Art Update
The text is all pointless, self-indulgent babble. Just look at the pretty pictures....
Here is everything I've done in the last few weeks. Well, everything except the drawings I did on actual paper, the sketches and paintings with no redeeming qualities whatsoever, the doodles that are only meaningful to me, the sketches I didn't save, the paintings that aren't finished, and everything that isn't art (it's absurdly difficult to convert "cleaning the house" to a .jpg).
This was a birthday gift for my sister. She had requested "yuri". I was going to draw her a lemon, but it...didn't...work... >>; I used a reference for the pose, and managed to successfully turn the guy from said reference into a girl, which is harder than I would have expected.
For anyone who may be interested, here is a closeup of the curtains at 50% the original resolution and another at 100%.
I was just me messing around and having fun with colors here. Also experimenting with textures. There's a ton that bothers me about it: the anatomy is so wrong it makes me cringe and the hair...just...*shudders*. But it has a few things I absolutely love. I also tried sharpening the final jpg...I'm not sure how well that worked.
Again, for those interested, here's a 100% closeup of the lips and nose.
This was painted from an attempt to correct the eye in the face above, using a reference. The attempt at correction didn't mesh at all with the overall image, but I had a lot of fun turning it into it's own painting. I'm not sure what the yellow ball is...I just felt like messing around with reflections. It seems a ton smaller than the above image because I had cropped out everything but the face.
Fun with shapes. Mostly, I just like the sparkly eyeball.
This is an update of something I've already posted, mostly with the addition of some textures and sharpening.
Plus, 50% closeup.
EDIT: It amuses me how fast this next one was taken down. I'll admit, I'm a little unclear on what photobucket considers "pornographic". Them that are interested and not offended by nipples can now find it on my DA account.
Basically, I just wanted to draw breasts covered by something gauzy, but got distracted drawing her face. I'm actually not particularly happy with how the gauzy something, but oh well. I don't think I've ever tried to paint anything semi-transparent like that before, so I forgive myself. This used a slightly different process than the ones above--I painted it initially in dark blue and light yellow, then colored it using overlay and multiply layers. It's something I've seen other people do and attempted myself, but this is the first time it's really worked. (An example of it not working can be found here.
Closeups: 50% and 100%. (The closeups are still up...apparently her face and mouth weren't the inappropriate parts.)
Can you spot the difference in style? >>; Someone somewhere suggested using a long, narrow brush at 100% flow and opacity and it's surprisingly fun to paint that way. Almost everything so far was done with a round brush at a fairly low opacity and flow (varying between 10 and 50%). This was painted almost entirely with a much flatter brush. It took a little getting used to, but now I love it. I also apparently can't use my old method of painting in Photoshop (sketch an outline, fill in gradually building up color, refine and mess with). I think the problem is mostly that I'm not as excited about it, so I get impatient.
The picture itself gave me absolute hell. You'd never guess to look at it, but I spend literally days trying to get a background that didn't make me want to claw my eyes out. The hands were hell and look terrible. It's still painfully unfinished, but I can't bear to work on it anymore. But I like their bodies (I liked them better before the hands covered things up), the poses and their faces. So there you go.
Here's a 33% close up on the good parts (their faces).
I had a lot of fun doing this one. I mostly used the same flat brush I used in the last picture. It's far from perfect, but I love it anyways.
I intended (and still intend) to give this as a gift to my psychology teachers from last year. Unfortunately, I can't email it to them until I get my computer back. I wanted to include a crying baby, but I couldn't get the pose to work. This was painted initially with a light round brush, but then I switched to the flat brush which worked a lot better. Or at least, allowed me to finish it instead of giving up with it looking sort of like a fluffy off-white blob. I used several references for this, and it looks rather a lot like none of them.
This is a painting I did of a character I've been working with. From behind, because it shows her costume best. Painted with the same flat brush as the last few.
Here's a 50% closeup.
Techniques:
*Almost all of these began with a sketch/outline. Some were refined into a clean, neat lineart before coloring, others never got beyond vague shapes that only implied the actual final shapes before I started shading/coloring. Both techniques work perfectly well, but differently. Better linearts are easier to get clearly defined and less likely to turn into annoying messes. Vaguer sketches are often more fun and tend to have more movement to them.
*I've discovered that "tracing" a the basic shapes of an image directly on top of the reference before beginning the actual sketch makes the actual sketching both easier and more accurate to the reference. I did that a bit for the picture of the girl on the green background, but I found it even more helpful for two other as-yet-unfinished pictures with more complex poses.
*References are good. I don't use them enough.
*Using colors from the background in coloring the foreground. I know, this seems like it barely deserves to be mentioned, but I don't think I've ever significantly done that before, and I did it a bunch here.
*Experimenting with texture, both using brushes I've downloaded from various places and my own custom brushes. Lots of playing with the size/shape/angle/scattering settings. Also, leaving some of the texture when using the flatbrush looks cool. It's also easier.
*For the first bunch, I mostly was using a round brush, with flow set to 20% and opacity ranging from 10-50% (mostly 20%), and opacity also set to "pen pressure". Occasionally size set to pen pressure instead/as well.
*For the last four, I used a brush with the roundness set to ~15%, angle set to "initial direction", opacity jitter set to "pen pressure", size jitter also set to "pen pressure" but with the "minimum size" set to ~30%. Flow and opacity were both set to 100%. I have fallen in love with this brush. It's so much fun to use!
*Sharpening the final jpg before uploading makes things less blurry (gosh, really? :O). This is surprisingly helpful, though I'm a little uncertain about *how* sharp to make things. As in, I have a feeling that in a bit I'm gonna look back and be like "WTF was I doing? That's massively over-sharpened." But right now, I seriously can't tell what's too blurry vs too sharp. Hopefully, my judgment will improve.
*Flipping the canvas back and forth couldn't be easier, and it's absurdly helpful for letting you see the major wankiness in an image you've been looking at for hours and are thus blind to. It doesn't always work, but it helps. A lot.
*I'm sure there was more, but I can't remember what it was. Yay.
Here is everything I've done in the last few weeks. Well, everything except the drawings I did on actual paper, the sketches and paintings with no redeeming qualities whatsoever, the doodles that are only meaningful to me, the sketches I didn't save, the paintings that aren't finished, and everything that isn't art (it's absurdly difficult to convert "cleaning the house" to a .jpg).
This was a birthday gift for my sister. She had requested "yuri". I was going to draw her a lemon, but it...didn't...work... >>; I used a reference for the pose, and managed to successfully turn the guy from said reference into a girl, which is harder than I would have expected.
For anyone who may be interested, here is a closeup of the curtains at 50% the original resolution and another at 100%.
I was just me messing around and having fun with colors here. Also experimenting with textures. There's a ton that bothers me about it: the anatomy is so wrong it makes me cringe and the hair...just...*shudders*. But it has a few things I absolutely love. I also tried sharpening the final jpg...I'm not sure how well that worked.
Again, for those interested, here's a 100% closeup of the lips and nose.
This was painted from an attempt to correct the eye in the face above, using a reference. The attempt at correction didn't mesh at all with the overall image, but I had a lot of fun turning it into it's own painting. I'm not sure what the yellow ball is...I just felt like messing around with reflections. It seems a ton smaller than the above image because I had cropped out everything but the face.
Fun with shapes. Mostly, I just like the sparkly eyeball.
This is an update of something I've already posted, mostly with the addition of some textures and sharpening.
Plus, 50% closeup.
EDIT: It amuses me how fast this next one was taken down. I'll admit, I'm a little unclear on what photobucket considers "pornographic". Them that are interested and not offended by nipples can now find it on my DA account.
Basically, I just wanted to draw breasts covered by something gauzy, but got distracted drawing her face. I'm actually not particularly happy with how the gauzy something, but oh well. I don't think I've ever tried to paint anything semi-transparent like that before, so I forgive myself. This used a slightly different process than the ones above--I painted it initially in dark blue and light yellow, then colored it using overlay and multiply layers. It's something I've seen other people do and attempted myself, but this is the first time it's really worked. (An example of it not working can be found here.
Closeups: 50% and 100%. (The closeups are still up...apparently her face and mouth weren't the inappropriate parts.)
Can you spot the difference in style? >>; Someone somewhere suggested using a long, narrow brush at 100% flow and opacity and it's surprisingly fun to paint that way. Almost everything so far was done with a round brush at a fairly low opacity and flow (varying between 10 and 50%). This was painted almost entirely with a much flatter brush. It took a little getting used to, but now I love it. I also apparently can't use my old method of painting in Photoshop (sketch an outline, fill in gradually building up color, refine and mess with). I think the problem is mostly that I'm not as excited about it, so I get impatient.
The picture itself gave me absolute hell. You'd never guess to look at it, but I spend literally days trying to get a background that didn't make me want to claw my eyes out. The hands were hell and look terrible. It's still painfully unfinished, but I can't bear to work on it anymore. But I like their bodies (I liked them better before the hands covered things up), the poses and their faces. So there you go.
Here's a 33% close up on the good parts (their faces).
I had a lot of fun doing this one. I mostly used the same flat brush I used in the last picture. It's far from perfect, but I love it anyways.
I intended (and still intend) to give this as a gift to my psychology teachers from last year. Unfortunately, I can't email it to them until I get my computer back. I wanted to include a crying baby, but I couldn't get the pose to work. This was painted initially with a light round brush, but then I switched to the flat brush which worked a lot better. Or at least, allowed me to finish it instead of giving up with it looking sort of like a fluffy off-white blob. I used several references for this, and it looks rather a lot like none of them.
This is a painting I did of a character I've been working with. From behind, because it shows her costume best. Painted with the same flat brush as the last few.
Here's a 50% closeup.
Techniques:
*Almost all of these began with a sketch/outline. Some were refined into a clean, neat lineart before coloring, others never got beyond vague shapes that only implied the actual final shapes before I started shading/coloring. Both techniques work perfectly well, but differently. Better linearts are easier to get clearly defined and less likely to turn into annoying messes. Vaguer sketches are often more fun and tend to have more movement to them.
*I've discovered that "tracing" a the basic shapes of an image directly on top of the reference before beginning the actual sketch makes the actual sketching both easier and more accurate to the reference. I did that a bit for the picture of the girl on the green background, but I found it even more helpful for two other as-yet-unfinished pictures with more complex poses.
*References are good. I don't use them enough.
*Using colors from the background in coloring the foreground. I know, this seems like it barely deserves to be mentioned, but I don't think I've ever significantly done that before, and I did it a bunch here.
*Experimenting with texture, both using brushes I've downloaded from various places and my own custom brushes. Lots of playing with the size/shape/angle/scattering settings. Also, leaving some of the texture when using the flatbrush looks cool. It's also easier.
*For the first bunch, I mostly was using a round brush, with flow set to 20% and opacity ranging from 10-50% (mostly 20%), and opacity also set to "pen pressure". Occasionally size set to pen pressure instead/as well.
*For the last four, I used a brush with the roundness set to ~15%, angle set to "initial direction", opacity jitter set to "pen pressure", size jitter also set to "pen pressure" but with the "minimum size" set to ~30%. Flow and opacity were both set to 100%. I have fallen in love with this brush. It's so much fun to use!
*Sharpening the final jpg before uploading makes things less blurry (gosh, really? :O). This is surprisingly helpful, though I'm a little uncertain about *how* sharp to make things. As in, I have a feeling that in a bit I'm gonna look back and be like "WTF was I doing? That's massively over-sharpened." But right now, I seriously can't tell what's too blurry vs too sharp. Hopefully, my judgment will improve.
*Flipping the canvas back and forth couldn't be easier, and it's absurdly helpful for letting you see the major wankiness in an image you've been looking at for hours and are thus blind to. It doesn't always work, but it helps. A lot.
*I'm sure there was more, but I can't remember what it was. Yay.