#shape breakdown

[caprin-fishie]

Shape break down I did for the 5 styles challenge ✨

[vendrawagram]

Theeeen, as a combination of that night and this afternoon, I decided to try and take a stab at drawing a character I made in the Code Vein creator. (lowkey actually an OC, lol)  Look at how my badly drafted eyes ruin the whole sketch lmao.

I did the usual draw-overs, but I wound up doing them twice because the hair just...didn’t confuse me, but it was hard for me to get a handle on. 

You can also see from this afternoon I did hella curl practice. I happened to see a tutorial on curls, so I tried it out. And...it worked! When I could start it right. I tried another tutorial, but they just...weren’t for me. They worked, but I couldn’t control the shapes of the curls as much as I wanted to, partially because of my level. (I’ve cropped and censored the tutorials so as not to repost them)  

Those deep navy curls on the draw-over? A sign of things to come...

Tutorial Links: 

Neko-Rina’s tutorials:  https://twitter.com/7NekoRina7/status/1237833675162767368 

Jey Ram: https://www.jeyram.org/curly-hair

Neko-Rina had another tutorial that I didn’t see and didn’t try, but I’ll link it anyway: 

https://www.deviantart.com/neko-rina/art/Curls-tutorial-481789429

[vendrawagram]

But i didn’t want to just call it quits and go to bed, so I decided to practice some more. I chose to use Tae Takemi from Persona 5. As usual, I did a draw-over of her, and then I started drawing next to her. 

But...filling out the faces just keeps proving to be a difficult task. You can see my rough eye placeholder lol. I had to really zoom in on Tae’s eyes and draw my own. I was surprised by how nicely it came out! So I just plopped it onto the sketch I did lol

One thing’s for sure though -- I need to practice eyes....real bad. OTL

And maybe her face is misaligned...Hm...

I do need to start doing Real Person references soon. I’m learning a lot from these sketches, but they still feel like low-key plagiarism even though I’m just doing it to learn and not to do anything else with them.  

For what it’s worth though, while I do draw-over references to get a feel for their shapes, my proper sketches never feature traced elements.

[vendrawagram]

The next day, I watched some anime and I really liked this still from the Babylonia ED. I knew it was way above my paygrade, but I still wanted to try and draw it, even if just super roughly and amatuerly. 

But I was pretty busy that day, so I didn’t even start drawing until well after midnight...I wasn’t in the mood to do all the detailed shapes this needed, and I certainly wasn’t in the headspace to navigate the software, which I’d basically only used twice. 

So I guess it became a study in thumbnails? Bottom image was drawn over the ref. 

[vendrawagram]

Finally, on March 10th, my tablet arrived! My very first (computer tablet) ever. Exciting times! 

It took a LOT of getting used to, and as I write this I’m still in the progress of trying to figure out what I’m doing with it. Namely, how to map my keys. The biggest question is the two buttons on the actual pen...There’s so many important functions, but I don’t know what to prioritize!

I mostly mucked around here, trying to get a feel for the pen. Digitally drawing is very different, even more than I had anticipated! The biggest obstacle I’ve encountered is that my stroke length doesn’t match up to what I think I’m doing. 

Last picture is the MS Paint kirby to christen the tablet! The grid of dots is actually me following the dot pattern on the Huion itself.