It’s about an hour’s worth of drawing on that one (the timelapse was originally recorded at 1frame/sec, but I sped it up by 3x to make it shorter/smaller). Which isn’t too bad, I guess. I’m pretty sure I’ve gotten faster and more accurate in the several years I’ve been using Krita to copy character art. (When I’m actually focused, at least.)
I like to do everything just on two layers, one for the sketch and one for the colors, as much as possible. It gets confusing otherwise, where I try to change one thing and it’s on several different layers. But I make backup copies of the layers after each round of changes, so I don’t worry about messing things up.
I’m kind of surprised to do so much in only one hour. I guess following along with the video made the time go by fast. My version’s a mess because I’m messy at drawing, and it’s a bit hard following along with a video, which I didn’t have zoomed in enough to see it well, but it was fun.
It’s funny this video gets posted when I was thinking about timelapses and videos again, I even did my own 45-min screen recording of drawing something on Friday as a test (not that I would have anywhere to post that).
That was of this bluebird here:
Also, I want to note that I enjoyed deevad’s recent “Grayscale to Color character design” video too. I tried to draw my own version of that character (with a headcanon name too), but since I tried to change the pose it went badly. I’ll post it only if I make a better version.
I’m kind of surprised to do so much in only one hour.
Great! That’s exactly why I made this video; to encourage the 1h budget digital sketch. Thank you for posting your result here about it and for testing it. You did well, 1h is really short.
I usually don’t draw in greyscale/monochrome unless I’m just doing a pencil-style drawing, so doing greyscale and then coloring it was interesting. Maybe it’s worth experimenting with more, since I think I have trouble with values sometimes.
Some version of my character Somath Reylos I doodled (about two hours):
I always have trouble with the colors/shading of this character, trying to use a dark color scheme without making it too dark or light.
You can add a layer on top of everything, fill it with black and put it on contrast mode (HSY)! That way, you can easily switch between colors and greyscale and see how the colors work toghether
There’s also a similar trick of setting Soft Proofing to greyscale.
With that, I can see my drawing is very dark. Knowing what to do with that information though, is a different matter…
Wait, I didn’t know that one! It’s so cool! I’m definitly gonna do that, thanks a lot
If everything’s too dark, then you gotta add more contrast to your colors. You say colors/shading, but are you adding light? You can adjust the colors thanks to some of the tools here:
This one is sketches of seven photos I took this month, which I drew over around three and a half hours, and then later took some more time to arrange into this image. The flower is golden groundsel. The insects, clockwise from top-left: american lady butterfly, red admiral butterfly, checkered-skipper butterfly, painted lady butterfly, celery looper moth, honeybee, orange skipper butterfly. The relative scale’s probably a bit off.
Sketch from almost a month ago when I was thinking about practicing more often, even if just an hour or more or less’s character art “study” or whatever you want to call it.
Fanart of (ghost) Zelda from The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks:
That one’s around an hour and a half. I was feeling a bit frustrated and wanted to just draw something on autopilot. It could use some more work (another hour, or two, or three…).
I guess I’m also frustrated because, part of me wishes I could chat about my technique and stuff, but other part of me knows I don’t really have any technique and I don’t like chatting with people. I don’t know if that makes sense. It’s just sort of, alternately motivating and demotivating.
The pink cup-shaped ones are pink evening primrose.
The purple cup-shaped ones are winecups.
The deep pink tubular ones are hill country penstemon.
The light pink tubular ones are penstemon cobaea, or Texas foxglove.
Yeah… that’s why I can’t make myself practice more often. Then it becomes a chore where I get frustrated because it’ll never be “good enough”.
Sometimes I think about, what if I made a video or stream or something, but one reason I don’t is, “it wouldn’t be good enough”. Even though all I want to do is just casually screen-record a drawing, not try to teach technique or anything. I mean, then it doesn’t have to be “good”. Except it’d probably be really boring to watch in realtime. So then it’d be kinda a pointless waste of time to share? It’d be too much effort to set up something like that “just because”…
Anyway, I just wanted to get that out of my head.
Beautiful drawing of a super-cool workspace setup-- I’m joking, it’s just my desk, poorly drawn on my (decade-old, slow) Android tablet with my finger (because its stylus’s nib doesn’t like to stay on anymore).
Laptop’s sitting on top of some tissue boxes so the screen’s at a better height, and small drawing tablet is beside it. (I mostly use the desk for drawing, not typing. If I was typing there, I might remove the boxes so the keyboard is lower.) Then there’s a clock and a game controller and stuff like that.
With my tablet, I had some weird input issues.
I don’t know why my finger (a mouse input) counts as low pressure; I had to turn off pressure curves so the brushes wouldn’t be tiny/low opacity.
Sometimes I would get a weird glitch where, I guess the brushstroke didn’t end properly or something, because it would jump from the last cursor position to the new one, while painting the old color (after switching colors in the popup palette).
I dunno if anyone else has those problems, though.
Oh yes, I have that too. Overthinking stuff, or having trouble to committing to something. I know the effort will be big, so I want to be sure, really sure I want to spend that much time and… often I just don’t do anything in the end It’s not a good place to be in.
Some years ago (heh), when I was still in school, I just did stuff without thinking and produced some result, even if it wasn’t as great. But there was no this mental struggle whether “is something worth it”.
Just think, if I spent all that time actually doing things instead of debating with myself over what to do… well, it’d either be more productive or more mistakes.
The pose is based on something else, it’s a bit off though.
I wrote a description of my version of the character (basically just random silly stuff that popped into my head).
Tamarind “Ox” Oaxaca
Militia member from a desert town known for smithing and crafting.
Plays a support role in combat, using fire and defensive magics, and the axe blade of her battlestaff in closer quarters.
Personality: strong, self-assured, slightly rebellious.
Likes: fruit with strong spices, shiny metal, protecting others
Dislikes: invaders, bigots, the ocean
Hey! She looks great and I love the backstory and name.
Your pose is not really ‘off’, if I had a main feedback, it would be on the general skeleton and proportions. With a quick fix of them, your artwork could gain a lot of visual appeal, imo.
The head is a bit small and legs a bit long; the combo makes her a 10 or 11 heads high character, and it’s exceptionally tall. For a more classic adult proportion, going back to 7.5 or 7 feels a bit more harmonious (I enlarged the head, and reduced the leg size).
The hand was also a bit low, the bone of the thumb is usually aligned with the croutch when the arm is extended (in dashed blue on my picture). Longer than this and it is the gorilla arm (not the case here, you really have to go almost mid leg for that). So, I shortened the foreharm and repositionned the hand.
Last feedback: about the foot on the floor. The volume of the one facing the camera is difficult.
Wait, I didn’t know that one! It’s so cool! I’m definitly gonna do that, thanks a lot 
It’s not a good place to be in.
