#really struggling with how to get my pencil sketches digitized

[fictional-teakettle]

I've been messing around trying to figure out the best way to digitize my doodles, and... it's been a bit of a frustrating process ngl 😅 so I thought it might be fun to do a lil series of quick doodles starring my OCs, so I can experiment and get some practice with this new medium.

So here's the idea: I'm gonna go on my main tickling blog, close my eyes, give it a good swipe, and draw a quick messy shitty lil doodle based on whatever post I land on.

I don't wanna hijack the posts themselves, so I'm just gonna link to them and tag the OP (but @ OP, if you'd prefer I reblog it directly I can always repost that way!)

The first post I landed on was this one by @puppys-preytime:

So Gus (the lil dude on the left) is a mad scientist from a black-and-white horror film who accidentally drank a Jekyll-and-Hyde type potion at one point. As a result he occasionally has lil flashes of Evil™ that he needs to be snapped out of.

Luckily that's pretty easy to do, because he's very ticklish.

[nei-ning]

Gonna rant a bit. I saw one set of beautiful anthro arts on another website. Sadly they were done in AI. I did left a comment, complimenting how beautiful these arts were but how sad it made me that they were AI arts.

The artist themselves was kind and polite, telling they use AI because they want to learn and be able to make game arts one day (but they too, apparently, with AI so...)

But then there was another user, AI "artist" too who replied to me that there's absolutely NO ARTIST who can draw anthros with detailed fur, goat like arm, lights, colors etc without editing or photoshopping. On the whole planet, absolutely none! This person clearly don't believe in people's skills when it comes on arts. Heck, I followed one artist on DA who drew ALL her arts traditionally and she drew, and still does, SUPER DETAILED FURRY ANTHROS! No photoshop, editing, nothing digital. Just her hands, paper and a set of color pencils.

Also, if people's art skills wouldn't had been amazing back in the days through mankind, we wouldn't have cave paintings, old amazing paintings or sculptures, ALL DONE BY HANDS IN TRADITIONAL WAY. NO AI, NO PHOTOSHOP OR EDITING.

Humans can learn amazing skills if they only want to. AI artists, maybe not all, just wants to take the easiest way / be lazy (and get lots of likes - like that other person who straight forward said it. That he uses AI to create furry arts to get hundreds of likes).

They also mocked my style / arts, saying they are not good enough to be used in AI arts - yet.

Like what the actual fuck?! I am pissed! I don't even want my arts to be used in AI arts by some lazy idiot (or at all). At least I draw EVERYTHING in my arts, from first sketch line to the last shade / light. Surely my skills are not as good as they could be. After all I'm self-taught, not gone in art school like some have. Not to mention I draw for fun, I draw to bring joy to my watchers, I draw therapy arts to myself, I like to keep my style easy and simple. My arts are a hobby, not professional thing or to fish a lot of likes. If my arts can make someone's day a bit better, then I've done my job! I never haven't taken my arts or skills too seriously, trying to improve them to the top.

Is there times when I wish I would put more effort to my arts, learn and study more, becoming better? Absolutely! But do I bother? Not really. Like I said, this is a hobby. I know I would burnout myself if I would start to force and pressure myself to do better, to learn more, to improve my skills. I mean I struggle to draw even now!

I do have some saved tutorials on Pinterest what I would like to try, yes, but still not in a way like if I would have a fire under my ass.

[annawayne]

Heeeello Anna! :3 I'm back to pester you in the inbox!

You may not have seen this, but this artist ask game... I've got questions for you!

1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 14, 15, 21, 34, 35

(ahahaha... That's a lot.... Ahaha.... Welp ....?)

But! No hurries, and I'm sorry if this eats at your precious time but I'd be happy to hear you talk more about your art! (Can never get enough tbh :3)

Hope you're doing a bit better now, Anna, please take care and you're loved!

Oh, Moon T^T

Hello, and you're right, I didn't even see this artist ask game (maybe, some time ago, so I don't even remember...), and thank you so much for thinking about me and for asking all this stuff T_T I have a lot of fun answering it, and it really distracted me from everything else going on in life since last weeks are quite difficult. But I'll be fine, and thank you for all of these questions, I appreciate you and your attention so much!

1 what medium do you use most (if applicable, what software)?

As I'm drawing now digitally, so I draw in Adobe Photoshop. I'm familiar with this software since my early teens, so it's very comfortable for me :D

When I was drawing traditionally, I primarily worked with pencils. I tried watercolour a few times, too. I have a very soft spot for oil - and I hope to develop this one day, too.

3 your favorite piece(s)?

Oh, what a question... I guess, for now, these ones:

4 piece you wish got more love?

All of them :D

I guess, these ones:

5 how would you describe your art style?

(I really want to joke and just refer to 21 question but well, let's take it seriously :D)

I guess, I can call it "cinematic poetry" - there's a very long way to go to really match the title, but this is what I aim for.

6 favorite thing to draw?

Oh, good question, Moon! As for the sketch stage, I really love to draw clothes, and when it comes to the stage of rendering - faces (primarily, eyes and hair, but I love the whole process and always try to improve my face renders skills...) and backgrounds!

8 thing you struggle to draw?

I think, when it comes to the rendering - HANDS. I think, my sketches of hands are not bad, but when I render them, oh boi, here comes the struggle. As a result, it seems fine, I suppose, but it's always a product of a lot of swearing and redrawing :D

14 whats your favorite thing about drawing?

Telling stories though different dimension. I like to combine in drawing both cinematography and literature, and it sounds a bit funny, because it's two different art directions, but still, I want to tell stories though a lot of things which combine these arts: details, emotions, lighting, and as if when you look at the art - you can hear all the vivid noises around the characters of life going one around and of characters themselves speaking, but then, as if they were caught in a moment, and then, I try to show this moment in my drawings. Or, when it's more of conceptual art, it also can tell a story, but differently - not like a frozen mundane life moment, but rather like a whole story behind it, and instead of these frozen ordinary life moments where the story is also told, here, the story told through not so evident details, starting from the pose to the colour palette itself.

I know I have a long way to go with it, but this is what I'm trying to improve and this is what I always aimed for.

15 least favorite thing about drawing?

Hm, very good question, to be honest. I thought about it for a while, since I can't really grasp if I can name such thing, but I think that it's both good and bad thing - that it's a lifetime commitment, that you should accept that you will study the whole life. From one side, it's wonderful and it's the whole fascinating journey, on the other hand - it can be really frustrating and draining not to be able to transfer your ideas from your head into the actual image, and while a lot of artists realize it, it doesn't make it easier to get disappointed sometimes. So, I would say, it's both good and bad thing, and how we look at it - depends on us :D

21 what do you think your artstyle would taste like?

I won't lie, this question sent me into a great reflection, and then I ended up questioning my art style in general, ha-ha-ha... But alright, hm, I think, croissant with orange jam? Don't ask. Just... Croissant. That's it.

34 whats something you still like from your old art?

Oh... Hm, I think from the beginning, they had great composition. I try to improve it now, of course, but I guess it was from the beginning a very great composition and "camera" shot. So this, this for sure!

35 if you had one piece of advice to give your younger artist self, what would it be?

Come, and do it, you're much stronger and braver than you think you are. It counts for many things, to be honest, and not only art, but yes, I would just hug my past self and tell myself that you're much more than you think you are.

Thank you so much, Moon, for all of it - for these questions, for your thoughts to ask me this in the first place and for your interest and support T_T It's priceless, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

P.s. I learned with this post that the post has a limited amount of images you can add... I didn't know we could add only 10 images... Woah...

[22degreehalo]

One thing that I always go back to when I get to thinking about machine-generated art

When I was in primary school, a friend of mine was really good at art. Like, not 'can carefully copy the Neopets Uni artwork' good, actual 'winning awards for her art piece' level good. (Look, for a horse girl back then I think that was not nothing of me!!)

And one time, when we were in year 5 or so - meaning the early 2000s - she entered an art competition with a beautiful picture of a bunch of African animals eating at a table together with the sort of cartoony, whimsical style you could easily see in a published kids' picture book (or so I remember it, anyway).

But during one of our classes, a guy came to the door to speak to her. And then she came back into the class to her cubby, awkwardly and embarrassedly carrying her picture.

Why? Because she's coloured it digitally, which (unawares to her) was against the rules.

She'd carefully sketched out the piece and drawn the linework physically, on A3 paper. And everything - the composition, the art style, every little detail - was her decision.

But she'd used a computer instead of paints or pastels or colouring pencils or whatever. And to the runners of the competition, that was 'cheating.' You weren't doing it yourself. All you had to do was click a few buttons and the computer filled it in for you, automatically.

Even at the time, that seemed wrong to me, though maybe that was just my inability to believe that my artist friend could've ever been wrong about art. But as I got older and tried out my own digital artworks and colouring... yeahhh. It's a hell of a lot less easy than I thought it'd be, if you want to make something look like how you can imagine in your head. To this day I think that my decades of doodling and anime art have made me okay at lineworks, but I never learned shit about colouring and it shows.

And it's just. I don't want to perpetuate the mistakes of the past, you know? Learn from history. The new technology is always going to seem scarily 'too perfect' and 'too easy' and unskilful and dangerous because What About All The Real Artists Who've Struggled Hard To Perfect Their Work? But digital colouring didn't kill traditional methods. They're just different.

(and requisite statement that I'm not thrilled about artists losing jobs but also by and large these would be the dead-end generic boring bullshit jobs nobody would be excited to do anyway soooo this is 99% a jobs and economic issue that has already happened before with countless past technologies and there is absolutely nothing to gain from hyperfocusing in on ai instead of, like, UBI or something to actually fix it.)

[egonkula]

Hey!! I truly truly love your art. (I especially love your rendition of Frank from IASIP. You capture him so well. And don't even get me started on your Hilson artwork...) Your line art and your coloring is really quite fantastic, and every time your art comes across my dash I'm mega-inspired to draw.

I was wondering about how you think when you draw? What's your process? I really struggle with line art and coloring (especially coloring), and you do line art and coloring masterfully! How do you keep your drawings so dynamic? Would you ever consider doing a speed paint for a future sketch? (no pressure of course).

Thank you so much!! I really admire your style. Keep up the great work :)

first, thank you so much! this was incredibly kind 🫶

For me my process just stems from wanting to capture a face, and everything else comes next. my favorite thing in the world is to draw shoulder up portraits, so I don't pay much mind to their bodies (which makes em look kinda wonky but that's okay)

line art is my favorite part! I spent most of my life drawing traditionally so when I transitioned to digital I wanted my work to resemble pencil and pen. I don't really have a "way" I do line art it just kinda happens LOL! I use brushes that are conducive to playing with texture and line weight and go from there :3

coloring is HELL for me actually, I struggle so much with finding colors that work together. honestly you just have to learn how to be comfortable with your drawing looking weird for a little! I adjust my colors after I finish with sooo many clipping masks to try and make them look cohesive.

I also play around with sliders and after a while you can almost feel? when the colors will work? you just get into the habit and it starts to be like riding a bike.

I'll reblog this post with a couple of speed paints to look at ! sorry if I haven't been very helpful! any proficiency I have in art really just comes from practicing. I know it's soo over used to be like "practice makes perfect" but it really is the best advice I can give!

[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!!

[buckxtommy]

Have you ever posted any speedpaints or beginning-end pieces before? I'd love to see more of what your process looks like! Really enjoy your art!

hi beloved! never posted speedpaints before (whenever i draw i keep having "side quests" where i get distracted from my original work and start drawing silly things on the same canvas esp when i'm bored so my speedpaints are embarrassing fjfj) but i can absolutely post beginning end pics for u w a detailed written walkthrough. <3

step 1: simple sketch. getting good at proportions requires a lot of anatomy study & figure drawing practice & letting go of idea that it has to be perfect <3

step 2: linework. so this is procreate's 6B pencil. it won't give you clean lines, you can zoom in and see that. it's not my favorite, i'm still in the process of discovering brushes and brushsets, and if you want to get more crisp & clean lines sharp inking brushes are the way to go.

this is also not very stylized, except i usually draw the eyes bigger than they are. i'm still trying to figure out what my style is, and i hope to have an established style one day.

step 3: laying down flat colors. i usually just pick mid tones for this.

step 4: shadows. one of the things i'm still trying to learn is soft and hard edges. this is also something you'll only get good at w practice

step 5: more shadows where you need them!

step 6: undertones!!!! honestly to me rendering skin is still one of the hardest things ab painting. we're not one solid color, we don't look homogenous. my tip for this step, don't be afraid of the colors (bec i used to be very much afraid of them fjfjd) we're not just beige or brown or dark brown. don't hesitate to put purple and pink and blue and yellow and orange while you're rendering the face bec we have all of those colors in our undertones.

step 7: putting some color in the shadows!

step 8: basic highlights. again there are soft and hard edges here too

step 9: the different lights.

step 10: i go through the same steps with lips and eyes, though i will rb this ask w a speedpaint of how i render eyes <3 i also put shadows and higlights on clothes on the same layer, just because i find that more convenient & easier. i also added details like the beard, tattoos, chest hair, highlights on the hair, and the background.

there you go! this is in no way a tutorial, i've been only learning how to draw digitally and this is like my 20th digital painting Ever, i still very much struggle with rendering and lights and shadows etc. but lots of practice & watching tutorials from artists u aspire to help a lot <3

one of the artists that give me insane artists envy is Likelihood Art, if you enjoy my art you would love hers!! she has a couple tutorials on her youtube channel too so i'd recc you to check those out <3

i hope this helped at least a little, i always feel like my process is kind of all over the place, i'm trying to get better at it too 🥹 thank u so much for the compliments!!!!! you made my day. mwah!

[rott1ngbra1n]

I posted this to my BlueSky (which is the same handle as here and I will be trying to post there too, I also ramble more there at points haha), but I’ve been experimenting more with traditional art since healing my sketchbook trauma/anxiety.

Ramblings below the cut as usual:

I want to show off more of my sketchbook pages cause I want to maybe help some other younger artists or other people who struggle with sketchbook anxiety. This is also not to say that everyone struggles with this, or has had this experience.

I just know it affected my art journey a bit, and I want to show people how I healed from it. Aside from me needing heal from my carpal tunnel *cough* which is why you haven’t seen me much lmao-

I’ve caught the AO3 author curse I swear /lh

But to explain this page, I was testing out better cell shading styles!

I’m not fully used to alcohol markers, but I wanted to use a bounce light along with a shadow. I still have some more refining to do but I quite like it! Using a red pencil then placing the colors on top, then lining it with a normal graphite lead helps to not only have a bolder final line.

It helps hide certain mistakes or guidelines, I’ve really enjoyed sketching like this. It reminds me of how I would sketch in a different color on my digital art, then do a more refined sketch in black.

I think adding what I enjoy about digital art to my sketchbook has helped for an easier transition between the two, along with easing the anxiety with sketching just in the graphite.

You can also tell I had to test a lot of markers to get the base, shadow, and bounce light colors in a nice order. I found that doing the base color, then bounce light, and then shadow was the best way for these pieces.

As sometimes the bounce light didn’t peek through the shadow as much as I wanted. Learning as we go.

The characters are as follows:

Purple: A cybernetic character, he’s very fun, his name is undecided rn

Green: PonySona, cause cringe is dead

Orange: A fur sona? Maybe? I might make them an adoptable, I dunno I just like their design, funky little fiend. Their name is JuiceBox

Red: Shadow the Hedgehog. No explanation needed. Current hyper fixation-

Blue: GoreSona! I like drawing gore works and wanted a character dedicated to that, one that’s not just an old version of my persona

[iraprince]

Hey, can I ask you a lightbox question? Idk how much use you've had of it, but it seems really useful! I'd love to trace my sketches, but im worried about blaring light right in my eyes because I'm super sensitive to light and get migraines even from doing digital art. How hard is it on your eyes?

so, i've only been using it for an afternoon, but i think i would immediately say my main concern on the lightbox is more about ergonomics than eye strain (and my concerns about eye strain are more about struggling to see through the paper than about the light itself). for reference the model i'm using is this one, it's about €20.

the light itself is not actually that blinding — instead of being direct it's like a sheet of LEDs covered in tiny holes, and the light from all those holes together combines to be bright enough to see through the paper. also, you're always going to have paper on top of it, so unless the paper you're working on is much smaller than the pad itself, you're not going to spend much time staring directly into the light anyway. i can definitely imagine that seeing the little strip of it on the sides out of the corner of your eye as you work could eventually cause a headache, though.

^ like that.

also, it has three different brightness settings; i've quickly found that all three of them are useful in different contexts, even within the same drawing! the brightest doesn't hurt my eyes so far (it'll depend on what kind of paper you're using; in these pics my sketch is on regular printer paper, and the final is on bristol, which blocks out more of the light than two sheets of printer paper would).

here's where my concern about eye strain comes in: on the brightest setting, it's easy to see the sketch (the paper underneath), but hard to see what you're doing on the final (the paper on top). on the lowest setting, i can see more detail in what i'm actually drawing, but it's harder to make out the sketch underneath. i can easily see these different types of strain taking a toll on your eyes over time, especially if you really get in the zone and stop remembering to adjust the brightness based on what your eyes need.

^ my solution so far has been like this! you can fuss with the positioning of a regular lamp until it bounces off the top paper enough that u can see what ur doing, but it's not so direct that it cancels out the light from below. if i need to see more detail from the undersketch, i can quickly cup my hand to throw some shadow on it or set up a barrier (like my pencil bag).

besides that the main issue im foreseeing is the ergonomics thing i mentioned, the pad is so flat and thin that i'm really folding over my desk to see what im doing — but that's a bad habit i have when working on paper anyway. the cord is long enough that u could pick it up to work in your lap etc, i just find that awkward so i'd rather work flat.

[muffimtv]

https://www.tumblr.com/ashe-hallows/724195547623407616?source=share

ALL

1. what medium do you use most?

digital art, using my ipad and procreate! i also sew an insane amount

2. most popular piece?

probably my fursuit (a few hundred thousand views on youtube if that counts?)

3. your favorite piece(s)?

MY FURSUITS!!!

4. piece you wish got more love?

my sticker designs!

5. how would you describe your art style?

cutesy, simple, colorful

6. favorite thing to draw?

animals

7. easiest thing for you to draw?

sharks

8. thing you struggle to draw?

HANDS.

9. whats something you always come back to when drawing?

colors, i always change the colors on my piece one billion times

10. how do you deal with artblock?

cry, watch something that inspires me, cry

11. do you listen to anything while drawing?

music! i listen to EVERYTHING

12. describe your process while drawing

rough sketch (shapes, no detail), second sketch (detail), lineart, color, change color, change color again, lighting, tiny detail

13. talk about a wip you like!

MY STICKER SHOP. i have all my designs done i just need to actually set up a website!

14. whats your favorite thing about drawing?

seeing my silly ideas come to life

15. least favorite thing about drawing?

my godawful posture

16. how do you motivate yourself to draw?

i don’t! i get an idea in my head and it eats away at my brain function until i draw it

17. what is something youre confident about in your art?

i love love love my colors

18. something you feel like you need to work on?

people. since i started working on my stickers i’ve been neglecting my people drawing skills

19. where do you find inspiration?

a lot of inspiration comes from MilkyTomato! I work for her, and it’s really motivating to see her success

20. is your workspace, digital or not, organized (not neat, organized)?

my workspace for drawing is typically my bed, so uh. but for sewing it’s generally neat and organized! i have a pegboard for all my things

21. what do you think your artstyle would taste like?

rainbow sherbet

22. do you have a favorite color palette to work with?

pastels!

23. how many artstyles can you work in confidently?

three ish? my sticker style, my people style, and i can dip into realism on occasion

24. whats a compliment about your art that has always stuck with you?

a friend told me that my art feels huggable a year or so ago and i think about it always

25. what size canvas/paper do you use?

i typically use the square canvas setting on procreate

26. what do you physically draw with (pencil and paper, tablet, etc)?

my ipad babey

27. do you ever have multiple wips going at once?

always all of the time. i can never do just one thing

28. whats a piece you would like to redraw at some point?

i would love to redo some of my older ranboo fanart

29. do you use a lot of references while drawing?

oh hell yeah dude i cant live without references

30. whats something youre proud of about your artstyle?

COLORS

31. which fandom have you drawn the most for?

probably mcyt tbh

32. have you done a lot of collabs?

nope :(

33. have you taken a lot of classes for art?

not really? i took art in middle school and i did a semester of animation but that’s all

34. whats something you still like from your old art?

the love i can see in it

35. if you had one piece of advice to give your younger artist self, what would it be?

KEEP DRAWING!!! TRY NEW THINGS!!! GET SILLY!!!

[delulluart]

could you post some work in progress stages of you're drawings and paintings? i am trying to improve my art and i like you're style but i don't really know how to get there. and many tutorials are for digital art only or there very anime style so it dos not very help in what i want to draw :(

but only if it is not to much work of course!

have a good day :-)

thank you, anon!

starting is really tough, i get you, and yes, i finding the tutorial for a style that you want to work in is often a struggle, but often you can apply the general rules to any style!

the most important thing is to not stop drawing! just keep going, a little bit every day/every few days and you WILL see the improvement! its super frustrating when you dont get the results you want immediately, i know that - ive been doing this for so many years now and i still produce pics that i dont like, where im disappointed in myself. but you cant let this drag you down too much, because everytime you fuck something up you learn something, too! you know then that this thing doesnt work - in a way failures are actually way more helpful. (still sucks a lot...)

as for wips: i found a few photos i took of two recent paintings; i dont know if it will help you, though. generally i just do some outlines roughly, then clean them up and then just...fill it either with paints or pencil. i dont do the whole grid method or assisting lines thing or something like that. before i start the proper drawing i often make a small quick sketch to know where everything has to go (see: first pic; youll notice its mirrored - i decided to change the entire orientation last second; i kinda wish i kept it, but its too late now) and then i just...idk? put it on the paper in a way that would make every art teacher cringe in pain (i know that, because it happened multiple times).

as for water colours its the basic rules: start with the bright parts and then go darker; make sure to use good paper, let the stuff dry before going for a new layer etc. add fine details/highlights at the end,

(hello no-hair-papa-anons, have some food here)

if you have any specific questions dont hesitate to ask, ill try to help! if you can afford it i recommend going to a proper class of an artist in your area, that can be lots of fun and really helpful. in 1st grade i was for a few weeks in a free weekly thing of a local artist and she introduced me to oil paints and taught me to just let GO sometimes of the perfectionism and the control of paints (yes, even tiny 5-6 year old me was already a control freak). the things she taught me are still with me.

[foxs0x]

Ask game!

🥦 Can you share an old piece of work next to a newer piece and say what you've learned?

I just love seeing how people’s styles develop over time.

Ok I had this question from a couple of people so I’ve held onto this until I drew something new!

I have a comparison from 2015 to now, plus one from 2019 to show how much my style has actually changed over the years!

2015

2015 I bought some comic markers but I couldn’t get the hang of them. It was around this time I was phasing out of only drawing manga and trying to find my own style. I remember being quite proud of this. I’ve since put a lot of focus on drawing portraits and now I’m working on anatomy.

2018

In 2018 I was learning to shade and add texture but I stuck to black and white. I was really inspired by Greek mythology and heavy metal album covers. It was also the same year I got an iPad and started trying to learn digital art.

2024

I’m still learning and growing every day. I’m trying to learn colouring and shading 😂

I struggle with bodies and anatomy and I struggle with clothes and costuming, but I’ll get there!

I’ve learned to loosen up my sketches. I have a habit of obsessing over minute details that only slows me down. Now, I SCRIBBLE! Then I build something out of that. Below is something I’m trying to to work on. I literally just grabbed a pen and sketched. I usually skip the pencilling because I find it freeing to just commit lines to paper and work from there without having the power to erase it.

Under that is Astarion, which is an example of how I’m trying to learn to use colour palettes and drawing costumes. My BIGGEST challenge at the moment is trying to keep a movement or flow in my drawings because they usually look pretty stiff.

[timpac-capstone]

Week 10

I finally did another digital drawing, this time using Adobe Fresco on an iPad Air 2. This piece was actually way more relaxing to draw than the last time I tried drawing digitally on Krita using my roommate's touchscreen laptop because nothing was glitching out. Everything worked perfectly this time and the Apple pencil felt very intuitive in my hand. I still struggled to get my line work to look nice and I'm not sure if the process in which I colored and shaded my drawing was the way most people do it but after finishing this piece I walked away wanting to do more digital art which is a victory in itself.

When I walked out of Manga in New York I finally understood the importance of how the presentation of an art piece can add to the overall experience of the audience member. This was a quick sketch I did in Adobe Fresco of how I was planning to display my animation. I'm thinking of getting one of those old TV carts that I would often see in elementary school where it had a big CRT TV that was hooked up to a VCR. The VCR is just for display because I'm not sure how to put my animation onto a VHS tape and even if I did it doesn't really add anything but I was planning on displaying my animation on the CRT TV. The reason the setup is like this is because this is the same setup that the two brain cells have when they are watching Dillon's embarrassing memories. I will also have two bags that will be labeled Embarasing Memories and Good Memories, after the audience member is done watching my animation they will write one happy memory and one embarrassing memory on an index card/cassette tape and throw them into their respective bag. I'm not 100% sold on this idea but it is a good start.

My professor recommended that I watch more animated short films that weren't just from previous alumni to broaden my horizons in terms of storytelling in a short animation and the way animation is used as well as its quality. I saw 10 animated short films but I'll only talk about the ones that stood out to me starting with This Actually Happens A Lot by Tom Law. I remember my professor asked me to explain why I love animation so much and I showed her the transformation sequences from Ben 10 (2005) and I just said "I mean just look at that". But she didn't see the same thing I did and said I needed to look deeper for the reason and I feel this short gave me that answer. Animation makes the unnatural feel natural without needing to explain why it is the way it is. In this short, we see that the male character's social anxiety is causing him to stick from wall to wall and be suspended in thin air. Obviously, this doesn't happen in real life but I didn't question it, I accepted immediately that this is how this world works and because of that I'm more in tune with the author's message instead of fighting the way he presented it, creating a much more enjoyable watch. If this was live-action I would be more interested in how they did the effect rather than what the point of this character being suspended in mid-air is supposed to represent in the first place.

Resilience by Yunie Choi gave me a new perspective on the horrors of war and life after death. They used animation to do a timelapse of a decaying corpse over the course of several hundred years and it is quite beautiful to see how life moves on without you. The use of colors and interesting animal designs really add to the beauty of this animation.

This guy, Manu Mercurial, does a lot of YouTube tutorials for animation but I haven't seen his animated projects in full before. I thought it would be topical for me since we are both interested in the subject of memories. He very much took a very different approach from what I was thinking of doing but I still think it was a good watch to see how people visualize revisiting their old memories

I like Afternoon Class by Osro for the same reason I like This Actually Happens A Lot, I don't question why this kid's head turns into several heavy objects but I have an immediate connection to it because I understand the feeling of trying to stay awake in class. Also, the use of sound effects is excellent in this short.

I put Forget Me Not by The Lonely Star Studio on here because it shows that even with terrible voice acting and mic quality I can still appreciate the animation of this short which has also been a huge stressor.

Bounty by Arrowmi is on here because it has the opposite problem of Forget Me Not it has amazing voice acting but the art style and animation are pretty rough. It's not bad but it's not super pretty to look at either. However, it was still able to tell an intense story of an ex-bounty hunter and suck me into the world despite its noticeable drawbacks.

Going back through my old script ideas, I had this one part where at the climax of the story the main character would wake up in a car sitting next to his dad. He's in shock because his dad is supposed to be dead and yet here he is just driving nonchalantly, the main character knows this is a memory but he decides to ask his dad a bunch of questions to see if his dad would still be proud of him if he were to meet him as an adult. I feel that this entire scene I made was inspired by this Spiderman story I found 2 years ago on Instagram in which Peter gets 5 minutes to talk to Uncle Ben after years of being Spiderman, this story really connected with me when I first found it because what I want the most in life is to just ask my dad "am I doing good". There are a lot of things that I struggle with; not being masculine enough, I'm almost 23 and still haven't had a girlfriend, and I constantly wonder if I picked the right career choice. I don't know if my dad struggled with the same things but I assume that he didn't and I often feel that if he were to meet me as an adult he would be disappointed. I know that most likely he would say that he is proud of me despite all my shortcomings because that is what parents are supposed to do but the fact that I will never get that answer kills me. I decided to read all 3 parts of this story to get a better idea as to what led up to this Uncle Ben interaction and it was pretty good, if you watched Spider-Man 2 it hits the same story beats. Lately, I've been thinking of scrapping the two-brain cell idea and instead animating the car scene I described earlier on its own.

REFLECTION:

I'm really happy that I finally found a groove into digital art and I'm hoping this will finally jumpstart some animation this week. I'm also glad that I watched all those animated short films, they all had their unique quirks and drawbacks that you don't normally get to see in professionally animated TV shows. I also want to explore the idea of being able to talk to a dead relative for a brief period of time before you never see them again.

[lonelyghosts-stuff]

I need motivation and tips for continuing art. I used it do it so much as a kid but stopped doing it as much for a stupid reason. Someone who I became friends with was a better artist. I was never popular but I had used to kind of be a smidge known in my classes for decent art until she came along and everyone admired her more. Now obvs that wasn't her fault and we actually became friends for a while (until she changed and pushed me away down the line in middle school and high school, but that's neither here nor there). Either way, I didn't do it as much and only did it here and there.

I never really had my own consistent style either. It was all just kind doodles and some full sized drawings. I never did well with humans but did decently with like animals and objects. This was all in a traditional sketchbook too. I eventually started some digital art too as my friend did and she had a natural affinity for it. Once again, seeing myself get outdone. I have a bad habit of feeling like a failure when I am not immediately good at something I try, especially when it is something I really really want to do. Over the years I would have random surges of doing art again but would often get distracted by other things and feel too overwhelmed to pursue the hobbies I like, especially in high school and me now at 21 in college.

I am pursing a degree in animation but haven't even started the actual animation class itself, mostly just the general education requirements and then some other art classes. I finished 2D design, 3D design, drawing, and life art. I feel like my art has gotten decent for objects and animals still, but I struggle with humans. And unfortunately my life art class was pretty awful with the teacher mostly focusing on a few things regarding the body (which don't get me wrong, was helpful at first) and just assigned busy work like 20 skeleton sketches or 10 skulls and 5 full skeletons or whatever and every single class was gesture drawing of the nude models we had and progressing to shading. Again, don't get me wrong, those are definitely important and helped me with improving my skills, but what bugged me was not only how repetitive it was (it felt like my progress plateaued very early into the class as it just became the same thing every time with the teacher not being super engaging), but the fact we never got into the main thing I struggled with when drawing people; the human face.

I am trying to reteach myself how to draw now, having done that life art class like 2 years ago now. I am watching tutorials which have helped a bit, but I think my main issue is not practicing as consistently. A huge factor being motivation. I often get busy so when I have down time, I'd rather do something mindless instead of intentional work like practicing art that I am not gonna like. And when I do draw, even the things I used to think I was decent at like animals and objects and sceneries, I hate them. They look so flat and lifeless and they look super inconsistent style wise when you compare the different aspects of the drawing. It makes me feel unmotivated and scared about my future.

How can I be an animator when I can't even be happy with a still drawing I have made? I adore 2D animation. I adore art. I have so many ideas I can fully visualize in my brain but as soon as pencil touches paper or stylus to tablet, it's like I am a toddler learning how to write. Especially on digital art because I always feel like I am doing something wrong or in the most inefficient way possible. Don't even get me started on the fill bucket tool on drawing programs never actually filling in the full space I want them too and lines never being fully solid and having weird fuzzy edges that make coloring in weird. Even when I try to look up fixes for this it never seems to work (I swap back and forth between drawing in the free program Krita and Adobe Photoshop I have temporarily while in college).

There is the part of me that wants to give up, but then the strong part of me that refuses to because I know this isn't just some random ADHD hyper-fixation I have gotten. It has been a consistent interest of mine since I was in elementary school, fluctuating based on motivation and other external factors, but never something I stopped being interested in. I dunno. I guess I just needed to rant. I need to keep practicing, I know, but I wish I had someone directly next to me at all times giving me the perfect advice and helping me immediately see where I am messing something up or whatever so my improvement can be faster lol. Idk who will even read this. But oh well.

[weirdagnes]

Hello! I am here for the Art Ask Game! ^_^)

How many different sketches do you usually have until your piece is finished?

A piece from this year that you're really proud of?

Something you would like to improve on?

What's something you hope people notice when looking at your art?

ooo i love answering asks >:] 💜 Thank you for sending some! (warning: long post)

1. How many different sketches do you usually have until your piece is finished?

If it’s a commission (that doesn’t require drawing the exact reference), I have 4 stages of sketching:

Stage 1. Ideas sketching. I do stickmans and general shapes that are most understandable to me. Doesn’t have to be clean, just enough for me to understand how I will place my elements in the paper, how movement flows, how the posture will look, etc etc. Here are some of my stage 1 sketches:

This one’s for a collab painting I will do with a friend. That’s our sketches while conceptualizing.

These are my concept sketches for the recent splatoon commission I did. For commissions, I always do 3-6 sketches of different poses when given freedom, which I will then present to my client and see which one they like best and I’ll go with it (bc I’m indecisive too LMAO)

Stage 2: Presentable concept sketch. When I have these ideas pinned down, I’ll make a more presentable version of the sketch to send to the client. That means visible body shape & posture, key facial expressions, mvt indications, etc. Following the splatoon commission sketches, here’s their stage 2:

Stage 3: Initial sketch on paper. When the client chose which posing is best, I’ll sketch it down on paper. I use rule of thirds, mark the margins, make sure the proportions are aligned and correct before I do the last stage (bc it’s going to be tedious to readjust everything once I’ve noticed it’s not centered or smth like that). I forgot to take a picture of the other posing’s stage 3, but it’s like this!

Stage 4: Lineart sketching. DO NOT jump straight to hard lineart, it will leave marks or stains when you erase. Sketch lightly first with an HB or 2B or any B pencils, honestly it’s in your hand’s pressure control and how you hold the pencil, but personally HB or 2B is good. This stage can be messy as long as the main lineart is shaping.

After that, I can start 1st stage of lineart! But this is all when I do commissions or serious pieces tho. If I’m sketching for fun, I just do 1 sketch then straight to lineart ^^

2. A piece from this year that you’re really proud of?

Honestly, I’m still proud of my concept art projects for my 2D and 3D animation subjects! When I look at it, it makes me feel like a professional concept artist☺️ It’s a warm feeling seeing my old OCs drawn like they’re posted in artstation or something hahah.

3. Something you would like to improve on?

I would like to improve on a lot of things, but getting started & staying consistent is mostly my obstacle when I want to improve. I want to learn how to draw:

Hair and different types of it. Hair is the thing I hate looking at in my drawings bc I can’t get it to look how I want it to.

Backgrounds - landscapes, cityscapes, seascape, etc (and how to be patient drawing it bc I always give up halfway LMAO)

Reflective surfaces

Different textures (fuzzy texture, chrome, rough, etc)

Bokeh & blurs (traditionally, on paper)

Shadows of two or more light sources crossing together.

Plants and flowers. Always so embarrassing to draw a piece with flora in it bc they look so elementary level LMAO I absolutely love flowers, but god have you seen my “Unbosom” artwork, I was NOT proud of how I drew petunias ;w;

Animals. I will not be showing my pathetic attempts in sketching a horse from memory, but you can imagine how horrible it was for me to want to improve on drawing animals.

Musical instruments. Still a struggle, especially when instruments are drawn from a different angle like that one time I did the Issei Noro digital fanart.

Fire and water.

4. What’s something you hope people notice when looking at your art?

I hope people notice the composition! I’m trying to be mindful of space, visual weight, and shapes of the movement or the posing, they contribute a lot to how to make a drawing less static or empty looking. But honestly, if the viewers didn’t notice, that’s fine ^^

[commanderfloppy]

I did @silvesi 's Art timeline thing, was a lot of looking through old notebooks but it was pretty fun!

Crazy to see how long ago certain art periods in my life were, and how I improved through the years!

Transcript now below the cut (Becuase my writing is probably a bit hard to read)

Cesco’s Art Journey

2009-2022 

2009-10: 8-9 yr/o

I loved old cartoons and made Looney Tunes style comics with OC’s like; Tom the Cat, and the Cartoon Law Police.  

Favorite things to draw: Dragons, Secret bases, Comics

2011-12: 10-11 yr/o

Anime influence sets in, I start defining the head from the neck. I got really into MLP and drew a lot of that. Also made my half-fairy half-witch mechanic OC. 

Favorite things to draw: Ponies, My New OC, Sailor Moon

^ B.D. Before Deviantart (Dating for Art during this period may not be accurate) 

Deviant Art Era: 

2013: 12 yr/o

Anime style gets even more set in. Bodies become more proportional, heads less dorito shaped. My Gw2 art started a little here. I also made more (Self-insert) OCs. 

Favorite things to draw: Gw2, Anime Girls

2014: 13 yr/o

Got a tablet and started some digital art. A lot of Warriors art because I had written a fanfic, (and ran a Cinderpelt/Heart ask blog). Also got a blender pencil and learned how to shade

Favorite things to draw: Warrior Cats, Anime, Mermaids, Cat People.

2015: 14 yr/o

SO Much Art this year! Probably related to my realization I could draw people who were not white (like I was). A lot of new OCs, also the start of my Splatoon Phase. No digital art (It got lost :( ) 

Favorite things to draw: All my New OCs! Inklings. 

A.D. After Deviantart v 

2016: 15 yr/o

Splatoon phase is in full force now. My style moves away from anime as I focus more on facial features (Drawing noses my beloved). I realized I was gay and so were my OCs, (thank you Undyne Undertale). Also got really into Star Wars again (thank you Clone Wars) 

Favorite things to draw: My Inkling OCs, Undyne, Ahsoka, My Cat and Rabbit OCs (Tajiri and Alkita) 

2017: 16 yr/o

OCs Galore! Now with stories! I made SO Many new OCs this year, my universe of elves, gay royals, a magical girl and magical boy. Things also got very gay and trans this year. I humanized my Splatoon OCs because I phased out of that. 

Favorite things to draw: Elves, Mira and Lillian (Splat OCs), Gay and Trans people (a new constant in my art) 

2018: 17 yr/o

Made a whole new roster of Monster OCs for a (hypothetical) dating sim. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles hyperfixation comes back with a vengeance, but drawing turtles is hard so I make a human AU (no set era, an amalgamation of all versions + my own characterizatoins) This is also the start of some Floppy drawings in my sketchbook 👀?

Favorite things to draw: Human TMNT, Monster OCs, Monster High characters. 

2019: 18 yr/o

Even more TMNT and Monsters, though things start to slow down and most of my sketches are in my school sketchbook. 

Favorite things to draw: Human TMNT, Monsters, Made up gods and Mythologies. 

2020: 19 yr/o

Was simultaneously a Very bad and Very good year for art. Lots of finished pieces for my Portfolio, but also a lot of Struggle. Started my Gw2 blog though!

Favorite things to draw: Portfolio Lockdown year. (Gw2 OCs?) 

2021: 20 yr/o

This year was rough at the start, I think this blog is what kept me going. It was nice to have an outlet to talk about OCs (No longer trapped in Google Docs) 

Favorite things to draw: Can you guess?

2022: 21 yr/o

This year has also been a rough one, but one again I am happy to have this blog as an outlet. Things have definitely gotten more active here, especially with all the Rp events! So here’s to 2023 being even better!

Favorite things to draw: My gay ass plants