Technically, I could draw from imagination as long as it’s not trying to realistically render something three-dimensional . Probably I should practice with simpler things (like furniture?).
But, yeah, getting better requires dumb things like believing in myself and consistently putting in effort and caring about the results instead of giving up.
I don’t have any grand ambitions about other people caring about my art, or putting it in a game (if I ever really made a game, it might just be text-based*). But I don’t know if that’s because I don’t think it could ever be good enough, or if it will never be good enough because I won’t dare reach for those goals.
(*Technically the character I’ve been drawing is originally from a text-based pen’n’paper-style RPG with friends. Expressing that character through drawing instead of writing is a lot more difficult… though I’m not great at writing either.)
Haha Yeah… Your observations are on point. It’s a bit of a chicken and an egg problem, right.
But don’t let anyone tell you what to draw or what to practice. Just draw what you really what to get good at and practice all fundamentals that benefit this subject. That’s why I almost exclusively draw anime, because it’s the style I love.
Yeah I guess to make progress quickly you have to do all typical exercises to improve your basics, like sketching many poses with a short time limit, studies of body parts and objects, or even just filling sheets with circles and other geometric shapes to train your coordination etc…
But to be honest, all of those are boring tasks to me, so I don’t do that at all really
I gave up the idea to do anything art related professionally long ago, for various reasons, so I just do what I can motivate myself to.
Though if you find the motivation, I’d still encourage you to do some of them, because I’m slowly seeing myself that drawing/painting just becomes a lot more fun when not every basic thing is a huge struggle. Unfortunately, overcoming my weaker self is too hard for me, I guess…
I’d say it still need to be roughly 30% smaller…just check the distances on your own arm, at lest my flat hand is several cm shorter than the distance from the inside of the elbow to the wrist. I don’t know how much human proportions really vary, but certainly not that much.
I think the main problem is the length of the middle part of the hand. Hands are generally very hard to draw. I hope you don’t mind me editing it to show you what I mean (I mostly just resized some parts of it). I can delete it if it’s a problem:
Yeah, if I think about it, the hand’s too big. But whether the proportions of it are off, I don’t know, I thought about it too much now so I can’t think about it anymore.
Apologies in advance for the rambling and dumb-looking art. I just wanted to get it out of my head:
I thought I’d try drawing my character in a neutral pose and just focusing on the proportions and design (as much as there is any design) and etc. Spent somewhere between one hour (Krita’s listed drawing time, without the time spent staring at the canvas) and three hours (total time based on the length of the music I was listening to, but honestly I stopped drawing for like an hour’s worth during that) on this, and the result is totally unsatisfying. Started off okay I guess, but didn’t know where to go from there.
I don’t know why I do this to myself. Not sure why I even bother drawing this character other than I miss having a RPG game going and having an excuse to hang out with friends. Trying to express my doubts about friendship and belonging through this standoffish character, or something stupid like that, I don’t know, it doesn’t matter.
Anyway, TMI. I’ll probably go back to drawing naturey stuff for a while… less complicated.
Not sure if you want any more advice right now, but in case it helps later – For model reference sheet, this pose would be good. But for a more alive depiction of the character, you must use contraposto, that is have shoulders and hips at a slightly different angle. One leg typically bears more weight and will affect the stance.
And I always recommend doing studies to get better. You don’t need to make an accurate copy, but try to compare as much as possible and try to understand what makes the original work so well. Then you can try to mimic the same in your drawing using the same pose. The proportions are frustrating and easy to get wrong, I struggle with it every time. Just need to keep churning out these characters one after another and always compare and review. As long as you look for mistakes and try to fix them, it should just be the matter of enough mileage.
For a change of pace I heard an advice recently to just draw from imagination a fair bit. Not even the characters, just anything that you feel like, maybe something abstract. Seems counter intuitive to me, but probably there’s something in it… I have to try once when I have time
Letting your mind wander and solve arbitrary drawing problems is probably a good learning experience, if that makes sense.
For me, I think of doodling silly whatever on a page like this, which I don’t do often but probably would be a good warmup if I wanted to draw more often. Apparently I was thinking of Zelda when I did this (a month ago)… maybe I just default to that sometimes, it’s in my drawing vocabulary. Though I guess that means it’s not too imaginative.
Sometimes it feels like the only way to draw anything good is to not want to share it. If I want to draw something ‘good enough’ to share I’ll try too hard and get frustrated, instead of not caring and enjoying it more. Or even just more harshly critizing something because of assuming that other people don’t want to see something that isn’t good, and then not being able to see any good in it. (“Why am I posting this, again?” I constantly ask myself.)
I haven’t drawn anything worth posting lately so here’s some older stuff I haven’t posted yet (probably because of being half-finished and completely unoriginal).
Fanart of Lynne from Ghost Trick. Rough sketch that I never finished/redrew, after I played it (the remake) a couple months ago. It would probably be a good place to use inking brushes and practice lineart, with that game’s artstyle, instead of whatever unfitting brushes I used.
Fanart of the male protagonist and Bow Legion from Astral Chain. Rough sketch that I didn’t color, when I was thinking about that game for some reason a couple months ago. I was trying to focus on the lineart, but it’s still probably confusing-looking, especially in the middle where the giant anime sci-fi bow in the foreground and the legion (humanoid alien monster thing) floating in the background overlap.
WIP, a honeybee on an aster flower, based on a photo. Was experimenting a bit with pencil-like brushes.
Then despite how I keep insisting it’s a bad idea I tried to draw some ideas with my OC that I knew I didn’t know how to execute, again, and got frustrated, again.
But sometimes when I’m in a bad mood I like to draw while listening to this game’s music (it’s motivating?), and I drew a character from it for once;
Fanart of Fret from NEO: The World Ends With You.
Obviously I still need a lot of practice (and less laziness) to draw good lineart. And more confidence, maybe, to avoid those shaky lines? But using brushes designed for variable size probably helped, at least.
I don’t know what it is about this game’s style that I always seem to have trouble drawing their hair correctly. Also, something that’s always bothered me about this character’s art: in his official art the plaid pattern on his pants is “painted on”, it doesn’t match the direction of the fabric at all, just straight lines across. I always thought that was weird.
The flat pattern is often used in manga as a simplification to do it quickly. Maybe you could even say it’s a stylistic choice in some other works.
One difficulty when drawing from finished illustrations is that it’s not that clear what the body proportions are, especially if the design is elaborate. That makes it difficult to draw it in a convincing way. And without doing the underlying structure, it’s hard to improve the skill of drawing without a reference. I guess this improves as you gain experience. I’m seeing improvements in my own practice, but it’s still a long road ahead.
Timelapse of the fanart of Veyle based on her art from Fire Emblem Heroes:
I got way sidetracked from posting that timelapse- the more times I got distracted and put it off, the harder it was to not feel like ‘why would anyone care anyway?’
But, anyway, yeah. I wanted to use soft brushes to reflect the character’s kind and gentle nature. Plus I wanted to test a brush I’d been tweaking, a pencil that’s large and soft at low pressure, small and hard at high pressure, sort of emulating tilt I guess. I just used that, a basic pencil, and an eraser.
I did a rough sketch to have somewhere to start, added color to see where things are, and then went back and forth between the lines and colors, adding detail and redoing things. Maybe it’s a bit messy, but that’s what seems to work for me.
I’ve long been used to using the right-click (pop-up palette) and E (erase mode) on my stylus, and Ctrl (color picker) on my keyboard, but lately I’m also getting accustomed to using Shift as well, to resize the brush. And I also realized since I have eraser preset mode bound to Shift+E, I can use the E on my stylus instead of the keyboard for that, which is a lot more convenient. (As long as I don’t accidentally try to hit Ctrl+E instead)
I missed the previous post. Wow, this looks so much better than the previous characters! I would still recommend you to try to make an overall correction after the silhouette is done, because that could make it probably even better. But yeah, the gesture and the impression are all so pleasant to look at!
Personally, I don’t use stylus buttons at all… Somehow I can never get a hang of it and it feels so slow vs the keyboard. Maybe if it was some other software, like Blender, I would rely on it more.
As usual I’m kinda stuck, not sure where to go with the drawing from here. Maybe it doesn’t really matter though. I think I’m more interested in the idea than being able to draw
it “well”. This is a sketchbook thread after all. (I’ve never actually posted anything in the Finished Artworks category. )
I guess I could try to explain the idea behind it a little… Basically, the two pieces of jewelry represent the character’s past and present identities which couldn’t coexist, and this is ‘what if they could, in the future’.
Just a doodle of a tree. Once I started to think about what I could do with the lighting and details I got demotivated… Lately it feels like my ideas are too ambitious for me, but not even worth working toward. Like I don’t know what I’m drawing for. Just overthinking it, I guess.
Sketch of some dianthus flower (carnation, maybe?), based on a photo, but I didn’t try to make it ‘perfect’ or ‘finished’. I just wanted to draw the flower and have it look okay. Sometimes I forget that I’d just like to share the pretty flowers
If I ever got in a regular habit of sketching them, I could easily fill up a separate sketchbook thread, as I have photos of like a hundred (flowering) plant species. I’ve drawn so few of them, and the ones I have are drawn at different times in different styles.
Well, I don’t know.
Another thing, I was looking through my drawings and found an updated version of this kitten with birdbath, which I’m pretty sure I didn’t post, so I figured I should post it.
. Probably I should practice with simpler things (like furniture?).
Yeah… Your observations are on point. It’s a bit of a chicken and an egg problem, right.
I would still recommend you to try to make an overall correction after the silhouette is done, because that could make it probably even better. But yeah, the gesture and the impression are all so pleasant to look at!
