I'm going to try to keep this more or less regularly updated. I'd like to get better at art, but for years now it's just been that sortof "oh, I'd love to be good at this," and then I'd go back to doing what I was doing instead of seriously picking up my tablet and doing anything with it.

So here the hell I go.

Started with a calligraphy brush that was set to point the brush in the direction I was making a stroke, then went to town with doodles. Just noodling, seeing what shapes I could come up with. Came out mostly limbs, not sure why.


Chose one that I liked (the little bitty one on the bottom left corner) and brought it into a new layer, started cleaning it up with the same weird calligraphy pressure brush. Fun to mess with, makes neat lines.



Then just generally went to town, adding details and what have you. Hopefully this is going somewhere.



What is it? I dunno, you tell me.

Looking good, you have a nice sense of perspective and foreshortening.

Do I? I always thought it was poor. I guess with this I've been making a deliberate effort to adjust and tweak things as I go along, which is why that first post represents about five hours of effort and work.

I'm really slow because I keep going back and redoing lines or bits that look off. Hmm.

Thanks for the encouragement, though! Like I said, hopefully I can keep this up and post progress.

I almost want to start up a sketchbook sort of thing like you have here. I'm also in the same boat as you with the whole wishing to be a better artist though so far I have only done a few Posemaniac sketches on my tablet.

I am so conflicted.

Also I have just discovered that cell shading looks cartoony and dumb, and I can't paint worth a damn.




EDIT: Turns out trying a different approach to texture and shading made it worse.

I think the cell shaded one looks awesome. Though it'd look better if the outline was consistent all the way around the li'l dude.

Thanks for the kind words!

I've been doing some research, going to try to do a legitimate paint-over tomorrow- erm. Today, I guess. For now, though, I should really put the stylus down and sleep.

Man, I know exactly how you feel, but to be honest, your work looks awesome. Now stop listening to yourself and draw! You're a lot better than you think you are you pessemistic silly.

I tried. I tried so hard. But honestly, the initial blocky shapes pass that I used for a basis looks better than the painted version. That's how you can tell I done goofed up.

Popped into Alchemy and put in some shapes for a landscape.


Then I took all of those interesting shapes and cool angles and murdered them by actually trying to detail them and add more meaningful tones.

You should skip texture brushes until you learn how to texture with a simply regular brush else you just end up relying on things that tend to restrict you quite a lot.

Hmm. Fair point, there. What's a good "basic" brush to paint with? I love the look of the Thin and Thick scratchboard tool from Corel Painter, since it makes those lovely clean, fat strokes and tiny, wispy ones, but Photoshop doesn't seem to have a competing brush.

Edit: Making progress, I guess. The lighting is really confusing and omnidirectional, but I think this is an improvement over last night's mess of a "painting."

Trying some gestures. Never done these before, and dayum. Some of them are just /crap/. I guess a few turned out alright, though. But man, I can't even make scribbles look good. Heh.

I am so bad at this.


Images thanks to Daestock.

EDIT: TRYING.



EDIT EDIT: Took somebody's suggestion to start with the skeleton and work it up from there. Turned out better, but not great.

Did you know it's actually really hard to comment on people's drawings when all they do is tell you how terrible they are?

You're redrawing lines a bit too much which get you this really sketchy looking stuff. Try practising using fewer longer lines, it makes everything look ten times better. You might also want to take a look at gesture drawing, it's really helpful for making things feel "alive". If that makes any sense.

@Hobbesy: I'll try to tone that down a bit.
@Slice: Gestures are kindof interesting, and I'm just scratching the surface of them, but I definitely want to give it a shot.

Anywho, updates! Had a friend of mine see all of my various art practice posts on Facebook and asked me to do a commission for him in return for payment. He wanted a heavily armored lizardman warrior with a bastard/greatsword.

I made sure to save the process, but I only remembered to do so after I had saved over the initial skeleton pose. So you don't get to see how I structure the thing. Oh well.

I feel like the drapery on his crotch wouldn't fold that way.

What are you imagining instead, Mr.F?

I just dont think that it would fold that way at the bottom, it would probably be just flat.

Seconded, it seems that way, given how gravity works.

Fair point.

Anyway, sorry for the lack of updates. I've been /trying/ to paint this guy up and give him some rendering. It's gone through a couple different tries, now.

I finally just got rid of the shadow layer entirely. If I took anything away from a couple of different sources, it's that shadows don't add. So, giving it another go for the first time without the shadows and trying to render them in "manually." So far the only real work has been on the head, but it's showing progress.



The more I look at it, the more I hate that robin's egg blue color on his jacket. The eventual goal is for it to be ice dragon scale mail (as per the client's request, otherwise I wouldn't be bothering with it). Bleh. Hopefully once I get to rendering it in with the white scales it'll look a bit better.

Looks good, I personally like the colors, though his right foot seems to be on a different plane then his other foot and his sword. His right lower leg also seems to be skinnier then his right one. Also the mail on his right leg seems to hang in a weird way, It doesn't follow the contours of his leg, it looks like it is locked into that one cylindrical position. Remember to really push the contrast on metals!

Noted, Mr. F. Going to try to wrap up that piece here shortly- it's been going on for long enough.

As for other projects...