cgmythology, thank you so much! I really like her design.
darktiste, thank you. I think I understand. I’m going to try applying that rendering advice next time I work on her.
I sketched out some faces to figure out proportions. I think (I hope) I figured it out in terms of eye placement. I tried lining up the side of the nose with the corner of the eye closest to the viewer.
Ooh, lovely faces and forms, very nice. Reminds me vaguely of The Last Unicorn, if you've ever heard of that. There's elegance and flair to your works. :D
I agree that color will be a nice addition but i think you should focus on getting clean lineart first because that the base of drawing.I don't know how far you have dive in digital really but it seem you are at ease to a certain level digitally but had fall out since the start of the sketchbook in my opinion.If you got acess to a scanner you could transfer your traditional stuff and clean it up digitally you can get smooth line easly if you know how to activate auto smooth (if the feature is offer in the software you use) but nothing beat confidence in line making.
You got a strong lean toward facial feature but you need to work on the anatomy below the head to because it lagging behind.More specifically on hand since you don't seem to draw below the belt yet.Get some reference of hand grabbing object to really feel how they wrap around object.You seem to draw doll like subject matter(slender women) so go and observe how they stylize the hand in game like fortnite for example but also look at the proportion from maybe toy like barbie.For hair i suggest looking at game such as league of legend there a good amount of women character and splash art to get inspired by and if you play well you atleast know what name to look for .Even if i gave you suggestion the idea is for you to find the inspiration in the thing you know and can learn and study from those are just a few example of the different media such as video game,toy you can get alot out of.
cgmythology - Thank you :) I actually reworked the image and focused more on the hair and fur accents as seen below...
I *really* enjoyed painting the hair and fur
Bookend - Thank you :)
darktiste - haha, can you tell what my least favourite things to draw are? Hands and especially feet. You're right, I need to study those more.
This is an old T-elos drawing that I digitally inked and cel-shaded. I wanted to try something a bit different and the drawing was quite anime-esque to begin with, so I took it and ran with it.
Another Akroma. I really focused on line weight variation and stabilization with this one.
There something off with your lineart it doesn't feel as clean as it should or could be i suggest you turn off the other layers when cleaning up the lineart and have a white background behind it or whatever color help the lineart poop.If you draw on many layers you can get better control by having the line art on it own layers otherwise it gonna be painful to preserve the line quality.
Here a few of the common problem overshot line, overlapping line, missing outline, line that got same color as the color next to it, color outside the line art, sketch line still visible and a tangent if you know what it is.
I understand that your line are very thin but there more than just line issue here there also coloring issue. I know that some artist don't use a outline all around in some case but i will assume that it sloppyness on your part due to the range of different issue i am observing in the linework. From what i gather it seem you are not fixing those issue because you might either have merge the linework with the color layers or your just not catching those error either because your sloppy or you don't have a critical eye train for clean outline at the moment.
One thing i would suggest is to thicken your line art otherwise i feel you need to zoom a little more in when you do clean up otherwise you will miss a lot of small detail that degrade the final result.
One other thing is the wrapping of the belt and the pant around the character your doing a mistake there your doing what called a pointed ellipse i am not sure if you familiar with it is but it basically when the ellipse is like two curve meeting at there extreme a ellipse is a squish circle .So in essence the mistake is your ellipse are not rounded enough. One of the other problem you have is not giving thickness to your object pant are not made of paper so are glove they have a noticeable thickness even if it much smaller then most other object by not giving thickness to object you flatten your object and it cheapen the final result.
Other then that i enjoy what i see it creative and beautiful.
darktiste - thank you, you got me, I kind of rushed through finishing that one I'll admit. Out of curiosity, what did you think of the recent Akroma one I posted? I used thicker more calligraphic lines for that one, do they look better?
Also, a general question, do you think if I did master studies/copied my favourite artists, I'd get to their level? I want to copy as many of my favourite artists as I can for more versatility, to develop my style, and get a lot better.
I did some drawing studies of concept art I've found online (I feel bad for not remembering the original artists though) below... what I did observe from doing the studies is that if I start with one landmark on the face (the eyes usually) and use that to map out different proportions of the face and then I keep drawing based on that. I do like the result better than using construction lines, and I've noticed some other artists use this technique as well.
I love akroma it use to me the name of one of my character in a video game obviously it just borrowed from mtg.I dont really want to spen time talking about about it since it mostly symmetry the line weight isn,t that special it sure is clean so even if i was pretty strict on your last one i see you can actually do clean stuff so take what i said with a grain of salt. I add that you could think of line weight with light in mind... but that a topic where it best shown than explain i recommend you look for video on that topic.
Studying artist is a trap when leaking fundamental as you need to be able to pick up on what choose they make. Some people actually hinder there progress because they shut down there active thinking they just visually copy and they regress to 2d thinking which is i know probably an abstract concept to understand since it hard to conceptualize. But let resume it to turning your brain into a printer rather than a thinking machine. Imagine what a camera see it capture a image but there isnt any understand of the subject matter it behavior and 3d nature is lost some who see a picture doesn't see have information outside that picture unless they close the gap somehow. What important is to be a thinking drawing machine. When an artist is not in front of you the information is rather mysterious and guess work the decision making process they gone through is obscure and it base on deduction but for deduction you need to understand what rule they are bending.
I am not to convince by the fundamental shown so far to advise for you to study other artist you need to build an understanding of form.Other artist are not perfect but if they make mistake how are you going to catch them yourself... that the issue here you dont want to study someone and pick up there bad habit let say it like that and for that you need strong fundamental.I know it tempting to study other artist if you dont have any teacher.It like explore the world without a map and following the blind...
Going after someone else Stylization is not good understand of anatomy that mean you also pick up weird proportion and possibly you cant make your own stylization because you dont know the starting point.
Would you build a house by building the roof first? There an order to learning and building fundamental.
But i dont want to make this a long post and it mostly personal to your artistic goal.
If you want to know what work better try drawing the same head from different and keep the result consistent (i recommend to find a picture of someone with bald head that as multiple photo of them).Construction are a formula using a center point to draw feature doesnt help you understand the form you are kinda stuck with the reference the thing with construction is you are building muscle memory via repetition when you copy someone you are not learning to understand the form of the head you are in a way piecing 2d shape together and that dangerous.It why problem like ellipse error occur it that fundamental understand of perspective that break down.
You can try the loomis construction method for the head but first just try drawing the same head from 3 different angle minimum.
I think it can be better w/ some more attention to the three dimensional quality of things. My impression is that you haven't yet unlocked the drawing surface as actually being a sort of 3D modeling program. I think that is a milestone. Trying to do construction drawing without having this sense yet is tough. But doing construction drawing will also help with it, so don't give up on that either.
There's a more formal sort of course in drawabox.com but you can make your own exercises, too.
I used to draw the same mannequin figure/pose rotated around like this:
Or more strict, trying to draw the head/torso/etc rotated the same way as these boxes:
The point of these kinds of studies isn't to make a pretty drawing. It's to exercise whatever part of the mind/brain that can see and feel form and perspective on a 2D surface.
I'd also argue that doing some 3D sculpting in Blender or some other software is useful for building this sense. If you can look at your 3D sculpt of a head as a 2D drawing then you can see how to change and improve it using your drawing experience. And then if you can look at your 2D drawing as if it were a 3D sculpt, you can apply that experience as well.
The head is a hard subject matter to start with the cube exercise is the actual exercise i advise but i mention it because it your ''destination'' the problem of some drill is that you don't necessarily make the link to where it lead which make drill somewhat abstract yes it not pretty or fun but just like muscle you can't have fun spinning a weight over your head until you build those repetition muscle .But the thing with construction is you learn about land mark on the face which can help when doing life drawing or make your own imaginative portrait/character but land mark leak versatility when doing more dynamic angle you still need anatomy and form.
Darktiste - Tbh, I agree. If I mindlessly copy, I will think in 2D, and I will pick up the mistakes of the artists I like.
ThereIsNoJustice - Thank you, I agree. I do have both Blender and Nomad Sculpt. I’ll utilize them more. I also think the exercises you suggested are brilliant.
I remember reading in the book Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise that something I can do is find a mentor of sorts. I have a plan. I’ve been drawing aimlessly for the past several years hoping that the mileage would help me get better. It’s not.
I’m going to try something, but I don’t want to give too much info away. I’ll see if it’ll work. If it does I’ll try to help others improve as well. If it doesn’t, I’ll try something else.
Well if you feel you been going in circle i suggest you look at this post i made a will back it probably going to help you narrow down what you been repeating to your own detriment.
![[Image: tumblr_p77u4iNd6Y1r4ltwho2_1280.png]](https://78.media.tumblr.com/ce3b0e63948b6d2bbc799c86699dfd08/tumblr_p77u4iNd6Y1r4ltwho2_1280.png)
![[Image: tumblr_p8ytkbClJ61r4ltwho1_1280.png]](https://78.media.tumblr.com/3b6471715f1e7b1caea185f1d4723c90/tumblr_p8ytkbClJ61r4ltwho1_1280.png)
![[Image: tumblr_p8y7keBH9o1r4ltwho1_1280.png]](https://78.media.tumblr.com/f2aac589e535a79f422ea6457e224137/tumblr_p8y7keBH9o1r4ltwho1_1280.png)