@EntropyXII: Ok, but be warned that my drawings are far from good, hehe. I'm currently studying for my last exam, but I'll make sure to search for a drawing as soon as I can. Thanks again.
Agreed - I love watching stuff like that though. I like to go through life knowing there is always someone better than me at something. It drives me to be better!
It seems he is working at very high res like 9000*6000. Since I've watched that video I'm trying to reach that level of details. I'm actually working on a picture that I hope close to this
lol That video gives me the sads! A lot of the time I can't work something out I sit there pushing colours around that just make the knowledge holes about foundations more obvious.
This is just an opinion (and not a terribly educated one at that!) while textures and brushes can help and are often probably necessary the user still needs a solid knowledge (of things they draw) to apply them. For example its probably more important to be able to paint grass than to find a brush that is intended as a brush for grass. I've seen lots of textures that rough up to make for the loss of variation that comes with traditional medias.
Mostly I love his use of colour. I've been trying to balance my pallet and contrast, trying to understand colour theory but stuff just doesn't seem to "pop" yet.
Since a few people were talking about their art set ups, my current set up at home is a 22hd Cintiq running on a i5 desktop, and using Photoshop cs6. ( I also fill sketch books up a lot, so Pencil and paper counts too) At work it's a 24HD Cintiq, again photoshop cs6 running on a monstrosity of a computer Trent built.
Nat (the art director) Uses the same set up, with the addition of a full drafting table because he prefers traditional pen and paper. He IS a comic book artist after all.
I prefer to make my own textures and brushes, but a really good brush set for starting out painting on Photoshop is DanLuVisiArt 's brush pack, http://danluvisiart.deviantart.com/art/My-Brush-Pack-118954791. I sometimes use them in warm up speedpaints and doodles.
@Boozilla - I really, really, really want a Cintiq. Would anyone have any Paintshop Pro brush collections? I can't seem to convert the PS ones into Paintshop. I like doing things on the cheap xD
For both digital and traditional folks: Proko does videos demonstrating and explaining a lot of the Loomis drawing methods and other advice Very handy especially for drawing people http://www.youtube.com/user/ProkoTV/videos
I am always available for criticisms and whatnot for people, but I prefer to do it in a private setting. Hit me up on my email mad@beamdog.com anytime.
@Troodon80 - Whereas I appreciate your nice comments your reasoning isn't valid - Your work is excellent! xD
I am trying my best to recreate some semblance of the BG2 portraits. The reasons for this are practical more than anything. I would like my portraits to fit seamlessly into the BG series without looking 'out of place' if that makes sense.
This is turning out to be extremely difficult - for one attempting to recreate somebodies style is not easy. If I remember correctly it was a few artists who drew the portraits for BG2 - Todd Grenier and Mathew Goldman are two I can remember.
My idea was to create an even medium between Mike Sass of BG1 (In lighting at least) and the animated style of Grenier and Goldman of BG2. Quite frustrating - none of my portraits have turned out the way I wanted them to.
If all else fails I may try for the entire alternative NPC pack - I don't know where I could get the time for that though :-/
I was given a tablet last Christmas, the videos posted here were really good so I downloaded the Mike Nash brushes (as well as holding the Lauren K Cannon tutorial open) and came up with this. Still finding it very difficult to choose colours, so I leave this "incomplete" (I'm done with it). But I was pleased with the result and clearly it is easier to switch up the colours and obliterate mistakes than with physical media.
-groan- I have just lost ALL of my full sized portrait artwork. If my laptop could only have lasted one.more.day. ¬.¬ On the plus side it pushed me to buy a new desktop set up so hopefully that will help clear up the horrendous lag I get whilst painting xP
Good job I have been uploading them here! It's something at least.
I'm so sorry! I have been meaning to back up my own work in forever, you know its asking for trouble. At least you managed to fit them into a rar online before they were gone (although I'm sure that's little comfort).
I totally agree and I think that most "outsiders" (to art) have no idea how hard it is to replicate that style. It only takes a few seconds for them to right click and save pretty pictures, but the burden is on us I guess.
I once tried to make them the photo manipulation way and I was really sucky at it so I can appreciate for example, your nice crisp lines. Part of making them work is having a pretty high contrast, I guess so that they can be seen even though they are so small on the screen.
The first one is my favourite though because....reasons.
May your new desktop serve you faithfully. I kinda regret getting a laptop, its been useful for my many bouts of sickness...but otherwise I wish I had just dropped the money on something a bit better.
Not useful for your old stuff, but anyone know if it is possible to share a folder on your computer with an external hard-drive, so it get's automatically backed up?
'Read an article about quantum computers today. Later I was messing about with 3D modeling and the creation of new materials. So I made this on a whim:
The lightning I did in PS. To tutorialise, what I did was: Create Clouds -> Difference Clouds (till I found something I liked) -> Levels (turned them down till I almost only had the black outlines and white background) -> Invert -> Hue/Saturation (and added a nice blue color, that fit the model). I set the layer as Difference, and erased stuff till it looked natural. This is also a good way to create backgrounds for portraits, since it's a very versatile technique. So easy a semi-trained monkey could do it.
The core of the quantum thingy is made up of at least 5 different layers of homemade materials. More trial and error than planning and knowledge went into that, so can't really make a tutorial for that one.
Not useful for your old stuff, but anyone know if it is possible to share a folder on your computer with an external hard-drive, so it get's automatically backed up?
It depends what you mean by automatic. You should be able to use an external drive and just set a routine scheduled backup. I'll see if I can find a list of software that does what you want. (Windows might also do it, but the packed software is usually only rudimentary.)
As for the now defunct laptop, @EntropyXII, you should be able to get something like this to recover anything you want, assuming it wasn't a physical problem with the hard drive. I have one, and it has been a blessing in some instances.
Hello there. The name of this topic suggest that I should keep away from here, but I'm kind of out of options. While I cannot consider myself as an artist, there is something I would like to hear from artists.
But first, an explanation. I am interested in drawing from long ago, when I was still in primary school, possibly even earlier. One could say that I was drawing for years, thought with large breaks (months, sometimes almost a full year), but I have never took it seriously, until recent 3-4 years. I was never attending to any art school or have anyone who could teach me how to draw, and as a result, I am pretty much self-taught.
The problem is, I was never content with quality of my drawings, and furthermore I get an impression that my progress throught years is almost non-existent. I've tried to approach the way I draw in different way. Tracing was useless, tutorials that I found on internet were useless, drawing what I see was useless, drawing until I have strained my wrist was useless, trying to improve my concentration was useless. None of those method was really succesful.
But I have thought of new one, and I want to ask you, artists, about it. I've thought of starting from the very basics again, to return to the point where I have to learn everything from the start. And, finally, here's my question, or maybe a request: Do you have any advices to someone like me, who is going back to the very basics of drawing/creating art? If you have, what are they?
I would be grateful to hear your answers. Who know, maybe in couple of months I will be able to hold a constructive discussion here.
Thank you for your attention and I'm sorry for wasting your time, eventually.
@ZelgadisGW From what you say, I think you would benefit most of all from criticism. Obviously art criticism is mostly opinion, but everyone works by their own rules and those systems are often useful when shared.
Is there anyone out there you would like to make work like? It is is an extremely useful tool; To already have an example of the end product before you are able to make it yourself gives a lot of inspiration, encouragement and guidance.
On your own: As an intelligent adult willing to start from the ground up, I'd suggest reading "The Elements of Drawing" by John Ruskin. You can use it as a textbook if required, though it's strength I think, is building critical awareness about your own work. Key topics covered are: Accuracy, mark making, tonal value, colour relationships and composition.
@EntropyXII someone may have already made a suggestion. I recently watched tutorial where the guy said he was using something like a tablet that actually showed what he was drawing on it but only just remembered you were looking for something like that in you OP. Anyway, he was using a Wacom 21 UX Cintiq, which they seem to classify as an "interactive pen display," that one is quite an investment, though there are apparently other interactive pen displays that are more affordable. (artist was Nicholas Kay)
Lately, I've been playing around with Autodesk's SketchBook Pro on an iPad a little bit. Using it has been rather enjoyable, I must say. The sensitivity and accuracy when drawing on an iPad is nowhere near professional hardware but the SketchBook app is a fun artistic getaway. After being shrouded in mythical digital mist, this looked back at me: My apologies; I used no reference whatsoever and I haven't been around for some thousands of years, so my sense of female aesthetics might be slightly outdated, not to mention my drawings hardly ever relate exclusively to reality. I also apologize for not sharing the big picture but, uh, I have not yet prepared proper... vestments.
@ZelgadisGW - Can you tell us what is wrong when you draw? I mean... are you lines not straight? does your shading look off?
Usually a lot of problems when painting/drawing comes when the artist is 'trying' to hard. This was an issue I had when I was younger. I had been drawing and painting since I was a kid but I hit a brick wall in ability when I was...13/14. My art teacher took me aside and gave me a few pointers which worked wonders.
Always hold your pencil/pen almost vertical when drawing. Keep control of your nib - do not let it get away from you. Do not be afraid to sketch - hard lines can be added later. Many people do the full slant quick horizontal sketch when it comes to shading - never ever ever do this. Keep your pencil always straight up - it takes much more time but the rewards are worth it - and like I said above: relax. Try to make drawing effortless for yourself. Enjoy it. If something doesn't look right, don't worry. Finish your drawing and move onto the next one.
I don't think you need to start from basics and in fact I think that this would be impossible. It isn't easy to retrain your brain, and it's nigh impossible to retrain the muscle response which your hand has become used to over the years. A few slight changes in the way you work will do wonders.
@Moomintroll Well, there is such a person, but I doubt that trying to imitate her is a good idea. She can perfectly mimic some mangakas' drawing style, plus she can draw in realism, too (from time to time). As much as imitating mangaka's style looks really convincing (when drawing manga/anime of course), I don't think I could be satisfacted by this. Also, I'm more jealous than inspired by her, since she's younger than me, yet posseses skills that I'm afraid I will never have.
I don't think that the book you suggested is avaliable in my country, but I will keep searching. Thanks, anyway
@EntropyXII Well, I think everything is not alright, thought lines aren't that much of a problem. What pains me most is that I'm utterly incapable of drawing without any references (well, in theory I can, but I can only draw few things, and quality isn't any good). Without any references, I just sit on my butt, staring at the paper - I just don't know how to start, even if I can imagine what I am going to draw. Besides, I'm neither good at shading (I do not pracitce it enough. Why, when sketch itself is drawn badly?), coloring (same here), perspective (never get it, horizont lines and such never helped me), sense of depth (my drawing are looking flat) etc.
What you have said next is really interesting. Trying too hard is why I fail? And furthermore, few changes are capable of changing that much? It almost sounds too easy to be true, but I think I can give it a try. I doubt, thought, that it's going to improve some of issues I mentioned above. Thank you, anyway.
Comments
but like I said... Mike Nash is the greatest painter I've seen on the web :
It seems he is working at very high res like 9000*6000. Since I've watched that video I'm trying to reach that level of details.
I'm actually working on a picture that I hope close to this
This is just an opinion (and not a terribly educated one at that!) while textures and brushes can help and are often probably necessary the user still needs a solid knowledge (of things they draw) to apply them. For example its probably more important to be able to paint grass than to find a brush that is intended as a brush for grass. I've seen lots of textures that rough up to make for the loss of variation that comes with traditional medias.
http://mirojohannes.deviantart.com/art/3Speeds-355073731
Matt Rhodes for example, varies his usage. I like this one which has a more limited approach:
http://cghub.com/images/view/163182/
But there's clearly a lot more on this one:
http://cghub.com/images/view/50555/
I imagine that fabrics are kind of the same?
Mostly I love his use of colour. I've been trying to balance my pallet and contrast, trying to understand colour theory but stuff just doesn't seem to "pop" yet.
This is my favourite skin tutorial:
http://browse.deviantart.com/art/SKIN-a-tutorial-Part-1-144294636
Since a few people were talking about their art set ups, my current set up at home is a 22hd Cintiq running on a i5 desktop, and using Photoshop cs6. ( I also fill sketch books up a lot, so Pencil and paper counts too)
At work it's a 24HD Cintiq, again photoshop cs6 running on a monstrosity of a computer Trent built.
Nat (the art director) Uses the same set up, with the addition of a full drafting table because he prefers traditional pen and paper. He IS a comic book artist after all.
I prefer to make my own textures and brushes, but a really good brush set for starting out painting on Photoshop is DanLuVisiArt 's brush pack, http://danluvisiart.deviantart.com/art/My-Brush-Pack-118954791.
I sometimes use them in warm up speedpaints and doodles.
For both digital and traditional folks: Proko does videos demonstrating and explaining a lot of the Loomis drawing methods and other advice
I don't know if any of you have seen but i've been uploading my portraits for a little while. Thoughts? Constructive criticism? @Boozilla @Klonoa @Seldar @krax @Nixxi @artastrophe @Troodon80
http://forum.baldursgate.com/discussion/19032/exii-baldur-s-gate-portrait-pack#latest
(That, and I'm really bad at trying to give constructive feedback
I am trying my best to recreate some semblance of the BG2 portraits. The reasons for this are practical more than anything. I would like my portraits to fit seamlessly into the BG series without looking 'out of place' if that makes sense.
This is turning out to be extremely difficult - for one attempting to recreate somebodies style is not easy. If I remember correctly it was a few artists who drew the portraits for BG2 - Todd Grenier and Mathew Goldman are two I can remember.
My idea was to create an even medium between Mike Sass of BG1 (In lighting at least) and the animated style of Grenier and Goldman of BG2. Quite frustrating - none of my portraits have turned out the way I wanted them to.
If all else fails I may try for the entire alternative NPC pack - I don't know where I could get the time for that though :-/
Good job I have been uploading them here! It's something at least.
I'm so sorry! I have been meaning to back up my own work in forever, you know its asking for trouble. At least you managed to fit them into a rar online before they were gone (although I'm sure that's little comfort).
I totally agree and I think that most "outsiders" (to art) have no idea how hard it is to replicate that style. It only takes a few seconds for them to right click and save pretty pictures, but the burden is on us I guess.
I once tried to make them the photo manipulation way and I was really sucky at it so I can appreciate for example, your nice crisp lines. Part of making them work is having a pretty high contrast, I guess so that they can be seen even though they are so small on the screen.
The first one is my favourite though because....reasons.
May your new desktop serve you faithfully. I kinda regret getting a laptop, its been useful for my many bouts of sickness...but otherwise I wish I had just dropped the money on something a bit better.
The lightning I did in PS. To tutorialise, what I did was: Create Clouds -> Difference Clouds (till I found something I liked) -> Levels (turned them down till I almost only had the black outlines and white background) -> Invert -> Hue/Saturation (and added a nice blue color, that fit the model). I set the layer as Difference, and erased stuff till it looked natural.
This is also a good way to create backgrounds for portraits, since it's a very versatile technique.
So easy a semi-trained monkey could do it.
The core of the quantum thingy is made up of at least 5 different layers of homemade materials. More trial and error than planning and knowledge went into that, so can't really make a tutorial for that one.
As for the now defunct laptop, @EntropyXII, you should be able to get something like this to recover anything you want, assuming it wasn't a physical problem with the hard drive. I have one, and it has been a blessing in some instances.
But first, an explanation. I am interested in drawing from long ago, when I was still in primary school, possibly even earlier. One could say that I was drawing for years, thought with large breaks (months, sometimes almost a full year), but I have never took it seriously, until recent 3-4 years. I was never attending to any art school or have anyone who could teach me how to draw, and as a result, I am pretty much self-taught.
The problem is, I was never content with quality of my drawings, and furthermore I get an impression that my progress throught years is almost non-existent. I've tried to approach the way I draw in different way. Tracing was useless, tutorials that I found on internet were useless, drawing what I see was useless, drawing until I have strained my wrist was useless, trying to improve my concentration was useless. None of those method was really succesful.
But I have thought of new one, and I want to ask you, artists, about it. I've thought of starting from the very basics again, to return to the point where I have to learn everything from the start. And, finally, here's my question, or maybe a request:
Do you have any advices to someone like me, who is going back to the very basics of drawing/creating art? If you have, what are they?
I would be grateful to hear your answers. Who know, maybe in couple of months I will be able to hold a constructive discussion here.
Thank you for your attention and I'm sorry for wasting your time, eventually.
Is there anyone out there you would like to make work like? It is is an extremely useful tool; To already have an example of the end product before you are able to make it yourself gives a lot of inspiration, encouragement and guidance.
On your own: As an intelligent adult willing to start from the ground up, I'd suggest reading "The Elements of Drawing" by John Ruskin. You can use it as a textbook if required, though it's strength I think, is building critical awareness about your own work.
Key topics covered are: Accuracy, mark making, tonal value, colour relationships and composition.
After being shrouded in mythical digital mist, this looked back at me:
My apologies; I used no reference whatsoever and I haven't been around for some thousands of years, so my sense of female aesthetics might be slightly outdated, not to mention my drawings hardly ever relate exclusively to reality. I also apologize for not sharing the big picture but, uh, I have not yet prepared proper... vestments.
Usually a lot of problems when painting/drawing comes when the artist is 'trying' to hard. This was an issue I had when I was younger. I had been drawing and painting since I was a kid but I hit a brick wall in ability when I was...13/14. My art teacher took me aside and gave me a few pointers which worked wonders.
Always hold your pencil/pen almost vertical when drawing. Keep control of your nib - do not let it get away from you. Do not be afraid to sketch - hard lines can be added later. Many people do the full slant quick horizontal sketch when it comes to shading - never ever ever do this. Keep your pencil always straight up - it takes much more time but the rewards are worth it - and like I said above: relax. Try to make drawing effortless for yourself. Enjoy it. If something doesn't look right, don't worry. Finish your drawing and move onto the next one.
I don't think you need to start from basics and in fact I think that this would be impossible. It isn't easy to retrain your brain, and it's nigh impossible to retrain the muscle response which your hand has become used to over the years. A few slight changes in the way you work will do wonders.
Well, there is such a person, but I doubt that trying to imitate her is a good idea. She can perfectly mimic some mangakas' drawing style, plus she can draw in realism, too (from time to time). As much as imitating mangaka's style looks really convincing (when drawing manga/anime of course), I don't think I could be satisfacted by this. Also, I'm more jealous than inspired by her, since she's younger than me, yet posseses skills that I'm afraid I will never have.
I don't think that the book you suggested is avaliable in my country, but I will keep searching. Thanks, anyway
@EntropyXII
Well, I think everything is not alright, thought lines aren't that much of a problem. What pains me most is that I'm utterly incapable of drawing without any references (well, in theory I can, but I can only draw few things, and quality isn't any good). Without any references, I just sit on my butt, staring at the paper - I just don't know how to start, even if I can imagine what I am going to draw. Besides, I'm neither good at shading (I do not pracitce it enough. Why, when sketch itself is drawn badly?), coloring (same here), perspective (never get it, horizont lines and such never helped me), sense of depth (my drawing are looking flat) etc.
What you have said next is really interesting. Trying too hard is why I fail? And furthermore, few changes are capable of changing that much? It almost sounds too easy to be true, but I think I can give it a try. I doubt, thought, that it's going to improve some of issues I mentioned above. Thank you, anyway.