Quote Originally Posted by Mazeburn View Post
Hi there. :)

I'm not the best at traditional painting, but I'd love to give you some advice if I can. What kind of paints are you using? It looks quite thick, acrylic or something.

First off - don't give up on drawing! It's clear you've got a good interest in art and it's something worth pursuing. Start small and simple, work up. It is possible for anyone to learn nobody here's born with a super-special talent, we've all gotta earn our cutie marks (except me. I have the cutie mark of making crass metaphors. ). It might take years, but a little a day, and it'll happen.

In any case, painting informs drawing and vica versa, so this stuff is a really good start. Anyway, you've got the nice beginnings of a style shaping up here, I like the coloured linework - is that all really done with a brush rather than markers? It's nice and crisp. I'd say experimenting with shading as well might be a good idea. Start out simple, introduce a clear light source and think about how the colour would react to it, then layer it on top of your base colour. That's usually a good way to get fairly neutral lighting. Later, you can begin mixing the lighting's colours into your base colours and get something that looks quite natural - it's tricky and it takes practise, but it can be quite fun. :)

Anyway, keep at it! I'll keep an eye on this thread and try to lend a hoof now and then if I can!

Yep, working with acrylics. I hate trying to work with water colours, and oils are more expensive than I care for. Acrylics are nice and cheap, and I tend to have an easier time mixing the colours I want. I probably need to get some better paper to work on though. I had gotten a cheap sketchbook to work on, but that seems to be devouring my paints. Need to pick up something more suited to paints at some point.

It's less that I dislike drawing more that I hate working in pens and pencils. I can't seem to get any of the lines and whatnot I like with those. I might grab a tablet at some point, at which point I'm probably going to get into actual drawing again. I like getting the smooth strokes paints provide and have an easier time correcting mistakes with them. A tablet would work just as well, I just don't have the money for one.

Still toying around with the idea of lighting. I modified a few MTG cards recently and managed to get some half-decent lighting done with those. Today's drawing was just a quick little thing I wanted to get done before D&D, so I didn't get too into the lighting for it. (Poor choice of picture to avoid lighting with)