#(i'm scared of messing up my sketch when i try to colour it)

[lixenn]

I sketched some stuff traditionally today (cause my tablet needed to charge and but I still wanted to practice) and damn.... I forgot how much easier it is to just.... draw with a simple pencil.

I did some stuff on perspective (very simple things with shapes) and then I started to read My S-Class Hunters from the beginning again and redrew two characters in my notebook and honestly it just flows so much better TT

I missed pencil sketches I should do them more often. I can draw hair so much more dynamic in the traditional way it's kind of insane. Maybe is should invest more time into just plain old pen and paper again.

[soonysy]

Hello :D

Goofy Magpie here to ask about your art process! Do you have any tips on how you do your sketching and/or rendering process? I hope this isn’t bothering you or anything but I really like your art and want to know how to do stuff like it ya know cause it’s cool and amazing

Also what art program do you use?

Well, hello! It is pretty hard to answer, just because I sometimes change the way that I do things, but I'll try my best to explain!

Everything is under the cut!!

Firstly, I use PaintToolSai2 :D

I try not to think a lot about line art. Most of the time, I do a very rough sketch from the basic forms and start making the character over it, like this

I have no idea how this circle just became this line art without any sketches; it just happens

Sometimes it helps to do an overly-detailed sketch, like the skull with eyeballs, to make a good form of eyes

I highly recommend not overthink sketches and line art. If you think that something is wrong, leave your art for some time (20 mins is enough for me) and then look at it again (or send it to your friend and ask what is off)

I like to add a pack of short lines on the clothes beside the foldings, it can fill in the empty space

It is really helpful to mirror you work at some point. Please, if you see a mistake when you flip canvas, correct it, even if you will have to change everything in your art. I was scared of it at first, but then it started to come in handy

For the clothes PLEASE USE REFERENCES, they are very helpful

I always try to make lines not straight, but curvy. This can add some flow to clothes or show that human bodies are not flat figures

Then I do basic colours (With the background to pick colours correctly!!!!)

My colour palette mostly is not in the same range of colours (Like yellow - orange - red), which might become a problem if you don't know colour theory (I definitely do not know it).

And then I do shading with the same colour as base one on multiply layer and lighting with colours lighter than base on screen or shine layer (And I do not like that part, because most of the time I'm messing things up, but if it looks okay, it's fine)

I also sometimes colour the line art. Most of the time I choose colour more saturated and darker than the base ones, but there are still cases where contrasting lines are better!!!!

I do not like render at all, but of course I really recommend you to do it only because rendering does this:

Render is really only picking colours, mixing them and then doing line with darkest one, it is not my strong side (There is a channel on Youtube called Bluebiscuits, there are a lot of helpful advises for this ^ type of art)

Also I think that for rendering is useful to look at other artists works! They can have some techniques that can make your work prettier (I personally had no idea about textures on the art works before one artist and now it helps me do these finishing touches sometimes that are necessary)

I think that this post is not that mush useful, just because I use the same techniques as the rest of the people, these advises are pretty common, but they saved me lots of nerves when I started this drawing-every-day thing

I do not do something very unique or extraordinary with my arts and style :P Just have fun and do whatever you want and remember: If it looks cool, it works

Have a great day!!

[tonispencerart]

When Art Goes 'Wrong' Part Two

Once I had done all of the wooden slices properly primed with PVA glue and gesso (lightly sanding with sandpaper in between each layer. I used two layers of PVA glue and three layers of gesso) I realised that I had basically forgotten how to mix and paint skin tones in acrylic paint. So, while the final layer of gesso was drying, I opened up my laptop and went straight to YouTube. I kind of love YouTube. You can learn all kinds of stuff on YouTube. Knowing this, I went looking for videos on how to mix skin tones with acrylic paint. I used a page of my sketchbook and gave myself a crash course in skin tones. It was amazing how much I'd forgotten but it all came back again soon enough.

And really, you don't need much, which is nice! Actually, that's true for most art, in my opinion. I have a limited paint selection because so much can be done with only a few colours. My main acrylic palette has the following colours: Red (usually a Primary red or the closest to it) Yellow Yellow Ochre Blue (typically an Ultramarine or Primary blue) Burnt Sienna Burnt Umber Black White You'll notice there's a black. While I would normally mix my own black paint, having a tube of black paint (I think it's a Lamp Black, but I'm not sure) can be useful. I almost never use black paint straight from the tube, though. I add in other colours to brighten it and make it pop and more interesting. And you can mix skin tones with them. With this new/re-learned knowledge, I grabbed a reference image and started mixing up paint. About those reference images... I learned the hard way to have far more than you think you need because, if you're like me, you'll definitely ruin them. Lots of them. So I quickly got into the habit of printing multiple copies of them. I cut one of them out and stuck it to my handy lightpad. I love this thing, too. I'm not always confident with sketching before painting, especially if it's a portrait where the need for accuracy is essential. My sketching and pencil skills go right out of the window then! I traced the image, making note of the values and where they were, flipped my tracing, and traced it again. I could then use this to rub on the other side of it with a pencil - hard - so that the image transferred to the wood. If I remember to, I flip the image before printing it, but sometimes I forget about this step. It looks a bit like this...

Once I refreshed my memory of mixing skin tones in acrylic paint, I started painting a wee portrait of Henry Creel on a wooden slice that had been prepped with my new best friend Gesso. And then it was time to mix the skin tones. This took far longer than I expected. But, with an extra reference image that I could mess up and ruin as much as I wanted/needed to, I made enough paint in each of the values I needed, according to the reference image. By the end of it, the image was mostly made of splodges of paint! It was useless as a reference image by that point, but it looked cool - in a weird way.

And it was going fine, even if some of it kind of scared me a bit. I had to keep telling myself to Just Trust The Process. But I enjoyed it and liked what I was painting for most of it... I got to this point, which, to my mind, was almost finished. And I was preparing to call the whole experiment a success.

And then I ruined EVERYTHING. I was trying to work out if it was dry enough for me to add the final touches. I poked it. And smudged it.

I then said several bad words, threw it into a box and told it, finally, to b**ger off, and went to bed mad as heck. And then realised it was about two in the morning...

I still haven't finished it, by the way... I'm still mad at it.