On a technical note, you can create a feeling of waves and ocean if you make reflections more horizontal and perpendicular to the wind. Reflection also should be directly underneath the moon. I would also add a bit of rim light from the Moon on the character to ground it in the scene. Check Ivan works and my overpaint.
Worked on this some more. It can be hard to tell whether I’m improving or destroying a drawing while I’m working on it, but I guess it turned out better overall in the end.
@SirPigeonz Not sure how much I was able to make use of your advice, but thanks for trying anyway.
I’m not really an artist, so I don’t usually think too much of the technical aspect, just try to draw something and hope it works. That’s why all my drawings are messy, I guess.
It looks better and more polished, so I think you did good :3
There is no entry exam for an artist, if you do art you are an artist
Funny thing is that I try to learn to work like you do - first go with the flow and fix stuff later… xD
Trying to do art this way helped me to lower the stiffness of my art, which is my constant struggle I try to overcome bit by bit.
Well, I just meant that I don’t consider myself a “serious” artist who’s devoted to it. (Though maybe I have trouble taking myself seriously.)
I got to thinking about my process for drawing characters from reference, and how I try to balance having a good foundation to build on but not worrying about the details too much since it’ll just get painted over later, but I couldn’t figure out how to explain it so it’s just some recent sketches.
Half-finished sketch, fanart of Julian from Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon.
For some reason I’m in the mood to dump some recent sketches I had lying around. Maybe it’ll convince me to keep trying, because I know I can do better. It’s mostly videogame fanart this time.
In no particular order;
Fanart of Link from The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, based on a piece of official art with Link fighting Darknuts, but very cropped. Sketched this the night before Tears of the Kingdom’s release, but got interrupted by encountering a crashbug in Krita Nightly (which has since been fixed).
Fanart of Kazuma Asogi from The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles, based on a piece of official art. Yet another practice thing that I never got around to continuing.
Fanart of a scene from Tokyo Mirage Sessions ♯FE, based on a frame from an ingame animation. This one is actually “finished”, I even got around to adding the background, at least to some extent.
Fanart of Futaba Sakura from Persona 5. This one isn’t directly based on a single piece of official art, but rather I tried to combine the pose and outfit from a few different sources. It never really came together, though. Mostly I wanted to portray her being confident, maybe my own lack of confidence got in the way?
Been trying to do some expression practice sketches with my character. Mostly terrible and not worth posting, but I kind of like this one, for now anyway.
I was focused on the lines and didn’t want to overdo the coloring, so I just put a few quick brushstrokes and left it like that. I used one of my attempts at custom brushes for it, a very modified version of “c) SK-04 2B Pencil” from the SK_V1 bundle. Instead of being a pencil, it’s now sort of a ‘painting’ pencil, I’m not sure how else to describe it.
And for the lines, I used “2023 Ink Pen basic MULTIPLY” from Ramon’s INK_WIP_01 bundle. I did some doodling with that the other day, but I couldn’t think of any feedback to leave in the thread, so I didn’t… but I guess I can leave the sketch here. I’m not an experienced inker, and I don’t have tilt, but I like doodling with regular ballpoint pens.
I’m trying to get more comfortable with practicing and sharing even if it’s not that great. It’s hard to improve my art if I try to avoid looking at it. But even still, I ended up putting off posting it until I had something else ‘better’ to share, which is-
An annual sunflower that was blooming this morning (based on a photo).
Haha, I do like the sunflower I think you managed to capture the lighting/colors very accurately, that’s why it looks very realistic.
As for your character drawings, are you going for stylization or something realistic? I think there must be a flaw in how you approach it, because your sunflower is so good, but characters seem much more lacking, right? If you’re not happy with the results, maybe for now try to do a few character copies instead of just using the reference for parts. I copy a lot and it helps get a feel for when something is off. And you definitely must look at your drawings very carefully and spot the mistakes only that way you will overcome them. Try to find one thing that you’re most dissatisfied with, or that stands out the most, and try to correct just that. I wonder if you’ll be happy with the results.
Well, trying to get one of my characters out of my head’s a lot more complicated and difficult than just copying a photo of a flower. I get easily frustrated by it and question why I keep trying when I know I’m too lazy to think about and study how to do it, and when I’m not sure it’s really worth it. So, I guess that’s the flaw…
I’m imagining my character holding a bow and drawing back an arrow, saying “It’s frustrating enough to feel like giving up, but I’m too stubborn to stop trying.” (She’s not good at archery.) But I’m not in the mood to try and draw it. Maybe later I’ll try to copy a character doing a similar pose.
I think I know exactly how you feel! It is overwhelming. When I try to paint something new or more detailed I immediately face the wall of not knowing enough to do it correctly.
How to deal with it? Start simple! Draw a very basic pose, or a pose for which you have a very good reference. In case of copying, pick a copy that is less challenging for you, or simplify some of it. Once you finish a few drawings in this manner, you will have more energy to try something more complex. At least this is how it is for me.
Also drawing and painting takes a lot of time. Like, a ton. Especially, if it’s something you haven’t already drawn before a few times at least. In my case, if I “get lucky” I might get a nice looking rough character drawing in 30 minutes. More often than not, something is wrong and I need to correct, and it takes 1 hour. Then if I want to tidy it up and add some details, it will easily take 2-3 hours. Recently I got into more rendered pieces and that can easily be 4-6 hours. And then, when it’s a full-blown tidy painting, it’s more like 20 hours So you really need to get some mileage to not question yourself “what the heck am I even doing here”.
Yeah, sometimes struggling to express myself gets overwhelming, whether that’s drawing or just trying to figure out how I want to reply to something, like this post. I guess I can either be excessively self-deprecating or give up, or say ‘eh, so what, it doesn’t have to be perfect’ and try to relax a bit.
So I did end up starting a copied-from-reference sketch of an archer, only around 40 minutes according to Krita. So it’s pretty rough and there’s lots of things to fix or add.
Fanart of Virion from Fire Emblem Heroes:
Recently I haven’t been spending as much time drawing as a few years ago. Maybe an hour or two and then not getting back to it. But sometimes I used to spend three or four hours, or even more. Looking through some old stuff, apparently according to Krita I spent seven hours on this one, I don’t know whether that’s because of the complexity or just inefficiency, it still looks a bit messy
Fanart of Alex from Dragalia Lost:
Looking through old drawings, I want to see what sort of progress or evolution I’ve made, and not just for copied stuff. I found some relatively decent drawings of other OCs. I don’t remember whether I referenced their poses at all, but I get the feeling I must have drawn similar shoes recently then.
My suggestion to improve here would be to make a drawing finish it and the redraw it again considering what you just did. I usually think making akot of different drawings is juststrwtching yourself thin. So choose your favourite subject and redo it until it is approved.
I think what you’re just missing from these drawings is a second lineart pass. It doesn’t even have to be a super clean and smooth lineart, just another refinement stage. These look as if you simply drawn the rough and then colored it. If you do rough → refine on a new layer → color, it will look much, much cleaner.
By the way, I hope my previous post didn’t sound too patronizing – you obviously had drawn a lot already. What I mean is that you must somehow achieve a few drawings for which you can say, “Ha, I did a good job here!”. That will give you the willpower to keep going. If you draw a lot but think that it’s all mediocre, then you won’t be happy and likely won’t improve that much too.
Also, what @EyeOdin said, that’s a very good advice. This is another way to put the advice that some experienced illustrators give, “don’t practice, draw finished/production images”. In other words, draw the best image you can, reflect on it, and try to improve the weak points in your next image. Obviously, this takes a lot of mental energy (at least for me it does), so maybe balance it with a few less demanding drawings, like a sketch of your favorite character, another simplified study, etc.
So you really need to get some mileage to not question yourself “what the heck am I even doing here”.
