sort of strain, tension, energy. Your sketch has Hoity Toity in a fairly neutral pose, so while it will still look good, it may not quite achieve its full effect.
edit: ...aand now you've made me draw Hoity Toity. LOOK WHAT YOU'VE MADE ME DO!
(preferably after you've drawn your own. Not sure how it works for you, but I can't help but be affected by images similar to what I want to draw)
It's not large, but Link.
Incidentally, I would still like to see the "talking yourself through the making" thing you've offered to do. It might offer insights I am incapable of grasping on my own.
A concern I had, but we shall see.
Ha! :smallbiggrin:Quote:
edit: ...aand now you've made me draw Hoity Toity. LOOK WHAT YOU'VE MADE ME DO!
(preferably after you've drawn your own. Not sure how it works for you, but I can't help but be affected by images similar to what I want to draw)
It's not large, but Link.
Let's do it!Quote:
Incidentally, I would still like to see the "talking yourself through the making" thing you've offered to do. It might offer insights I am incapable of grasping on my own.
Step 1: Sketch
I've made an enormous mental breakthrough with sketching recently, and curiously I put a lot of it down to the brush settings I've got for my sketch pencil. A solid line you obsess over and fiddle with, a sketchy pencil-like line you feel more okay with erasing, drawing over or fiddling with, Resultingly, this step was curiously easy for me.
Step 2: Flats
Square brush + Eraser. Just getting the shapes filled in.
Step 3: Render
Render brush to add shading and depth. It's a relief not having to fuss over the outlines.
Step 4: Solids
Throwing down some regular round brush strokes to add some irregularity.
Step 5: Outlines
Solid black everywhere, yo.
Step 6: Complete
Breaking up the outline with the eraser and cutting the shapes down to size. This part took a surprisingly long time but that's mostly because I hadn't done anything remotely like this before.
Total time: 2.5 hours.
I'm so bad at posting here these days. :smallredface:
That Hoity Toity pic is fantastic, Thanqol. Excellent work!
Thank you for the advice. I think maybe sitting down with some tutorials is a good plan. I'll have a look through those old figure drawing books you posted a while back, plus some of the random special effects tutorials I find on dA, those are usually good for inspiration.
Objection! I DO want your advice! That's exactly what I'm after! :smallbiggrin:
Alright, I'll consider taking a break. I certainly would like one.
And then there's this. I'll be honest Thanqol, I respect your opinion, but I'm starting to think that while the daily draw thing worked for you, it may not be for me.
Still, I'll carry on for a while. I'll try a mix of the advice given: take a break from drawing and instead spend time with tutorials and messing about. I've tried out what you said; I opened Photoshop and just kinda played around. Yesterday I fiddled with the filters (lesson learned: the stained-glass filter is pretty cool) and the day before I tried out a whole bunch of different brushes (lesson learned: there's a brush which would be pretty good for sparkly magic type effects). Dunno if I can say it was fun, but it was interesting.
Just one thing:
This... This is probably going to sound stupid, really stupid, especially in a thread full of artists, but... what's the difference? I always just thought of painting as drawing, just with paint.
I don't know if this is what Thanqol means, but my view of it is that drawing deals with line, whereas painting deals with color. Shape vs. form. Appearance vs. identity, although that one's lines are not in quite the same places.
Personally, I have in the past gotten more enjoyment from drawing than painting, but then I wouldn't say that I've had enough practice at painting to consider myself sufficiently skilled at it.
Picture in commemoration of my (or technically my avatar's) 27th birthday.
Link (1900x1100 img)
Southern Sky should brush up on her cooking. Plus, I think that applied meteorology and cooking are like hot and cold air currents - it's better if they don't mix. :smalltongue:
Went through a bit of a funk and my art suffered. I got better though!
Great Hoity Toity and food for thought.
It's amazing that you did it in only two and a half hours!
Happy late avatar birthday(?)!
Not only does the cake have a rainbow in it, it also has it's own water cycle. Best cake ever.
Nit pick:
Southern Sky's eyes with the angle of her head seem a little off. She doesn't seem to be looking at the viewer but slightly off, which makes the picture feel a little weird.
Don't feel too bad! I always thought of it the same way. A painting is a picture made with paints. That's it. A drawing is one made with pencils, ink, or charcoal or whatever and (generally) monochrome. At least that's what I always thought.
I like Thaqol and Kd7sov's definitions dealing with linework though.
Day 69-75, Or "Sunshine and Celery Stalks"
SpoilerDay 69 is when everything went wrong. I never was good with 69.
Moving right along,
I barfed colors. And not the good kind.
Link
But then I got better after roaming around for a few days in a daze and drawing garbage. During this time I did clean up and finish or at least stop tweaking the Tropius night cityscape picture.
Mostly I added more lights on the ground level and cleaned up some lines here and there.
Link
One down, now it's time to start from the top and do it all over again!
I started working on the AJ versus Wispy Woods. Once again it's like I spat colors all over the place. But it's a work in progress as you can see. Mostly just some shading and base colors. The clean up will be long and hard for this one.
Link
Onward to more entertaining things!
Link
It's possible for someone to love those celery stalks a bit *too* much if you know what I mean. Sure those bitter little stalks have a sexy crunch, but you need to control yourself. *nods sagely*
Besides AJ's cheating on the apples.
I heard that I use too many dark and saturated colors. So I decided to lighten things up a bit. I actually have an unholy love of desaturated colors and watercolors and stuff like that.
Applejack is supposed to be tiding up the celery stalk crop dirt pile thing. Or whatever it is people do with gardens and growing things with dirt and stuff like that. The pose and intent got away from me and now I'm not sure what she's doing, swaying around like a love struck leaf in the wind. I also realized I had forgotten everything I thought I knew about pony anatomy but didn't. Need to work on actually learning that.
Anyway,
Things I learned,
Once again, it's all in the contrast. Before I applied the darkened lines, it looked like this. Very dirty, too bright, and ugly. But when I went back and put the darkened lines in, it looks much cleaner and not as bright. Okay, it's still dirty, bright and ugly. But still, it looks cleaner and darker just because the brain has darker lines to build the picture off of even if the base colors are the same. The opposite of the night picture, were brighter lights made it seem cleaner and brighter. This may seem elementary, but my life is a long painful lesson on the groking of elementary concepts.
Random non-pony art!
Yesterday it was hot and I wanted to draw something dealing with winter. So I did! Well, ok... Maybe not. It's just cat children bullying a lizard. I dunno.
Link
xoxoxoxoxo
Hello ponythread. I'm cross-posting this from the avatar thread, since the most criticism one seems to be able to get over there is "It's great, thanks!" or "Could you change XYZ small thing?"
Anyways, this is my try at a Warhammer 40k tech-priest pony that was requested, and I'm looking for criticism/advice. This is the ~third pony I've drawn (the first being my avatar, the pony parts of which were actually made by the pony creator, the second being another avatar request), and my first ever time using photoshop.
Here it is:
Some things I can already see that need correcting:
Spoiler-The rebreather is slightly out of position with respect to the eyes
-The 'cutie mark' on the robe is out of style, and not properly bent around the curve of the body
-The right shoulder portion of the robe is too small
-One mechadendrite is much more 3D than the rest of the image, but nonetheless lacks curvature in a few places
-A significant overdose of solid red (I was trying for a showlike style with no shading), as well as a general primary colour overload (I was trying to keep things simple though)
-Front leg merges with the body
-I derped and missed a spot on the brightness correction layer mask
And a question for the photoshop users: How many layers would you expect to use in a plain drawing like this one? I don't know if I should be try to use more or less, or if its just personal preference.
xoxoxoxoxo
Thank you! I knew it didn't look right, but having little to no art knowledge (especially about colour) I had no idea how to fix it. Not knowing what is wrong makes it hard to do a google search for it (as stated in my obvious error section: "there is too much red"). The best I could come up with was lowering brightness.
As for the blue pony, I agree, but it was what was requested. How would you recommend changing it, so it looks better but is still blue?
xoxoxoxoxo
There's plenty of blues. Look at, for instance, Rainbow Dash, Soarin' (including the Wonderbolt uniform, but also his mane and coat), Mrs. Cake, Photo Finish, Sapphire Shores (mane), Princess Luna, Fancy Pants (mane), Shining Armor (mane, mane, and mane), The Great and Powerful Trixie, the sousaphonist in Octavia's group, Twilight's father, the jelly with which that one stallion was strangely obsessed...
I haven't been drawing a whole lot, mostly due to issues with eye strain and concern about vision quality in general. I guess my body wasn't ready to keep this sort of thing up. :P
I did draw something more or less decent, for one Alex Gann, who you might know as Slag, the author of Special Delivery (the RDxShipping fic), whose birthday it is today, June 24th.
Link (1900x1300 img).
Oh well, I really liked the hat... Are you going to try again maybe?
Glancing over it, I realized that then she would be lower then the other characters waists. I never realized halflings were so tiny. For fantasy races, waste height was always my personal if-you-are-below-this-height-I-cannot-take-you-serious level.
It must be his award winning personality!:smalltongue:
Tip noted! I used it the other day to good effect! Who knew? Start with large shading large brush, then go in for deeper shading with smaller brushes. Still blotchy, but I'm just a dirty guy like that, I'll work on it.
The funny thing about the colors and shading is that I notice a lot of things wrong with them. I don't know if one of them is the one you are referring to or all of them at once.
Spoilered longer response,
SpoilerIf you want reasons why the coloring looks off, I have a dozen and a half.
One problem is that I'm approaching shading like I sketch and doodle. With a thousand light strokes and then going back and hinting at where the line or shadow should fall. At best it's generally soft. I treat everything like a round ball, even when it should be shaded more like a square. In other words, I treat the more angular spaces on surfaces like rounded parts. If that makes since.
What I need to start doing is drawing a line in the sand and making a stand! The shadow is here, it is defined, and it will fall no were else! Dang it.
Another problem is that I don't treat the contrast/light values right when I pick colors. The reason my night scenes always look marginally better then my daylight scenes is because saturated colors come out best with low light. Hence, while Flying Tropius and Pony Vampires, while still amateurish, come out at least looking a bit like something and are more popular unlike my daylight scenes which turn into steaming piles of cow manure.
Finally, besides pony colors which are seeded from screenshots I tend to chose colors at freehand. So my color choice is often off. Metals don't feel like metals, cloth doesn't feel like cloth, hair doesn't feel like hair, flesh doesn't feel like flesh. A bit silly using "feel" for seeing, but I want to say something deeper then just "looking" like something. Even though this is a visual art which makes it rather silly. I mean it's all looking anyway, right?
But I digress, I'm working on it. Those colors of mine.
I rather like the Celery one's colors too. It's my personal theory that desaturated colors are just easier for me to work with, seeing as a lot of the tones are found in nature, as opposed to over saturated colors which is generally only found in a few places in nature and reminds one of cartoons and plastics. Many of my older pictures's colors have higher color saturation, yet softer amateurish free hand shading as opposed to cell shading, making the whole thing look off and plastic like. Simpler basic cell shading looks best with high saturated cartoon colors I think with little to no highlights.
If one is attempting more gradual and varying shades of color for shadow and highlights, or, is simply bad at cell shading and has a uneven hand (like me), then I think it's best to stick to more desaturated colors.
Of course I ramble. All this is probably wrong, these are just the words of a man who has only been at this coloring business for 6-8 months and only around 70-80 days of actual practice. Since I have time to think, I'm just throwing these thoughts out there.
Don't worry on the detailed hair front. That picture is far away from being finished. There's going to be like, leaves and stuff. And bark. Granted, before drawing trees I should have made sure that I knew how. Perhaps I should have waited for autumn for the leaves and started a summer scene instead?
Oddly, something about that clothed pinkie looks like she could be in a fashion magazine. And I prefer the doodled version of Locke. Can't help with the realistic sketch, but something about his eyes looks very creepy. But then again, I'm not good with eyes myself. And I never watched the show so maybe it fits?
I'm not Mr. Anatomy, but his shoulders and arms look way off. His right arm's elbow seems to be around the waste which is too long down, and I feel like his shoulders should be a wider and more defined.
Then there is the hands, much better then I could do for realistic hands. But, I must say that the right one is much larger then the other.
I read that fic after you posted.
Thanks. You made my day.:smallannoyed:
SpoilerPure genius. So wrong, but so perfect. I haven't laughed that hard in awhile, I needed that.
Is he planning to write anymore?:smallbiggrin:
Day 76 & 77, or "Allured with Armor"
Spoiler"I saw her there on the battlefield, standing among the dead after she had broke our ranks with that ungodly strength... And I... I... felt an odd urge to brush the pony's hair."
Link
So I seem to be on a role with drawing! Or at least drawing and coloring something everyday. Hopefully I can keep it up for a whole week.
Today and yesterday I was drawing armor! Yes! This is a exciting thing.
Yesterday I was doing a Ghulam reading a newspaper. I kinda of lost focus from the shoulders downward. And he lost his lower body in the war, now he spends his days out in the yard, reading newspapers. I need to do a full body week again. And work on anatomy, yes I know. But honestly I just drew a doodle and started to color it, I wanted to get to the coloring part faster. Next time I'll take my time and get the anatomy down right and make a full figure.
Today I drew a spontaneous OC pony! Trapped in a strange land of war, she is forced to join a free company and fight for her life(!) Over the years she has abandoned her name from her time in her happy pony homeland, now most call her the remorseful warrior, Valkyrie!
Action! Drama! Explosions!
Alright enough stupidity.
I wanted to draw a pony with armor on. Put some lines together and here we are. The armor is based loosely on Gothic horse armor, but at the same time I wanted to do fancy Italian parade style armor, especially with the helmets and stuff. Hence the helmet with fish-dragon-demon. I put the Holy Roman two headed eagle on her for a standard, and some somewhat random coat of arms for the armor near her foreleg. I wanted to do a painted pony, brown and white, but you can't see it as she's wearing a lot of trash anyway!
Things I learned,
Where to begin? I built off of the lessons I learned on contrast between light and dark and took it to the next level and applied it to the saturation of colors. Shadows having greater saturation while colors in the light having less. This may seem elementary, as usual, but this concept was quite a break through. I finally learned why my earlier drawings colorwise didn't seem to *pop*, that's because I wasn't giving any thought to saturation. It was like I was ignoring a whole dimension of color (bare with the silly phrase), only dealing with colors and how light or dark they were. Thus giving them a flatter 2d look on the color spectrum. If that makes sense. Day 76 was when I started to realize this and today (Day 77) when I begin to draw I applied what I had learned to draw a new random birthed pony OC.
The theme for these two days was armor and I got some practice coloring metals. I like armor. I'm a ye medieval type guy and I love me some armor type stuff.
I learned that metals have sharp shiny highlights, it's best to use a color very close to white for it. If the metal is in sunlight large parts of the shiny iron armor will probably be pretty close to white. Thus, while Day 77 is the stronger colored picture by far, I believe that the newspaper reading ghulam feels more like he is out in direct sunlight. Out there in his yard, drinking coffee and reading newspaper. Anyway, this is because of parts of his helmet, which are almost half almost white, while the other is darkly shaded. At least I think so. Ignore the rest of it's body it is pretty bad. I don't know what time of day it will have to be to get the sunlight to be like that. While on the other hand we have Valkryie, the shieldish parts of her armor could be more whitish in the highlights and they could be bigger. If that makes sense.