Creative Corner

@Mintiani You have every right to be happy with them, they turned out great! I can't really say anything about shading because I'm still learning to that myself, but other than that ... the only things I really noticed is that your lines are still very wobbly - but that's probably something that will go away once you have more practice - and some minor anatomy mistakes on the first one. The right arm is a bit too long - it's actually longer than her left arm, and the elbow looks a bit weird. Also, both feet are pointing in the same direction, which kinda bothers me? But I'm not sure whether it could actually be considered a mistake.

I love the gradient on the first one, it came out great! You really did a great job there. Also, the eyes?? Amazing!! I really love them. I really love the color scheme, too, the colors all go very nicely together! And the second one: damn, I don't think that I'd be able to draw a human/humanoid face that well!

Maybe as a tip, or I guess more something you could try out and see if you like the effect it creates: I personally love to color the lines instead of just leaving them black. Black lines can look fine of course, and I'm not saying that they look bad in the drawings above! But colored lines can make things a lot more interesting or make things easier on the eyes. Especially when using lighter colors for coloring like you did in the second drawing! The black lines create a very stark contrast to the lighter colors of the skin and hair, so choosing to change the lines' color from black to something else could make the whole drawing easier on the eyes.

But as I said, that's more a fun thing you could try out and play around with to see if you like it or not (I'm still experimenting with it, too!). Sticking with black lines is completely okay of course! You already did color the lines in at least one of your drawings, so playing around with it a bit more could be fun! Don't shy away from using contrasting colors for the lines as well! Sometimes it can look real fun!

Also, not realted to anything really, but if you want I could give you some general tips that make drawing digitally way easier for me if you want? I'd just need to know what art program you use. I could also share some of the things I do to make my drawings a bit more interesting when coloring them if you want! Doesn't mean you have to do that stuff, too, but I think it's always fun to look at what other people do and see if it works for yourself too!

[color=#800040]@Mintiani All right, here we go! I was coloring a sketch today and made some screenshots along the way. Obviously my way of drawing - and especially shading (I use the cel shading technique most of the time) - is different from yours, so just because something works for me doesn't mean that it has to work for you, too! But maybe some of the things mentioned below could be super useful anyway! Just as a heads up, my version of Phostoshop is older than yours, but that shouldn't matter too much. It's also in German, so things are named differently, but I tried to look up what some of the functions are called in Enlish. In case the pictures are too small, you can just right click 'em and open them in a new tab! They should show up bigger then. Okay, so here we go: Once I have my sketch ready and want to color it, I usually start by choosing a color and simply outlining the sketch like this: [img]https://i.imgur.com/yJKywNm.jpg[/img] The color I'm using for this doesn't have to be any of the colors I want to use later on (though in this specific case it was). Once I outlined the sketch, I fill it in with the paint bucket tool: [img]https://i.imgur.com/cdcYESY.jpg[/img] That saves tons of time and is super convenient! I continue by kind of "locking" the color that's on the layer and then create a gradient with the gradient tool (see picture below, I circled the button for doing so in red). Locking the color allows me to apply colors and gradients only at the places where there is already color. Everything that isn't colored won't be affected! I like to use gradients sometimes because it can create some interesting effects. I usually make the head and neck the lightest parts, and things like hind feet and tail are the darkest. That creates depth and shifts the important parts into focus. [img]https://i.imgur.com/hWsu0m9.jpg[/img] Now I just add all the other base colors that I need, sometimes on several layers, before I start with shading. I use clipping masks to do this. A clipping mask creates a new layer and has a similar effect like the locking color optiopn does, i.e. I can only apply color where there is already color on the layer beneath. It makes things [i]so much more easy[/i] because I don't have to worry about coloring outside of the lines. In case you don't know how to do a clipping mask, basically all you do is create a new layer and check the box for "clipping mask": [img]https://i.imgur.com/1elGSZM.png[/img] You can also do this by right clicking the layer and choosing "create clipping mask", though. For shading, I don't simply choose a darker color than the base color. It's completely fine to do this of course, but I recently started using multiply to make things more interesting! By changing the layer's setting to "multiply", the colors you apply will be kind of merged with the ones from the layer beneath. I don't really know how to describe it, so have pictures instead: [img]https://i.imgur.com/3V995Oo.png[/img] Ewwww. That's gross oh man. (Obviously I didn't shade with my settings on normal, I only changed the settings back to make the screenshot above.) [img]https://i.imgur.com/iAtXedt.png[/img] [img]https://i.imgur.com/uMRw7de.png[/img] Whew, that looks way better! If you want to play around with the multiply setting, make sure to use colors that are [b]lighter[/b] than the base color, otherwise you end up getting really dark and ugly shadows (unless that's what you're going for of course). It's also fun to use colors that aren't similar to the base color, i.e. I could have used a green or purple or even red color for shading. I actually did try it out a few times, but didn't like the effect it had, so I just stuck with the light blue. But definitely play around with the multiply function! It can create some visually interesting effects! Now my sketch was almost done, but I like slapping some interesting highlights in there (if you could even call what I did highlighting). Basically what I did was create a new layer, change its settings to "lumiosity" and then select a very bright color (in this case once again blue, but other colors are fine too! Experiment a bit!) I then chose a very large brush size, made sure that it was very soft and had an opacity of ~ 7%. I did the same with the eraser tool, though the opacity was at ~15% for this one. Now I just slapped some sweet, sweet bright blue on and erased parts of it away again until I was happy with the result. [img]https://i.imgur.com/CBxhxr4.jpg[/img] Left is with "highlights", right is without. The difference is kinda subtle in this case, I gotta admit that, but I really liked the effect anyway, especially on the horns. I hope this was helpful in some way :v [/color]

@Mintiani I love your art!

I think an area you could improve a bit is in lineart. Idk what program you use, but your lines seem a bit shaky and they've got this odd fuzzy quality to them (especially your second image). It might just be my eyes playing tricks on me but I THINK your brush is a bit fuzzy so your 2nd picture looks softer than your 1st where it looks like you've gone in with a hard eraser and modified the edges. I could be wrong though.
I myself don't use fuzzy or faded lines so if this is a style you want to pursue I encourage you to experiment with it, but if you wanted to use a more typical, solid style:

Practice getting smoother lines. There are plenty of exercises you can do, out there. I can see in your second example that you're using various strokes to achieve what you can do with one - for example that lock of hair on the right hand side of her, you can see some interruptions that prevent the line from flowing as nicely than if it was just one line. As well you can see the tail is shaky and irregular in the outline. This is something you can go in and fix with an eraser, but practice achieving those same lines with only one stroke. You may need to zoom out or adjust your tablet sensitivity or go into the settings on the program you use.

Line weight. I don't know if the program/tablet you use has pressure sensitivity - if it doesn't it's a harder thing to achieve but it can still be done by going in with an eraser or drawing out the thicker lines and filling them in. I think a balance between your images is ideal. Your 2nd drawing could benefit from some thicker lines to emphasize weight and cartoony roundness of some parts (the hair, the face, etc. You're on the right track with the eyelashes.) The first one has a good variation but I'd say it's gone too far thinly in some places, and looks like a photocopy or a scan has blown them out. Also, the thickness is very inconsistent and bumpy so try smoothing them out and making curves and bumps in the line thickness more gradual. It could be that you're zooming too far in so if you don't, practice working more zoomed out and only zoom in close when you're fixing a small detail. Then go out again.

Here's a video of a random person drawing that might be helpful (Lineart starts around 5 minutes in)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0KKCSI0A2o
They don't draw everything in long single lines like I said, but they're sculpting up and erasing their lines to make it LOOK like it.

I hope this was helpful and please let me know if I said anything in a confusing way because I suck at teaching lol

@Mintiani yeah sure!