#experimental sketchbook stuff

[orangeslushies223]

A whole garden of flowers and my name etched on a rock. All this could've been avoided. All I wanted was to talk. (New eye style!!)

[icewindandboringhorror]

Pages from trying to keep a little sketchbook-scrapbook type thing going for two weeks lol. I gave myself specific rules in hopes they might all end up more cohesive/consistent seeming, but alas, scribbly chaos reigns, it seems

[pigeonquinnart]

testing out new brush packs 🌌🌊

[grimsgreymatter]

no stars//only smog

[bougonia]

hmm. i hate to say it but i do think my art was more creative when i was smoking weed.

[the-kneesbees]

I'm thinking about entering this local art show?? for the town fair ?

[sludgeguzzler]

Hmmm should I go back to posting art?

[vetyr]

hi, i ireally love your work and i don't know if you've answered this before but, what kinds of studies do you do or how did you learn color theory? i wanna get better at rendering and anatomy but im having trouble TT TT

Hi! Long answer alert. Once a chatterbox, always a chatterbox.

When I started actively learning how to draw about 10 1/2 years ago, I exclusively did graphite studies in sketchbooks. Here's a few examples—I mostly stuck to doing line drawings to drill basic shapes/contours and proportions into my brain. The more rendered sketches helped me practice edge control & basic values, and they were REALLY good for learning the actual 3D structure behind what I was drawing.

I'd use reference images that I grabbed from fitness forums, Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest, and some NSFW places, but you could find adequate ref material from figure drawing sites like Line of Action. LoA has refs for people (you can filter by clothed/unclothed, age, & gender), animals, expressions, hands/feet, and a few other useful things as well. Love them.

Learning how to render digitally was a similar story; it helped a lot that I had a pretty strong foundation for value/anatomy going in. I basically didn't touch color at all for ~2 years (except for a few attempts at bad digital or acrylic paint studies), which may not have been the best idea. I learned color from a lot of trial and error, honestly, and I'm pretty sure this process involved a lot of imitation—there were a number of digital/traditional painters whose styles I really wanted to emulate (notably their edge control, color choices, value distributions, and shape design), so I kiiind of did a mixture of that + my own experimentation.

For example, I really found Benjamin Björklund's style appealing, especially his softened/lost edges & vibrant pops of saturated color, so here's a study I did from some photograph that I'm *pretty* sure was painted with him in mind.

Learning how to detail was definitely a slow process, and like all the aforementioned things (anatomy/color/edge control/values/etc.) I'm still figuring it out. Focusing on edge control first (that is, deciding on where to place hard/soft edges for emphasizing/de-emphasizing certain areas of the image) is super useful, because you can honestly fool a viewer into thinking there's more detail in a piece than there actually is if you're very economical about where you place your hard edges.

The most important part, to me, is probably just doing this stuff over and over again. You're likely not going to see improvement in a few weeks or even a few months, so don't fret about not getting the exact results you want and just keep studying + making art. I like to think about learning art as a process where you *need* to fail and make crappy art/studies—there's literally no way around it—so you might as well fail right now. See, by making bad art you're actually moving forward—isn't that a fun prospect!!

It's useful to have a folder with art you admire, especially if you can dissect the pieces and understand why you like them so much. You can study those aspects (like, you can redraw or repaint that person's work) and break down whether this is art that you just like to look at, or if it's the kind of art that you want to *make.* There's a LOT of art out there that I love looking at, probably tens of thousands of styles/mediums, but there's a very narrow range that I want to make myself.

I've mentioned it in some ask reply in the past, but I really do think looking at other artist's work is such a cheat code for improving your own skills—the other artist does the work to filter reality/ideas for you, and this sort of allows you to contact the subject matter more directly. I can think of so many examples where an artist I admired exaggerated, like, the way sunlight rested on a face and created that orange fringe around its edge, or the greys/dull blues in a wheat field, or the bright indigo in a cast shadow, or the red along the outside of a person's eye, and it just clicked for me that this was a very available & observable aspect of reality, which had up until that point gone completely unnoticed! If you're really perceptive about the art you look at, it's shocking how much it can teach you about how to see the world (in this particular case I mean this literally, in that the art I looked at fully changed the way I visually processed the world, but of course it has had a strong effect on my worldviews/relationships/beliefs).

Thanks so much for sending in a question (& for reading, if you got this far)! I read every single ask I receive, including the kind words & compliments, which I genuinely always appreciate. Best of luck with learning, my friend :)

[s0ull3ss-p3rs0n]

Drew this and I like how the clothes turned out.

The entire picture (I don't like the legs that much but the ribbons are cute)

[belmarzi]

so this year i'm working with @as-if-unreal (who is the real superstar, i'm just his lackey 🤠) for a fundraiser for hermit a day may!!! it's supporting gamer's outreach (a great organization, super happy to lend a hand to them). for every 150$ of donations recieved, i will be making 10 seconds of an animatic! so if 900$ is recieved, i would make 1 minute of animatic. please, put my apple pen to work. she needs the exercise. donation link below :)

also i decided to change my approach to this challenge. i've really been unhappy with my art recently so i decided to do all sketchbook drawings this month instead of anything digital so i can get back into more experimental stuff. i'm going to go back and redo beefs lol

sorry for all my yappin 🗣️

[orangeslushies223]

Starting to experiment with textures mediums and interactive art more in my sketchbook and it's been going okay I guess it's really fun and I'm looking forward to creating more fun stuff with this!

Bonus oc stuff <3

[illusioncanthurtme--art]

Style experimentation feat. zim and dib (rough chronological order). This is the most fun I've had drawing in a long time!! Still kind of in shock over it.

This all started from Two Things: A.) I've been looking at animatics in preparation to make a ✨Portfolio✨, and B.) I saw some fanart that had me making heart eyes and I still can't stop looking at it.

When I first started this invader zim kick a couple months ago, I didn't think it was going to lead me down this path. I thought I was going to draw some of the characters in "my style", and eventually move onto something else. I don't know HOW it ended up being this sort of retrospective muse for me, where I'm challenging myself and trying new things. Maybe iz isn't the cause, maybe this would have happened regardless of what characters I was drawing. But here we are.

And I am so so so happy for it because I USED to draw like this all the time!!! This is what my sketchbook used to look like!! And somehow I just?? Forgot? That I could draw this way. That there wasn't anything stopping me. And that it would be so FUN. You can literally draw, and make the characters less detailed, but simultaneously more exaggerated and expressive, AND you can make more drawings in less time?? Ive always been a quantity over quality person when it comes to drawing, and i think its the animator in me that loves drawing like that. I was drawing all day yesterday. I didn't want to put the pencil down, and it's been a long time since I've felt that way about drawing. I had so much fun and I don't want to draw any other way ever again...That's just how I feel right now at least.

I swear, I probably come off as the most wishy washy person. First I messed around with zims design multiple times, now I'm inking stuff, now I'm drawing cartoonier. THIS IS NEW FOR ME I SWEAR... its been a long long time since ive let myself draw this way. I guess I just hadn't realized how much I was restricting myself.

Anyway, rough chronological order. The first adult dib page (second to last image) was actually the first one I drew. You can tell from the last page that I used the shapes n such from the kid dib on the older dib to make it look more like him. The big forehead is actually pretty crucial lol

[thirdtidemouse]

@sketchbookweek DAY 4 - SECRETS

another late one im so sorry but IT TOOK ALL DAY OK!!! here is a comic for you about johanna and kaisa and growing up a lesbian. they are 14 here in the middle of a pe lesson

i normally prefer sketchbook having just met as adults (fully grown up and still dorky losers) but given they both presumably grew up in trolberg (and depending on kaisa's age) its not unlikely they at least knew each other

im learning to be more experimental and try more sequential stuff... i'm specialising soon in illustration and the tutor showed me some really inspiring student work im enjoying drawing a lot rn *smiley face*

the actual hilda comics are a major inspiration for me i love luke pearsons panels and pacing and everything its so fun to read

i know this is a big one but still it might look rushed bc i have work in the morning (xmas is round the corner and i work in a supermarket god help me...) but wanted to get this one out... i'm still a day behind but there is more in the oven.. peace and love :P

[cryptist]

First three pages in new sketchbook !! I’ve been struggling with digital things so I just opted for traditional today. Might try some more experimental stuff.

Sorry for bad camera work :-|

[frogsafterdark]

So I haven't posted in forever, but I HAVE been drawing still! I'm suffering from a terrible bout of art block T^T so all I have rn is experimental stuff from my sketchbook. I haven't been able to do any big pieces in forever but I'm hoping the block will break soon.

I have some digital sketches too so stay tuned for those :D

[thefairygodmonster]

More traditional experimental stuff! I got a new sketchbook as I finished the last one (maybe I should do a video tour of it?). The new one isnt quite the texture I like for just sketching, but it is very nice for ink and markers and I happened to purchase a few more water based markers the other day from my fave art store. I know its probably seems obvious but I found that copics are not the best for this paper but the water soluble markers from faber castelle and tombow are very nice to work with. I may get more in the future.

I think would I would like to try next is some oil pastel pencils? Im curious about them though I should also just use up my colored pencils. Either way Im having fun! Its nice to just...make a thing and say 'thats good enough' and move on while thinking of new ways to keep pushing it. I broke in that big sketchbook too so no more 'oh no its too nice to make art in' for me!