I'm working on one of these circle-quadrant character personality memes and... I think it makes sense? It makes sense to me. But it does look very funny at first blush
Because a few people have asked: this was just something I stole from @misscammiedawn , with the idea being you pick a bunch of characters you relate to and organize them into radial quadrants, with the center circle ideally being the characters you relate to the most. There really aren't any rules beyond that, I just organized them in a way that made sense to me
This is the template we used, if you would like to do it yourself
One thing that always awes me in your art is the density and richness of detail, be it environmental, composition, clothing, etc. Do you have any advice for adding more detail to an illustration when my instinct is to be lazy and simplify it?
thank you!!! this is a really good question sorry i sat on it for a while. short answer:
loooong answer:
i do think theres such a thing as TOO dense for a drawing so i think when adding detail it helps to think about what motivates that density and detail and what you're conveying in a drawing with it. remember that the more detail/color/line/shading/etc there is in a drawing the longer itll take their eye and brain to process everything. so you can use detail to control how long the average viewer looks at something. a comedic/quick read drawing will likely benefit from less detail (unless the punchline of the joke IS detail ie spongebob gross-out shots) and something you want people to spend longer looking at or contemplating will often benefit from more.
a closeup on an object generally will read better with more detail, something in the distance will read better with less. etc etc. ALSO bg details call tell a lot of story, you can understand where the characters are, how they feel, what they're doing, what they were just doing, or what they're about to do. maybe you want these story hints to be obvious and upfront but sometimes you want them to be something people only notice after theyve been looking for a while. so there's a lot of reason to include stuff beyond just what communicates the first read...
once you kind of have your reasoning/motivation for detail on lock i think its easier to decide how much detail you want and where you want to put it.
when i have my reasoning down pat sometimes it helps me to break the detail down into different levels. this is often more subconcious than it is concious but if you can find the time to pause mid-process and check yourself on it..that may help.
1) high detailed
wherever the focus of my picture is detail is usually highest. here you can see i care about clothing folds, the circle buttons on the top of drink lids, contents of first aid kids, textures and highlights etc
2) mid detail
at this point my character drawing is a little looser, theres still some textural details but its more structural drawing. ill draw a loose page sticking out of a binder but probably not the bends on the corner or anything. wires coming out of the cash register but no scuffs or labels
3) low detail
very loose structural drawing, more just abstracted shapes and colors. this is how id render things on a screen if youre not meant to look at it, details that tell a story but the readability isnt as important as the feel of the whole
and of course theres always exceptions to the rule.
the billboard in this drawing is essentially the 3rd character in the composition so it's just as rendered as the characters in front of it if not moreso. I used a lineless/painterly style to separate it from the characters tho.
and for this piece, I put extra detail on the stuff on the shelves to sell the feeling of being in a gas station convenience store with tons of labels to look at. the space feels more well conveyed when its detailed like that. tho if youll notice all the "packaging" details are rly just simplified blobs of color ha ha
if youre having a hard time thinking of which environmental details go include heres a few good ones i always fall back on.
1) texture
everything has texture whether its smooth or fuzzy or scuffed to hell. you can add it in the lineart with specific markmaking or in paint/color but i think especially when something is close to the camera in a composition i always try to indicate its texture.
2) joinery
i think a really beginner artist instinct is to draw a window like this or a door like this or even pipes like this.
and these r good abstracted drawings but theres a lot of structural detail in real life that is basically invisible to us because we just dont think about it. including this stuff can go a long way. crown moulding/wall trim in rooms, hinges on doors, ceiling struts and rope ties..etc. i kind of think of wires and vents as similar to this, stuff that we ignore but is important to somethings structure and functionality.
3)wear & tear
this is probably the most obvious detail when its utilized correctly and honestly...in my opinon, the most fun. drawing wear and tear kind of invites you to think abt the life of every object and environment you draw. what elements is it exposed to? what parts to people touch the most? does a bar have stains from spills in particular spots, does the underside have shoe scuffs around kicking height? i think the example you see most often is a cube with rougher edges but which edges are more dinged up than others? this is a huge storytelling opportunity to me haha.
OK THATS ALL IVE GOT I'll maybe edit this down to be less rambly later hope it helps
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