fanart, Junkie!Roy

[ratcreature]

Fandom: DCU (Green Arrow)
Characters/Pairings: Roy Harper (back when he was Speedy)
Media used: Wacom tablet in GIMP
Rating/warnings: PG, I guess, for drug use
Notes/comments: This took me a really long time, and I don't just mean that I first had the idea for this in 2006. I have no idea what I am doing wrong that digital coloring takes me so long

Comments

[glockgal]

OH SPEEDY. OMG I love that you drew a scene like this and I love the angle and pose and entire composition. It's like the viewpoint of someone crouching down to survey and pity him and that's just so perfect. Looooove the detailing of his perfect shoes and the lovely gungyness of the wall and just. His flopped over self, it's all a tableau of tragedy. HIS QUIVER AND BOW. WAH. *CLINGS*

The perspective of his face is a little odd and I had a bit of trouble discerning what was what (I thought his mouth was his nostrils at first lol), but I'm sure you've already acknowledged this and it totally doesn't detract from the overall scene.

And yay use of a Wacom!! Digital colouring gets faster with practice, ahaha. I was totally like 'wtf is faster about this' as well when I started using mine!

[ratcreature]

Thank you, I'm glad you like it, and that the tragedy comes across. I wanted to show him as he hits his the lowest point.

As for his face, I'm not sure, I had some trouble with it, and tried just making it vaguely okay to me and then stopped. I think the oddness you notice may be that I might not have gotten the foreshortening of the head to really match with the rest of the body. I mean, there is quite a bit of foreshortening from that perspective, so the lower half of his face/head should be larger in absolute terms to look right, but I'm not sure I did enough of that, but may have balked out in favor of drawing facial expression more like I know without noticing.

And yeah, practice... I'm such a lazy sloth though. *g*

[mimes]

Oh. Oh, wow. You did a really wonderful job of making him look pathetic/pained/hopeless. A lot of times I notice that when people draw things about this kind of subject matter they tend to make it. . . well, glamourous, I guess, and not ugly like it should be (NOT THAT I'M CALLING YOUR WORK UGLY. MERELY THE SUBJECT MATTER IS A PRETTY UGLY/GRIM TOPIC).

It's very well drawn too, and I like the setting/angle you drew this at. So this is really good from both a technical and emotional point.

So, yeah. Good stuff, good stuff.

[ratcreature]

Yay, I'm glad that the despair and hopelessness comes across, because I wanted to show Roy as he hit rock bottom.

And I know what you mean with the atmosphere of depicting drug use. I think it is because drugs also have an air of glamor, glorified decadence, and creative mind altering effects alongside with the squalor, sickness and crime elements, also the rejection of bourgeois mainstream values is implied, which can be positive or negative depending on your perspective. It's the same, whether you have some 19th century artist going on about absinthe, or some 1960s hippie about pot or LSD.

[porntestpilot]

This is excellent work! The detailing is amazing. wow.

I can't tell you how awful I am at digital coloring, and the tutorials I've looked over so far have not helped in the slightest.

[ratcreature]

Thanks! I'm glad you like it.

I love the undo button that comes with doing things digitally, but the intricacies of digital painting totally elude me. I mean, I see the people who can make digital coloring look like a photo, and those you can make it look like amazing paintings, and I looked at tutorials, and even at tutorial videos that people made while painting digitally, but I still can't make either work at all. I'm more or less stuck with filling in a base color, and then add a darker area for shadows in a layer above that, and another layer with a few simple highlights, and that works okay with my generally somewhat comic-like style, but in reality it is not so much a style "choice" on my part, but my technical limitations. I sometimes feel like I'm doing the coloring book version of digital coloring.

[porntestpilot]

I recc'd it in my journal because it occurred to me I never do that for fanart, and I like your stuff.

I spend a lot of time watching speed art like Nico Di Mattia does on youtube, but mostly it's just an awe thing. I was practicing on uncolored fanart that is basically meant as coloring books and sucking at that. I think part of my problem is I can't draw.

What program are you using?

[ratcreature]

Thanks for reccing me.

I use GIMP, which is open source, and thus free. In general I can't afford to pay for software, so I've been pretty much an exclusive Linux user for the last decade or so. From what I understand GIMP is similar to Photoshop (which I have never used), at least I can follow a large number of Photoshop tutorials for graphics stuff, though some of the more arcane functions (some filters and such) are missing or in slightly different places.

[snake_easing]

Oh, ouch. Poor boy. I'm glad he got out of the situation eventually. The details really add to this one.

[ratcreature]

Thank you! I'm glad you like it.