Artblogging 2: More lessons, not much to say
It's only the second week, but I want to make myself do this every week. So, more artblogging! Writers and hilldo may skip this post.
THIS WEEK'S ART
Well, both happy and not-happy with this week's submission. It looks a little more like my art usually does, mostly because I drew on paper this time and scanned it in. I have a lot more control that way and the original sketch had a lot of lines and details and wrinkles and shading stuff that I thought was pretty neat. The sketch itself: decent.
I - of course - pantsed it up by trying to get fancy with the tablet again. I outlined the sketch in Photoshop (♥ to layers) and although the outlining went well, and quickly, I noticed by the end that the picture had lost a lot of its original... well, "feeling". I'd tried to neaten it up too much and somehow in doing so lost a little bit of the original appeal, sketchy and messy as it was.
The outlining did give me some practice with the tablet that I sorely needed, and it went like 100x better/easier/faster than last week's did. So in the end I am not really sorry with what turned out. I got some practice on a sketch that was fairly normally-proportioned and relatively okay, and that's what counts.
ON SHADING
...which is what killed the Irvine picture, haha.
What I did when shading this picture is the same thing I usually do when colouring art, just... lazier, I guess. I color in the different parts of the picture/outfit on a variety of different layers ("hair", "skin", "pants", etc), tweaking colours until I get something that goes relatively well.
Then, I choose a general light source for the picture (sometimes I actually draw it in on one layer like a big blob or a happy face or something, because I am a loser).
I then transparency-lock each individual layer and begin shading. I pick all my colors by hand, because I am not always a fan of the way the Dodge/Burn tool(s) choose colours for you. I start off a little bit darker and softly airbrush in what I want to shade. I then work gradually darker and darker, with more and more solid/defined brushes, until I get down to really deep shadows / wrinkles in clothing / etc. Sometimes when I move into shadows I tweak the colours a little bit -- I'll go more brown, or more blue, in deeper shadows, to see how it looks. It kind of depends on (a) the mood of the picture, (b) what I'm coloring, and (c) how risky I am feeling.
(This is mainly a hanging-on from photography. I like playing with toning, a lot, and one of the things you can do with a good toning kit on a B+W photo is make your shadows and highlights a variety of different tones. So I kind of have it in my head that green shadows don't always have to be green, and the like. Sometimes it works out splendidly; others, not so much.)
Anyway!
Where I failed on this week's picture, I think, was not spending enough time on shading (duh) and also not ...taking enough risks, I think. Or, that's the best way I can think of to put it. I spent a lot of time colouring inside the lines, and shading real general and basic parts, and in the end the picture looks flat and plain. It doesn't have any character to it, or style. The original sketch, messy as it was, had a lot more flair. Anyone could've done this colouring job.
In retrospect, I want to go back and re-color the outline. I want to do it a little messy, and I want to try more brown-toned shadows, going for a "sepia" look. (No, not the sepia filter in Photoshop. I want to do it myself; what do you learn from a filter?) It needs to look a little less ... "neat", I think.
I've noticed this a lot with recent pictures I've coloured. I -- I used to really like my colouring style, honestly. I used to really, really like the way I did hair. (out of practice now of course) I used more colours, and I used the paintbrush rather than the airbrush, which made for more choppy, defined-sort of shading. It wasn't great, and it was messy.
But recently when I colour things it simply makes them look flat and boring. It's just the soft airbrush tool on a coloured panel -- anyone could do it, really. It doesn't look interesting.
So I think in the future I will experiment a little more. So maybe things don't look "neat" or traditionally "finished" or "good". XD I want to play around a bit, and see if I can pick up something a little more fun to do.
Comments? Alternate ways to shade?
THIS WEEK'S ART
Well, both happy and not-happy with this week's submission. It looks a little more like my art usually does, mostly because I drew on paper this time and scanned it in. I have a lot more control that way and the original sketch had a lot of lines and details and wrinkles and shading stuff that I thought was pretty neat. The sketch itself: decent.
I - of course - pantsed it up by trying to get fancy with the tablet again. I outlined the sketch in Photoshop (♥ to layers) and although the outlining went well, and quickly, I noticed by the end that the picture had lost a lot of its original... well, "feeling". I'd tried to neaten it up too much and somehow in doing so lost a little bit of the original appeal, sketchy and messy as it was.
The outlining did give me some practice with the tablet that I sorely needed, and it went like 100x better/easier/faster than last week's did. So in the end I am not really sorry with what turned out. I got some practice on a sketch that was fairly normally-proportioned and relatively okay, and that's what counts.
ON SHADING
...which is what killed the Irvine picture, haha.
What I did when shading this picture is the same thing I usually do when colouring art, just... lazier, I guess. I color in the different parts of the picture/outfit on a variety of different layers ("hair", "skin", "pants", etc), tweaking colours until I get something that goes relatively well.
Then, I choose a general light source for the picture (sometimes I actually draw it in on one layer like a big blob or a happy face or something, because I am a loser).
I then transparency-lock each individual layer and begin shading. I pick all my colors by hand, because I am not always a fan of the way the Dodge/Burn tool(s) choose colours for you. I start off a little bit darker and softly airbrush in what I want to shade. I then work gradually darker and darker, with more and more solid/defined brushes, until I get down to really deep shadows / wrinkles in clothing / etc. Sometimes when I move into shadows I tweak the colours a little bit -- I'll go more brown, or more blue, in deeper shadows, to see how it looks. It kind of depends on (a) the mood of the picture, (b) what I'm coloring, and (c) how risky I am feeling.
(This is mainly a hanging-on from photography. I like playing with toning, a lot, and one of the things you can do with a good toning kit on a B+W photo is make your shadows and highlights a variety of different tones. So I kind of have it in my head that green shadows don't always have to be green, and the like. Sometimes it works out splendidly; others, not so much.)
Anyway!
Where I failed on this week's picture, I think, was not spending enough time on shading (duh) and also not ...taking enough risks, I think. Or, that's the best way I can think of to put it. I spent a lot of time colouring inside the lines, and shading real general and basic parts, and in the end the picture looks flat and plain. It doesn't have any character to it, or style. The original sketch, messy as it was, had a lot more flair. Anyone could've done this colouring job.
In retrospect, I want to go back and re-color the outline. I want to do it a little messy, and I want to try more brown-toned shadows, going for a "sepia" look. (No, not the sepia filter in Photoshop. I want to do it myself; what do you learn from a filter?) It needs to look a little less ... "neat", I think.
I've noticed this a lot with recent pictures I've coloured. I -- I used to really like my colouring style, honestly. I used to really, really like the way I did hair. (out of practice now of course) I used more colours, and I used the paintbrush rather than the airbrush, which made for more choppy, defined-sort of shading. It wasn't great, and it was messy.
But recently when I colour things it simply makes them look flat and boring. It's just the soft airbrush tool on a coloured panel -- anyone could do it, really. It doesn't look interesting.
So I think in the future I will experiment a little more. So maybe things don't look "neat" or traditionally "finished" or "good". XD I want to play around a bit, and see if I can pick up something a little more fun to do.
Comments? Alternate ways to shade?