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Here's a Splatoon sketch I did today: On a side note: anyone got advice on how to feel more confident in ones work? I've been drawing for close to a decade now and I still hardly ever feel satisfied or happy about anything I produce, to the point where I often don't know why I even keep going. I'd like to be more productive and put out more art, but the almost instantaneous self-bashing makes it pretty difficult.
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Oct 22, 2017 18:19
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Some pose practise sketches for today. sigma 6 posted:Learn better anatomy. Go regularly to figure drawing sessions, or just get your friends to pose for you. Feel good about getting better with some kind of daily progress towards realism. Remember that "style" is just a byproduct of hard work / consistent practice. Most people are rarely very happy with their work on the first pass. "Stay thirsty, my friend!" I've done my fair share of anatomy practising, but I've never had the necessary courage to actually sign up for figure drawing sessions. I guess I should really look into that some time. gmc9987 posted:Being a good artist is difficult in that it requires you to constantly be your own worst critic, but also to ignore that and share your artwork anyway. For me, I found a good balance is to set specific criteria that allow me to call a piece finished, and to pick 1 aspect that I need to improve on to really focus on in that drawing (the last year, it have been incorporating better backgrounds into my images, and improving my color schemes). Then, when a drawing is as done as it is going to get, share it online at all your art places, and wait a day or so to look at it again and see it with fresher eyes. You can find errors you missed, but for me I often find that there are a lot of things in each drawing that I really like, that I hadn't noticed before. I generally don't have a problem publishing the things I do, unless it never reaches my hard drive to begin with. I guess one of my major problems is that with the current style I'm trying to evolve, I don't really know in which way to push to get it to look more like something I'd like. Some things look better than others, but I can never really grasp why. I know that "likes" and such aren't much of a metric for anything and I shouldn't really go by what others say for my own style anyway, but the fact that how much other people seem to like the things I do is somehow often inversely correlated to how much I like it confuses the issue even more. Theokotos posted:At least personally I've never felt outside motivation to create; but as mentioned above, you can bolster your definitive skill set and thus confidence by taking classes with set learning goals, and doing other activities that have a clear path from start to an improved state. I have a lot of different creative interests that I pursue, so it's usually not a decision between not creating anything and drawing, but rather between which of the things I want to work on I should invest my time in. For drawing it's often just the case that the expectation of not ending up liking what I did makes it harder to justify doing it over the other things. Obviously not drawing isn't going to make me improve or like my things any better either, though. Going back to just practising specific things for a while sounds like it might be a good idea though. Thanks for the feedback!
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Oct 23, 2017 12:21
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Trying to get back into the swing of daily drawings, here's a dress sketch. Sharpest Crayon posted:I'm gonna assume that this isn't just a slump after a pic that you feel didn't succeed? Because it's real easy to get down on yourself after one and feel that nothing that you've EVER done is good, even if the twinkling knowledge in your hindbrain is holding up a sign "you know that's not true". Why do you feel like you should put out more art, if you've got other creative pursuits that (presumably) don't leave you quite so disappointed? Do you bash your own efforts in other creative things or other aspects of your life? It just seems like you're trying to find a reason to keep doing something you're not enjoying. I've been dissatisfied for many years now, but it only really became a problem when it started to hinder my throughput sometime around a year ago. I don't know exactly why I feel the need to draw. I've asked myself that plenty before and haven't been able to come to any conclusive answer. The best I can muster is that I like seeing certain art others put out and I'd like to be able to do something that I like on my own too. I do seem to bash the rest of the things I do as well, but nowhere to the degree of what I do with drawing. My explanation for that is that it's much more immediate and easy to see faults in a drawing and compare it to other works than it is for other media. Drawing as a process can be calming and fulfilling in a way sometimes, but very often it's also just very infuriating and discouraging because I can't seem to get things done right. I've tried to stop with drawing altogether multiple times, but was never able to really let it go for long. I guess the need to draw is there, but I can't put any solid reason as to why. Yeah, I know that basing things off of popularity is by no means a good way to get any sort of feedback at all. The only reason I brought it up is because it is all too easy to get mislead by it and increase frustration, especially when it seems to "contradict" my own judgement.
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Oct 24, 2017 23:01
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Morning sketch. Sharpest Crayon posted:Ok, a dissatisfaction that comes from within you can be fixed. I want you to tell me one thing you think you did well with this pic, and one that you'd like to improve on. There's a couple of things to improve that jump out at me immediately, but I suppose the biggest is that I still have a lot of trouble drawing feet and shoes. As for what I did well, I'm not too sure. I guess I have a somewhat solid grasp on how I want to shape things in terms of curving and edges. Of course. I guess I just fall into the pit of "I'm never gonna get there" way too easily, which is something I'm aware of, but not sure how to combat against. Looking at bad art doesn't seem to do much for me, unfortunately. I've trawled through dA, Tumblr, Pixiv, and Twitter and encountered a ton of crap and have critiqued some of it as well, but it doesn't seem to help me boost my own confidence. And yeah, especially people who do long-standing webcomic things tend to either stagnate pretty quickly, or even deteriorate. It's kind of astounding. I suppose they just don't feel the need to improve anymore?
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Oct 25, 2017 11:21
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Sharpest Crayon posted:Great! Backhanded positive, but it's a start. Now you gotta keep doing that for every pic you make. Grab your brain by the legs and shake those compliments out of its pockets and onto the canvas, every time. Force yourself to face the good in your work, you can't trust others to do it for you. Even if the good you see is "potential to be better someday", acknowledging it will help you be happy with what you can do now. Thanks again for the advice! I'll try my best. Did another Splatoon drawing on the Switch today. Christ is that painful. The touchscreen is inaccurate, there's only one undo, and of course no layers or anything of the sort.  I didn't have the patience to really get the line thickness and everything the way I wanted, but I think I did an OK job with the black/white limitation.
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Oct 28, 2017 21:01
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A quick scenery sketch for tonight. I still have pretty much no drat clue how to draw any kind of water with just line art. On the upshot, I think this turned out fairly decent overall for the small amount of time I put into it. Makes me want to go back to doing daily scenery drawings like I used to.
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Oct 29, 2017 19:30
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Vermain posted:I've kept a record, whether digital or physical, of every single drawing I have ever done since I started drawing two years and change ago. Whenever I start thinking, "There's no way I can learn how to do this," I go and pull out one of the drawings I did two years ago and compare it to something I did even two days ago. It's a very good and very real reminder that I've been able to progress immensely through hard work and dedication, and that I'm not going to suddenly plateau and be unable to learn a new technique or master drawing a specific form. I have a record of almost much everything I've done, and while there's definitely noticeable change and improvement to three+ years ago, I struggle to see much of an improvement to the things I've done about a year or more ago([1] [2] [3]). Some things are different, but I can't really tell whether I like what I'm doing now more than what I did back then. I guess I don't really have a solid idea of what I really want, nor how to figure that out, so I keep on stumbling around somewhat blindly. Vermain posted:If you're seriously struggling with the confidence to put thought to paper, it's never a bad idea to go back to the absolute basics. Whenever I start struggling with things like anatomy and form, I go back and practice the simplest possible methods of construction - boxes, spheres, cylinders, etc. - and apply them to the form I'm attempting to draw. The times where I get in trouble when drawing are usually because I've succumbed to hubris and thought myself above simplifying a torso as a box or drawing some perspective lines or looking at reference. If you've been doing it for 30 years like Glenn Vilppu or Steve Huston, you can get away with not always drawing things to look like a box to begin with, but for us casual schmoes, constantly brushing up on and adhering to the basics is the best thing you can do. I always use a sort of skeleton to help me draw people and to figure out how to construct stuff. It's just that, despite this, I still somehow can't get it quite right a lot of the time. I don't know-- for a large part I also fear that I might be just whining and should instead bite the bullet and do a ton of practise sheets. People like Boulet that can just shake a complete drawing out of their hand without any sketching underneath are incredibly impressive. dupersaurus posted:First, define what "there" is, and milestone if need to. This will be difficult because personal style is, well, personal, and you'll be tempted to look to other people and go "I want to be X". Resist the temptation. Learn from other people, but don't Buffalo Bill them. Yeah, that's definitely a good point. I think I've managed to steer clear of just imitating another's style so far. Figuring out what I actually like about a drawing can be pretty tough in an of itself. Alright, I'll keep that in mind. Thanks! On to thread-related content: It's getting pretty cold out, and I'm enjoying the weather.  While I like the line thickness being constant, I think it would be worth it to try and incorporate different levels of thickness as I did here. Probably could expand on that more, though. I still feel like I don't have a good grasp on what kinds of colours fit together; should probably get back to trying to get into painting to start on that.
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Oct 31, 2017 13:56
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Felt like doing another scenery today. I feel like the way I placed the figure into the scene doesn't quite match up with the perspective. I couldn't quite make sense of it. Adding some more detail with debris and stuff might have also helped, but I felt like it might have gotten too crowded too, so I don't know. Overall I think it turned out quite alright, though. Franchescanado posted:Do you only draw digital? Maybe experiment with a medium you're uncomfortable/unfamiliar with, like brush and ink, watercolors, pastels, markers, whatever. Using different materials can make you see your art and style differently and help. I occasionally draw traditionally with pens and brush pens, though not as often as I'd like. As mentioned, I've been meaning to get into painting to break off from what I've been doing so far, but I have difficulty getting started. That's just me being a dumbass, though. The current style is what evolved out of a much more generic, rounded style, I suppose. I was actually interested to see how things evolved, so I put together a selection of drawings of the past four years: [warning, big] Sharpest Crayon posted:It's me, I'm the person quoting from forever ago, but here I doodled a couple of quick & easy ways to do water with lineart: I guess my problem is more that, when combined with the rest of the scenery, it often ends up looking rather muddled, making it much harder to discern.
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Nov 3, 2017 13:11
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Did another scenery today, but I got tired during the colouring, mostly because MyPaint crashed twice. Ah well.
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Nov 14, 2017 23:21
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Internet Kraken posted:The speed at which some of you work is insane. I can't imagine drawing something anywhere near that good after days of work, let alone a mere 5 hours. Forgot to reply to this before, but speed usually comes with just practise. I do think it's important to specifically practise going quick as well, though. Being quicker means you can iterate more often and try things out that you couldn't get to if you had to be slow and meticulous about everything. Anyway, today I tried to do a more dynamic, action-kinda thing, and I wanted to try and draw a scooter, so here goes. 
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Nov 15, 2017 22:45
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I've been going through a real inspirational/motivational drought lately, so I barely got anything drawn at all. Fortunately I managed to squeeze something out today. Unfortunately it ended up pretty generic. Ah well, better luck next time, I guess?  On a side note, I've always found it interesting to see other people's sketch phases of a completed final piece. Some people (like me) are pretty messy, and others surprisingly clean. If you have anything like that handy, I'd be interested in seeing it!
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Dec 12, 2017 23:25
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gmc9987 posted:If you sit down to raw without a plan or idea, most of the time that's how it'll end up. I like to keep a few low-stress ongoing projects on the backburner so (in the rare moments that I have free time to draw for myself) I'm not stuck without an idea. Some larger project that is easily broken down into smaller chunks is perfect for keeping inspiration going. Right now, I'm working on an animal alphabet. Try something like designing the images for a tarot deck, or drawing each of the demons from the Key of Solomon - something that gives you prompts so you don't have to struggle to find an idea. It helps me anyway. Yeah, now that I think about it the periods during which I was the most active I always had some kind of easy series-like thing to latch on to, like certain sceneries or characters I wanted to draw. I can't really think of anything like that that I would even want to do though, so I'm still stuck in limbo. Maybe I should give abandoned villages and cities another shot for my sceneries. Hm. Anyway, for today just a quick sketch before bed to celebrate the new Splatoon mode. 
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Dec 14, 2017 00:08
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Another Splatoon drawing right before bed in an effort to get things done. Trying to wrangle the inklings into something that fits into my style in a way I like has been proving a bit challenging. 
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Dec 20, 2017 00:31
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 I really need to sit down and practise shoes soon because every time I need to draw one in a slightly unusual manner I have no drat idea what I'm doing anymore.
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Dec 30, 2017 22:02
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 Shoes.
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Dec 31, 2017 18:40
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I hope you all have a good new year filled with inspiration and motivation for drawing.
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Jan 1, 2018 00:54
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I use MyPaint and Krita, which are both free. I'm not really sure how MyPaint is these days, I'm still working with a version that's a couple of years out of date by now. Both are pretty solid though, and especially with Krita you should have more than enough tools at your disposal to start out.
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Jan 5, 2018 09:06
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Arbor posted:some of the sketchbookin bits i particularly enjoyed from the last week or so. I use absolutely garbage paper that couldnt handle a snail's sneeze, much less any wash of anything using water, which is why theres buckling on some of these. Doesn't bother me, sorry if it bothers you. That's some delicious line work, holy moley. Here's something new from me. Took a couple of hours, all these drat blades of grass... 
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Jan 6, 2018 20:55
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Gave drawing on the Switch another shot. Using a very limited medium like that is a nice change of pace every now and again, I just wish it wouldn't draw random lines every now and again when the touch screen fucks up.
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Jan 8, 2018 23:00
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Wasn't the thread theme birds or something? https://twitter.com/Shinmera/status/951202584685105152
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Jan 10, 2018 22:23
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And another one for the road: https://twitter.com/Shinmera/status/951214867771424775
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Jan 10, 2018 23:12
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| # ¿ May 11, 2024 10:43 |
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Androids are pretty cool. https://twitter.com/Shinmera/status/953040998040522752
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Jan 16, 2018 00:08
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