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Learning To ART Challenge #36!!

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A Journal of my art adventures learning to draw, not a tutorial/guide

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Feb 24: I kinda wanna just get this finished up, so I'll just do a quick pass on the pants and coat so I can call it a day. Top first pass (one shade of dark/light)

Now I'll add the even darker/ lighter shades:

oops, I think I went too dark, it's kinda blending in to the background now... Anyways, lets blend it:

...ok, not sure why, but it just kinda came out blurry... Maybe the colors were too different, maybe I blended too much, it's hard to say, I don't really know what I did wrong :'( .....Maybe I should start this part over... --- Mar 4: --- Ok, so looking back, I think I may have not really considered what the other colors were supposed to represent, and blended them far too much. I think I did not really think in terms of lighting, shadows and highlights, and darker shadows, once I reached the torso section I put equal pars of each, rather than taking lighting into account. So let's start again, And why not with a new illustration! --- Yesterday, I saw a lot of cute fan art for Kohran Li (Sakura Wars) as it was her birthday.

While I don't traditionally celebrate birthday's for fictional characters, I was really inspired to try my own hand at designing art for my favorite character of that game. Though... taking that dress into account, I may have bitten off more than I can chew, I Guess we'll see!! But she's such a fun character I'd argue she's worth it!

(Hopefully, working based on a simplistic design like this may make coloring easier) So I double checked the wiki, and it appears this dress is a cheongsam, and based on some quick research, It appears this is a 'westernized' version of a traditional chineses dress that's seen several variations throughout the years Here's seems to mix some elements from the early to mid 20'th centry:

IT seems to take the length and overall design and footwear of the 1930's style, with the more formfitting cut (without just using side-ties) midsection and more vibrant colors of the 1940's designs. It's interesting to see that a game that takes place in 1923, opted for a much more modern look, I'd imagine this is because of it's more iconic look.

I'll be using the photoshoot from this video as reference:

Traditional Chinese Dressmaking Techniques Are Cool (a 1930s Qipao ft. Claire Zhang) (by: Bernadette Banner) ----

I REALLY love the color too, so maybe her fan base won't mind if I base this art on her green combat suit rather than her traditional red dress. Ok, since today's art is more about coloring, I think I'll make this in vector, (no tracing today tho) Let's start with the basic shapes:

...But I decided to do something a little different this time, since the torso is clearly twisted, I was not sure how to show that with basic shapes.. so I went with the next best thing....

First I stitched the screenshots together as best as I could, Then I drew cubes instead of squares to represent the three main areas of the torso, and how they line up, and I think I'm finally staring to see how all the pieces fit together in 3d space. I was going to go full vector, but I think I may be able to sketch over this as-is, leaving my squares as a guide for later shading! I'll touch it up a bit, then start with the outline:

Attempting to draw the legs really helped me get the shoes position better, and it showed that based on the position of the feet, the shoes are not prospectively correct' As shown above the legs are slightly offset, that's correct. The right side of a sideways pose, but if I look at the box for the hips, the top of the legs don't really come out of parallel sides, the leg closest to the viewer is too far forwards. So I made some adjustments:

First I made the front of the dress have it's side ties rotated more, as they should not really be in the center I adjusted the hip proportions, as well as placed the legs properly and finally I adjusted the length of the lower parts of he skirt. I was able to do all this by looking at the boxes I made and thinking: "Ok how large/wide should this section be, and how does it connect to the rest of the body?" Lets see how this looks when outlined!

I started by trying to draw the upper face based on the shot that had incredible rim lighting, and the torso from this lower shot, ...But unfortunately, they don't really line up even the neckline is a bit thrown off, with the top one being far more to the right, and the lower being a bit closer to centered., also the collar lines flap and the line that goes near the armpit is much more front and center in the lower shot due to her facing us more, so I think I'll stick to the lower shot for positioning/angle of the torso/face. So let's try this again...

I still don't know much about perspective, but it still looks a bit better... --- May 17. Ok, so this project is starting to become bigger than I expected, I chipped away at it a few months apart, but I found it kind hard to even do smaller (probably more helpful) practices because I 'had to' finish this one first. I understand the fallacy in this way of thinking, some simple drawing exercises would not prevent me from finishing this later... But every time I picked up my stylus, I just could not bring my self to even re-enforce old think I need to work on, let alone try new things. Despite being stable in my new job, and actually getting a fair amount of free time at work, and bringing my tablet every day for like a month, I never once opened my drawing app. Hopefully by finishing this up. (even just a draft) I'll be able to mentally move past it, so I can get back to learning... Always, let's see if we can do some more touch ups!

I adjusted the arms a bit, making them a bit rounder and a tad less messy, I also made the sleeves look more sleevelike, by attaching them to the torso with a bit of a curve. Also, near the hip I tried to put an indent to show how the fabric twists with the body. it's still very messy looking, but I think we're starting to get the basic shapes down finally --- May 27. Ok, so I have a spare hour or so, So I figured I'd try to work on this a bit more, I really want to finish this before my new (used) iPad mini arrives, As I hope to use that as a (more portable) way to do quick art practice/drills at work. Yes, I now have a pen tablet for my pc, a Samsung tablet, and an ipad mini, but they each are for a different use-case. Anyways, last time I forgot to show off some small changes I made to the lower legs:

I figure to really sell the leg pose, it would help if I have the lower part of the dress follow it. I did not want it to be skin tight, but I still wanted to have it flow slightly based on the leg movement. So I sent an angle that roughly matched the leg bend, but spaced further out, to hopefully accheve a 'draped' effect, we'll see how this works out in the end. Anyways, let's make some new changes today.. I started by looking for what felt off, and the first thing I noticed, was the arms, they don't look bad to me per-say, but kohran tend to have failry skinny arms, so I figure I should scale these back a bit. I started with just the laso tool and moving them to where I think they fit best, but ended up redrawing a far amount:

(The above image would not embed for some reason... so I had to upload it to Imgur) The change is subtle, but I think it looks a bit closer to how korhan's arms are supposed to look. And despite the lasso tool'd version looking kinda janky, it still served as a good reference for where everything should line up. (Moving around the messy lines let me visually judge what looked 'right') Ok that looks like a decent enough sketch layer, but I kinda feel like I'm having trouble getting the lines to look how I want, lots of wobbling and lines not matching up. So I defently think I need to do some drills to get my lines and shapes under control. (kinda feel like that may not work, as even my handwriting is trash.) For now, I think I just make a vector art version of this sketch, so I can at least practice lighting and shading, I can go back and actually 'draw' it later, using this as a reference. So yeah, we started with vectors, and new we're ending with them too. Alright let's throw down some basic shapes, then I'll round them out and add some basic coloring:

It looks a little lopsided, but it was hard for me to tell before blocking it out again with shapes and colors. The leftmost arm looks a little too small, the torso part looks a bitt to long, and the head rightmost crevice for the nose could use a little work. May 30th. Ok, so let's check our proportions:

Based on this guide, Generally female drawing should be 7.5-8 'heads' tall, and 1.5-1.8 heads wide at the shoulders. So, Let's see what we have...

Ah yeah, saying "she's a bit too tall" is a bit of an understatement. I think the shoulder width looks okay, but it's a bit hard to judge with the perspective angle:

I guess being able to see that, even before measuring mean's my artist's eye is developing! (so that's one good thing) Ok so let's scale this down a bit,

based on the guide, the neck and top upper part of the torso should be the second head of height, torso to hips, should be the third, and the leg separation should start about half a head down from that, with about 3 more heads to the bottom of the feet. I know not all characters will fit these proportions, no do I consider these the 'best choice' or "most ideal', but I still think it's a good standard for me to practice, before I try more diverse body types! <3 Ok, I probably should have started with an easier head design, or resized the vector boxes instead of my sketch layer, but here we go!

Ok, it still looks a little weird, but no longer "too long".

And it was faily easy to adjust the vector to fit, I started by squishing and stretching the basic shapes, then adjusted the nodes manually to fit.

The torso could denently use some work, but I got bored, and started working on the face, again using my sketch as a template:

I think I may have been trying to do too much with the silhouette really trying to sell the twist of the body with shape rather than shadows (later) So I smoothed our the rightmost side a bit, and I think it looks much better at this point. I also scaled down the neck and collar a tad:

Now, it's become clear that the arms have gotten a little managed in all these adjustments, and I never did actually perspective check them. So let's fix these up really quick... Based on the proportions we're using for reference, it looks like the arms (excluding hands and shoulders) should be about two head heights. TBH I just measured these with my fingers on the screen, but I think they came out well:

I'm running out of pictures for this post, so I have to do shading and more detailed coloring in a separate post

for now, I'll add more facial details in the same way I have in the past, and I'll try to touch up the leftmost shoulder as well, as it dose not look very sleevelike atm.

Something still feels off with the face, but I can't really narrow it down Anyways, we're running out of images, so we'll just try to finish this off quick with some hair..

I'm not SUPER happy with how it turned out, I feel like I could have done better a few months ago, but I honestly don't remember how I fixed this. I guess the advantage to blogging this all out, is that I could go back and look it up, but I guess that leaves me wondering if I forgot this fast, if I took some time off from art like a few months or years, would I lose all of this? It's kinda discouraging to think about. Anyways, lets try for a quick shadow and lighting pass, using what we learned earlier with the color picker. I'll do a quick shadow and highlight's pass, this time using pen pressure to allow for various darkness levels for the shadows, hopefully this would look nicer than simply applying blur...

And yeah, I think that's Slightly better than last time at least, I defnelty think using pen pressure and overlapping when needed looks WAY better than simply applying a blur, but I kept getting stuck trying to figure out where the hiligthts and shadows would land outside of the obvious ones like hard edges. Oh well, I've been literally working on this for months, and it's clearly beyond my current capacity to even take a fair crack at, so I think I'll just end this here. I don't want to believe that my progress is going backwards (again) so maybe I'll try something easier next time...

#learning to draw #vector art

Learning To ART Challenge #35!!

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A Journal of my art adventures learning to draw, not a tutorial/guide

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First post of 2026! I've been really busy with my new job, so it's been hard to find time (and energy) for art. Afterall I started this journey around the time I lost my last job. OK, so today's goal is to master coloring, I like using vibrant shades in my work. But I think I can push it further with blending.So I'll be following this guide: https://tips.clip-studio.com/en-us/articles/9759#6db88822

And right of the bat they have some very eye opening example, like this

I'd already learned to switch from shading using black to just dark grey, but shading with other colors manually looks just so much more vibrant, so ill see how that compares with my other methods.But obviously when i can't just use gray for everything ill need to more manual decision making, so ill read a bit further before attempting this Ok, so it looks like we can use CSP's color wheel as a guide going forward, moving the outer wheel southward to get a darker shade:

You cant really do this with the north and south poles, pure yellow or blue.

So you have a bit of flexibility in how you Handel these, The author recommends shifting yellow a bit to red and blue a bit more to purple, but you can also just darken the ordinal color if you prefer as well.

From left to right, #1 shading with black, #2 grey,and #3 a darker shade of the current color (all blended at 40%,with 'darken' mode) and the fourth and final one #4 is rotating the color wheel southward a bit, no blending or anything.

And I think it looks Much better especially for my first try! It may not be perfect for all art styles, but I really think it fits the overly colorful look I'm going for, the other ones come out looking kinda faded, and even the third that arguably requires the most steps still pales in comparison

Next up, brightening, basically the same thing in reverse..

hopefully this will make for better and more vibrant highlights, also I noticed a bit more of an angle on these, and they seem smaller in their example too

Maybe this is due to the shape of the object and how a smaller more focused brighter light source effects it. Let's see if I can adjust my example to get a similar effect, and compare it with my other methods for highlights in the past:

1 brightened with white, #2 brightened with light yellow (both blended with the 'lighten' layer effect set to 28%) and #3 is just adjusting thr color wheel, no effects or blending

OK, well this is not a perfect example, as a warmer shade of orange is yellow, but I still think the third is more punchy, and the first looks the most faded..

Let's do one last example to see how it look on less favorable colors.

(But I'll use the same shadows on all three to save time)

Well,it does look (a tad) brighter, but not really like a highlight

I had to look back though the instructions, and it looks like I missed the important step of manually brightening the color as well, so you rotate the outer wheel northwards and scroll up and to the left some in the color square. So let's try this:

(Base color) (Highlight)

And here's how it came out:

I think it looks okay, but maybe a little faded (too much grey mixed in) So I'd assume that means I moved the point in the square a little too much to the left (removing contract/color vibrance) It also look like I made it a little too bright, like the green show be a shadow, it's hard to explain, but it feels like there's too much contrast between the base color and the highlight, as if it should be the shadow color, but it still looks more natural than the first orb.

So let's try something new, I'll put a layer under the highlight, that's brighter:

In short I added a base color by starting with the 'too dark' color and rotating the outer wheel a bit to brighten it up, then I colored everywhere the shadows would NOT touch, and put that layer under my highlight, and aside from the new shadow being a little new blue, I think it looks good, if this was a project, I'll probably shift it more towards dark green They have not mentioned it in the guide yet, but I also want to try out a blending brush, and sure why not, let's fix the shadow color!

And now the blend brush..

So I just kinda swiped the brush around the edges of each layer, and it looks okay…but its clear good blending is a skill I'll have to learn over time, Also, I kinda like the harsher shadows cellshading offers, so I may stick with that for now. Next up the author talks more about the use of black and white, and how those are common examples of light and dark, yet how you other colors can look brighter or darker without adjustment;

They show how some of these colors may look brighter or darker that each other based on what their paired with, Here's their example of the actual brightness levels compared to how they look visually! (same colors as above, but left shows their 'brightness value')

They all have the same brightness, but the right shows how they look visually compared. I was a bit confused as ti the usefulness of this, but based on their description, it looks like its to explain how neighboring colors effect each other, for example:

I'm not going to pretend I fully understand this concept just yet.

They describe the top half of the color circle being warn and the lower half being cool

And they begin to describe how objects we see and perceive as a single color, are actually made up of various smaller (seemingly unrelated) color elements

And I guess that starts to make sense, its like a multiplier in a JRPG, instead of casting a spell to do double damage, or adding a jem to a sword that gives it poison or other status ailments, by combining colors you argument their original effect, dispute not changing the attack itself.

They add that this is why using a color picker on a photo may lead to odd results.

And they then give some examples of how to pick a color pallet, starting with your chose color, and selecting some neighboring (complementary) color as your main set or working shades, then you to highlight things you can add some parallel (contrasting) colors for accents:

My first though was that this is starting to make sense, but with all the examples being landscapes, it feels a bit difficult to figure out how to apply this to the character art and (OC) portraits. But luckily they talk about about this in the next section:

They describe adding colors to both zones and curves/contours of the body. And I think the blue and red represent cooler and warmer shades of your main color.

But they seem to be focused more on blending rather than the harsher shading I'll be starting with.

So let's see if I can find a older project to practice on.

This is actually one of my favorite works its traced from of of my in-game screenshot, but the arms still look a little weird >.<

Any ways let's try what we learned, starring with the hands

For the first pass, I tried to follow the first few steps, Shadows bringing down the color circle, And the highlight up and adjusting the color to be a bit brighter.

Normally only do one pass, by I think I may do a second...

And I actually made a pallet this time at the bottom so I can easily get the colors back for other areas of the skin,

I don't think the selection blends on the smootist way but I think these four shades (brighter, bright, darker, darkest) allows for more variation in the skin.

It looks a bit messy now but may look better zoomed out or blended.

I'll do the other hand off screen then focus on the face..

Ive decided to keep a praticalr order, Start with the largest area of darker colors (to avoid overlap) Then do the largest area of lighting (to best judge how big the lit and shadow areas should be)

OK, that looks a little weird, I guess less is more when it comes to lightning the example given for face colors mentions this I think, we gotta keep coloring light, lets the the same thing but with a different brush, and maybe tone down the amount I paint.

I was using the 'round mixing brush' prior. Let's try 'Gouache' it seems to have a good amount of variance, maybe it will look less painted on

OK, well that did not really offer the blending I was looking for, likely because the base color under it is on a separate layer, but I do like the texture of this brush, so let's try using a blending brush in top, I'll try the "Gouache blender"

OK, I actually really like how that turned out, it really looks like a lighter version of the base skin tone without greying, and it blends really smoothy with the base skin

Now before moving on to the darker shade I considered making a new layer to make fixes easier, but then that would make blending harder possibly….

Oh well, let's give it a shot, same deal, new layer.

I only cover dark areas with the darkest tone, making sure ro only touch the far edges, body contours, etc

I also tried varring my pressure a bit, and I kinda like the effect of more of less paint being left behind, let's see how this looks blended, I don't know if it matters but ill try stroking the blending brush inwards (as in from the darker edges towards the center of the cheek)

its a little more intense that I would have liked, but I think the effect is still very nice, and I added some shadows on the neck too.

Now on to the highlights, the judgment is a little harder for these as I learned previously too much of a bright color can look out of place, (and be distracting)

Currently it looks like a spotty job of applying dabs of foundation, but hopefully it will look better blended..

And I think that came out pretty well!I did not really worry about blending direction this time, and it did not seem to male much differenceBut regardless, The skin feels way less flat now.I may have to look up more makeup tutorials to figure out how contouring and color blending works. Anyway, after blending the hands we have...

This was a lot to cover, so I'll try to do more next time! Thanks for Reading! Continue to #36!

#learning art #learning to draw

Art Recap 2025

It's been quite the year, I still don't know what I'm doing or where I'm going, but I had a lot of fun! And I hope to improve even more in 2026!

#learning art

Learning To ART Challenge #34

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A Journal of my art adventures learning to draw, not a tutorial/guide

------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Alright, so it's been a little over a month since I've done anything art related. I got a little depressed about how confusing digital painting was, and then my post got age gated, because I dared to mention parts of the body, and the holidays are always stressful for me. And now I've started a new job, so I have less free time then ever, But, I've also been more motivated than ever to get back into drawing. I even bought a cheap old android tablet (Samsung tab s6 lite) So I can practice basic sketching skills when away from my pc! (With CSP loaded up with a bunch of drawing figures, I always have a ref to pratice with) We'll go back to painting next time, for now let's do something else. So today, we'll be just trying more basic anatomy practice. I got started with this on my tablet, but noticed, it looked a bit off:

I drew it like 4 times but I just could not get the neck to look right. I asked for suggestions in discord, and I got a really good suggestions First was a link to this post from: "Takuya's Drawing"

It really shows how the trapsiod muscles are important to making the neck look right. This was further clarified when "Melon"(full name redacted) Gave me a direct visual to compare with:

This really helps illustrate where I went wrong, purely going off the 3d models I was kinda trying to blend the neck into the shoulder with a curved line where:

Now ffrom what I undertsand this tends to be less preominate in women, And the angle of the arms/sholders effects the size too.. but there's still a 3rd distinct section between the sholders and neck:

So that's what I'm going to attempt to figure out for myself. Using Melon's example, as a brief reference, (won't look at it while drawing) I'm going to attempt to draw the upper torso, recreating these muscles. Based on the 3d models pose.

Let's give it a shot! Ok here's attempt #1 and #2 side by side:

yeah, that's still not right, let's overally mellon's sketch to see where I went wrong:

And yeah, taking a closer look, you can really see how much definition is lacking in the drawing figure. The sholders really do look too smooth, the people in the discord chat warned me about how these drawing figures don't really take things like muscles into account, and this really helps me see it, so let's try something else... Most the photo's on twitters are taken at kinda odd angles making the muscles near the neck hard to see, so lets try this instead:

I just looked up websites with yoga clothes, and found many high resolution pictures that are taken straight-on like this. The pose is still cute and fun, without being nearly as complex as the other one, so lets try to sketch it out:

ok, so a bit off, for one the shoulders are sloped in the wrong direction, and the left arm is too small, and the neck to thin, the right arm barely exists, the overall sizing is a bit off too, I'm going to have to start over on this one. I think I focused too much on the small details this time that I lost sight of the big details like fitting everything together, Let's go back to the basics,let's start with some simple lines And I'll draw them fully zoomed out to get a better look at how everything fits together.

I feel like we're getting closer, but the proportions and angles are still off by a lot, I think we're going to have to go back to drawing shapes! I kinda hoped I would have improved my visualization enough to be past this, but... maybe it's just the lack of practice?

anyways, this was a bit hard to break down, so here's what I came up with:

I think it's decently close, so on a new layer, I'll try filling in some details:

And I think we're getting a bit closer: I'll redraw it one more time ona 3rd layer, hiding my shapes, and adding a little more detail...

And after another refine pass, it's getting much closer!

All I did was draw in my existing shapes. Adding a bit more detail to each line. I think the basic shaping is done, so I'll now allow my self to zoom in to add more detail. So I touched up the brows, and ear, and added some eyes:

By no means perfect, but I think it's a clear improvement... Alright, after a few touchups, I add some hair, and here's the final product!

I think it turned out okay for my first real practice for this, especially since I'm drawing on an android tablet for the first time! Anyways, that's all I have time to work on today, thanks for reading, here's the full timelapse:

continue to #35!

#learning art

Learning To ART Challenge #33

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A Journal of my art adventures learning to draw, not a tutorial/guide

------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ...And we're back! (again) It's been almost 2 months since I tried something new, But I have done a few bonus practices since then: [??][7][8][9][10]

And I'd like to think I was able to refine my skills at least a little in that time. But since we're doing another numbered post, that means it's time to try something new! (I guess that's my rule now?) ...Anyway, today I'm going to learn the basic of digital painting, I've always loved how others could blend colors to create unique effects, so I figured I'd give it a shot, and journal my experience of learning how to do this.

To make things, easier, I'll be starting with one of my existing works:

Here's my vector trace from bonus practice #7. I'll be removing the base shading, so only the 'flat color' remain, Then we'll try adding some dimension purely by painting! But honestly, I have no idea how to even start with that, flat colors ans cell shade shadows, only 'kinda' make sense to me so I'll need to learn more about coloring and blending before we can start. So we'll be starting with this video:

Ok, so next I removed all the shadows and hilights from my art and after a few touch ups, I'm left with this flat color version:

And watching the next step of the video, I notice I'd run into a bit of an issue...

He shows how to analyze the shadows of the source image, and how to find the color you'll be using. (Empathizing not to purely use the color selector tool) But we don't really have a source for that,

Not only is our source image of a different skin tone, but also the lighting in this game is VERY harsh. So it's hard to tell how the skin/outfit tones should look, So I took matters into my own hands and booted up FF:XIV, And using Gpose and a few mods, I was able to recreate the pose:

It's not a perfect replica, but I think it's pretty close, And having to actually move around the bones and joints, really helped me kinda 'feel' just how awkward the original pose was, So I already have some ideas for how I'll go back and tweak the original image. I took a few screenshots with different lights, to really help me key-in on where rim-lighting hits, and where shadows are more intense: ( 1 / 2 / 3 / 4)

1-Ambient Light Only 2- Basic Front light* 3-Rim Light only 4-Blend of the two (*The rim light bled in a bit, sorry I did not disable it fully) Next, I made a few tweaks to the base image:

I mainly fixed up the shoulder, and arm gaps, I slimmed down the arms too, but the right arm still looks a little weird, but I reposition the hand to make it feel a little more natural with the angle of the arm, I still can't get it to feel like it's resting on the hip, but I still think this is enough for our practice. Now lets start paining! I think we'll first start working with our ambient light, because I'd assume this will have more intense shadows than anything else. Sam mentions looking at your reference, to see where it falls on the hue and saturation spectrum, so let's do that .

I'm going to diverge a bit from his instructions, and find the areas in both my ambient and standard lighting refs that both have shadows, as it sounds like these should be the darkest, here's what I found:

some are much fainer than others, so I'll use the tones from my ambient light for this first pass:

Let's start with the face:

Ok, let's look at the ambient lit (left) and again, I'm not looking to recreate it's colors, just what it has in common with our standard lit (right) It looks like the top of the nose is actually lighter than base lit skin color, in both, so maybe we'll add a slight highlight! As for shared shadows, it looks like their mostly around the eyes and lips.. So as Sam suggested, I compared the normal skin tone (non-highlight) to the color of the shadows..

and under the lips, it looks like it's both darker and a bit more red, This looks a bit more complex than just mixing in gray, as I've done previously, So let's give it a try!

and I think that looks pretty nice for a shadow, it's a bit on the dark side, but since this is for ambient colors, we'll probably just end up blending this later..

So I followed the same process to find colors for the nose, and around the eyes as well, and here's why I ended up with: (left old face coloring, with simple shadows, Right: New!)

It's still pretty early into the process, but I think the shading and colors are already looking better. Ok, next I'll move down and work on the neck, and upper torso, following the same rules, fine highlights or shadows that match, and try my best to recreate them based on my new image.

The neck seemed pretty straight forward, but despite the bust size differences, and slight difference in angle, it seemed like what I had portrayed looked kinda weird in comparison to the new light/pose ref

The outfit is different, but I it looks like a few things that help sell how dynamic this pose is, is the twist effect on the torso, and I kinda lost that by designing my top more front-on, I also drew the bust a bit too low, and almost as if globes glued to the chest, rather than sloped protrusions,my top dose not have exposed cleavage, so I'd assume it will smooth this out a bit, but it still looks like adjustment is needed in multiple areas... So here's what I did...

The neck seemed pretty straight forward, but I think I needed to infer it's shape a little better with the shadow rather than making it just a plain line, so maybe I'll trim off the sides a little to give it more of a curve. But first, I'll work on adding the light similarities from the ref:

(Sometimes switching to black and white makes them easier to see, But I still use color to tell how much to adjust!) Ok, so let's do it!

I found that by using my pen's pressure sensitivity I could vary how much 'paint' was added to the image, this helped greatly with blending, as I could push a little harder on one stoke to get more of the color, then I could fade it out over time, by drawing more lightly with each pass, it looks very messy now, but that should clear up when blended, My main goal here was to match how the lights and shadows wrapped the body with my brush strokes pretending each stoke was a beam of light (as silly as that may sound) Ok, on to the hands and pants next, and we'll be done with the first pass! So let's take a look at the hands:

Very intresting it appears that even when lit just with ambient lighting, there is still very clear highlights near the top of each finger! Again, not at the very top, rim light style, but I assume this means it's the highest point from the light's perspective. So this is what I'll try to match, very small shadow at the tops to show what's fully blocked by the light, and a slight highlight at the part closest to the light. Oh and even though I forgot to circle it, it appears the nails each have a small highlight on them as well!

I have not really nailed down how to make my shadows or highlights looks consistent yet, but I think this is a good start

Now, on to the pants, and other hand:

And here's where the dimensionality really started to make sense, not just how the variating level of highlights made things look more curved, but also, how overlapping of shadow (like near the inseam) Really helps to sell the edge of an object! Ok, this looks decent enough for a first light pass, after adding some quick highlights to the left most nails, and adjust the neck shadow. let's try blending these lights and shadows together, in the future I plan to do this manually, but since we're just getting started let's use a filter! First I'll copy and hide my painting layer to back it up incase i want to make changes later, Then I'll do a ~14px gausen blur and set the opacity to 49% and...

Well, the pants and hands came out okay, But the shadows on the top look way too noticeable, so I guess that's a sign that I was too far off on the color matching, and now looking back at the pre-blured image, I can kinda see it, especially on the right side, So let's undo the blur and blend, so here's take 2:

As you can see, I started by using colors much closer to the flat colors, I think the brush strokes are also much neater, and more blended, I added the bust protrusion highlights as well, and added a bit more definition to the shoulders. So let's see how this looks blended:

The same blur/blend settings were used, but the new one (right) Looks a lot better in my opinion! But since this is just the ambient light pass, we may further drop the opacity later. Also, after taking a break for lunch and returning, I guess the lines look a little too stroke-y, even with the blur:

maybe it would have been better to overlap the stroke to help them blend better, the way the pants tuned out, is much closer to what I was looking for, and I used larger strokes for those:

There's some light banding for sure, but I think it looks closer to what I want. (for this part in my learning at least) So I'm going to try tackling this one more time to get a bit closer to that before moving on to the next step... ok, I think this worked out pretty well:

A little messy, and the contrast looks like it may be a little too light, as as the highlights look a bit ashy/dusty, rather than purely illuminated. But I think this looks good enough for now, as I don't know how it will look when colored over. Okay, back to the video...next time! Turns out I've already nearly reached my image limit, so I'll be back in part 2! Here's a full view of where I'm leaving off for now:

Continue to post #34:

#learning art #vector art

Bonus Practice #10

Did some more vector practice today, tried a new method for lip drawing based on this guide: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DOgyeE0CDsL/ Today, I'll be trying to remake my new sims 3 character:

I'm not the biggest fan of the shoulders, and the face is a bit rounder than I anticipated, so I'll make a few changes along the way...

Here's the time-lapse:

I ran out of time, and did not get around to the hands:

Project completion time: ~3 hours. Initial Thoughts on this work: I think it came out 'okay' especially for just 3 hours, it was REALLY rough to work through at the start, and I was pretty disappointed with how ti was turning our until I made some big changes at the end, But even still the proportions look off. But I think the fact that I noticed how 'off' it looked, and that I was able to at least start correcting it, is a good sign for my progress!

#vector art #learning art #Youtube

Bonus Practice #9

Still have not really tried anything new, so just another bonus pratice, I tried re-(Vector)drawing one of my older 'Pre-cid' Style Savvy Screenshots, as my current avatar, (no tracing this time!)

I think it came out pretty well all things considered! (took 3.25 hours) Here's the Timelapse:

I'm actually pretty happy with how this turned out, obviously it's not perfect, but for so long it just kinda looked 'wrong' but slowly,it started to look closer and closer to the original image, and especially, when comparing it by overlaying (bit not tracing) the source image, i was able to break down a few more tweaks I needed to make. I think I was able to capture the basic pose and general vibe more than I've been able to with previous practices, so being able to convey that, even if not perfectly, makes me happy! <3 I'm going to try to do some digital painting this weekend, so and I plan to use this as my base/sketch, so it will be interesting to see how that turns out! (My next big numbered post/project)

#learning art #vector art

Bonus Practice #8

I did not record the sketch process, as I did it on my laptop, I'm trying to freehand draw Mara from Cod:MW (2019)

But here's where I started pre-timelaps: (outline sketch)

And Here's the time-lapse: I wanted to work on muscles today, as well as trying out the 'colorize mask' tool

And here's the final look:

(I ended up using the line tool a lot for the rifle) I debated spending more time to do cleanup,shading,etc but this was meant to be a quick little practice and ended up taking much longer than I expected.

#Youtube

Bonus Practice #7

After my last project didn't end up working out, I decided to do something a bit more simple for a quick practice! So today I'll be reworking one of my Model Debut 3 screenshots:

I really like this one, I don't remember if I picked the pose or if ti was stock, but I really liked the outfit, even if it is ...very layered. Anyways here's the timelapes:

And , after fixing a slight ordering issue for the backpack straps, and adjusting the shadows slightly...here's the final comparison:

Ok, maybe I went a little overboard on the highlights, lol. And now looking back the scuba suit is a bit much, so I also made a version without it:

Anyways, that's all for now,thanks for checking it out! (it was fun!) Project completion time: 3.75 hours

Learning To ART Challenge #?? (DNF)

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A Journal of my art adventures learning to draw, not a tutorial/guide ------------------------------------------------------------------------------

IT's been a few weeks since I've done anything art-related, so I was looking for inspiration, I had a few ideas that I was only kinda interested in, but eventually settled on doing a female ninja. I was looking for who to design, as I'd not been watching much anime recently I honestly could not think of any but then I remembered the ps2 game 'NightShade', the game's literally called 'Kunoichi' (female ninja) in japan, I've only played it a little, but I figured the protagonist could be a fun subject to re-create.

Then, when looking up images for reference, I saw how Hibana's outfit actually looked:

And I kinda feel it looks a little bland visually, and extremely bright, especially when compared to the male led 'Shinobi' on ps2 where Hotsuma is decked out like:

So Today, I'll be attempting to Redesign his outfit to fit Hibana. (Please note, I'm not going for any kind of historical or even lore accuracy, I'm just doing my best to match the general vibe!) I'll be borrowing alot of Hotsuma's elements, but I'll be making a few changes along the way as well. To get started, I messed around in CSP a bit, and after an hour or so, I came up with this base pose:

I did not have any props, so you'll just have to imagine she's holding a sword in her rear hand, and Kunai in the front. I tried to capture some of the sensual energy I've seen in the keyart, but making it look a little less"in your face" I guess:

I think adding the draw sword will also make it a little less traditnal-pinup, and more modern photo shoot. I guess. But we'll see Ok, let's get started by sketching out some shapes (raster):

And despite my best efforts, I could not seem to get the proportions right, I started by trying to sketch from the top down, but I'd draw something like the hand a little too large and because of that the arm would be too big, then the neck and torso would be progressively all the wrong size, so it turned into a mess, the one shown above was as close as I could get, and that had me switching off between drawing on the top and bottom, it was MUCH closer than previous attempts but still failed miserably, I just have a lot of trouble getting the shapes to look right, so let's switch to vector for now,if nothing else to block everything out... So I tried the same process again, but using vector shapes, and I think it came out much better:

It obviously needs some touching up, bit it just goes to show I'm not great at visualizing and re-creating shapes just yet, epically without clear landmarks. Alright, let's trace those vectors:

Ok, it looks MUCH more natural now! And I learned my lesson from last time, doing a final outline before doing a rough sketch for the clothes means you're just drawing a lot of the same things twice.

So starting on a new layer (for now, to make edits eaiser) I'll sketch out a basic design for the clothes:

I tried to keep the same basic design, but curving off some of the sharper angles on the top to give the look a slightly more feminine appearance I think it looks okay, but it's a little hard to visualize, so I'll merge down the layers and add some color to verify:

And, now that I can see it a little better, the chest area looks a bit too boxy on the right, and I think I made the fins of the top a bit too large, and there's a severe lack of muscle mass, ...Also, I need to add some dimension, as it looks like the metal parts are just skin tight fabric. I'm not sure how much of this I can fix, but I'll try my best...

I added a lip to the top so the metal part will more clearly protrude from the body, next I rounded out the right side of the chest, and shrunk the little fin things, and got to work on the arm muscles, But when drawing the upper arm muscle it looked weird, like it was too long, measuring it I realized it was in fact far to long previously, so I removed it, and I plan to adjust the vectors and re-draw it, based on the ref pose I made,the elbow should be about one head's length from the armpit, let's fix that...

...and I ended up having to delete most of my arm drawing to fix it, and I adjusted the chest covering and arm muscle again too, as..turns out, because of the way the model is posed, when I though I was drawing the shoulder connecting to the neck, that was actually part of the back, But it was worth it, the neck, back and front arm look much better, But what's going on with that back arm, now that it's colored, I can see how weird it looks like it's zig-zagging behind her head I think I need to trim it back in a few areas. After some Work I had:

the lower part looks better, but I can't figure out ho to make the top feel connected as well.. we can come back to that. I tried to work of the face a bit, but trying to draw a perspective correct version of the mask was certainly a challenge, And for some reason I really had a lot of troble trying to get some decent looking eyes, even after a dozen or so attmpes I was still not happy with them:

But It's already after midnight, so maybe I just need a break I'll pick this up again in the morning... Edit: I think I bit off more than I could chew with this project, I really like the idea, but I think I kinda made some foundational mistakes, and lack the knowledge needed to fix them.

So I'll be scraping this project, and starting it again from scratch later on own the line. thanks for reading.

Learning To ART Challenge #32

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A Journal of my art adventures learning to draw, not a tutorial/guide

------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ...And we're back! Since the last challenge, I did bonus practice #5 where I did some free-hand practice using my new tablet, and #6 where I tried making vector art using the same tablet, both were very interesting experiences, I was surprised at how much easier even moving lines and nodes for vectors could be when using a tablet! Anyways, today we're trying something VERY different, it feels kinda weird for me to think about, but I actually felt a strong urge to draw this scene I saw in my mind of one of my favorite pairing in media. Shiki and Mikiya from Kara no Kyokai. (a borderline horror/romance) I don't think about this kinda thing often, so it was a very odd experience, and it's not like Other people havent drawn them together already, so it kinda felt weird, "as I'ts already been done!"

But when looking through various 'couple poses' in the CSP asset library, I saw came across one I though would look really cute with these characters, and it just kept poping up in my mind throughout the day:

So I booted up CSP, and imported the models, but since no 'box' was included, it looked like the rear model was just kinda 'squatting' so I added a bed in the background, and adjusted the pose a bit:

I decided to mainly 'loosen up' the hug by just moving the arms down a bit, I kind feel like this make the hug feel a little more delicate, a better fit for the look I'm trying to convey. Since I'm mostly using krita at the moment, I export this image as a png, and then import it to krita. And I think today we're going to do more pen practice, and we'll start by tracing these 3d models since form/anatomy is not the focus of our project today, Our goal is tackling drawing two people together, adjusting for cloth, and getting used to the drawing tablet. So After importing the image with the models into krita, I did a quick outline using the pen tool with a textured brush, and after an hour..

I ended up making a customized version of the pencil tool for this, I liked elements of both the pencil and some textured brushes, I liked the texture and randomness of the pencil, but the darker bold tone of the pens (fewer gaps/variation in contrast) So I went in and tweaks a bunch of the pencil settings, making it darker, yet still offering some randomness that varies based on my pen's direction and speed, and I was pretty happy with the outcome, I also learned the importance of varying line size here, This is not really something you can do with vectors:

Aside from vectors looking more 'blocky' even with curves, the fact that you can't easily 'trail' or tail off lines, means you can't imply subtle curves/creases as well, and that can lead to things looking a bit for flat. (Sure you could mask it out, for each point,but that's a lot more work)

Any ways with a bit of cleanup, here's what we got:

Some of these angles were really hard to draw smoothly, I ended up rotating the canvas a few times to make some a bit more comfortable. Ok, next I'm going to try starting on incorporating their faces, Luckily anime/manga characters have fairly simple designs, We'll start with Shiki, and I'll be using some official art/screenshots as reference.

Shiki (right) came out 'okay', even If I don't think I really captured her personality well. But Mikiya (left) looks really off, And I think I was zoomed in way too far, as his eyes are too small and too close together. I could try editing them, but I think I just need to start over on his face.. The second attempt came out a little more uniform, but..

He was supposed to look kind and comforting, but came out a little creepy. Maybe I need to soften shiki's expression too to make it look more comfortable and less 'surprised.' to really help sell the overall look. (this is much harder than I expected..)

So I removed the eyelid covers (will show them just with shadows) From Mikiya (left) then I adjusted the size ans spacing on the eye brows, and it looked much nicer. I then adjusted shiki's brows and mouth to match (adjusted brow angle to look happier, redrew mouth)

I think they look much cuter together now! <3 Next up is clothes... I started by drawing a new outline that varied a bit from the body shape, to mimic how the clothes drape, and flow...

And...now I see I probably should have just started with this, as I'm pretty much just drawing the outline all over again.. My original outline was just tracing the bodies, so while that's great for exposed skin, there's a lot of areas that were going to be covered up that I traced too.. oh well, live and learn I guess.. On to the next part: I felt the guide 3d models still looked a little too aggressive, so I went off-model a bit to tone down the shoulder height, And I think it looks pretty nice:

However looking at it now, the hug looks a little too 'lose?' we'll keep going for now, but I may adjust the angle on the lower arm. Also I should have loosened up the shaping on his arms a little, it looks like he's wearing a skin-tight shirt.. :-/ Next up head and hands... (re-draw)

I made some adjustment to the colors as well as drawing out the hands and feet, I then did a little touching up to the coat and smoothed out the arms to make them more sleeve like. (Adjusted the width to match the widest part of the arm) And I also added a gap between the end of the hand and the lower edge, to make it look like it was hanging. Next up we’ll add some detail for the eyes:

The artist does something really interesting with how they shade eyes, so I tried my best to adapt my style to match. I think I missed the mark a little, not getting enough of the glow. But I still think it looks nice! (top=texture/colors, Bottom=Blur+mix) Ok, the next big thing to work on is the hair...

I tried my old process of drawing a 'cap' for the bulk of the hair, then drawing stands on top, it looks pretty messy, but atm my mind is blanking on how to fix it. Next I drew a quick outline for the bed, it looks pretty weird as-is But lighting should help make it look less flat

So let's do highlight next: For the first pass, I did the same reverse-shading option from before:

I started with a fully gray screen (inherence transparency) Then I simply erase the parts I wanted to highlight, I used the 3d layer as a guide, and added my own touches to match here the clothes hang. Then I applied a slight blur, and blended it in with multiply (26%)

Next I'm going to try to fix up the hair a bit before moving on... I remember that some feedback I'd gotten before mentioned that showing too many strands in a simplistic art style could look messy, so I played around a bit with how I could combine stokes, Such as putting two similar stoke next to each other to make, or even increasing the brush size:

But subtle curved 'V' Shapes (second to last) seemed to look the best to me, But I will need a way to fill them in. Maybe I'll combine this with the 'hair shape layer, and by making the hair strands darker I can also get some nice texture/outline out of them as well. So let's try it, maybe using jet black (or dark gray) too, so the line art coloring step will blend them together. And here is where I Learned the importance of layer groups once again. I made a group for just hair in general, then a subgroup for each character, in each group I made a later for he hair base (top) then I drew on some strands (middle), then by having them grouped, I could use the magic wand tool to select all the free space. (Everything outside the strands and base for one character) By inverting this, I had a selection that was composed of both. And by filling this I could color both the base, and hair strands. (bottom)

Sure, I could have combined the hair stands and hair base for easier selection, but keeping them separate makes it easier to edit. Next by sorting and blending the layers I was able to get an outline for the hair strands It's Still not perfect, But overall, I think it looks MUCH better than before!

So I touched up the bed design a little, by adding creases to the folds of the sheets. Then fixed the glasses and rearranged the outlines so they'd be colored, and here's what we end up with:

And finally I added a custom paper texture that I made following a YouTube short, it basically comprises of wetting and drying a paper, to make the papers natural texture more visible, then scanning in the result, I took this scan and made anything white fully transparent, leaving only the bits of gray texture behind. I set this on the top most layer, normal blend 28% and it left me with a very nice texture over the full image that blends nicely with the colors:

And here's the final result:

(Project Completion time: ~6 hours) Initial Thoughts on my sketch: I kinda wanted to add a second shadow pass, but at the same time I already spent a fair amount of time on this and got to really practice what I wanted to. So I think it's time to move on. I'm pretty happy with how this turned out overall, I defiantly think the 3d models did a lot of heavy lifting when it comes to proportions and perspective, but I still think I did a good job with my adjustment, colors and details! And here's the time-lapse! (Using my new capture Method!)

(Recorded in OBS at 1fps to save space, then speed up in ffmpeg)

Continue to #33!

#learning art #learning to draw #Youtube

Bonus Practice #6

As a followup to 'Practice #5' I decided to try remaking the same screenshot but instead of free-hand drawing, I'd make it in vector, but using the drawing tablet almost entirely! I mapped the buttons to edit line, object tool, create polygon, etc. and I used the pen to place and edit nodes here's how it went:

I spent a little longer on this one than the last, but the total time was still under 3 hours, This time, I tried making the eyes entirely in raster, (along with the front slim hair strands) and I'm pretty happy with how it turned out for such a short practice:

If I had more time, I would have added more of the outfit details, and maybe some highlights too, I was hopping the shadows would help convey the perspective a little more, and I think it worked decently well for the tilt/angle of the head. But I just could not nail the left-most arm, it looks 'straight on' rather than angled, like in the source. Overall, I really enjoyed using the drawing tablet for vector editing! It too a little while to get used to, but I think I'm almost as fast as I am with a mouse now, and making slight adjustments is actually a little easier. I can jump between nodes just by moving my fingertips, rather than having to slide my entire mouse, and panning the canvas by just holding a button on my pen and dragging feels very natural too

#learning art #vector art

Bonus Practice #5

I had a few hours free, but was not up for a big project, so I tried more free-hand tablet drawing, and I tried a new method for recording:

I like this new time-lapse format, as it lets me show the full ui and all zoom-ins as well! Basically I just record in OBS at 1fps, with audio disabled. Then I use ffmepg to speed up the video 30 times As for the art, I got a little frustrated with the lines not coming out right, and ended up giving a little early, But overall I'm still decently happy with the end result of about 2 hours of work:

This was mainly just more simple free-hand practice, and if nothing else, I think I'm getting a little better at showing personality.

Learning To ART Challenge #31

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A Journal of my art adventures learning to draw, not a tutorial/guide ------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Alright, welcome back, it's been a little while since my last post, I did a few practices since then, but did not journal them much, Bonus Practice #2, Bonus Practice #3, Bonus Practice #4 You don't have to go back and read them though! As a recap, I tried a few new things, and settled on at least trying out using vectors as my sketch layer, then 'inking them' by drawing over them with more natural lines. So that's what we're mainly going to be trying today! This is my first attempt at doing a project like this, so I'm going to try to focus on figuring out how I feel about the process, rather than the final outcome. I just made a Fun new screenshot in FF:XIV, so let's use it as our ref:

And yes, we're going to attempt backlighting for the first time as well! This is another one of my older Alts, and I was pretty happy with this outfit at the time. I don't think it's 'bad' per se, but I think it's a little too busy, with a few clashing styles, so I may make a few tweaks to simply it a bit. The last thing I did after taking this screenshot, was using the games 'hide character' features, so I could get a clean view of the background to use for my drawing. (we're not tracing this time)

Once Again, I'm drawing on linux, but this time I'll also be using my tablet for the vector work as well! ------ Alright, so I loaded up krita, and pasted in the background image, now I'll get started on drawing the basic shapes,

It looked (mostly) okay when zoomed in, but taking a larger view of both, I see a lot of corrections are needed before I start adding detail to the shapes. I tried to not use the background as landmarks, as I need to get better at judging sizes and postioning, but even with my own shapes as landmarks, the tail is way to small, same with the head, The torso also needs more work as it's missing a midsection that leads into the hips, the shoes are also the wrong size, but I'll work on them later... Ok, I did some resizing, and I think this looks MUCH better:

the knees still need a little work, but this is a tough pose to capture, Now time to add some rounding and extra detail, I rounded up the arms a bit, and pulled back the right-most shoulder, to really help sell the angle of the pose. Ok, let's try it out:

Ok, I think it's looking better, but it's kinda hard for me to visualize where were going, and the spacing on everything with all these white blobs, so I'll start adding some coloring and little more clothing:

Ok, well the tail looks a bit more lizard than cat-like, but it's okay for now. I made a more defined belt, and turned combined the top and mini-skirt a bit for a more seamless look. I also closed up the arm opening a tad, as I though the ff14 version look a little weird on smaller frame characters like this, Though, I guess this design will give me a chance to work on drawing armpits from various angles.

I think this is a good start, but the perspective still looks a little off And the clothes don't really look draped here, more just 'glued to the skin' I've read that I need to take gravity and the fabric into consideration, so maybe I should smooth out some of these lines. I also think I made my torso a little too narrow here. So I'll try to smooth things out, and increase the width, but without increasing the bust size as well:

I also adjusted the armpit placement here too. The ref seems to have the top curve inwards a bit towards the undersize of the bust, I'm not sure, but I don't think fabric would naturally wrap that way, but I guess that explains why you see so much bunched up near the bottom, the fabric is being push up and inwards toward her body to create that draped look, But that's a bit past what I'm capable of, so I went with something a bit more simple. Let's move on the skirt and thighs next:

I tightened the skit a bit, since ff:xiv generally makes them kinda chunky, I'll add the pleating later, but for now I'll stick with this to get the basic shape. Next I touched up the tail and shoes a bit:

Next up I started working on the face:

I followed the same steps as always, Making a separate layer groups, with sections for the eye outline, eye detail and eyelids. I think the angle on the ref is a bit sharper, but I'm modifying the expression as we go, so maybe this is still okay. Alright next I'll move on to the hair and hat.

It took some adjustment, but I think the hat came out okay. Alright, let's take another step back:

hmm, before we move to the the sword, it looks like we need to touch up the arm a bit, it's looking a bit chunky on mine, and maybe a little too long. So I retouched the leftmost arm, repositioned the right elbow and added a basic outline for the sword and scabbard:

And I think that's a really good vector sketch! So let's get to inking, adding some corrections along the way! For example I noticed face sizing/position was a little off, the shaping around the bust aria may have been overly smoothed out, and I think the right-most arm it pointing out at a weird angle. The left-most shoulder could use some work too. Ok, Time to draw!

It's going to need some cleaning up, but I think I like the silhouette a bit more than that of my vector, being able to free-draw some rounded areas lead them to look much more natural in my opinion. I'll get to work with the eraser, then I'll get to work setting up a layer with just the colors:

So far so good! I was able to get some cool colored outlines too! What I did was select regions inside my line art, then expand the selection by 4 pixels (the width of my outline) then I used the fill bucket to color on a new layer above my line art, with the layer blend method set to 'addition' I may change this up down the line, as I'm not sure how I feel about lighter outlines like this, but it proves the effect works possible Next I get to work drawing out the face, I'll be putting the details for this on a separate layers, and here's the face outline compared to the older vector:

And already I feel it looks much more natural, very happy with this outcome too! I used multiple layers to color the eyes: On the first layer there was no blending, and the underlying blue is from the skin, I used the selection from the eyes I with the fill buckey on my main 'face colors layer to make the eye while and base color for the pupal/iris, The second layer is the the outline layer I used for all the factial features, I set this to 'soft light' so these outlines will blend with the colors below. The third layer, is simply the base colors for the eyes, I just drew circles and cut out the parts that would be overlapped by the eye lids, and the fourth and final layer is the eye detail, I drew (air brush) and blurred some lines to give the eyes a little sparkle.

Once, you put them all together, (and clean up the overlap you get this!

Ok, so the lips are a bit of a mess, and the eyebrows could be trimmed back, but I'm pretty happy overall So Next we'll work on the hair, Just as before, I start with a basic shape, then move on to filling in the color:

It looks a little messy, maybe it was the brush I used, or maybe the lines were too thick, but we'll move on for now... Next I got to work on the hat, I made it on the same layer as the hair, so I could use the fill bucket without having to worry about closing shapes:

Next up is the sword, by this point I was getting a little tired, and it's a really long shape to draw free-hand, or even trace, so it came out like:

I think it's good enough for a practice, that sword is way too detailed! Ok, I added a separate shade of pink for the gloves and boots, then drew on the bottoms, Some Hair in the back.. and I think this is a good stopping point for the base design:

Next I'll try paining on some shadows, I was going to try the air brush, but it came out a little to varible and splotchy, so I just painted them on manually

Then I finished the first shadow pass, and set the layer to blend multiply 24% This layer will consist of the lighter shadows:

Then I made a second shadow layer with the same setting and color, This will add an extra layers of darkness in areas that need to have more noticeable shade (directly blocked by something nearby) I then added a second shadow layer with extra detail for the hair and tail:

Next up some quick highlight, we're doing backlighting this time!

hmm, it looks a little too intense, I'll clean it up a little, then blur it. And we're done!

(Project Completion time: ~8 hours) Initial Thoughts on my sketch: Wow, that was a lot of work! I figured tracing the vector would make things faster, But this still ended up being one of my longest projects! But at the end of the day, I think Using vectors for my sketch layer could end up being beneficial in the long run, it just really helps me get some rapid prototyping out of the way, Then when I start actually drawing, I can add the details that would be too hard to do in vector. Sure, I did not add all the details I wanted, but if I did, I imagine it would not take that much longer than doing it all in vector, the outline tracing/adjustment was relatively fast, and I am more than happy with the improvements I could make when redrawing, even if I disable the shadows/highlights, I still think the drawn version looks much nicer:

So yeah, I think I may try this again in the future! Thanks for reading and enjoy the time-lapse:

Continue to #32

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Bonus Pratice #4

In a followup to the 'Last Practice' I tried a few new things to make drawing on a tablet easier, First, I read that zooming out can help a lot, as it means minor variations in lines are less notable and are easy to correct, as they're spread out over a larger area. As for my terrible 'line control' I found out it's because the surface of the tablet is far to slick, my hand moves far more than it would on paper due to the lack of friction the drawing surface provides. I've heard 'paper-like' screen protectors can help with this, but I want the (not-recomended) cheap route, and used painter's tape to attach a real sheet of printer paper over my tablet, I feels kinda weird, but I noticed significantly more control with this method:

Again, this may wear out the pen nubs or even the tablet surface faster, so I don't think I'd recommend it on any pricey tablets, but I think the results speak for themselves: No paper / Paper

the differences may look minor, but the first one took about half an hour. While the second looks cleaner and only took about 20mins! I'm now mor ewilling to use vectors as my sketch layer, And hopefully this is not too hard on my tablet/pen

Bonus Practice #3

I tried to trace some of my old vector art to see if I could basically use my 'overly clean vectors as a stand-n for a sketch layer. ..it did not work out so well:

I just find drawing so furstrating! I just want the lines to come out they way I want, but my hands refuse to work right! I know I'm still making progress and improving, with pencil drawing. (and to a lesser extent digital drawing) But it just feels like more work, for generally a lesser result. I know I need a ton more practice, regardless of if I don't enjoy it. but it still feels like at best, I'd just be making slight tweaks to my vector outline.So at this point I feel I may as well keep it as is

Maybe I just stick to using raster for hair, eyes and other expressive details, keeping all the big stuff vector only... I also learned the difference between the polyline and polygon tool today. For months I've been trying to make shapes with the polyline tool and have been confused as to why there is always a gap at the end rather than the lat points being connected, turns out ONLY the polygone tool auto completes shapes:

Bonus Practice #2

I tried making an anthro character for the first time! I was not even planning on practicing today, but then I saw this:

(Just as a heads up, this creators post both sfw and nsfw content,So keep that in mind if you decide to checkout their page) So I decided to give it a shot, here's the timelapse:

Project completion time: ~4hours

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