ukiy0h

[ukiy0h]

reflection

I’m really glad I decided to choose digital art as my passion project. Originally, I was torn between 3 or 4 different choices because 1) I’m one of the most indecisive people to exist ever and 2) I’m somewhat a jack of all trades, and I’m constantly finding things I want to try and get better at so I had to choose between several different options for this project. I really love creating fan content because I am part of a lot of fandoms and it’s really rewarding, so digital art was a good choice.

Unfortunately, there were definitely challenges I faced while trying to finish my final product. One of the challenges was that anatomy is really hard to master, and for some reason I didn’t really get that into my brain until I started trying to sketch something without a reference, but it worked out in the end (there was a lot of trial and error). Another challenge that really hit me hard was my lack of motivation. I didn’t realize I’d have such a mental block right around the time this project was going on/was due but my mental health took a decline and I haven’t been feeling creative or motivated to do much the past few days, which really hindered my progress on this project. 

Ultimately, I’m still not great at sketching freehand, and my line work is very shaky (to say the least), but I’ve actually learned a lot about tricks to using the software that make it so much easier to color and shade. From my first original piece (the red one of the cosplayer) to the second (the blue one) the time it took to finish the piece drastically improved. Instead of spending the better halves of two days on one piece because I had to painstakingly draw outlines and fill them in, I ended up taking about 4-5 hours to finish the entire piece, which was incredible. I learned from mistakes I made coloring the manga panel, and sketching/coloring the first original piece and I feel that I’ve made a significant amount of progress on digital art.

In the future, I’d definitely like to improve on my anatomy and my shading, and I also want to work on a steadier hand when doing line art. I could definitely talk a lot about what I think I need to improve on, but for someone who had a relatively low understanding of digital art before this project, I can say for sure that I am satisfied with the work I’ve created for this project and I’m really excited to continue going into the future! This project served as a reminder for me that I should always work to get better at what I love because the satisfaction at the result is worth the effort. Seeing what I was able to create is super inspiring to me, and I’m excited to keep getting better at it!

[ukiy0h]

final product

In my proposal I said that my final product was going to be a series of original works, and I ended up with one colored in manga panel and two original pieces so they will be posted here.

This is the manga panel I colored in for my first blog post (which is here).

This is the first original piece I made for my second blog post (which is here).

This is another piece I made today. I wasn’t feeling very creative, so this piece is based off of the tutorial video by @/samijen that is linked in my research page (the only thing I really changed was the hair).

[ukiy0h]

lookbook

This is where I’m compiling work from artists whose art styles appeal to me and who I’m taking inspiration from!

artist ©: @/belmeran on instagram

artist ©: @/theodrawshere on instagram 

artist ©: @/kkumri on instagram/tumblr 

artist ©: @/wuhsawgi on tumblr

artist ©: horikoshi kouhei

artist ©: @/samijen on tumblr (this is the art from the tutorial video on my resources page)

[ukiy0h]

research/sources

These are the sources I found to help me with individual aspects of this project!

Belliveau, David, et al. “Digital Painting: The Ultimate Beginner's Guide.” Paintable, 29 Jan. 2020, paintable.cc/digital-painting-the-ultimate-beginners-guide/.

This first source is an article for beginners to digital art, and includes technology recommendations and resources for how to understand the software and use specific tools. This article had drawing tablet and program recommendations, but I already own a Wacom Intuos drawing tablet and Clip Studio Paint Pro from before this project, so I looked through the recommendations despite the fact that I already know what tablet and program I’ll be using. One of the most helpful parts of this source is that the author included a 28 pack of free portrait brushes to download and tutorials for the brushes, which was really helpful! I decided to use the hair and skin brushes from the pack, and I had to import them into CSP one by one, which took me about 3-4 minutes.

Jones, CS. “Color Theory in the Digital Space.” Wacom Blog, 31 Aug. 2019, community.wacom.com/color-theory-in-the-digital-space-part-2/.

Originally, my source for color theory in my proposal was a different blog post/article, but when I went back to it, none of the pictures would load, which was really unhelpful, so I decided to just find another source. This one is part 2 of a series, and this one is specifically for digital purposes. This was a really interesting read, it explained hue, saturation, value, and several more terms, and it was helpful in making coloring less difficult and more put together.

Eaton, Scott. “Artistic Anatomy for Digital Artists.” 2010. PDF File.

This source was really comprehensive. I found it while searching for guides to anatomy and I originally found an in person anatomy course by Scott Eaton, who is an artist, designer, and photographer, but I looked a little closer and I found a PDF of course notes that follows the lecture. It includes a section on proportion and for each area of anatomy simplifies it down to major shapes and planes, then identifies major landmarks of each section of the body and has diagrams that show the musculature of the anatomy and reference photos 

Jen, Sami. “How I Make Art in Clip Studio Paint” YouTube, uploaded by Sami Jen, 28 Mar. 2020, www.youtube.com/watch?v=7p8sMTwvKDk.

This is probably the best source I actually used for this project, I wasn’t sure if I should include it because there’s some casual swearing, but eventually I decided it wasn’t bad enough for a school project and it was the most helpful source I used so the pros outweigh the cons. This was an artist on Tumblr and Instagram and they basically went through their entire process for how they make art on Clip Studio Paint, and there were a lot of helpful tidbits casually explained in a really helpful way that I would not have thought to do on my own, and would save me a lot of time when making my own art. Unfortunately when I decided to try using this video as a guide I was feeling really uncreative and it just wasn’t working for me so I’m not sure I’ll end up using these tips for art that I create in time to upload for this project, but I will be using it in the future. 

[ukiy0h]

blog post #2

For the last blog post I made, I seriously underestimated how much time it would take to finish the art and make the blog post, so I decided to start this one earlier (I also just wanted to draw). I’m going to start this blog post today (Sunday, April 26th) and update it over the course of 3 days. 

For this blog post I want to sketch, line, and color an original piece which is much easier said than done but I’m going to start off by going through a pdf of content for Scott Eaton’s Artistic Anatomy for Digital Artists course, which will be cited on my research post.

Honestly, one of the more challenging parts of this project was figuring out what I wanted to draw. I’m super indecisive, so that took a while. Eventually (with the help of my friend), I ended up choosing this as the reference photo:

©: @/fraycosplay on instagram/tiktok (original post)

Sketching has always been something I like to do, so I didn’t really think about it much while doing it. Most of the challenging aspect of digital art for me is the line art and the coloring. I really like the messy aesthetic of a sketch, and sometimes lineart can make it look different from the sketch, so I’m kinda nervous to ink this piece.

Progress picture:

The nose was giving me a little bit of trouble, but I decided not to spend too long on it and when I was about 60% satisfied, I figured I’d just do my best to fix it using the lineart.

Progress picture #2:

The nose was still giving me trouble, so I decided to go a different route and looked at a reference drawing from an artist whose style I liked, and tried to draw the nose that way. It still looks kinda wonky unfortunately :( I also decided not to ink with a proper pen style brush and used a different sketching brush I downloaded because the lighting is so saturated in the original reference photo that I wouldn’t outline the piece but rather use colors and shading without a stark line differentiating the figure from the background.

Progress picture #3:

This is all the flat colors, and that that wasn’t too bad, just a little time consuming to outline each part and then fill it in and go over the edges because the fill tool leaves a really tiny outline. Then I started coloring, and I realized that I chose a reference photo with tricky lighting... I ended up using both normal skin colors and red, pink, and white to shade the skin because a hard light overlay wasn’t getting the colors to be more like what I needed them to be.

Progress picture #4:

(my phone camera messes with the lighting a little)

I honestly started getting a little frustrated coloring this. It’s hard and time consuming and my back, neck, and shoulders hurt a lot, but it really do be that way sometimes ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ but I’m pretty satisfied with how it’s coming along.

Progress picture #5:

The features took me some time to get right, but I did eventually get them done (it took a lot of trial and error).

I misjudged the amount of time I had to finish again, so I wasn’t able to finish the background before posting this, so I will update it as soon as I finish.

Progress picture #6: 

This is basically the finished product, I just wanted to color the background so it’s darker. My phone camera isn’t great (I have an iPhone 6S) so the lighting of the picture blurs it out a little, but I actually really like how it turned out and only have a few small things I want to fix.

Final product:

I’m actually really pleased with how this came out!! I spent most of yesterday (Monday 4/27) sketching, lining, and coloring the base colors for the shirt, skin, and hair, and then colored the hair and today (Tuesday, 4/28) I finished the rest of it. I spent most of today working on this after finishing an assignment for AP Psych, and it’s really satisfying to see this piece actually done, even if I’m still trying to figure out my art style.

[ukiy0h]

blog post #1

I’d like to start this progress post by saying that I have a little bit of experience with digital art, but I’m not great at it yet. I used to use FireAlpaca, which is a free digital art platform, and it’s not bad, but I recently won a giveaway for Clip Studio Paint Pro (I was really shocked to be honest, I don’t win things so this was awesome!) and I thought that I’d take it as a sign to get better at digital art!  For this week, I’ve been focusing on color theory and shading, so I haven’t really thought about sketching and line-art yet. I decided to take a manga panel from my favorite anime/manga, My Hero Academia, and color it before I try sketching an original piece.

This is the manga panel I decided to use (just the top panel):

So far, I’m not actually finished with it yet but I definitely forgot how long digital art takes. I’ve spent about 45 minutes only coloring the flat color for his hair! I’ve been looking at some pieces from artists I like and follow on Instagram, but most of them are tutorials on how to color and shade skin, and I’ve been doing my best to apply that information to hair. Otherwise, I’m actually pretty satisfied with how it’s coming along so far!

Progress picture with the hair colored:

Something else that I’ve come to terms with through this project: I’m not really used to using layers when doing art but they are so helpful. From the tutorials I’ve seen you can color the base color and then use a clipping mask to make it easier to shade, and it is so much easier to do it that way, so I’m trying my best to remember to add more layers when starting different parts of the piece. For the picture above, I used 2 base color layers for the white and red, and then clipped layers to each of the base layers to shade each half of his hair.

Progress picture with the skin colored:

I’m not sure if I like the shading on this or not, but I still have a lot to learn, and I’m not actually sure if I’ll finish this piece by midnight so I’m making an executive decision not to spend too long on this. For the shading, one of my favorite art styles is by @/belmeran on Instagram, and they have a tutorial for how they shade skin, so I tried to follow it to the best of my abilities. I don’t have all of the same brushes because I’m using a different program, so I tried to use similar brushes that I could find and download for CSP.

Honestly at this point I was just trying my best to get this done before midnight, so I didn’t spend much time or put much effort into the jacket or some of the facial features but I finished it in time.

Finished coloring:

When I finished this, I thought about it a little bit, and there are a couple of things I can say definitively. 1) There are definitely aspects I could improve, but I actually really like how this turned out, 2) my line work is a little shaky and 3) I’m still working on the whole layers concept, but they really do make coloring so much easier.