Apparently, my last try was in January, so basically a year ago. I would have sworn that it has only been a few months or so since my last draw-attempt, but I guess not. Though, of course, there was a drawing attempt in ~October, I simply did not post it here because it was a thing related to one of my own characters and that of another person, I only shared it with them basically. Maybe I'm gonna upload it some day, maybe not. I don't know. I'm not all that liking of it anyway - as usual.
Anyway, here's a new drawing. Again one I'm not happy with, but at least it's one I can post without using many tags because it's an OC of mine.
4 versions, because I couldn't decide whether I liked it more without the sketch-lines in there or not, and because I'm not so certain on using a background or not.
The background is taken from one of these various "free vector background" websites.
This is Lightning! She's a speedster-oc of mine (with a lot of inspiration from dc's own, but unrelated to their force bc I don't know a thing about that), and as you can see, she's doing a special job during the holidays!
I've had the headcanon for a really long time that speedsters would totally do this during the holidays, to give something to children that might need it most or something, and now that I made this OC of mine "public" in some form, I had to make this an actual picture.
I drew her face twice, actually.
On the left you see the first face I drew. I was so utterly unhappy with it that I decided to try again, which I then did as you can see on the right pic, and while I'm still not happy with that, I did like it more than the first so it ended up being the one I used for the rest of the process.
For comparison, here's a picture of her face I did many many years ago.
I like this old pic a lot more than both of these new tries at her face. (She's wearing a proper speedster-outfit here, basically the outfit of KidFlash from the TT cartoon, which, doesn't really make all that perfect sense, but as explanation I can give that at the point of me drawing this one, she hadn't really been anything more than a female version of that KF. So yeah.)
But well, what can I do? Outside of slowly stopping to believe in the whole "practice makes perfect" thing.
I'm just not gonna even start on the things I don't like, it doesn't quite feel like there's a point in doing that outside of talking myself down. And I'm already disappointed enough in myself in regards to drawing, enough so that I'm considering to just stop my tries at getting better with it, so I don't need the down-talk.
The red string you see just below her head? It's not a mistake, it's there on purpose, because her hat absolutely certainly has a around-the-head string to keep it attached when she's running.
Anyway, I hope you're having happy holidays or just a good time!
I'm still here, still trying to work on learning to draw. Just taken two months or so off, I guess - what with the holidays and all.
As you can see, it's time for Blackfire! In human/earthen attire instead of her usual stuff, because yeah.
I'm not very fond of this, which is as usual I guess, but, still. I used a reference for the pose, and three different ones for the outfit-pieces.
I used a few blocks and straight lines and stuff to sorta-kinda create an alley-like background, not too fond of it but it's something else compared to the simple gradients I usually do, so that's okay. I should've had the sky be visible somewhere though, at least a little. Feels a bit too very gray-y here.
Same thing as before, where I manipulated the contrast etc. a little to use my paper-sketch-lines as actual lines for the drawing because I don't wanna retrace everything to get it digital. Not as pretty perhaps, but, I might just have this as my default way of 'digitalizing' my arts for now, because it's easy and fast.
Things I don't like:
The proportions feel out of place. I think she's too thin especially in her middle there, I think she might be too 'long' too kinda, I definitely didn't make the hair long enough. Don't get me started on the hands - also not too fond of the face.
I think I mentioned pretty much everything here now, so that's probably enough. Yeah. I'll stop here.
Okay, well, another month another drawing. I tried to find a way to not have to work on digitalizing my pencil-lines as much, so my first result was a more or less line-less thing, the number 2 of the ones shown here.
I added the result of also throwing my pencil-lines onto it with very roughly removing the background (aka the white from the paper I drew on), which to my surprise looks decent enough. I do also like the lineless version though, so I'm sharing both.
I'm not quite as disliking of this as I feel about most of my art, so I'm guessing that that's something good.
Starfire's whole hair is going through the small metal-golden piece on her head there, the whole puffy hair in the back is all a big ponytail. Or at least that's what I wanted to draw, I'm not completely sure if that worked out.
I originally wanted to give her... I think it's called a bubble ponytail, but it just didn't look right and then I just needed to live out my fantasy of curly-hair-Starfire in some way.
I realized now that I totally forgot that I had wanted to add golden sparkles to her top, but well, I don't feel like working on adding those in anymore now.
And another kinda redraw. I didn't want to just continue drawing off of Ry's own comic panels since they are so few and as such limited in different posts and such, and so I told myself to instead choose some screenshot from the cartoon randomly, and reproduce Starfire's position of that with Ry.
Well, I tried.
I feel like it's very obvious that I have already long lost most of my drive to keep trying to get a better grip of drawing (once again), but I will try to keep forcing myself for a little longer. Although I absolutely don't feel like I'm making progress at all.
The picture on the left is not my picture. It's taken directly from the cartoon, from the episode "Can I keep him?".
A simple redraw of a comic-’screenshot’ (do I call it panel then?) this month. Or, technically too late since I should have done it earlier to actually post it before the end of the month, but I was busy and half-inclined to just delay art for a month (or longer), but I managed to fight the struggle away enough to do something.
I feel unhappy about my freestyle-arts, so perhaps I will just continue copying screenshots or panels for a while to get a better grip.
(If it isn’t obvious: The right, colored picture, is taken directly from the comic. Not my art.)
And again a little not-art post to tell you that I didn’t forget my drawing. I skipped it last month, but this time I actually did some eye-practice. Or, well, I redrew some eyes, mostly, it didn’t feel like I learned anything from it. But I did something, yes, it simply isn’t post-worthy enough since it’s just some sketching and only eyes.
Next month, hopefully, I’ll do some actual art again. Or attempts at least, as all my things are.
A very late posting this time (since I told myself to do one every end of a month), but I haven’t forgotten! I just needed a while because apparently I just gave myself too much to do.
I drew this on the 30th or so, so I did keep my schedule up, only the coloring and stuff took me a bit.
So, as you all know, it had been may, which also at least some people call mermay.
I just knew I had to do something in reference to that, and when choosing who to draw I couldn’t decide (one part tells me to do Wildfire because he’s so little known, another to do Starfire because she’s just... well, her, and so on), and so I got to the brilliant idea ‘hey why not just do all three of them!’. Obviously, this was a choice that I really shouldn’t have made, it took me forever and I had to draw them all much closer together than intended (especially Blackfire, she was supposed to sit somewhere in the distance and just angrily watch from afar) since I wanted to fit them all onto one page.
Those outfits are very much based on my versions of the three from the mermaid-dollmakers of azaleasdolls.
Blabber about what I like or don’t like about this below the cut.
I probably should have started the figures somewhat higher on the page, then I would have been able to finish their tails too, but oh well.
Also, I really need to get better at eyes. I mean, I need to get better in general, but it feels like I often ruin the eyes and I should fix that. Maybe I’ll take next month to just redraw eyes from references a few times, or something.
The hands were a fight, as they probably always are, and of course more so since I had to do 3 times as many. Well, 2 and a half I guess, since Blackfire’s one hand isn’t visible.
I’m still very unhappy with perspectives or angles or however I should call it. I hope that with doing some every now and then I’ll eventually get better at it, but, I still very much dislike whenever I try anything that isn’t straight front view, or perhaps exact side.
The latter version of the pic is with a quickly created background, not very proficiently done or anything (if I’d have cared, I probably should have added some bubbles or fish or something in the background to make it more look like happening underwater), just a quick blue background for the water and a shape to somewhat depict the stone that Blackfire’s sitting on.
My scanner was kinda odd when scanning this. I chose a high dpi because the program offered (the one I’ve used so far when I scanned drawings didn’t recognize the new scanner that we’re having by now) and played around with the settings a little. It feels odd though, kinda too bright and too undetailed for a really good scan of my pencil creation. It still caught everything well enough for using it, though, so I didn’t bother any longer.
Random fact: My version of Wildfire here is actually intended to be shirtless. I absolutely didn’t dare trying to draw a body though, as in without a simple clothing to cover it with and having to only draw the shape, so he got a quick shirt-thingie here.
By the way (though I don’t know if anyone really cares except me since it’s my own given schedule and I doubt anyone here is sitting on their edge of their seat awaiting my next scribble), I didn’t forget my monthly drawing. I did draw on like the 30th or so, but I’m trying to color it at least a little too and I don’t really work on that during the week so it’ll still take a little longer.
Since my last two attempts at getting used to my tablet were... very very very bad, I’ve decided that perhaps I could get better used to drawing digitally when I do screenshot-redraws (or kinda sorta copying off of the screenshot, since I do lay it behind the drawing as ‘reference’). This is the result, along with the original screenshot for comparison-reasons.
I have also decided that this was my last attempt at drawing digitally, at the very least for a good while.
At least with my drawings on paper, I’m not downright hating myself for them, so it’s better if I keep to that. Maybe I can try to find ways to easier use the lines from paper in digital coloring, maybe if I re-trace them with a thick pen before scanning, or something like that. But yes, I just can do better on pen, so it’s what I’ll be doing. As much as that might be more effort than the digital way.
While it feels like I copied more than I did myself on this one, I’m just glad that on the top of this blog of mine there’s something that I can live with again now. If you look at the blog, please best just ignore the previous 2 things.
I don’t wanna post this, I don’t wanna post this, I so don’t wanna post this.
But, it’s time for another thing, and, well. Might as well.
Another time of trying to learn to use my tablet, this time using gimp. Out of whatever reason, gimp didn’t recognize my tablet’s pressure. Outside of that, I think I started on too small a resolution to really be able to work in detail on like the face and such, though maybe I also kinda lost drive to keep going by working on that. Sorry.
I only now noticed that I completely forgot his ears. Whoops.
This is sort-of a continuing of that expression meme that I posted some time ago, I still do hope to grow (or get into existence) my drawing skills through doing something like this, so I think I will continue on it. With this abomination, I have surprised covered, too, even though I think it barely looks any like that. Oh well.
Again, this will not be tagged with the usual tags, if the followers of this blog see it, that will be enough, I’m not going to bother anyone else with it, not when it looks this bad. I’m not thinking my other, tagged, arts are good even, but they are still so much better than this one, so yeah.
Assuming I’ll manage to remember by next month, I think I’ll take a drawing-time to just practice eyes. Just, take a few pictures of my favourites, and redraw their eyes on my tablet. Because my results so far of eyes on my tablet-drawings (which is only this and the previous one) are absolutely bad. Like, really really so. I’ll probably still post that though, since I do wanna try to keep up with doing a post each month.
I’m feeling absolutely horrible about even posting this. But, I was intending to do a thing each month, and this is my “thing” of this time I guess.
It’s more or less my first time working with my tablet (I did use it before, but, never really much or actually got to work with it more than like using it for clicking through stuff or whatever), and, I am intending to get more used to that since I’d really prefer digitally drawing over having to always digitalize my paper-sketches. Yeah uh, this looks very bad, it has no hands (bc I kinda gave up) and the proportions aren’t correct either or anything, but, at least I got something out this month. I guess that’s something, right?
I used Krita since I heard it’s a good program for drawing, but I’m not really sure yet if I’ll stick with it. It seems a little inconvenient at parts, to me.
Okay, and here’s an actual ‘new’ thing. I looked up frilly dresses and found a nice one through a picture search, and figured that if I do a drawing like I want to try to from now on again regularly do once a month, I can as well try to draw Starfire in it.
On the left, you get the sketch (with pencil on paper), and on the right the result after digitalizing and coloring it.
You might notice that I ‘shrunk’ the face a little in the digitalizing, I had planned that ever after finishing the face in the sketch, because I noticed that I made it kinda too long. But it’s not easy to fix that on paper, so I left the fixing to the digitalizing.
I had planned a necklace and bracelet for her, too, but didn’t manage to create any decent-looking results so I went without it in the end.
Another thing that I had planned for was a summer-hat, but when taking another look or two at it, it just had a completely wrong angle and didn’t look right. I would’ve had to ‘tilt it forward’ more if I wanted one to work, I guess, but I didn’t bother with that.
It’s my first time really working on crinkles or folds of clothes, and I’m not at all happy about them, but it fels better than not having any, so I left them in.
The quick little background was a nice thing, I managed to do that rather quickly and it isn’t that good, but I think it looks good enough. I maybe should’ve done a bit of ‘water’ after the ‘beach’ before I have that sky-color, but yeah.
Here’s a collection of a recent-ish time when I tried to keep regularly drawing. I broke it off much too quickly, of course, and not made it very far in the template (which I’ve also shared there in case you want it for yourself), but yeah.
And of course, this was with the one that is mostly inspiring me to actually get better at drawing - Wildfire! Or you might know him as Darkfire, or Ryand’r, though I think most people simply don’t know of him at all.
He’s Starfire’s and Blackfire’s younger brother, and he appeared in a few older comics (and a more recent Supergirl one), and the appearance that I’m basing his looks mostly on is from the TTGo-followup-comics of the TT 03 cartoon.
As you might see if you look at the pictures, one (’angry’) is double there - that’s because I fixed the face after I got the drawing into my computer.
I seem to have a tendency to do faces too long, I’ll have to keep an eye on that.
Starting off with some “older” things, if the date that I wrote down on the files is correct, those range between 2016 and 2018.
Always sketch on the left, and digitalized-and-colored on the right.
You might notice my tending to front-view or exact side-view, that’s because I couldn’t, and still can’t, work with perspective or angles or however that’s supposed to be called, at all, yet. I hope that some day I’ll get better at that, but, yeah.
On most of these, I didn’t exactly bother with lights or shadows. I tend to be rather unhappy with my arts, and usually then I don’t see reason to try and bring some good-looking shadows or lights to it all. Not to mention I usually do that with the mouse (since, well, I draw on paper), and that’s not very fun either.
I am in no way happy enough with my art to actually feel confident in posting it, but a blog like this might be my easiest way to keep track of my results AND maybe also make me feel like I ‘owe’ it to the blog or the people looking at it to actually keep going on at least somewhat a regular schedule. (My current aim is to draw at least once per month. Which isn’t that much, but better than nothing.)
Hi, hello, thank you for looking at this blog. I’m not good at art, I barely can do anything that isn’t straight front view, I don’t feel like I can do anything in regards to art really good. But it should be that practice makes better, and that is basically all that this blog is for. I figured that it can’t hurt to just throw out my stuff somewhere (at that note, please don’t come to me to be unnecessarily rude or insulting, I don’t claim to be good so there’s no need to rub it in that I’m not), and maybe eventually be able to see the progress of my art if I truly will get better over time.
In each art-post that you’ll find here, you will get a picture, perhaps more than one, and some blab of my thoughts or what I had to do with it below. I will post the things as photo-posts, though I would prefer to put them under a cut and just hide them but that’s not the point of making a blog like this.
