#it's a digitally cleaned up sketchbook page

[skatankata]

Damn that magical girl sure does not want to be a magical girl

[cuteniaarts]

@katkastrofa: *writes a single throwaway line in one chapter of Lost and Found that is never referenced again*

Me, completely randomly and with no prompting: Alright, bet–

[smilepebble]

jesse we need to draw octopath characters

[zemfruit]

Cool goth dragon gf oc to loosen up and get a break from my big projects. Photo of a sketchbook page cleaned up and colourized digitally

[infohazardouz]

ello! for the au, do my weezer blue eyes deceive me, or do you digitize some of the pencil work? i'd love to know how u make some panels with brushes/ or pencil sizes

your weezer eyes do not deceive you.. the past 3 or so posts have all been scans of sketchbook pages that I've cleaned up and edited in firealpaca :0) I started doing them traditionally because it takes way less time and I feel like my trad sketches are always looser... I could do a full mini-tutorial on how I do these panels if folks are interested!

As for brushes, I make my own and also use a few from the firealpaca free brush store! Here's a brush I made recently, modelled off of a human spine:

Maybe I can release some of my brushes as a 5k celebration or something :0), let me know if you guys are interested!

[doodleswithangie]

birthday boy

i always miss posting on richie's (movie canon) birthday but not this year! i cleaned up some scanned things from my sketchbook for the occasion.

[Image description: Digitally cleaned up ink sketches and doodles of Richie Tozier from the "It" movies. Alt text provided and copied below the cut. END ID]

Image one: An ink near-profile portrait of adult Richie. It is captioned, "Richie Tozier sketch studies" with a heart.

Image two: Ink cartoon verisons of child and adult Richie. The third of the page where adult Richie stands is filled in with black ink. It is captioned, "Richie Toziers."

Image three: Ink near-profile portraits comparing teens Richie Tozier and Mike Wheeler from Stranger Things. They are captioned with their respective names.

Image three: Ink near-profile portraits comparing teens Richie Tozier and Mike Wheeler from Stranger Things. They are captioned with their respective names.

Image four: Ink doodle of adult Richie sobbing into the shoulder of a confused (alive and unharmed) Eddie. They are dressed in their outfits from the sewer.

Image five: Ink doodles of adult Richie in two bust poses.

Image six: Ink doodles of adult Richie in two more bust poses.

[gwennafran]

Pale Lights Fanart - Horses

I drew pretty horses in my sketchbook while watching silly Youtube drama videos. Then I cleaned it up digitally and put two pages together to one image.

Maryam rode with her mother's army of raiders. She probably is the most experienced horseback rider in the Thirteenth. Raiding style.

Angharad undoubtedly had proper riding among her many homeschooled classes. She probably also got perfect form.

Song is tricky. She most like knows the basics, but hoses are expensive and not part of basic Tianxi military formations, so I don't think she has actual experience. She undoubtedly looked super self-confident getting on the back of that massive warhorse, though.

Tristan I figure never has been on the back of a horse in his life. And he doesn't plan on starting either. That is one of the most obvious contract backlash catnips you can find.

The Erraticana Discord has declared that Fortuna (obviously) has claimed the back of Tristan's poor beginner pony. He's not using it, anyway.

[eldathsgrove]

The Talk of the Town

I finally finished my art project!

Gift and process under the cut

As a treat, I saved the frame separately, so other people can use it for their toxic ships 👀 please tag me; I want to see them 👀

Now, I want to walk y’all through the process for this, because I think it’s hilariously odd

I can’t picture things. At all. I get the impression, like the brains reaction to having seen something, but no actual visuals, so…

There were at least two different version I tried to work through first; I really wanted to draw AAstarion with his corset visible, but I just couldn’t make it work

I started this one by turning these two into 3D models with Hero Forge, and posing them

With some paper on top of my laptop, I roughly traced their outline, and then drew a grid on top of it 👀

So…do you remember those pages in coloring books where you’re supposed to use a grid to redraw a picture? I always hated those, but that’s how I got the outline into my sketchbook 🙃

This is what I took Forever (months) fleshing out, and then, well…the border 🙃 each individual rose was its own grid, and the others I had to break down first. I wanted there to be another layer of flowers as the background, all Wolfsbane. I just couldn’t figure out how to do that one well enough 😅

I took the picture of the finished sketch, and traced over it in art studio

I only had three layers to work with, which was a pain in the ass, even though I was barely doing more than dumping colors

Astarion’s dainty face and pain in the ass hair were too delicate for my pencil, so they were done entirely digitally…by precisely pasting game and hair references I could use as guide lines to trace over. I don’t love tracing, but I could not figure out how else to do this; his face is impossibly pretty

Gortash’s mug, in sharp and obvious contrast, was not as involved of a process. I think he’s ugly cute. The only specific detail I made sure to include is the mole I saw someone mention getting obsessed with. I turned it into a little heart 🖤

Anyway, a whole bunch of cleaning up, selecting and cutting, a diy glaze, and here we are, just in time for the chapter it goes with 💪😭✨

@nyda-the-tav thank you again again for helping me figure out how to get the formatting functional; I hope my process didn’t give you an aneurism

[airborneice]

gonna just d r o p some extremely rough sketches here bc my sketchbook I’ve had on the go since 2020 is almost filled up and once it is I probably won’t go revisiting any of the sketches in it, so I may as well share some of them here

I’m incapable of shutting up abt my art so ramblings under the cut

1-3 - mattie sketches :) the last ones are recent and the 1st is one of the first drawings I did of her, back in 2021. idk I just think it’s important y’all know she’s been on her tide mouse shenanigans since the beginning

4 - I think I drew this back in last march and meant to move it to digital and clean it up there but things got busy and I never did :( they’re based on @randomwords247’s wonderful mermaid designs bc I love them

5 - unrelated to the last one, but while I was working on one of my little mermaid au drawings I tried to think how I’d approach the sequel if I got that far & ended up w. this. something something mermaids having human familiars being frowned upon

6 - I think. this is a drawing of @blaithnne’s pony!lauren that I never finished oops

7 - forgot I had this!! year before last me and @bubblekidaesthetics were planning to cosplay these two at comic con, and I got super hyped and doodled this. we did do this cosplay and it was awesome <3

8 - slightly more recent design stuff for freyja, still based on hilda-fanblog/rhombus’ design ofc but figuring out if I wanted my take on her to change anything like how many legs she has lol. also some pony!mountain king doodles on the next page

9-10- something something centaur au. somewhere in my notes app is a whole list of hilda chars and horse types/colours bc I started researching them and got so carried away. johanna’s supposed to be a bay and hilda was gonna be a shetland I think…? (the hilda one is a lot more recent and I think it shows lol). rip to dee who had to watch me talk abt this au so much and barely actually draw it

anyway tumblr won’t let me add any more pics which is probably a good thing 🤷‍♀️ I hope literally everyone feels better as an artist for seeing what an absolute mess my drawings start out as 😌 now I gotta buy a new sketchbook

[mysticdragon3art]

Inktober 2024, days 28-31.

10/31/2024. Dip pen. Daler Rowney FW acrylic ink “Flame Orange”. No pencil underdrawing, so mistakes fixed with Daler Rowney FW "White" acrylic ink and paintbrush. Background digitally cleaned up in Krita. Because my scanner darkens colors, digitally fixed the hue in Krita, to better match the colors on my physical sketchbook page.

[pumpkinpatch-jack]

sketchbook page :]

close ups under cut

real proud of how the bottom bit came out cause i did not know what the heck i was doing. i just sorta went with it. i may clean that one up a bit and make a digital version.

[pawseds]

Broke out my new Midori blank notebook (sketchbook?) to celebrate half of the M-EPIC crew getting back together! The new Delta Green game (tagged Helvetia, will be run by @theroyalzealot) I'll be a player in is set in the same universe as my M-EPIC campaign (and also the Melati/Grief Rice campaign I'm running right now).

Finan (my PC, glasses) will get a cameo through M-EPIC's appearance. Then I accidentally roped in North's (long hair) player, and then the handler asked me to ask Ian's (beard) player if he wanted to join, and he said yes. So that's pretty cool!

Because I can, quick Midori notebook first thoughts, because I know these notebooks are a big deal in the travel journal/journal corner of the internet:

Heard they're good with fountain pens, and I was very excited for that! The top drawing was drawn with my fountain pen

The paper's smoothness works well with them, but the ink takes forever to dry/be absorbed by the page (hence the smears), which was a bummer as I'm also quite the messy artist lol

Fountain pen is the Pilot ones with the faces on the nibs btw (it was also skipping and I only had the mind to clean + fix it after the first drawing lol)

I also used a drawing pen (equivalent to the Sakura ones) and tombows (water-based ink). They worked perfectly with the paper. Especially the tombows! My gosh! They're so much smoother and blend better (despite my messy and quick flats lol)

True to the brand's word though, none of the inks bled on the page itself (no flowering) and none of them bled through the page as well

Unfortunately, you can see the shadows of your inks on the back side of the page and through the next page. The second one was pretty shocking since I've never had a sketchbook/notebook like that

But! At least they don't show up in scans. And that's really what matters to me since I picked up the habit of digitally archiving sketches

Can't wait to use this sketchbook more with inks (fountain pen, tombows, maybe dip pen cuz I think the paper can handle it!) without fear of ripping a hole through the thing or bleeding onto the previous page!

[iraprince]

hi ira! im p sure i remember u regulary scan ur traditional stuff n also times where u said u didnt do it for a while or smthg. do u have any tip on where tf to start w a big backlog...i didnt have acess to a good scanner or camera for a long time and now i do but i have so much shit i wanna scan in (both sketchbooks n loose papers) i have no idea where and how to start :')

[wheezing softly] yeah "regularly" is the goal, but hitting big backlogs every few weeks is more accurate to reality lmfao. but that means i have a lot of little things i've folded into my workflow to make it more doable!

that being said, i'm sure what works best will vary person to person, but the core rule that works best for me is: scan the backlog in batches, but digitally clean/edit/organize each batch in one sitting. picking up in the middle of where you left off in a physical stack is easy; picking up where you left off in a bunch of nebulous digital files is a fucking nightmare.

what i mean by that is, like, let's say i have a stack of 60 sheets of paper to scan in. maybe i don't have the time/energy/attention span to scan all 60; i start running out of steam at page 20 or something. in that case, that's fine, set the rest of the pages aside; but if i sit down to start cleaning/editing that folder of 20 scans, i should do them ALL NOW. if i don't think i can clean them all tonight, i'm going to wait and start tomorrow.

the reason i'm adamant about that is like, say i get through cleaning scans 1-6 out of 20, then i want to pick them up tomorrow.... frankly unless i remember to write myself a note (and i probably won't) i'm going to forget which one i was on. it's a pain to open a bunch of the scans trying to remember which one i did, i lose the "flow" that you can kind of get into when doing tedious stuff like this, etc... these are all tiny problems that i know ppl can come up w a million simple solutions for but the fact of the matter is for a task that is already kind of overwhelming + tedious that i'm already dreading, ANY AND ALL sources of friction are going to make it more likely that i'm just going to keep putting it off, and then it just Won't Get Done.

basically, discover anything that potentially throws you off or makes you lose your spot or just makes the whole thing more of a pain in the ass (i can't remember where i saved everything, the papers are disorganized and i can't remember what i've already scanned, etc) and ELIMINATE IT (throw everything into sub-folders of one big folder called "SCANS" even if it's ugly, gather ALL the stuff u need to scan into big piles in one place even if it's ugly and then move them elsewhere when scanned, etc). it's tempting to want to be like "i will get all my shit perfectly color-coded studyblr organized first and THEN i'll do my scans" but realistically that just means you're never ever going to do it. shit does not need to be organized. shit needs to be EASY!!!!!!

now some technical stuff, which is again super personalized to what works for me but maybe it'll give ideas!

i use a free scanning software called NAPS2 and it's a godsend. there's a batch scan setting where u can tell it how many pages u have to scan, then set how many seconds it waits between each scan (i.e. 10 seconds, just enough to take each finished page off and swap in the next one/flip to the next page of ur sketchbook) and then it'll just automatically keep scanning/waiting 10 secs for the next one/scanning until the stack is done, WITHOUT having to click "scan" every time. ymmv but for me this is really nice bc my scanner is on the opposite side of the room from my computer lmao (walking back and forth to hit "scan" every time is a friction point. ELIMINATE.)

NAPS2 also makes batch-saving things really easy with placeholders! for example, let's say i have 120 pages to scan and i want to save them to a folder. instead of having to save and name each one individually as i go (friction point. ELIMINATE.), when i'm done scanning i can batch save and name them "april 7 scan $(nnn)" and the program will automatically name each one "april 7 scan 001.png," "april 7 scan 002.png," etc etc all the way up to "april 7 scan 120.png." it saves me an incredible amount of time. (you can also do placeholders for current date/year/etc if that's useful to you, but i already tend to manually sort my files into monthly folders so the placeholder numbering is the only thing i've used personally.)

if you have one of those "all-in-one" home office printers that has a top-loading feeder you can use for stacks of loose pages instead of putting them directly on the scanner glass, that can also be a good way to get a high volume done without having to open and close the scanner/place each individual page on the glass/hit scan every time etc; but i would only advise that for casual scans where the quality/alignment doesn't matter much, bc there's a higher risk of jamming/wrinkling and sometimes a lot of the scans come out a bit crooked that way.

when you're digitally cleaning (this is clip studio specific but i'm assuming a lot of software operates similarly): once i've done whatever correction/adjustment layers i need to crisp up my scans, usually a tone curve + saturation adjustment in my case, i hold off on merging the adjustments down right away!!! you can copy those adjustment layers and then paste them on top of all the other scans you have to edit. i.e. copy the tone curve layer from scan 1.png, switch tabs into scan 2.png, ctrl+v. scan 3, ctrl+v. scan 4, ctrl+v. rinse and repeat and now look, you basically only had to do the tone curve once and then you can get the rest of the batch 90% done with one keyboard shortcut each. depending on each image you'll probably have to tweak them for them to look their best, but it's still way faster than navigating the menus and redoing your tone curve/level adjustments/etc from scratch every time (friction point. ELIMINATE.), especially if you're trying to fight your way through dozens of files.

uhhhh what else. well here's just a quick flowchart of my scan process in case it helps visualize! my philosophy is for everything to be in service of the end goal (get scans organized into patreon sketchbook compilations/set aside for later refinement/ready to upload, then i'm probably never going to look at them much again); i organize just enough to make that EASY, but i don't bother with any form of organization that i won't need to reference later. again, more steps just = more reasons the shit is not going to get done. ELIMINATE. STREAMLINE. WIN

(there's also a folder by year but i forgot to stick that in and also who cares. i hope this makes, like, any sense at all)

[sleepy-stories]

This is what i meant that i have been sketching hazbin hotel. I am still doing six the kids clean up. It is a lengthy process but worth it.

But here's the boys minus alastor:

I am still into the drawing them in the time period but i guess i gave up a little. Maybe or maybe not. Angel dust is likely just drawn to see if i can draw him as a girl version. The thing is that they are draw human.

But now...i regret it. Since they could look perfect as their demon self. I don't know i am playing around the idea. So this isn't 100% what i wanted but this is the start of simple drawing them. They are human. Maybe after some of the human designs that fans did. Mainly angel here. But others are from me think of when they died design that i do.

I did draw charlie too but i completed this sketchbook and did her on another.

Yes i did on a sketchbook. I like doing that alot when i start drawing new fanart.

Before i get brave enough to color them digital.

The unfinished pose was suppose to be angel dust but i gave up before going to work. I did also an early test with ironically that pose earlier with husk or a "character" that i pretended to not be husk.

Because husk died in the 70s and i was brainstorming human look. Obviously i won't show because i am unsure if I have the confidence for that one.

No it is not NSFW but it's just under the same page as the felix the cat drawing that i freak out over how i draw different now.

[chibigaia-art]

how did you learn to draw? Would you recommend any classes or certain resources? do you have any tips, general or hyperspecific or anywhere in between, other than "just practice"?

sorry to bombard you with questions. I'm just a frustrated amateur artist trying desperately to improve, so I'm asking around some of the artists i particularly like.

I learned to draw by bashing my head on my desk for several hours, which means practice (sorry,) and also by staring intently at artists I like, trying to 'steal' how they draw some things

I never followed a class online, so I wouldn't be able to give out recommendations for those, and I haven't actually looked up an art tutorial online in years so I can't remember anything, but here's a few resources/general tips under the cut

RESOURCES

haven't used this myself, but my teachers during the first year at comic school mentioned proko as a good YT channel for beginners

quickposes - useful for gesture drawing, I acc use this one when I feel like I need to draw but dont have any ideas

I know some people use designdoll for poses as well, I never used it myself because I tend to use the csp models for that, but if you don't have csp, I think it's a good alternative

coolors - for color palettes

adorkastock - more poses! I don't check it anymore at this point but it was my first actual 'art landmark' when I was a kid and I needed to find some poses, I could always rely on their photoshoots

I'm not linking any tutorials because, as I said, I haven't looked up any online in 10+ years, but I used to watch a lot of speedpaints as a teen, and it should be fairly easy to find decent tutorials on YT at this point;

GENERAL TIPS

if you have a sketchbook, please don't let the internet make you believe every single page has to be a masterpiece, that attitude is gonna break you

not everything will be a hit piece and thats ok

when shading, avoid pure black

experiment with styles!

when inking, you shouldn't move just your wrist but use your elbow as well! also rotate your canvas, both when doing traditional art and digital

true to traditional and digital art as well - flip the canvas to see the art mirrored and find mistakes (for traditional you can hold up the paper to a source of light and look at it from the back)

use references whenever possible

what works for another artist might not work for you ( re my ink tip: I follow that, but I know a couple mutuals don't do that and their art still slaps and looks clean and crisp)

when drawing a full illustration with a background, work on the background perspective first and THEN add the character,, this should be basic knowledge but my idiot ass actually processed this info only a few years ago

learn how to use perspective grids asap, dont be like me

IF YOU DON'T WANT TO LINE YOU DON'T HAVE TO!!! be free

rule of thirds is always useful to keep in mind

I'm not super good at giving advice because tbh I don't think I'm good enough to give it, but I hope at least one of these things will help you out!

[hauntedtotem]

Do you have any drawing tips?

•When it comes to digital art, if you struggle making lines clean or sharp enough, using a textured brush erases that struggle because the whole point is not being clean or sharp.

^left is obvious where mistakes were made and had to be erased, looks choppy and needs cleaned up. right does not need cleaned up much. saves time and energy!

•if a drawing looks a little too bland or unfinished, but you don't know what else to do about it, adding a texture overlay does a lot, especially for solid backgrounds

•For both traditional and digital artists, do👏art👏studies👏. No, this doesn't mean sign up for expensive art classes, it means spend a page in a sketchbook just practicing one thing. So instead of drawing say, a character portrait like usual, have a page that's just full of hands in different poses (use references! Very important for studies!)

2016 example, but you can tell which ones had references (hint: only 3 of them did,but they're way better than the rest)

the only recent example I had was an unfinished page of bird skulls :/

Which brings me toooo

Learning to draw realistic skeletons can also really help with anatomy, if your character looks wonky, think "could a skeleton fit in there?"

Thinking abt how their skeleton looks can help notice things like the eyes being too high up or the mouth being too low, or having no room for a brain

*this is not a dig at people with this style! It's okay to have more exaggerated features and you don't need to draw realism! The skeleton rule does not apply to cartoony characters obviously. Just some advice from someone that used to put the mouth too low all the time

•if you get stuck where you feel like you aren't improving, try different art styles out.

•If you have art block and don't know what to draw, try the 'dtiys' or 'draw this in your style' tags and pick something there, or do screenshot redraws from games or shows

•If you usually listen to music when you draw but it's just not doing it atm, switch to something like long YouTube commentary videos or documentaries, and vise versa. Sometimes the brain wants music, sometimes it wants information or gossip. When you get burned out from one go to the other

•this applies to traditional and digital art too! If you have art block on one medium, switch to another! If digital isn't working, grab a pencil or paintbrush, or play with some clay! Sometimes the brain isn't bored of art, it's just bored of the medium.

•If you're trying realism and struggling, break it down to simple rules.

And I don't mean the shape thing everyone suggests, I mean things like "the inner corner of the eye lines up with the mouth, the outer corner of the eyes lines up with the ears, your nose bridge leans into your eyebrows, feet are the same length as your elbow to your wrist, use the collar bone to guide the shoulder position, the armpit curves into the breast, etc.

*this doesn't apply to everyone or every expression! Remember the mouth moves around and comes in all shapes, it's a very loose "rule", and people's eyes aren't always the same distance or angle, just keep the ear around that general eye area

Glasses test: can your character wear glasses?

carlos passes glasses test- a better rule for mouths is to imagine smile lines, even if whoever youre drawing doesnt have wrinkles, theyre a good guide for mouth placement

•doing color palette challenges can help practice composition and shading with abnormal colors, and helps understand color theory

•for digital, you can overlay colors over a drawing to make the palette more uniform. Don't be shy abt messing around with it

•Watch speedpaints! Watch pencil animation clips! It helps

•don't be afraid to use your art supplies. Ik the struggle of "but I don't wanna waste it", but that paint will go bad if you keep it on a shelf for years! Use it already! Doodle in the "fancy" sketchbook! Yolo!!

•use cyan and magenta for mixing paint, not blue and red. The "primary colors" rule doesn't always apply to all mediums.

•keep your old art! Do not tear it up or throw it out just because you're not proud of it, it's cool to reflect or even redraw it years down the line (backup your digital art somewhere, even the ones not posted online because your computer could just die one day for no reason and take everything with it. It sucks)

•IF you sketch on paper and then digitalize it later, you can draw the pieces seperately and photoshop them together. So dont worry if you drew a really good hand but it's at the slightly wrong angle, or too far away from the body. You can put it where it needs to be without having to erase and redraw it