God I just love that in The Dying Detective you made it so Sherlock is struggling to convince Watson he's sick. Watson knows him so well at this point. It huuuurrtttsssss (positive)
THANK YOUUU I wanna talk about this because it ties into why I love comics so much, and why I love adapting prose into comics. It's a pretty well known idea that part of the job as a cartoonist is to be the 'actor' for your characters - to try and inhabit their heads, figure out their body language, make their expressions with your own face as you're drawing them, etc.
This brings a certain level of intuition into comic drawing that I find really magical. Sometimes I'll have something written (for original work) or there will be something in the text (for adapted work) but when it comes time to draw it, I just...can't get the character to do it. None of my drawings make sense or feel authentic. It feels like they've turned from 'real' people into flat paper dolls. I've been doing this long enough that I've learned when that happens, it means something in the text needs to change.
For Dying Detective, I started sketching it as a direct translation of the book, but something weird happened as I went:
I found I kept cropping out Watson's face. Maybe it was just that I'd drawn sad Watson too much recently and I was tired of it. But I couldn't figure out how to draw him reacting to Holmes being sick with genuine distress, the way he does in the book - not within the altered narrative I'm telling with the Sketchbook. They've known each other too long, they're in too tense of a place in their relationship, and Watson is too familiar with Holmes's tendency to make a scene.
So to experiment, I drew him looking skeptical instead.
And THAT was fun and easy, which meant it was the right direction to go. It also made the scene go from feeling like a single, sustained note of distress, to an unspoken power struggle, where the characters end in a different place from when they begin. For this specific adaptation, it was a good change to make - and it was something I only discovered through the art. All this to say that I love comics always and forever!!!
Are you ok with people tracing hands? Everything else i can just reference, but I can’t get hands right. Can i trace them?
Everyone can trace anything I post.
Tracing is just a tool. You can decide to use it or not use it based on your goals, skills, etc.
Tracing is morally neutral for learning and if you're working from appropriate resources (like my Creative Commons licensed stuff!) then it's morally neutral for all types of art making.
my dtiys for 500+ followers on tumblr
ik its not much but for me whos usually unpopular it is !!
(color palette will not be given so more creativity can be achieved coming to the colors !!)
start date: nov. 23
end date: december 25th, but will extend for single people or for multiple people if enough request it !!!
rules !!
no changing the character !!
no tracing !!
background doesn’t have to be drawn to this extreme detail !!
art doesn’t need to be shaded!
outfit can be modified *SLIGHTLY* !!
no nsfw of her !!
no spamming with multiple art pieces !!
no sore losers; don’t harass others for winning !!
no sore winners; no shoving in someone who lost (or won 2nd or 3rd place) that your art is objectively better than someone else’s because you won !! i will HAPPILY take away your prize and give it to someone more deserving !!
pose does not have to be exact and can be changed slightly!! (just be sure to have her stirring)
prizes !!
1st place, half body; full shade
2nd place, bust shot; full shade
3rd place, bust shot; flat color
anyone who is not in 1st, 2nd, or 3rd place will have honorable mentions and i will make a post, showing all the art
DISCLAIMER!!
if you are not chosen as 1st, 2nd, or 3rd place, its not because your art is bad!! it’s dependent on many things, including my own perception!!
2ND DISCLAIMER!!
for prizes, i can only draw female characters or feminine looking characters best!!
Hi Thank you for coming to my TED Talk about how I dont like the Grid Method for drawing
I think most people in their life have seen the grid method for copying a piece of art - if you haven’t seen it you can probably at least get an idea of it pretty quick. The grid method for art requires you to break a piece into a series of equal squares, and then transfer those squares onto a blank piece of paper divided into the equal squares of the same ratio. Conceptually this idea is very sound - rather than biting off the entire picture, you focus on each section. Theoretically, if you can make square A1 look like square A”1, and so on and so forth, you should finish with an identical drawing to your picture. I, personally, have a strong distaste for this method. It teaches bad habits - especially to younger and newer artists. (If you are a big fan of this method please read all of my rant first or at least scroll to the end where I will reiterate some of the perceived positives of the method)
The best way to discuss this is to start with a general idea of how we go about drawing something - especially something from a reference! I will try not to riddle this rant with disclaimers, but not everyone will draw using the same or similar methods, but this is the way that I was taught and when discussing with other artists they usually follow similar ideas: When you draw you go from big to little - from general to specific. Getting too specific too early is detrimental. This is an art rant, so let’s chat about this with some pictures.
Here I have a picture of a square and a circle. Next to it I have my blank piece of paper, and I want to draw it EXACTLY THE SAME on the paper. To do this - whether consciously or not - I will start taking mental ‘measurements’ of various aspects of this composition. How far are these objects from the edges? How much space do they take up? And I will compare these objects to each other - which object is bigger? Where do they connect - is their point of contact halfway up the square or a quarter ways up the square? In the previous questions I am specifically focused on circle in relationship to the square, so it’s worth noting that if my square isn’t placed correctly then everything else will be placed incorrectly as well. Early on in a piece you want to keep lines light, ready to be changed if need be. One of my professors used to say that you wanted to avoid falling in love and getting married to a line as long as possible, because once you fall in love with your lines you will be reluctant to change them.
Here I have a square and a circle - although maybe these have a little more details going on in them than our previous square and circle. Now maybe this is overwhelming, but remember we want to start from general and then get specific - our process for drawing this should look much the same as our previous painting! Starting with the outline and general shape! This brooch technically isn’t a circle - it’s scalloped on the edges - but before we put that information in we want to make sure we have the placement of it correctly both on the paper and in reference to our other elements - the square. When we feel confident in those elements, we can start SLOWLY adding the other information. A lot of art is about training the eye - we’re looking between the picture and our drawing, trying to see visually what the difference is and correct it.
Naturally, the more complicated the piece the more complicated this process becomes. If we, for instance, have a person, thats’ a lot more to deal with. We once again want to work outside first. My professor was very big on outlines and shadows first and details slowly after that - so I would likely want to work on the external form, and some lines, and then work in blocky shadows, and fine-tune it from there. Once again let’s ask ourselves what will happen if we just start with the eye - and we spend HOURS drawing the perfect eye - only to realize that it isn’t in the right place in reference to everything else. We’d either have to erase that eye and all our work, rework the entire rest of the drawing, or leave it to look offputting and wrong. When you start art you can get preoccupied with features, when in reality they should be one of the last elements you definitively put in.
There’s one last part about this that is relevant to my dislike for the grid method, and it’s the idea that when we’re looking at a piece we find commonalities along lines to help guide our art. For instance here we can see that one eye lies horizontally on the same plane and the back of the dogs head matches with a place on the coat - these can help guide us in making sure things are looking right! The grids may help us to see these things, but not necessarily.
Okay, back to the grid method. As I’ve stated earlier the grid method can be used well and the principles behind it are good - our neat squares provide an easier visual way to do the exact same stuff we were doing earlier - how far is the object from the edges and from each other etc etc. However these squares actually can encourage the artist to focus too closely - again either a square at a time or a feature at a time. In addition they narrow the focus of the artist away from the whole - instead of seeing how everything lays on the entire page, you focus on how things are lying in that specific tiny box. Art is usually a dance of in and out - close and far. Taking a step back. The grid method discourages this.
I say this again aware that many people are extremely successful using this method - young auteurs who draw a giant portrait hyperrealistic. Leyendecker would use a grid to make his smaller drawings bigger (although I would argue he first had an understanding of the previous methods for the intiial drawing, and used the grid more for enlargement of the previous piece). People do this method and do it well… just more people learn bad habits from it that they have to fight against to progress.
The last thing I want to say is about how the flaw, always, with the grid method is that it has to be something that you can place a grid on - you become confined to the paper and ruler. While the earlier method was taught to be through still life drawings, measuring with a stick, it was clear that this eye training and method was versatile, and could be used for anything you placed in front of me, the grid method becomes a shackle. And I know I know I know, but other artists have found ways around such a block - the perspective frame for painting has been used by many artists over the years, including Vincent Van Gogh - places somewhere to make the process of copying the real world easier - but why let yourself be confined willingly? If you are a big grid believer I would beseech you to AT LEAST try and expand your studies in addition to the grid formula - a healthy diet of many different kind of studies and practices and eye trainings is what we do to hopefully, one day, be able to put the designs in our head down onto paper accurately.
Additionally, using the grid method provides no room for your to be using your instincts to help. I’ve been reading through ot3’s personal philosophy of composition and I found the line in the introductions where they discuss the idea of following your instincts very important. Part of my philosophy firmly believes that people understand art ephemerally without the need of words first, and overtime the act of art is becoming more aware of the words and phrases of certain concepts, so that we gain the ability to use and manipulate them purposefully.
If I were in the AP for the second episode of Gladlands, instead of all the songs the Dusty Do-gooders were referencing I would've just sang that song from The Little Engine That Could (1991)
HEY YOU. DO YOU LIKE SHARING ART?. DO YOU LIKE TALKING ABOUT ART?. DO YOU LIKE TALKING?. WELL I HAVE A GROUP CHAT FOR YOU. Ahem. Anyway my friend Buu has a gc on instagram and the other three members left for some reason so it's just me Buu and the other two people that remained. It's been really lacking in activity and we'd both appreciate it if they were more people to make the place feel less empty. Here's the link if yall are interested -> https://ig.me/j/AbZ7WreQyd5sElgi/.
I've always been captivated by the raw power and mysterious beauty of jaguars. For this series, I wanted to explore not just their incredible realistic form, but also their symbolic energy and how that can be expressed through color and style.
Here are three interpretations:
1. The Wild Guardian: A tribute to the jaguar's natural majesty.
2. Shadow & Light: Exploring its stealth and mystery in monochrome.
3. Mystic Hunter: Infusing it with vibrant, otherworldly energy.
Which of these jaguars speaks to your soul today? Let me know in the comments!
What animal should I explore next?
Love these? They’re now available on mugs, stickers and prints!
