colored lineart

This is a style that I've been meaning to try for a while. I like the look of it and it looked easy enough to do so I finally got around to giving it a try.

The outline is based off of a sketch that I did in photoshop but could also have worked with a scanned in pencil drawing. After the sketch I just used the paint brush at 100% opacity and traced my original, altering little things here and there. After the inking was done, the coloring was just like any other digi-painting I've done. Just working with a bunch of layers.

This one didn't have that many layers because I was kind of quick on the coloring and didn't really put a lot of detail into it. This is most obvious in the hair since it only looks half done. XD

anyway.. the point what to try inking a sketch and coloring it a little and that's what I did so... done! :D I think I'll try this a little more to see if I can get a little faster. this one took much longer then I think it should have. (it took somewhere around 4 hours when it should have been 2 hours max)

2 days for 2 years

Just finished my first attempt at a full blown digi-painted portrait in over 2 years! I wanted to practice just heads and for my first attempt in such a long time, I just couldn't get myself to do it only halfway. So I spent 2 days on it and finished it.

This ended up mostly being a hair practice since the piece I did 2 years ago was such a hair fail. So I had to redeem myself and I think I did. :]

I also tried to give her sort of glowing looking eyes. ...it kind of worked. I will definitely be doing some studies on light and especially light around the eyes since I had a hard time deciding what to do with the eye lashes.

I showed this to my sister about halfway through it. she said it was very Disney princess-ish. Win. How can you go wrong with Disney? :]

fighting

sort of a speed paint that I did about a week ago. I learned a couple things from this one:

First of all, this is my first one working with a black background so that was kind of fun. :] It's also kind of cell shaded so it was good to get some practice in with placing hard shadows. I'd like to do another one like this pretty soon here. Something I need to be careful of is to stay away from outlines. I love the look of outlines but they are also something of a crutch and are preventing me from learning to refine my edges in other ways.

This pic is mostly focusing on the face and I'm thinking that I'll probably be doing bust portraitists like this for the first bit. In my last entry I posted a speed paint of two characters and a background. While that one was meant to be unfinished, it ended up being much less finished then I thought it would be. After I had done it I didn't think it was too bad because the faces where looking closer to finished and where more what I had in mind. My problem was in the bodies and that speed paint made it really obvious that there are still may things I have to work on when it comes to drawing and especially painting bodies.

At the moment I want to focus mostly on my digi-painting techniques which have also become obvious areas for improvement. So for the next while here I think I'm going to stick with just bust portraits since that it something I'm already familiar with. :]

Many more speed paints to come!

speed paint 1

So the idea is that I have to paint an entire scene. Here is my first go and I was actually amazed at how much I was able to get done. :] It is far from finished but that is the point. To see how finished I can make it look in only 2 hours. This will help me practice working on the whole image at once.

Not bad. :] First off I was impressed with how accurate I was able to get her face even without drawing any guidelines/lineart. That was just drawn as it was painted. I like his face less but it is still pretty good in terms of looking like an actual face. :3

interestingly, one of the biggest things I learned was how simple noses and mouths are. There are only three colors in her lips and on her nose. I was amazed at how round I could make it look with only those three colors and hardly any blending, if at all.

Somethings to work on... I obviously don't have a very firm grip on how to draw the torso. His is hidden and hers is very unstable. For one thing the shoulders are too big and kind of in the wrong place.

Pretty boring background but it does give the idea of sitting in front of a window where the light is filling up the room. Next time I would try adding some objects in the background.

Overall, better then I thought it would be. :] I actually like this picture and I think I might try to finish it.

Getting started

So I'm feeling that an art blog is in order. For the last few weeks I have been doing some extra study into digital painting and just in working with colors in general. For those who know anything about my art history, you know that just plain-old gray pencil is about all I've even been good at. And I am good at it. At least I like to think so. You also know that I am far more practiced at drawing people then anything else. Portraits of peoples' faces, to be more specific.

Another thing that we all know about art is that it takes FOREVER to get really good at anything! D: Learning to draw portraits as well as I have has been something that I've been working on for 12 years. whoa. 12 years?! That seems so much worse when I write it down. BUT. The good news is that after all that, I'm feeling pretty confident with those.

SO. here's the hope: That learning to paint or just learning to use color will be more or less like learning a 3rd language. Learning to draw photo-realistic portraits was language number 2. The one that takes forever and tons and tons of hard work. The 3rd language, color, will also be hard work, but hopefully less like 'forever'. That makes scene. :3 That should work right? right. ...i know. whatever makes me feel better right? XD


Getting started.

One of the biggest weaknesses I've found I have in this area is my tendency to work on all the detail of one spot before working much on the rest of the picture. Honestly.. now that I think about it, I have no clue how I've gotten away with this for as long as I have.

A very helpful part of the art process is to work on the image as a whole from start to finish. I've always been good about sketching up a skeleton (body guide lines) and the general line art of the whole image, but I fail to continue the gradual detailing process after that.  Because of this, I imagine that learning to do this with color (since I never learned it in the first place) will dramatically improve my pencil stuff as well, and that is very exciting. Thankfully, I'm still quite impressed with my pencil portraits, but recently I've started noticing consistent flaws (such as a somewhat flat looking nose) and that means it's time for more improvement.

My plan for getting started is to work on speed paintings. I plan to give my self 1-2 hours a day to paint up a full color picture. That idea behind these speed paints is that in order for it to look any good at the end of 2 hours I will have to have worked on the detail of the whole piece in steps all together. Otherwise the end result after only 2 hours would look VERY unfinished.

So for the next while here, I will be using this blog to record my progress and findings. I will post my new speed paint every day along with any comments on the piece and what I learned from it. Here's to getting started! :D