Sketchbook 2024

[YRH]

Hi, maybe I’ll post some random stuff here.

I should be drawing more and practicing more, but so far it’s been going a bit slow… And it’s March already! Oof. At this rate, I don’t see improving much this year. Oh well.

Today as a copy/observation practice, I drew Black Swan from Honkai Star Rail. I want to paint a proper portrait of her at some point, she’s such a lovely character. This is rather rough because I used a thicker brush as an experiment, but then colored it a bit anyway.

Here’s the line sketch only.

[YRH]

Sparkle. Copy from reference, aka. observation practice, and a bit of fun with shading…

Another love at first sight character… Why oh why it has to be a gacha game

[activity]

ah nice matee! You really understand proportions, and oi, gatcha characters are made to be likeable so understandable situation you are in
I have a peculiarity though bruv, how much did it take? I am tryin’ to get back in art again and I feel, personally, a problem of mine is that I kinda slug through the process so your insight could help, if you do not mind

Really fluid piece buvv
(─‿‿─) ｂ

[YRH]

Hey, thank you. Okay, I will answer honestly, based on how it applies to me.

The first one with Black Swan took me 1.5 hours. I didn’t keep track of how much time the lineart took, but if I were to guess maybe 1 hour? Coloring was very fast and loose. The time really starts to fly by when you get to tweaking some details that probably nobody will notice

The second one with Sparkle was 1 hour 15 minutes. Again, tweaking and adding some detail is probably what took the last 20 minutes or so. I can make pretty big corrections even at a very late stage, because as you add more lines you notice better if the balance is wrong.

So yeah, I would say this is slow and difficult for me. For every good drawing I have like five bad ones. I know copying is nothing to write home about, that’s why I’m always very clear when I draw a copy, but it still takes skill and a lot of attention. What I’m trying to achieve here is to always draw with a good reference to really drill those proportions into my brain and have a good eye for the balance. My hope is that at some point it will help me notice mistakes and draw better original drawings.

Also these two pieces are not the best practice, honestly. My current limitation – still, after a year! – is character drawing, especially the face. I’m rather confident with colors and can get decent results, but my work is held back by mediocre head balance and various mistakes, so I want to fix that. It would be more efficient to not push a drawing that far, to shading and details, and instead draw a larger number of simpler sketches, to get enough reps in. However, once in a while I need to draw something beautiful to convince myself that I still can.

Yeah, that’s one thing that gets me with drawing You just cannot assume skill. At least, at my level. If I get too complacent and sloppy, everything falls apart and I get demotivated. I know I should be drawing 2x, or 3x more than I do now, but I don’t want to get burned out either. I hope that at some point I can raise my skill enough to draw simple sketches effortlessly and be able to focus more on artistic expression or interesting ideas instead of the technical side. Well, it’s a journey…

[activity]

I understand
Really apreciate your respounse, mate, helps a ton

[YRH]

I’m in a bit weird spot… Can’t really commit to anything finished, I’ve been just drawing random basic copies and sloppy sketches.

I had this idea for some time that it would be fun to draw my favorite DOT (damage over time) team from Honkai Star Rail, and this time I kind of kept going despite everything being wonky as hell, and I made this sketch below.

Could be an interesting painting, but it would probably take me forever to correct the poses and perspective I need to embark on something less ambitious first, I think So yeah, just a rough idea.

Oh, BTW, I’ve been using this weird brush I made for sketching. Basically it’s a charcoal pencil with less strength and variable size. It’s pretty fun, I can start big and have broad, gesture strokes, then scale it down to create light and precise lines.

Generally, I noticed that brushes with variable opacity, or the ones that have some build-up, like a pencil, are much more forgiving for sketching. On the opposite spectrum are fineliners. These are so hard to use, because every little shake and sloppy stroke comes through 100%.

[gregors]

@YRH

Oh, BTW, I’ve been using this weird brush I made for sketching. Basically it’s a charcoal pencil with less strength and variable size. It’s pretty fun, I can start big and have broad, gesture strokes, then scale it down to create light and precise lines.

I just started sketching (playing with my tablet) in krita and sometimes get lost in all the menus, options and such. So, now I know I can make my own pencil. Lets see when I can read the corresponding chapter(s) …

Generally, I noticed that brushes with variable opacity, or the ones that have some build-up, like a pencil, are much more forgiving for sketching. On the opposite spectrum are fineliners. These are so hard to use, because every little shake and sloppy stroke comes through 100%.

I still don’t have a glove, so to avoid accidentialy panningtilting/zooming the canvas I have to sketch somewhat “free hand”. So, recently I started with a circle …

[dragonscales]

Still a great composition. Would be fun to paint.

[YRH]

Sure, it’s good to experiment! Definitely try the existing brushes first (and there are some great bundles to download, too) and then you can tweak stuff further to better match your preferences.

If you need a dirt cheap glove, try this life hack

Tablet workspace bundle

Hey. Sorry if I’m transgressing by bumping an older topic I applaud the creative individuals who sew their own gloves, but I’m not as dexterous nor patient. If you have big hands as well (or just want to save money), maybe try this. I was browsing online the other day and found a dirt-cheap pair of ESD gloves without grip coating. It’s a domestic store, so I’m not sure if you can get a similar deal in your area, but this cost me about 60 cents a pair. So yes, 30 cents a single g…

[Lynx3d]

I like the idea of that scene. But wide angle with lens distortion from a low position…you sure didn’t miss many opportunities to make it more challenging.

Proportions sure are a bit all over the place.
You may want to give Huohuo and Black Swan a neck

The new (not yet in stable release) Curvilinear Perspective assistant may help you there, after a bit of fiddling I had a decent approximation…and I couldn’t resist messing with your sketch

[YRH]

Yeah, that assistant looks really cool! This time I basically winged it, because more often than not, it’s OK if you are 80% close, you don’t really need to follow the guideline perfectly. It’s basically what I meant by having to go back and actually fix the poses

Agreed, BS looks much better with a more pronounced neck, as for Huo Huo I meant to have her slumped a bit with her shoulders raised and her leaning a bit forward. This is definitely a challenging angle, or in other words, RIP without a reference (or a 3D model, I guess) So it was again just my hunch that if she would lean forward and look down, the neck would get foreshortened like that, but maybe I overdid it.

[Lynx3d]

That’s indeed tricky…but her head and shoulders definitely need to be scaled up for that…so maybe more like this?
Something still feels wrong though…

[YRH]

That indeed looks anatomically correct, but now she’s leaning too far! It no longer has the “feeling” I was going for, but I admit it looks compelling, too. As if she wanted to bolt out of there, so that’s good storytelling as well

Yea, I’m not sure how exactly you need to sit to make it look like in my picture, perhaps the problem is that you really need to lean forward significantly to make it work, but I’m sure you can raise your shoulders even higher, too. Well, if I figure it out with some references, I’ll report back

[Lynx3d]

Hehe good luck…I know the feeling of having something specific in mind but can’t get it to paper…canvas…whatever. Though that often means it’s physically impossible after all, but usually it was still worth trying because I learned more than just “doesn’t work”.

Yes you probably can raise your shoulders more than that, but that doesn’t really move the collar position, only distorts it some. Given that the perspective is from below, I don’t think any human can bend their neck enough so the head hides it entirely without leaning forward pretty far.

[YRH]

Just for science, I took a selfie this morning. This is the traced version.

I was wearing a T-shirt, so didn’t capture the base of the neck and the collarbones (that was an oversight), but I mainly wanted to see how the head and shoulders behave.

Ultimately, I think it’s OK to exaggerate the pose a bit, especially for the stylized stuff, but of course it can’t be too wild, or it will cause discomfort in the viewer.

[Lynx3d]

A bit hard to to tell, but to me it looks like your had points to an even lower position than the camera, while Huo Huo seems to look straight at the viewer, which gives me the feeling she’s worried or even scared…but you can play with the head angle, if you lower the head so the eyes are looking up, I’d expect some distrustful or even reproachful look.

The camera in your selfie seems to be a lot nearer to the feet than in your sketch though, and transferring a pose from a male adult body to an anime girl might also be tricky…

I often enough struggle when the reference seems a decent fit at first. Recently I had to accept that body height is more tricky to adjust than I assumed. Although the pose was good and it was slim sporty looking woman, I figured she’s too tall to give me the look I wanted when just copying the body proportions except head, it looked surprisingly tomboyish.

I’m glad I don’t have huge hands with sausage fingers, so at least my own hands give me a good guide also for female hands usually

[YRH]

Yeah, I find it difficult to use the phone. Also you kind of need some tripod/holder to really make use of it for body poses. Stylizing from a radically different body type is tricky at best, as you said.

I think for more complex cases using the 3D models is the go-to, but posing them is so cumbersome. Probably it would pay off the best to learn Blender for it, as that can cover the main landmarks of the scene as well as the character poses and camera lenses… But yeah, it’s not exactly easy to learn all that. Well, another time investment to make.

Ultimately, extrapolating from a few close’ish references and “winging it” seems like the best bang for buck method

[Lynx3d]

About rigged 3D models, I just remembered the Blender overlay plugin for Krita included “BodyKun and BodyChan”, and I finally tried it, but was pretty disappointed how the joints move weirdly out of the body.

Looking a bit further, I found an updated rig here: Blend Swap | Knee/Elbow IK Rig for BodyChan/BodyKun (need to register to download )
It works a lot better, although it’s still confusing at first, and yeah, fiddling with character rigs and camera is still cumbersome, especially if you want fisheye, because only cycles can do that, and it’s rather slow and noisy (on my super old CPU, anyway).

This is what I got after a ton of fiddling:

side view to get an idea how much she’s leaning:

And this model unfortunately has rather stiff shoulders, while you can move them, the joints basically pop out of the torso and it looks super unnatural so it’s hard to judge if that’s even possible, it ends up like this when moving the shoulders up and forward:

[YRH]

Hey, that’s really cool, thanks for finding an updated rig. I did notice the joint problem with the original models.

Probably for anatomical details like that, a photo would still be the best. Ideally, ask someone to pose for you to make it easier

[YRH]

Still in kind of a weird place, art-wise… Just wanted to practice character faces for a bit today, started with this base:

First draw this, for hmm maybe 40 minutes or so. Turned out a bit meh to be honest:

Then I drew this in like 2-3 minutes total:

Isn’t the second one like… much better? Even so rough, it feels more alive to me. I found it kind of funny, so just wanted to share

But yeah, there’s a reason why you’re supposed to do at least a few progressively more detailed sketches.