Thanqol Learns To Draw!

[Thanqol]

That coloured drawing of the girl with the staff is amazing! The pose and proportions all look so natural* and I especially love the folds of the fabric.

* Except for that outstretched hand, but you already knew that, and who am I to complain about hands anyway.
Further tips for improvement: See if you can't make hair look a bit more hairy and fluffy, as opposed to one solid mass. Now, the way you've got it hanging down is quite unexpectedly realistic (hair that long would have huge mass, but usually people still depict it being all floaty and feather-light), but it could really use some loose strands here and there being all free, you know what I mean? Especially seeing as the hair is only clasped all the way at the bottom, which means all those strands of hair that is only growing to be that length would be unrestrained.

Ah, very good point. Normally I'd do such but I was deliberately stepping away from my normal style with that piece so I decided not to. I'll re-adopt the practise.

A couple of tiny little monster psycho juvenile felines have been taking up all my time recently, because there are very few things harder than leaving two purring kittens who look at you with big sad eyes and start mewing for you to come back whenever you start to leave. Here, have a picture:

Spoiler

Show

*arms in air* KITTY!*

On a non-kitten related note, I really like your most recent piece. The anatomy looks pretty sound, and it's got some details but not too many, and I can really get a sense of her personality. I think that the new coloring works great. The slight roughness of it gives it some nice texture and life. The cityscape drawing you're working on is also really nice. I'm a big fan of that color scheme.

Grand, grand, thank you

Oh man, I remember when I realized how much easier everything was for me to just have all the coloring in a single layer, except for maybe the background. It's different for every artist, but I found that everything became so much easier and less rigid.

On the topic of not fussing over every line and trying to make them all smooth and perfect . . . I certainly consider that to be a very important artistic breakthrough. That's what the sketching I was talking about a while back is all about, actually. Not caring if the lines are pretty or perfect, just getting them down on paper, getting the shape and movement in.

You know, this breakthrough was directly inspired by a commission I had done recently. The artist include a full resolution version, and I kind of stared at the detailing for a while, wondering how something that was so, well, sloppy close up could look so good zoomed out.

I still get commissions from time to time even though one of the stated goals of this project is getting to the point where I can produce the pictures in my head without paying someone. There's a lot I can learn from watching and working closely with someone.

On the topic of sketching, there's another method of sketching that I use in digital art that you might find useful, if you don't use it already. I've heard it called "lineless sketching" or "colored sketching," and it's basically where you take a fairly big brush in your art program of choice, and just start slapping down color. You figure out where the light hits and what the shapes are with the colors and the form of your brushstrokes, rather than with lines. Usually, I use a gradient that matches the general colors that I want the background to be and put that on a background layer, and then make a new layer for the main subject(s), and just start trying to get the shape and color of it down. Then I work at refining those shapes in the same way that I refine the lines of a sketch, only I take this all the way to completion. I use a rectangular brush for this because it makes sharp lines easier, but round brushes work as well.

I actually think I've done this a few times; that's what I call Pure Paints. I usually sketch out some boxes for the general area of the picture in blue pencil and then do everything else in pure colour. Here's some examples of pictures I've done that style

I'm pretty sure that's something that almost every artist has to deal with--I know that I do. You summed it up perfectly . One of the great struggles of art is learning to tell imaginary perfect you to shut up and go away.

He's fine to have around so long as he has me producing things and getting better rather than paralysed with doubt and insecurity. I'm generally in firm enough control of my mind to partition artistic disappointment from the rest of my thoughts.

Holy ****.

[Buy Some Apples].
My consolation prize is in knowing this thread will still be here, full of resources, when I get the equipment for this.

What's that? The sweet sounds of envy? Sounds like victory.

Remarkably valid. Even thinking about how that would work tangibly relaxed me.
Art isn't in perfection. It's in bull****ting. So long as the end result is art, Thanqol, the minutia don't matter. [/hypocrisy]

Increasingly becoming to realise it. But I feel - *pauses while a random crank call comes through. Thanqol switches to troll mode and starts describing in lurid detail the sexual prowess of his beefcake manservant until the cranker gets disturbed and hangs up* - that you're right.

Gosh that crank call came at the narratively appropriate moment.