#its been a while since ive used my pen to draw

[tealfruit]

it's like this

in this case the knowledge being your expectations for how you want your art to look. it comes and goes in waves

How do people learn to draw without losing confidence in themselves 95 times a day

[itsutatanelol]

working on tamari fanart !! this is the rough so far :)

[insufferablemod]

should maybe take the 'my lines r shaky cus my hand is injured so I'm drawing with my left hand atm' from my pinned post cus they arent really shaky anymore lol

[mintyvoid]

I just checked out the new hobonichi line up for 2024 and damn. I only started getting into getting one last year. Got the green weeks and the yuka hiiragi clear case for said weeks planner. Honestly a really good combo.

Theres a seahorse design aaaaaa, i liked the embroidery designs from last year but felt they were kinda meh in some ways. The bunnies one felt too dark, like the colours used werent contrast-y enough tho i cant say how it looked in person. And while i loveeed the cafe one i wish it had only sweets on it instead lf various cafe foods.

But if i get the seahorse one for next year..i suppose i could just not use a case. Or maybe get the normal clear one... i dont really like the colours they chose for the plain ones. Or wait i could do navy. Thatd make the case i have really pop.

Choices choices...

[ghostpajamas]

DUUUUUUUUUUDE your alcohol marker works r SO sick i saw that sequence of process pics u had and my mind was just Blown . can you elaborate more on ur process ?!?!? /nf

hello ! thank you for your kind words. i apologize for taking a while to answer this. the process of coloring the drawing i did as an example was rocky, and ive been busy with school.

i'll preface this by saying that i have a few posts with process pictures on twitter (i treat it as a wip dump when i remember to post). heres one of the few where the pics are all together, but my media tab has a fair amount scattered around.

this is going to be long, so i'm putting the 'read more' here.

step 0 : sketch. i start with blue erasable pencil, lighten it, and do my lineart with a mechanical pencil.

step 1 : base color. half frivolously chosen as a neutral color to set it off from the white of the paper, half "whats the color of the light / the lightest color being reflected by the material its cast on"

im going to stop numbering the steps. i immediately went too dark with the hair and failed to consider the strength of the light in the setting / how reflective hair is. also i colored the basic color of the eyes and the rough shadow under the jaw. dont get attached to any of this.

broke out the "ph. martin's bleed proof white paint" my mom gave me a jar of years ago. it does well enough at bringing back light, but the texture youre left with is not ideal. lightly shaded the face skin with a similar color. i also blocked in the rough color for the suit jacket and tie here. the marker doesnt have to be evenly applied because you'll be going back over in enough layers that it'll even out.

i wish i stopped here.

things start to go off the rails. painted over his eyes because "why did i give him double eyelids" tried to paint over just the eyelids. didnt go well. scorched earth. reshaded the hair, deepened shading on the face and neck, started on the shirt, and applied a cursory pass of shadow on the jacket. the light angle does not remain consistent with this.

redrew the eyes. the angle feels uncanny. i wish he was still looking at his phone but the paint is not taking ink well and i doubt another layer would make it better. at some point i applied rough shadow to the hands. dont worry about the inconsistent lighting.

darkened the eyes so they were less creepy. didnt work. i assume the ink bled (alcohol ink soaks into paper, but since this is now on top of white paint, it just sits on top and pools out), so i embellished with posca marker to cover it up.

realized that with the length of the shadow the brow ridge was casting, the hair should cast a shadow too. light source starting to be established.

im really sorry. i didnt realize there was such a drastic jump between this one and the prior photo. basically, i started defining edges and areas of deepest shadow. fine edge definition was done with the cheapest ballpoint pen i own. dark marker blends fairly well, but only put it where you WANT it to be that dark, and blend outward from there to darken surrounding areas. many, many layers of grey and light blue, brown and darker brown for the jacket. now that i had a vague idea of the light source, i just had to place the shadows and follow the folds. hitting the points of shadow with brown (base color but darker + warm tinge to suit base color) and blue (reflected light).

this also wouldve been a fine stopping point.

used posca to outline the edge of the face + sharpen edges. added more pupil-spots. messed up the mouth some more. whatever. calling it done here because the jacket looks good and the face is freaking me out.

overall, i treat alcohol marker like watercolor. a big wash of color, rough base colors. roughly block in shadows, gradually add washes of deeper shadow. define edges. etc.

its harder to blend colors directly than with watercolor but thats nothing more layering cant fix. and then white paint if layering doesnt work. and then more layering.

[tpher]

how do you make your oc screencap edits?? i also have a td oc and i dont really know where to start 😭

ok so!!! i use firealpaca which is just my usual drawing program. so i'll keep using it as a reference for my steps but of course im sure whatever similar program u use should have similar features

i'll be long winded for funsies as usual 💕

FINDING YOUR SCREENSHOTS

the key to decent td edits is to flat out trace screenshots whenever possible. stock pics will do, but of course itll be a lot more fun and less obvious if u use a screenshot from the show and put it into your new context

in terms of making your ocs, you will likely have to do what someone once called "frankensteining" your pics. this is where you use pics of other characters for their specific features and put them together since your oc doesnt have official screenshots to trace. this also absolutely comes in handy w canon characters! maybe you have a pose but u need them to be sitting. so try to stitch together two different pics to get what u need

it will look very scary but just trust the process. here is a random example i made using a dawn screenshot (where i removed the background), gwens eyes and eyebrows, and kittys hair

the sketching part is semi-optional. if you think you can freehand the lineart then go ahead but i assume your oc wont be a complete copy of something found in canon and therefore you will have to draw the newer/different features (such as the hair or the outfit) at least a little bit. and sometimes when i frankenstein the pics, my brain gets all overwhelmed so sketching makes me feel better jfbdjdnd

(in terms of my own oc, i screwed myself over bc his body type is so unique i gotta freehand it like all the time 😭

you can see i traced his head from his render (ALWAYS DO THIS BTW!!! TRACE CONSTANTLY), but then the body was freehanded using a canon pic as reference because tracing the pic wouldve been inaccurate)

THE LINEART

yes the iconic td thick, sharp, flat lineart. i achieve this by using a normal pen tool, turning off the pen pressure, and then turning up my pen stability to 40-60 (very high). you could use a curve tool if that works for you! but i would suggest against that for ALL of it bc the tool just wont respond well to rly drastic curves and such

the pen size varies on the pic. if the characters are close-up, itll likely be a bigger one. and then the characters' little details and facial features are usually a slightly but definitely noticeable smaller size. for the most part, ive had the bigger pen size at 13 while the details are around 9. or big size 10 and smaller size 7.

heres my technique:

as u can see, all of my lines go a bit too far. this is so that when im done drawing them, i can go back in and slowly erase where they meet and get them all sharp and pointy. this is just how i personally do it lmao. when it comes to facial features and other stuff that doesnt connect to anything, just get a close look at your reference to see how thick or how thin the edges get and do ur best to erase the edges to the point where they should be

THE COLORING

not much to it! the bucket tool is the best way to go. again just get a good look at your references just in case any parts have the lineart also colored in

THE BACKGROUND

you can find some generic td background pics on google or u could get them from the show and try to erase any character in the way lmao. if ur recreating something like, say, a dunc/ney scene w a different ship, then its very tedious but youll have to do your best to erase the canon characters and piece the background back together.

i like using the smudge tool a lot for this!!! just kinda pulling whats already there towards the characters. to save time, put your drawing visible on a top layer as you do this so that you dont have to edit the ENTIRE background, just what you need

THE RENDERING

ok so heres a big one imo. after youre done, youre gonna have to fuck up the quality at least a little. well not that u HAVE to but like..... to match the standard quality of a td screenshot? ive never seen a td screenshot in perfect hd quality outside of stock art. so u could blur ur drawing just a little bit. maybe add in the teeniest bit of chromatic aberration (just set it to 1 or -1). not ALL of them together but u do whatever u gotta do

my personal favorite is blurring just a little and then saving it as a jpeg (around 65-80%) so that its pretty crunchy and looks all the more real

obviously not a NECESSARY step but just something to point out. especially if ur background isnt the best quality so the characters have to match it

this one from yesterday i didnt even redraw topher bc i was lazy and he looks fine enough. i just put danny onto the pic to cover the other character. so i blurred danny a little bit and then saved it in a pretty low quality so that they match one another. look at those pixels. that crunch.

SO THE TLDR IS just trace and copy your references as close as possible. if you cant find a reference for your character, try finding another character w something close enough

[ronanxing]

hi!! I love your art and have been wondering what brushes you use since they always look very smooth

omg thank you so much!!! 😭 that means a lot to me cuz im actually a rly messy artist so ive been trying hard to make my art neater and the lineart cleaner,, i actually use random brushes interchangeably so since theres quite a bit ill just expound below the read more cut :>

so for the entire year or so the main brushes ive used are wendy xu's esterbrook double elastic #135 vintage dip pen mimic and fine point sharpie mimic ! its pay what you like (min $1) and theyre only available on procreate. i highly recc them, they feel SO nice to use! ive been using them a lot esp in the recent (ivantill) comics ive been drawing but also for rendered pieces to clean them up a bit

also rly fun to use for sketching / crosshatching! personally i love to use the mimic gel pen for sketching while the elastic is for clean ups

sometimes i also just use the default ink procreate brushes like "syrup" or "gesinski ink"

for more rendered pieces like the ones above ive been using rinreeper's procreate brush pack (pay what you like, min $0) and marmastry's brush pack (pay what you like, min $0). both of these packs have really lovely brushes that make blending a lot easier, and coloring becomes a lot more fun :> they've been a huge help for me for a long time now (i also used the aforementioned wendy xu brushes for inking and lineart)

these brush packs also come with their own lineart brushes and i sometimes use them too

for pieces that are blockier / not quite as blended i love to use twulf's procreate brush packs, specifically the draw and paint packs. its free and only on procreate! for the draw pack i use "filly 1", while for paint i use "002" and "basic rounded cube". this is perfect if youre not rly looking to blend your colors and rather lay it out as is

OK thats pretty much it, sorry if its incoherent in any way i wasnt sure how to like. format this;; but these are the brushes ive been using d entire year 🫡

[yuyuneekii]

So like I’m gonna assume you may have an idea on this but like how do you like get line weight on digital art? I’ve always struggled with digital and honestly I’m not sure why. It’s just something about the canvas feels off, how many brushes there are.

Like it feels… almost inauthentic? But I really want to learn how to draw like Japanese fanartists, and also WLOP style really intrigues me. Maybe its my ipad being really small…? I’m not sure.

Okay back away from that rant. How does… line weight work on digital? What I mean is how do you get your lines to vary in thick/thinness without having to manually edit it because manually editing just makes it look choppy, much unlike traditional.

In the meantime, I’m having fun with 20 min pen sketches because they’re really nice to loosen up with. Pen honestly just makes everything feel nice, because you learn to accept the mistakes, you get to see the shading, the form, yet you also leave the form to the mind to fill in, which nearly negates the mistakes. Plus, I think the looseness just… makes art more enjoyable? I stopped for a while just because art felt stressful. Pen kind of made it more fun for me hahah.

So here, take some art from a month ago.

What do you use?

When i do line work i usually rely on pressure sensitivity but ive always had either a drawing tablet (like wacom or xp pen currently) or an apple pencil to work with.

One thing you can try to do is manually go over parts of the line you want to be thicker (or more in shadow)

Like this maybe?? (I dont think i showed it well since i usually use pretty heavy lines sorry)

Ive tried to find examples in my older artwork where i do it

I dont know how much of a difference this makes but its just something i do

I should get back into doing pen doodles since ive been finding myself frustrated whenever i draw and i end up scribbling all over it whether its digital or not snjs

Thank you for reminding me about pen doodling!!

Also that drawing is so good!! You’ve improved so much!!

[astranauticus]

post mortem for my orv animatic bc i have lots of thoughts and yall are gonna hear all of them (that is a threat)

first is the obligatory special thanks/plagiarism declaration section but a lot of the shots in this are inspired by the original changgwi lyric video which like. please watch it there's a reason this song is a classic animatic song on bilibili like the music is good but the video definitely helped. also speaking of bilibili, special shoutout to this arknights chongyue animatic that introduced me to the song that will haunt the next 8 months of my life!

the original inspiration was the thought that the verse of the spirit telling the story of its own death felt very yjh coded but it took like another week of stewing on it to have the idea of using the final chorus for the dkos arc which was the moment i decided i have to actually make this thing

going strictly by when i started putting pen to paper (pencil to ipad screen? whatever) this took almost exactly 5 months since i created the first drafts in february but the first 3 months ish from february until may were also my school semester so. most of the progress (id say about >60%) was done in the last two months of me working on this every moment i wasnt at work (or playing project sekai, for some reason)

also! funny little detail but counting the drafts and some discarded frames my procreate stack for this thing has exactly 49 artworks in it! neat little easter egg i guess (yeah 51 wouldve been more fitting but whatever)

this fully slipped by both me (at 2am) and my friend whom i sent the finished version to (fighting the flu) but in the final edit i didn't actually include the second half of the last lyric?? it's 'i will take you to the mountain god' i apparently just wrote 'i will take you' and never finished the rest LMAO

speaking of the lyrics i dont speak korean and im not a huge fan of most english translations of this song that exists so on multiple occasions i was so tempted to just use the chinese cover someone on bilibili did because then i'd at least be confident i know where the fucking line breaks were (there's one line at the end where im pretty sure i didn't edit on the line breaks correctly but that was more of an intentional compromise because the timings would've been off otherwise. anyway) tbh the only reason i didnt do that is the atmosphere and delivery of the original song is. really unbeatable like the cover's also pretty good but it doesn't quite achieve the same effect

also speaking of things i fucked up im aware i drew sys in the wrong outfit for the dkos fight but like. ok full disclosure my orv reference folder is a complete mess (theres like 400+ images in there. for some reason) so on net ive gotten character outfits wrong while working on this thing like at least 3 times bc id just grab a random webtoon screenshot from my folder and go w it. it's just that by the time i realised i fucked up i'd already finished drawing all of sys's frames and i was too lazy to go back and change all of them LMAO

anyway yeah some other random things i wanted to whinge about:

there's a lot of effects i wanted to do that didn't quite come across due to. lack of skill/time/patience/all of the above but the one im really annoyed about is the yhk postchorus bit with the 3 circles bc. first off i think i drew those while halfway dozing off on the train to school once because uh. yeah

anyway poor drawing aside id really wanted to recreate the sort of. drawn-in effect on the circles and lines that the original lyric video had but i could NOT for the life of me figure out a way to execute that in capcut so. here we are (also you cant put transitions on overlays in capcut so that's why those also looked so bad. youre welcome)

honestly my timeline for this in capcut looks pretty ridiculous bc if you want to do word by word animations/effects you need to pay for the pro version so my workaround was just to have like five thousand text layers with 1-2 words on it each (do not recommend btw)

speaking of the text im a moron so i kinda forgot to account for the text when drawing frames and wow you can tell. yeah next time im just hand writing the text fuck this

and i have some more thoughts that are. mild to moderate webtoon spoilers so past this will be the spoiler warning line

__________________________________________________________

actually my original plan was to upload this the day dkos dies in the webtoon but a. i genuinely did think it was gonna be yesterday like i dont pay for the early access episodes so i was just kinda going off orvtwt LMAO b. i could feel myself burning out on this like the last few frames i drew for this were fucking dogshit so i figured either i finish it soon or i wont finish it at all

i will probably still draw something for dkos' death day though for those who celebrate (basically when i was thumbnailing for one of the frames in this i ended up with one that didnt fit the video aspect ratio at all but still looks pretty good so im promoting it to a full drawing. so look forward to that)

like for an idea of how fucking sick of this shit i was by like. last week pretty much like for the last few frames of the dkos fight i straight up forgot to draw dkos' wings and had to add them in halfway through editing last night. like that's how fucking out of it i was by then lmaoo

looking back its actually kinda funny cuz the whole put this up when dkos dies thing was my plan since february but i had literally no way of knowing when that would be especially since the webtoon stopped going with the novel chapter numbers exactly (i could.. guesstimate but my original estimation was in june so yknow. real useful) but like i can find evidence of me panicking about that deadline since may. why did i do that

given that deadline i knew i cant really include stuff from the novel past the dkos arc but man. the amount of times i wanted to use something from later (ESPECIALLY 1863 arc). i actually have another idea i want to test out thats like full epilogue spoilers partially because working on this for so long made me realise i really want to make more epilogue content <- what

yknow how i mentioned discarded frames yeah i had to draw dkos' death 3 times because the first two compositions just never quite panned out. i mean the current one is also pretty unreadable with the colour scheme but trust me the previous ones were way worse christ alive

[torchstelechos]

i realize how nothingish this question is regards to like answerability but like how do you get.... ideas...? or. i dont really ever have any kind of bigger things i want to draw its always like small stuff.... or... idk.... i want to make things that are like.. more... i want to make stuff that like... means something makes you think something... most of my stuff is just tiny little things with nothing behind it just something to get it down but i like want to make things that are interesting to look at.... idk..... okay wait ill share a self portrait i did.

^ im really hapoy with this stuff theres color theres studf going on! an eclipse! right like its. its neat theres things theres associations being made theres questions theres something there this is the only thing ive made where i actually feel like ive expressed something that was in me and i just dont know how to do that again i want to make more things like that i want to get more out of my art than just putting stuff down thatll be forgotten the second its down i want what i make to be meaningful to me and idk how... uhhhh anyway thanks for reading thisif you do i just needed to get thoughts out or smth frustrated with this. doing this for six years and its just. ive managed like a handful of things id want to show people everything else is just things made because i just have to do this urghhh sorry about all this

Howdy! I had to take a bit to think of an answer for this question. I didn’t want to fall back on the statement everyone gets when they ask about art (practice), especially since you specified ideas rather than art appearance/style. So! Lets get into that! (gonna be kind of long oops)

First I want to say that I enjoy your self portrait, its very colourful and I LOVE colour. The choices in colour also complement each other very well, as yellow, orange, and blues go well together. Not only that, but the saturation of each colour help bounce off each other and bring it all together. Now, I assume the materials are a blue pen, and crayons? It might be markers, but the way the orange moves across the yellow makes me think of crayons. I adore it! I love crayons and haven’t been able to use them in a while, so it’s nice to see them being used. 

Now, your question, I feel needs some context from my side of things before I can properly answer it. I have been doing art for about 15 years now, and I have done multiple mediums including painting (water colour, oil, and acrylic), drawing (crayons, pens, markers, pencils, etc.), fiber arts (knitting, sewing, crocheting), baking/cooking (i think the presentation counts and how its a medium that takes combing lots of things to make a singular outcome), and a few I wont share right now. I’ve had official art classes that made me do things very specifically, one that taught me art history and how different genres of art were introduced, another on creativity and how to help flourish ideas, and some others on how to use different mediums and styles. I also watch speedpaints, animatics, and animation progress videos to learn some quick shortcuts in digital art since I was never taught officially on digital art. Including all of these, I also have done LOTS of practice in art. Having said this, lets get into some of my own thought processes. 

When I make art, the first things I tend to ask myself is “what do I want” and “what do I think would be interesting”? These aren't mutually exclusive, but they can be answered very differently depending on how I want to do something. For the Siffrin during the Mal du Pays fight piece, I actually started it by seeing a cat picture and thinking, “I want a discord reaction with Siffrin face down on the floor” which went into drawing Siffrin as the cat and then asking myself, “Wait, why is Siffrin face down?” which went into Oh! It’d be funny if it was Mal du Pays! So, doing that I decided to make it in the king's room which meant I had to draw a background. Eventually that transformed into “Okay but it doesnt look right, why?” the answer was that it didnt look like the game so I had to add some texture details and ta-da! Siffrin face down! 

But this also comes from years of practice in knowing what I want and knowing how to draw it, some of my art pieces were, “I think it would be cool if I drew a character looking down at me in front of a skyscraper” but um,, I didnt know how to draw that ;-; so I had to just let my hands kind of try and finish the piece even if I didnt like it. At that point, I realized I needed to practice the character and my style more until I COULD draw what I wanted. Which led into my drawing, a LOT of things I couldn’t and didnt like. 

As for symbolism in art, and how I got ideas for it, a lot of it comes down to knowing the character and how you want to translate your thoughts of the character into art. One of the ways I started doing this was adding flowers to the characters art, or learning what flower I considered “theirs” that way I could add hints to  it in the drawings. Some of it also came from animals, others came from art genres and their historical significance, and some come down to theories (such as colour theory in art). 

Finally, it really does come down to practice. As much as I hate to say it, a lot of the art pieces I do and share tend to lean towards “practice” or concept doodles so that I can better understand HOW I want to add it to a bigger piece. Most of my Siffrin and Loop drawings tend more to that as I need to better understand how their shapes and lines communicate to an art piece (Loop being a fucking star gets me so much) before i can add symbolism and make a bigger art piece. Even then, sometimes it doesnt work and the bigger art piece needs to be put to a back burner before i can communicate my thoughts on the characters as I wish to. 

(Here’s also a neat little trick I do, write out what you want to draw and then draw thumbnails so you can figure out the composition of the piece you want. It helps you know where something goes and how you want it to appear without keeping it in our brain for a long period of time. Some of the things I share are concept doodles but I’ve shared pictures of me doing this before! It can be annoying but trust me, it helps when you can’t figure out the draft at all.) 

Also, heres some of my REAL old art for reference when I say I’ve practiced a lot and didn’t always know how to do big art pieces ;;;;

Hope that helped answer some of my thought process on ideas and how that translates to art? I could go into more detail if you need me to discuss something further

[creatively-cosmic]

make a bad comic... take a bad picture of it..... the starry brain experience simulator 9000

readable(???) stuff below

ever since moving, its been hard to parse any of my thoughts and feelings.

id been wanting to draw my way thru it for a while now but never felt able to.

today why did we cross that out

uh idk

this morning we saw a comic on tumblr that DEMANDED you draw a bad comic [fully blacked out writing] oh it IS a thing my bad!!

to which i said internally

"ON GOD?"

draw bad on purpose

so i thought this would b fun 2 try!!!!

ive been tired of not being able to draw. to create. to work. to think straight. to do anything im "supposed" to. which is stupid

dont say that thats mean!! X(

given no expectations are on me now

Aren't there some expectations?

why can't we live without feeling like we need to do something?

Brother i think it's the trauma

GUYS WE'RE GETTING DERAILED

well this is about whatevers on our mind so :/

SO what im doing is grabbing random pencils or pens out of my Cowboy Bebop™ Ein™ and family Pencil Bag™ (stop writing TM its not funny (FUCK U)) and writing whatever thots we think on here n drawing about it YIPIEE!!

(this is JIMMY)

also we aren't allowed to erase anything

(wanna bet?) (THAT'S NOT THE POOOINT)

THIS IS SUCH A BAD IDEA WE LOOK SO FAKE WHAT ARE YOU DOING

idk who said that lalalala

I HATE YOU AND EVERYONE ELSE HERE

lalala im drawing u dead on the ground with a big ass and writing ur thoughts lalalala

oh i hate this pen

the chisel tip :(((

anyways i don't have anywhere im rly going with this,,,

i just hope this'll b a nice outlet 4 us after our life changed fundamentally however messy it might get

ik i had fun w this one! :3

(goD this pen sucks)

[self-indulgence-of-shame]

i finished drew a humanized(?) version of Hey Riddle Riddle’s logo on my sketchbook, and now i have finished digitalizing and coloring the drawing!!

the og sketch

and the finished drawing

this is Old Man Puzzles with a planet for a head so not sure how human this can be

with this drawing i tried something different from my usual process, i tried to follow Sam Does Art’s advice of ‘use less layers’ which is good for my phone storage methinks LOL

i also use a different pen than the kind that i usually use

before i used just the default dip pen on ibis paint x, but this time i customized it a little with the jitter function! i like the way it turned out, tho it is a little bit wonky in some parts but with more practice i’ll get better using it

its been a while since ive drawn at all, so even if this sucked i’d still be happy to have made anything at all LOL

im thinking of humanizing (personifying??) more podcast logos, esp Welcome To Night Vale’s logo (and the Desert Bluffs logo)

but thats a project for the future, for now im gonna go sleep!!

[tryingtolearnartsob]

hehehe i’m soooo happy feel like i’m IMPROVED AND CRACKING DOWN AT THIS DRAWING FIGURES SHIT! !!! i feel like i’m more consistent with it too and ahhhh that makes me happy. so like i feel like i started to run into this trap of drawing in simplified ways of just drawing all of the body in one go and the problem with this is well. the fact that i get the proportions wrong and it becomes flat, since the simplified way was like. flat drawing of the torso and i thought my problem for a while was trying to get the portions and also kinda realised my drawings were becoming flat. but i didnt want to go back to drawing in ribcage etc since it was like so. much more steps and hahaha i just! terrible! but i did get some enlightment between these moments where i felt like my understandings and shit were getting better.

i also realised drawing circles helped instide the flat simplificiation helped but anyways it was until today i figured way. and its honestly less figured out and more like things clicked into place. recently, ive been wanting to not zoomed into the canvas since i realised that it becomes small that. and i think overall picture from zoomed place will help wih spacial stuff and i have been using more pen like brushes so like i can focus on my line and stuff. anyways i didnt think that today i would be doodling, i did want to but eh it wasnt something i just wanted to do. and since i didnt wanan force it i just let it be… until heheh i got the urge to draw today <333 and so! i got the pen and went to cracking it. picked a art pose ref and got to it: and this session i wanted to take it slow. its something i also realised about me self. like i sometimes go to fast with sketching stuff, that really, its better to just sometiems SLOW THE F DOWN. ahaha.

and also this time, i wanted to better draw in head. then just circle. and after that, its time to block in body: i leave out the next, and since ive drawn in head more properly i didnt feel like using the simplied body thing or whatever i do. and just did like line for the shoulder and from then, tried to block in the pelvis/crotch era with line and i think its where it clicked. this method of constructing body from line portions and sometimes full boxes/squares. so i can get my portions right and i can have more freedom with it all and i think this all worked out before i did diff things across my journey: like when i really wanted to get better at drawing the chest but was having struggle with it all since when i drew torso first, it just wasnt workig so then i tried to draw collarbone and then chest right after. it also helped with not drawing the chest further up then it supposed to be. also when i was having struggle with where the crouch started/where belly botton was and did this kind of instintcive portion thing where i would go to ref and from chest go to naval to crouch and see that for me, i would do it a little more up than it should do. it was the same for knees, so i would do that. and those times where i thought drawing the arms first was helpful, it was and still is sometimes in some poses. and also that one video i watched that while the exact method isnt for me, the way was helpful while trying to understand n draw arm start/deltiod/shoulder. and thise videos that did pose from other view to help better explain really helped today when i was trying to break down this lying pose since ahaha i havent really hacked on those and theyre hard! but wow did i get better understanding from trying to draw in side view. anyways man it just made me feel/realise all those steps i had and stuff and when id go through OMG I FOUND THE WAY TO DRAW THE ART and even those some early poses that looked good and then became bad but it wasnt. it was me jumping from different ways and different levels to GET TO HERE!

the ups and downs, worked out in so many ways….? im so happy….. it feels like /all/ of it is paying off mann… im so happy. like when i honestly did like/felt so easily frustated in the begining and realised well. problem was that was that i was approaching the studies with such realistic(?) kind of way that. dumbing/simpling shit down made me give up less….! and that time with me trying to study more seriously and doing humerous bone study and muscle…. and that i didnt end up continuing but i stilll rememebr what i learned. and i feel like it will help when i get back to studing arm.

like right now, my arm and legs and head study i really need to work on. even neck. lol the way i forget neck a lot ahaha. and also the doing from diff angles, the digure. also i do like as im doing this studies im also trying to get a feel for the gesture and how to make it less stiff. i feel like now, im getting more better understanding of everything and better direction and ahaha def now that i will fall into those downs again and frustation and feeling like its going bad again but at least now, its all be accumalting my better understanding. ahhhhh im so happy right now.

[bandaidfingers]

Siona Atreides time ✨

[citrispace]

how long have you done digital stuff! very envious of your skillz

Hi, thank you so much!!! I got my first (and still current LMAO) drawing tablet back in 2014 and I've done digital art pretty steadily since then!

[ink-the-artist]

Hi! i was curious about your process for scanning/editing traditional stuff/specifically colored pencil is? I always fight with getting traditional stuff to look right/ not have scanner glare etc. If you don't feel like answering/don't have time that is absolutely cool! Hope you have a good day! Love seeing ur stuff on my dash! ty for reading

I have a post here where I explain (with pictures) how I go about photographing art when I can't scan it and a post here that talks more about editing it. When I get glare I try to edit it away using the burn tool in photoshop and trying out the different burn tool settings (highlights, midtones, and shadows) highlights and midtones settings are usually especially good for fixing glare since the glare tends to be lighter than the artwork and those settings will target that.

tbh I don't tend to have problems with scanner glare with colored pencil art, only when the drawing is a bit old bc for whatever reason the colored pencil drawings develop this foggy shiny glare on their surface after a while, but that's easy to get rid of by just rubbing the drawing with my hand as it rubs the weird surface glare right off. It might have something to do with the type of colored pencil you're using maybe? I would say it could be that you're pressing hard and really layering the colored pencil on thick, which tends to make the surface shiny, but I do that too and glare is only really a problem for me when I'm photographing the art, not when scanning it. otherwise I mostly get scanner glare from ballpoint pen or graphite art.

Ive been trying to use my scanner more lately and figuring ways to scan stuff even if its in a sketchbook, like by having just the one page sticking out and pressed to the scanners surface by heavy books. it definitely works better than photographing since the lighting and color is more accurate and there's no issues with warped perspective, and there tends to be a lot less of that glare with a scanner than with photographing it. so you're already on the right track in actually using scanner instead of photographing your art like I often do lol