Discussion Post: Wednesday, 03 October
Hey, guys! Since it's my posting week, and we discussed this a little last week, I figured I'd bring in the first Discussion Post and see what people were more interested in doing with this community.
The first thing I think would be helpful (suggested by the wonderful kimouski) would be for people to discuss their strengths and weaknesses. What do you ( Read more... )
The first thing I think would be helpful (suggested by the wonderful kimouski) would be for people to discuss their strengths and weaknesses. What do you ( Read more... )
Strengths/Weaknesses: When I was drawing frequently, I remember getting to the point where I was relatively pleased with my sense of proportions and style. With pencil on paper, I could draw my own characters relatively well, and be at least relatively happy with them - hair, clothing, light shading, faces, looks, hands/feet, style, etc. My computer work was always more messy; I found a technique to do hair that I was rather pleased with, but I was never good on the tablet.
Now that I haven't been drawing regularly, I'm finding that I've lost some of that, so I don't really want to declare it a "strength".
Things I'm looking to improve? The "active" parts of drawing, such as facial expressions/emotions and more active poses. I have always had a hard time making "exciting" pictures that carry emotion and action. This is partially because I am weak on proportioning in different poses, and partially because my style will not decide whether it wants to be anime-like or realistic-like and so my faces all end up looking the same. I'd like to get back to where I can draw different faces for different characters, too.
And I am definitely looking to improve my computer/tablet skills, because I am very weak there. So far I haven't done much pencil/paper work for this comm because of that, and although all the art has come out looking crap, it's because I know I need tablet work each week if I want to get better at all. With the tablet, I need to learn how to start from scratch (I have a hard time getting proportions right on the computer), smooth out my outlines, and develop a decent colouring style.
The main thing I need to make myself do is spend more time on each picture. I tend to be "afraid" to put time into a picture because "it might look like crap", and otherwise I have the excuse of "yeah it looks bad because I didn't spend a lot of time on it". I know this is lame. I don't do it with writing, so I just have to get over it for drawing.
I do know a lot of Photoshop tricks, from reading various tutorials online and from taking digital photo classes. I just don't necessarily know how to make the best of all of them, mostly from lack of practice.
I want to come out of this with my own sort of style - I don't care about looking 'realistic', and honestly, my style tends towards anime-y or comic-y, so "realistic" isn't the goal, it's more something "believable". I'd like to get to the point where if I wanted to start an online comic, I had enough artistic skill in my arsenal to do so. (Not saying I will, but that's the point I'd like to hit.)
Oh, and for the record, I love crit, with the simple caveat that once a picture is done, I'm very unlikely to go back and change things / work on things. So if you are expecting me to rework a picture I will probably disappoint. But if you can give me general advice to help improve my next picture, I'm down with that.
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I do keep people's comments in mind for future things, though, which is why that kind of crit is more valuable to me.
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Need to start this again, too, especially for men! WHY ARE MEN SO HARD TO DRAW.
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