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I decided to dig into the Arteza colored pencils I got myself for Christmas and I'm pretty happy with the result! It's been... Oh... A VERY long time since I used colored pencils and I'm clearly no expert, but it was fun and I'm not mad at it.
I posted some progress images on Facebook as I went through it, so here they are if you're interested! Click to embiggen as you'd like. :)
Lineart of the central character with some vague suggestion of background:
Full lineart:
Background colored in because I was TERRIFIED to color in the character:
Full color illustration:
There are things I would fix if I hadn't cut a lot of corners and/or if I were more practiced. I wish I hadn't been so into drawing her boots that I chopped off the top of her head and I wish I'd redrawn her body once I realized how off-center she was. I wish I'd made her face more prominent. I wish I had known what on earth I wanted to do with her pants!
But, overall, I'm happy with it. For a drawing that I did basically on the fly with very little reference (just the general pose; nothing else) and with a medium that I'm not completely comfortable with, I'm pleased! :)
I posted some progress images on Facebook as I went through it, so here they are if you're interested! Click to embiggen as you'd like. :)
Lineart of the central character with some vague suggestion of background:
Full lineart:
Background colored in because I was TERRIFIED to color in the character:
Full color illustration:
There are things I would fix if I hadn't cut a lot of corners and/or if I were more practiced. I wish I hadn't been so into drawing her boots that I chopped off the top of her head and I wish I'd redrawn her body once I realized how off-center she was. I wish I'd made her face more prominent. I wish I had known what on earth I wanted to do with her pants!
But, overall, I'm happy with it. For a drawing that I did basically on the fly with very little reference (just the general pose; nothing else) and with a medium that I'm not completely comfortable with, I'm pleased! :)
Yay!
Date: 2019-01-04 06:43 am (UTC)From:That sort of imbalance is why a lot of artists choose to sketch out a composition with rough geometric shapes, then refine to a complete sketch before coloring it in. But not everyone can work that way.
Sometimes it helps to think in much broader geometric terms, like the rule of thirds. If you can imagine dividing a page into sections, that makes it easier to fit a character into a given space.
One interesting art class exercise is to slide two pieces of paper across your working page, to change the size of the area you can draw in. Try to imagine how a character's pose could change to fit inside the space as it changes. This one is really fun if you have one of those little wooden models to pose.
so cool
Date: 2019-01-04 07:02 am (UTC)From:I do that thing where I accidentally draw myself off the edge of the paper too. It particularly happens when I think I'm just doing a doodle--not really planning to do a finished piece--and then it turns out better than I expected so I start to put in more detail and then realize I'm crowding up against the edge of the paper.
I just started playing with colored pencils about two years ago and having a lot of fun. A few months ago I started playing around with markers, but wasn't quite happy with them as a finished result... and someone recommended doing colored pencil on top of the marker drawings, which I love. It's basically a colored pencil sketch, but the marker underneath lets you fill in background colors so much faster and I'm so lazy that that was my biggest complaint about the pencils.
Re: Yay!
Date: 2019-01-04 07:08 am (UTC)From:I completely understand your intention is to be helpful, but I'd really prefer not to get advise or tips unless I ask for it, specifically. It's been years since I did any art at all and more than a decade since I did art regularly. I developed some bad habits artistically--all of which I am keenly aware of!--and it brought me down pretty hard and made me really frustrated with my output and made me scared to show my art to other people. Posting it online in a relatively anonymous way is a way of making myself comfortable with not only making art again but also with letting people see that art, warts and all.
Again, I completely understand that you have nothing but the kindest of intentions but I'd much rather let this blog just be a space for me to play creatively. If I run into a tricky issue that I feel like I need help for, I'll absolutely ask! :)
Re: so cool
Date: 2019-01-04 07:14 am (UTC)From:I've been eyeing the 80 pc set of Ohuhu markers SO HARD on Amazon, but haven't made the plunge yet. I don't even want to think about Copics until I have a job and, like, actual money that I can spend on a $6/pc marker.
art supplies
Date: 2019-01-04 03:36 pm (UTC)From:One of my vows for 2019 is to not spend more money on art supplies. I have so many. Current colored pencil collection: 24-pc Crayola, 12-pc set of Prismacolor Premiere, a random selection of Polychromos mainly in green and purple and brown/flesh, some Derwent water-soluble pencils, a couple of the Albrecht Dürer water-soluble pencils, a 60-pc set of the Prismacolor Scholar (the cheap version of Prisma), two or three Col-Erase pencils ... So many. I don't need more, at least until I've really figured out what I'm doing. And yet when I read your post, the very first thought in my head, "Ooo, Arteza! I haven't tried those yet!"
Re: art supplies
Date: 2019-01-04 10:09 pm (UTC)From:The hoarding! It's a problem!
Re: art supplies
Date: 2019-01-05 03:23 am (UTC)From:Re: art supplies
Date: 2019-01-05 03:47 am (UTC)From:Re: art supplies
Date: 2019-01-05 04:08 am (UTC)From: