#i like making my own ref like thats the easiest to look at generally

[skitskatdacat63]

My Christmas wish is to finish all my pertinent wips 🙏

[ikkydikky]

Here it comes! Time for an end of the year “Here’s what I drew this year” list. Mainly just to archive my art now for future’s sake and tell myself my thought process and how I felt about it now.

I’m skipping over sketches and going straight to stuff that was finished and polished and I’ll explain each image as we go. Buckle up boys its going to be a long one. 

We’re going to go to the first image I did this year and explain how things went from there!

Drawing #1, Scrubbed off Katia Managan 

March 3rd 2017

Art is actually kind of hard when you don’t know what form, line consistency, anatomy, or any of those things are! In fact I only know about two of them right now! And how to put into practice one of them! This image shows what its really like to start out with base-nothing. The idea is cute! And I’ll probably redo it later on when I am probably a years worth better. It marks however the first thing I really posted online. To me, that makes it special.

Drawing #2, Sigrid, but smug.

September 9th, 2017

BIG gap between the two! And not a lot of improvement, or maybe a lot of improvement? Who knows. I think this image was the first thing I did digitally that I put up for other people to see, and it was exciting! There’s absolutely no construction to this. Prior to this image being done I was basically drawing people’s heads and circles. Like, pages upon pages of circle grinding to actually know how to draw a circle digitally.

The main reason why there was such a gap between March and September was due to me graduating high school. I basically didn’t feel like drawing at all when I already had the work load of school ontop of me. But the art starts coming a lot faster now. Yes you can see there was a huge prequel influence. 

Drawing #3, Blushin Bob

September 29th, 2017

Art is something that you can really do a lot of, but you can easily get burnt out on. Animal crossing is actually one of my favorite games out there, and to try to pay tribute I drew this. Not uh, not exactly my favorite. 

This image has me trying basically 3 new things I’ve never done before. Shading, clothes, fur tufts, and bodies. Yeah. Not exactly my best job at any of those. The shadows are, very inconsistent and its clear I didn’t really know how to do it properly. The fur is atrocious with it looking like spiked tumors, and the shirt rides up way too high like hes wearing a shirt thats way too short! Also he might be a bit too skinny. 

This is kind of an image that broke me. At the time I was trying to fix every error when I just couldn’t, from the arm in the first attempt being god awful, to how the shading and shirt looks. I genuinely think this is the worst image in my library, and I knew it at the time since I drew nothing for all of October. You know. The month that’s meant to be the most inspiring artistically?

Drawing #4, Gondola The Peaceful Giant

November 12th, 2017

This was actually just a shitty paint up I did of a sketch practicing perspective. It was mainly for a draw thread on 8chan’s /v/ and probably my only work I’ve posted to an image board. I think generally doing art for anonymous people is a bit thankless. Its great for practicing but it really gives back no validation.

Keep in your memory these clouds, I’ll be talking about those later. 

Drawing #5, Bunny, The space mechanic.

November 12th, 2017

This character was a mistake, not the drawing but the character! This is my first actual tabletop character and boy I flubbed it. But this is art retrospective. Not roleplay retrospective. Anyway. A portrait done with a new pen style that I don’t think worked out too well. It comes off a bit too rough and gritty. But it makes for unique coloring when it comes to painting. I’ll actually have some more to say about that in a bit too! This also marks the point where I really got into drawing again. See. The table top group I’m in rewards you for drawing pictures of your characters, no matter how shitty it is, as long as you do your best, you get a reward in game. Its actually a really, really neat system!

Drawing #6, Oh dear god why.

November 16th, 2017

This is going to be a reoccurring character, so. Lets get to talking about it here. This character was as far as I know, a joke character made by a friend that got turned into a full blown character for a campaign, she is nonsensical, random, actually crazy, and worst of all, vibrantly colored. She is the Deviant Art Sparkledog as a character. Which funny enough, is her character name. This was my first attempt at really going ‘sexy’ and ‘nude’. And actually I think Sparkledog is a perfect candidate for it because its already cringy and god awful to look at! So it hides my bad attempts at a sexy lady behind an already cringy character. Thanks friend.

Anyway to talk about the art its self. It was done with no ref or pose. And I think it kind of shows. Everything’s proportionate to a degree but something about the perspective of the whole thing feels... off. Of course the background is just slapped together with glue but I mean on the character. She’s laying on the ground but not in a way that I think is possible or comfortable.

This also goes as my second attempt at fur, it’s, better. But definitely not good. Ontop of that this is probably my first attempt at an actual muzzle! Pic below related.

Muzzles are really hard to do. For some reason. If you ever read Loomis’ Fun with a Pencil it becomes slightly easier, but it also kind of isn’t. A month later and I still struggle with them, A lot of my joke sketches I often forgo any sort of attempt at drawing a muzzle and go for round head shapes, this works out if the character’s species is a prey type, as the eyes for herbivores are often on the side of the head, while for predators, its facing dead ahead. On another note, apparently I can just *do legs* with almost ease. I’ll touch on this more in a bit.

Drawing #7, A background for the end.

December 2nd, 2017

Tabletop is a wonderful thing, art groups are also an amazing experience to ever be apart of. The group I’ve been with has been an amazing experience for me artistically as I’ve learned to grow so much more. This is an image I did as soon as I woke up on my birthday. Friend A. did the character sketch. Friend b. did the coloring of the characters, and I got to practice something that I’ve wanted to do for ages.

Environmental art.

Ontop of character art and such, one thing that always draws my attention is environment art. Its something you can always get lost in. Your eyes can search to every corner imagining what it would be like to be there. Genuinely amazing works of art is often environment art. 

Its also time we talk about the clouds. I hope you remembered them from the gondola picture. See. Clouds are all about layers, and layers, and layers. Especially when done in a thunder storm. They’re something I might recommend painting if you ever want to start out! I do however think the clouds in the gondola image work a lot better. But I think that might be from the several things I did to trick myself to think they look better.

 And that’s all there really is to say on this image. Which is a problem. I learned a bit more about perspective and how floors work when under character’s feet... and how to do lightning kind of. But there isn’t much else. If I were to do this more I’d probably add another cliff to the background. A mountain, a landscape just beyond the fog, because it seems unfinished as it stands. 

Drawing #8, Oh dear god why, Revengeance.

December 5th? 2017

Probably the only unfinished image that gets posted! So lets talk about it. I think fur is my least favorite detail to make ever.Yet it also is my favorite when its done. The tail also might not be the best but its league’s better than my first attempt! But lets talk about the main thing about this image.

PAWS.

I don’t have a thing for paws, or feet, that’s not my kink. I think footjobs are sort of appealing sure but I don’t care much for it. so this was my first attempt at paws, and I think I did damn well. However, digitigrade legs are something I still have an issue with, and I am working towards fixing that. I don’t think furry characters look great when their legs are humans, but with paws. As well I think legs are the easiest part of the body to draw in some ways, that might just be me.

The face also is a bit of a mistake? Its better than its.. original incarnation...

[NOT EVEN THE DEAD KNOW PEACE FROM THIS EVIL]

Animal faces with human features is the proper way to do things, but human faces with animal features is... Hell incarnate.

Also that ass took me like 30 tries to get right god damn. 

Drawing #9, The last hoot for today.

December 18th, 2017

The last one for today. Some point after Christmas I’ll post probably another three drawings. But this is the final one. Lets talk about a few things about myself.

Art style is all about inspiration. You pick up inspiration from everywhere. Specifically from art styles you really, genuinely enjoy. You might have noticed the art style at first was I Wanna Be The Kazerad and then to something completely different from Kazerad but not distinct from anyone else. This is the process I think to finding your own art style. Emulation.

You might also noticed I ditched aliased (pixely) lines in favor of smooth lines, this was because I was having a tiny issue with drawing at large scale. For some reason I always liked zooming in real close on my 2000x2000 canvas and drawing tiny little things. The bunny picture is a really good example of this. He only took up the tiny corner of my much, much larger canvas. Speaking of his part of this post, lets get into color.

There’s been 3 ways I colored things, the first was plain flats, second was with a sort of homemade crayon brush (Ala Bunny and Gondola), and third was a unique way in how I did the eyes of this image. Looking at them closer you can see theres, actually a lot of rich detail in them!

This was a pretty easy thing to do and it has such amazing results that, I want to do a full image using it just to try it. For how I did it, I use krita, and how it handles gigantic brushes is like most art programs, by automatically raising the spacing between each ‘use’ (for a lack of a better term.)

Here’s what the blue part looks like with a white background behind it and the layer count to make this beside it. (Only one of them visible.)

It also kind of hits close to to another artist I’ve been following pretty closely as of lately. (And more recently on tumblr.)

You might not have heard of @jamdrawers , and you should definitely check them out if you haven’t. They are someone who, in my eyes, has such a wonderful art style. Other artists that do a style with pixelly, aliased lines don’t even come close in my opinion. I bring jam up here because of a few things, the art style he presents has thoroughly inspired me to pick back up trying to draw in aliased lines again, and because going forward I’ll continue looking to him for inspiration. Also if you read this jam tell winrarphile I said thanks for getting me into your art. 

Now, when it comes to the owl its self. I regret not adding a thicker outline to all of her character, and instead kept it to just the head shape, as well I do think she comes out a bit bland. Of course color wise its to keep in theme with the rest of the table top groups color theme. But outline wise? Definitely needs work. I tried a ‘hair style’ for her but that didn’t really work out either. So I kept it to the three feathers at the top of the head. I also think I spent more time on this image than I did any other, to quote myself “I’ll finish this owl up in about an hour or two”, which quickly lead to 8 days instead, just through procrastination.

Don’t do something in art if you really don’t want to do it. You can easily, easily get fatigued and burnt out with out delay, but among this procrastination came other sketches that, I don’t think I’ll post here, but helped me learn hands somewhat. So there is that.

Thus ends this posts governing topic. If you read this whole thing, good job. If you didn’t and skimmed to the end. That’s fine too! I understand I got a bit wordy but, I genuinely wanted to lay out my thoughts about all this.

In conclusion, I think the rate at which I’m getting better is decent, Mistakes are being ironed out each new drawing I take on. Each study and figure drawing adds onto the many experiences I’ll use for later in my artistic career, and I think the rate at which I’m drawing is far too slow for my own tastes, as such its a goal for the upcoming year to get a lot faster with finishing each drawing so I can quickly move onto the next. Thank you for reading this.

Have a noid chewin’ some pizza as a reward for coming down to the end.

[brinytrolls]

Hey there! I need some help! I really want to be an animator in the future. I just rurned 18. But i havent improved on my drawings. Ive stopped drawing for 2 years. And just recently started getting back at it. And its hard to get back at it. i feel like i have creative block! I only draw faces! Do you have anything or resources or ANYTHING to help me??

i mean im not a pro but buckle in im gonna compile a list of tips to try and help you the best i can-this could get lengthy! 

this is so cliche i can hear u groaning already but-practice! practice every day if u can. even the smallest thing is good! draw as much as you can every day. 

the biggest thing thats helped me in the past couple of years: make an inspiration folder. save everything. anything that inspires you in any way. like the colours of one? the way another artist draws hands? eyes? save it. 

separate the folder into sub-folders. make a folder for tutorials you see around tumblr that look useful. a folder for interesting poses-mine has a lot of stock photos in it. if theres a particular type of art that inspires you a lot [mine is concept art + character designs] make a folder for that. 

this is long enough that it needs its own tip-but i have a folder called “interesting expressions” that has helped me a lot. ill have huge sai files full of screenshots from episodes of cartoons with expressions that are interesting to me-take an episode of a cartoon you like and screenshot it when something interesting comes up. save it. it might be useful one day. i do a lot of sketch sheets just drawing expressions in my own style. 

don’t subscribe to the weird internet attitude that refs are bad. theyre the best friend u will ever have. use them! if u rly cant find a ref for smth-try taking a photo. i take shitty webcam photos of my hands when i cant get a pose right 

take inspiration from other artists. this isn’t by any means telling you to steal an artists entire art style-but if you like the way a certain artist draws eyelids or how they ink fur or how they colour eyes or how they....put a weird amount of detail into their characters teeth?? try it! most art styles are just a mangled mishmash of inspiration from other art sources. 

it doesn’t matter if you have a “consistent art style” or not. i know it can be frustrating for things to look different every time, but tbh its ok!! drawing in different styles is super fun. try different styles! 

try different things in general. different colouring styles, brushes, anything. i went through a phase of shading everything in eyeburningly neon colours. it was fun! 

draw things you’re scared to draw. yes, even hands. don’t try and hide them in the drawing. you’ll feel so much more accomplished if you draw them.

draw new things! something im awfully rusty at is animals. i find the easiest way to learn new things is separating them into shapes. i trace over photos of the subject from different angles, then use the shapes as my construction for when i draw them without tracing. the shapes help if you want to exaggerate features later on. 

speaking of construction drawing! heres a tutorial that explains it better than i could: http://lackadaisy.foxprints.com/exhibit.php?exhibitid=356 it helps keep characters consistent. 

watch youtube videos-art tips & speedpaints i find to be v useful. watching videos about basics geared to animators will help a lot-gesture sketching is very useful topic to learn. 

heres a site for online figure drawing. they have a class mode which can help a lot! 

just fuckin indulge urself. do it. make characters solely based around things u enjoy drawing. draw that thing u like. draw what makes u happy.art is fun dont make it a chore-and if it feels like a chore to learn new things, try something new and then reward yourself with drawing something you enjoy. 

im sorry these are all kinda generic sounding but i hope they can help at least a bit?? i can be more specific if theres a particular topic you want tips for!! im by no means any kind of professional but if u want advice on smth specific like character design or anything just send me another ask! hope these help at least a bit