#trying out a new painting/lineless style and i think im getting it??

[pybun]

You probably get this question a lot, but how do you keep yourself motivated/engaged with art?

Has it become routine for you because of the deadlines you had at uni, or is there something that I'm missing?

I would love to get into a regular routine of improving my art, but on the rare occasion that I do create art, I get halfway through it and hate the way its working out, which demotivates me..on top of that, I have ADHD so my attention span is shocking.

Sorry if you've already answered this previously!

i actually dont know or at least remember if ive been asked this. i prolly gotten similar questions but i most likely gave generic advice back then

im not exactly sure how its become a routine. ig its either because:

its a part of being an internet artist where you have to keep making something to stay relevant

im not satisfied with what i can do so i keep experimenting

i like to see how people react

simply bc i enjoy making art

im working towards a goal. an example would be like a scenario that i thought of that i think will look cool so i do everything i can to make that scenario real

its a tug-o-war between all of those which all pull into driving me to make art

but whenever i finish something, whether big or small, its just a matter of moving on to the next thing. not that youre not allowed to linger on your work, just enough to recollect yourself after the experience and take what you learned to your next projects

I get halfway through it and hate the way its working out, which demotivates me

ohhhhh boy i experienced that a lot but i cant remember what initially made me push past this feeling. these days whenever i feel that i just think abt the pieces where i had a similar feeling, pushed past it and liked how it turned out. i just keep thinking that i might like it in the end

if something isnt working out but you still really wanna make that idea real, you can try approaching it differently. ive had artworks where it took me several iterations just to get the feel right. whats important is that youre happy with it. it sucks to keep working on something that youre dreading

like in this example: i initially wanted this to be a lineless painting but i realized it looks like shit so i just went with the style im comfortable with

another example: while i was already liking the progress on the left pic, i still wanted it to be more semi-realistic so i went fuck it, 3d tracing time

it seems counter productive to stick to your comfort zone but if youre just making art out of enjoyment, might as well

as for attention span, i have a lot of unfinished works just bc new ideas keep coming. while it does feel bad to leave countless wips, it feels worse forcing myself to finish them. the best case scenario is hyperfixating so much on an idea you finish it within your attention span. dont forget to eat, drink water and take breaks when you go on these binges

idk what else to say for now but i hope retellings of my experiences will help

[tomwaterbabies]

I'd like to know if you could share some of your favorite art that you drew? since you have fantastic drawings 😊

you're very sweet, thank you! favorite pieces Of All Time would be too hard to pick i think so i'll share some of my (somewhat recent) favorite pieces ive done.

(DISCLAIMER: apparently there's quite a few i wanted to share so. sorry about the fact that there's 14 down below. lol)

^one of my first attempts with my new toned sketch style. and the first thing i drew this year! getting expressions/posing just the way i imagined is always a rare treat for me LOL so im also really happy with that still

^probably my favorite ive done with one of my Other new styles (semi-lineless painting) (along with the first i did with my favorite oc lol) kind of funny to have this as one of my favorites. like of course one of these answers would be pinocchio. but i really like this style because i try not to use any effects like glow or multiply. all the shading, highlights, and stuff like that here is just regular paint

^more disney... sigh. well these ones are sentimental because i love these guys and drew the first one on my bday which was also when this parade debuted at disneyland again. ive been called insane to have done that one entirely in one day but honestly that just makes me happy because i think ive really developed a good process for sketches like this to make them look nice AND to enjoy making them. the other was made after the last show of said parade and it was just fun to draw a bunch of characters interacting while trying to keep them in character

^too embarrassed to say what this is other than it's insane oc/canon art BUT i really love this new toned sketch style i do as i said above. and the left one came out nice i think! particularly fond of the wings and facial expressions! and the second one... well i really think it's just one of the best ive done of this character. his hair and proportions on his features just came out so well... ok im gay moving on

^dont even remember if this was this year or not but let's pretend it is. this one is self-explanatory i think. BIG lineup (for me anyway) and it's of the party from my first ever dnd campaign! very special

^these ones look simple but they both show things that became SO much more. the first one... it's a catalyst. the start of making what was originally just a COMPLETE joke character into one of my favorite ocs. a treasure. isnt he cute :3c and then the second one is my character i made for a custom ttrpg which ended up being one of the best EVER!!!!!!!! augh. a brilliant campaign made by my very talented friend that ive shared a bit of here

^idk this is just a cool prompt im proud of. "draw your ocs in fairytales/folktales" and i went mad (i love fairytales/folktales) and just did a bunch of them. in my painting style. can u guess which story is which (little hooded cloak man has the most niche one)

^pinocchio madness has done a few positive things for me. one, this oc my friend and i made for pinocchio is so precious, i really love their relationship and they bring me so much joy. but ive also developed my skills with expressiveness by studying and drawing disney's pinocchio. these are good examples of posing and expressions im really happy with (can u tell im really focused on expressions LOL). also pinocchio helped me get back to animation work??? wild

^i am pretty much always happy with how my "screenshot" styled pieces turn out, but this is the most recent one! glad to share this one too since it is literally fanart of the efteling which is that themepark im not normal about

OK IM STOPPING NOW. THANK U

[alienpeppers]

raph with a big ol teddy bear

@nickelodeon bring my soft boy BACK

[ankhisms]

the always wonderful shelley @shanheling tagged me to do this thank u so much!! i think that everyone i wanted to tag has already been tagged to do this but if you feel like doing this feel free to consider urself tagged by me!! im putting this under a readmore bc its long and i ramble a lot

the piece i was tagged to explain my process on is this oc piece! unfortunately i have a habit of deleting my original clip studio file once ive finished my art and saved it as a new png file, so i dont have the file to show the sketch and different stages of this piece. but I still can go through my general process and talk about how i did that piece!

1. planning

honestly i think about the art that i want to do a lot, and in this last year or so ive thought about the art i want to do more than ive been able to actually create and finish that art that i want to do. for my planning i tend to do a lot of different thumbnail sketches for the art im thinking of

these are some examples of thumbnails, a lot of times ill do thumbnails just on pencil and paper and with some of these theyre done quickly with my fingers on my phone note function on a day where i was feeling too bad to get up and draw on paper but still wanted to get the thumbnail ideas down. two of these are for the same songxiao piece that i still havent finished and i have more thumbnails digitally on clip studio for the same piece, i do a lot more thumbnails when a piece isnt working the way i want it to and theres times where ill completely scratch a thumbnail or a sketch and start over in order to do more thumbnails because i dont feel happy with some aspect of it.

two of these are small gouche painting thumbnails for two pieces i did maybe a month or so ago, i did the thumbnails and then tried to expand on them digitally and im wanting to do more thumbnail paintings like this in the future because it was fun

for the piece of my oc trio it was based off a series of ask prompts i got for a few different outfit prompt memes i had reblogged, so i based their outfits on the ones in the meme. when im drawing figures i tend to try and get the movement down in the poses when im sketching, i do several rough sketches of the pose before beginning to start setting down lines (if im doing lineart at all because sometimes i dont like doing lineart and do a more lineless painting kind of style). i really try to get my art to convey some kind of emotion, in the oc piece i wanted it to feel fun and like youre seeing three best friends while theyre out on the town having a fun night

2. creating

this is the only real example i have of a piece in the middle of being filled in and created, this piece is one that im really not very happy with & have had lying around for a while and ill probably scrap it and try to come at it from a different perspective at some point. but anyway it still shows what i do, i lay down a kind of neutral gray color underneath my final sketch/lineart if im doing lineart in that piece and then i start picking out the colors that i want for the piece and kind of setting out a pallette for myself. i dont do this color pallette thing 100% of the time but i do it really often, especially if im working on a commission or a larger piece where i know theres going to be a lot of colors or if its a piece where im not sure exactly what color scheme i want so laying out the colors together helps me kind of decide what kind of scheme i want. i am sooooo picky about my colors in my art i am genuinely obsessed with colors in art and there are times where i really have to stop myself from working on something forever just constantly adding more colors or putting little tiny changes and gradients in the colors.

after ive got the colors i want down i tend to try and block out parts of the piece with the base color for that section, and then i start to paint with the colors that i want to go on top of that base color from there.

once im satisfied with the colors/shading/rendering and everything ill go back and look over things and will fix things that look off or sometimes completely redo segments if they dont look right to me. when i was younger and mainly doing digital art using my phone and my fingers i would use a lot of filters and overlays on top of my art once i was done, and honestly im glad to not be doing that anymore because i dont think it made my art look any better. i do color adjustments and sometimes will put on a color overlay or a layer to emphasize the shadows and the light in the piece, but i try to keep those layers to a minimum and like i said before i have a tendency to obsess over the colors and ill spend a good amount of time in the color adjustment tool of clip studio and then ill just decide "actually it looks fine as it is" so yeah!

3. posting

i feel like i dont have a lot to say here gbfm i mean i honestly have a lot of thoughts about the relationship between artists and social media and how social media changes our views on art including our own art and how we can feel like we constantly need to be posting new art and just become content machines churning out new stuff. but ill save that rant for another time. i used to be really concerned about how many notes my art would get when i was younger, and i dont at all blame anyone who still is very concerned about that bc it sucks when u work hard on something youve created and then you dont get a lot of recognition for it, but honestly within the last two years or so i feel like ive begun to have a lot healthier relationship with posting my art. i really just post my art on my art blog, reblog it to my main blog, and then thats that yknow! i do really appreciate any and all support people give me, it means the world to me, but for me having the mentality where i dont need to post all the art i make and i dont need to be posting every day or every week or every month even has been a lot healthier for me because then im not constantly asking myself why didnt this get notes is my art awful??? and yeah i just kind of post it and my brain goes okay were done with that art we gotta make more

ive honestly been struggling a lot with art thru the pandemic and if youre reading this and have been struggling with creating in any way recently or even before the pandemic, please know theres no shame in having trouble creating and it doesnt make you bad at whatever it is u create!

thank you for reading this, feel free to consider urself tagged by me again if u want to do this!! love u all