Creative Corner

Please, bare with me as you read the following wall of text. I'm... not necessarily the best at communicating my feelings and thoughts, so I apologize for any confusion.

Anyway, I'll try to make a long story short. I'm currently going to college for Illustration. I want to do something in the field of art, probably comic books or some kind of concept art. I LOVE making and drawing characters, but I especially love doing it for other people. But lately... I dunno, something has felt off with my artwork.

I get part way though something, and it just doesn't look right, but I plug on and finish it anyway, and for the first 24 hours, I think it actually turned out ok. But not very long afterwards, I'm just unhappy with my work. It's not that I think I'm a bad artist or anything, I'm just not overly proud of anything I've done lately.

Doing the actual work itself is a chore for me. I spend hours drawing and redrawing the same thing trying to get it to look passable. And it's HARD. It's not like I expect the drawings to just flow forth from my pencil like some sort of artistic prodigy, but... I don't expect it to be this hard. It physically hurts my head while I draw, because... well I don't know why. But my biggest fear is the fact that I'm not really having fun drawing anymore because I'm so caught up in improving, and I'm not making -any- progress. I feel like I'm just running in circles. I try something new, it's fun, but it doesn't make my any happier with the end product and then I get depressed.

I found a website that has a slideshow of model photographs: http://artists.pixelovely.com/practice-tools/figure-drawing/ and that's been really useful, but the thing is, I can thumbnail like a boss. But I can't do expressions worth a damn, and that makes me really upset because it's so vital to me that my art have that.

Undel is, and always has been, my main inspiration and is the sole reason I even decided to go into the art field. Her art is the quality I wish mine could be. But I can't get my lines to look the way hers do, nor my shading. And I don't say that in a "I want to obsessively be just like you in every way and steal your style." I mean that I want my lines to have the same solidity hers do. Mine look so... flat. Lifeless. My shading is awkward. I think the only thing I have a solid handle on is color and even that I'm not even confident about anymore..

I've included a link to my tumblr at the bottom of this post, mostly because it has the most relevant art on it and because I haven't updated my website in a while. If anyone could take a look at my art as a whole and, I dunno, give me a critique on my style and method, I'd really appreciate it.

and PLEASE. I beg. I don't want people to tell me I'm crazy and that my art is good. I can't go to my friends anymore because that's what they all tell me. They give me no artistic criticism at all. If anything they give me a hollow "Just practice more." with no extra tips to back it up. I'm tired of looking at my artwork and hating it, but not knowing why, and I need to reach out to other artists that might be able to help me. I'm sorry to dump all this out here, but I honestly don't know what else to do. I'm so close to wanting to just giving up but I know I can't because art is my life, and so failure is not an option.

http://kosikaillustrations.tumblr.com/post/54436081125/this-is-air-gear-character-i-decided-to-randomly

A couple things I'd like to point out on my tumblr, that might help those of you reading to help me. The first thing on there is an Air Gear OC. I'm not happy with her at all. I don't know why. But just below here is an SCP character I was commissioned to do. THAT I was proud of, still am, but even still, something just isn't right. Right above my Axolotl is a character from my Webcomic. I know there's all kinds of things wrong with that, but I just wanted to get it done so that I could say I've been doing art lately. It's those kinds of things. I don't know if that helps or hurts the ability to give advice.


Anyway, if you're reading this sentence, thanks for bearing with me. It means a lot to me that you'd at least read all the way down here. Again, I'm sorry for dumping this all onto FR, but I just didn't know where to go...

Your lines are quite similair in line weight - try varying it more if you're looking for more lively lines. Add more lines to your faces - eye brow lines, facial creases? In terms of shading you seem to stick with one layer - try multiple layers and try blending a bit more as you seem to overlay airbrush over cel-shade and it's quite noticeable. Try airbrushing only smaller sections/in different opacities? Sometimes your anatomy gets strange, so keep doing those figure sketches!

@Firewarrior Thank you, your advice on how to go about breaking down my goal is really helpful. I think I need to start drawing more, so that's what I'm going to do, starting today with your advice :) Thank you very much~

@TanuKyle any tips on how exactly to blend more? The reason I overlay is because I can&#039;t figure out how to blend my hard edges. The smudge tool looks dumb, and the blur tool looks worse. The closest thing to soft edges I&#039;ve gotten to work for me was gradient shading, but even that is starting to look bad to me :< I really appreciate your honest critique, this is just what I needed. I&#039;ve been so worried about improving that I couldn&#039;t figure out -exactly- what I needed to improve on.

The best advice that comes to mind is to train yourself on how to self-criticize. When you are working on a drawing and you get to that point where you think &#039;something about this is off&#039;... pause and take some time to look at the picture critically. Don&#039;t just struggle through and finish it if you feel something isn&#039;t working.

Knowing something is off is a good start but you can&#039;t fix a picture unless you know exactly what&#039;s gone wrong. Try and train yourself to pinpoint what needs to be changed to get the picture looking the way you originally intended. I&#039;ve found that if I&#039;ve been spending a long time on something it helps to take a half-hour break and then come back to see it with &#039;fresh&#039; eyes. You&#039;ll be surprised at the suddenly obvious mistakes. These mistakes are likely what are causing you to lose confidence in images after that 24 hours.

You also might want to try doing something you&#039;ve never done before as a challenge. Do you usually paint using multiple layers? Try only using one. If you are a purely digital artist, try something traditional. Don&#039;t like background? Do landscape paintings. Tackling a new challenge is a great way to train your critical thinking and has helped me out when I felt my work had become flat and stale. The challenge isn&#039;t about mastering a new skill or even about making a good picture, it&#039;s about exercising your brain and training it to think more critically about the creative process.

Hopefully those tips can help, I look forward to seeing more art from you in the future!

Im not going to read what the others said, not because im lazy but mainly because I want to get down what&#039;s in my head. So if I copy some of what they&#039;ve said im sorry.

First off, I know what its like not to get crit from friends. Im tired of hearing &#039;but your art is awesome&#039;. Oh bite me I want crit not platitudes.

I am a very hypocritical person and hate my art, that aside "STOP stop looking at others art and comparing yourself to them." I dont care if you stumble across a ten year old that draws like botecelli. You are at your own level, have your own style.

Youtube an artist called Sycra. He has a LOT of helpful videos.

As for your air gear picture, do different line lengths. Using unanimous formed lines makes a picture boring. Her foot is in the background you might even want to try bluring that area to show its not in focus and sharping the rest of the picture. Use thicker lines for things that our eyes are meant to focus on(IE her outline that&#039;s coming &#039;towards&#039; us) and where shadows go.

As for your coloring, try to use a shadow color that isnt a darker-grey shade of what ever you are shading. Black/white are not useful colors for drawing no matter what anyone says or you think. Since she&#039;s primarily wearing shades of green and blue you want to make her POP. So pick a complimentary color or in this case Tertiary. In this picture you&#039;d want oranges or if that&#039;s to &#039;harsh&#039; at first, try purple.

DO NOT use the blur or smudge tool to color(the latter has its uses though for certain painting styles not more poster styles like your art c:). It screws up your pixels.

Depending if you use photoshop or sai or corel or what ever, it doesnt matter. Lower the opacity of what ever brush you&#039;re using to color, set it to pen pressure and eye drop eye drop eye drop. It will take awhile do not get discouraged.

I could keep going but ill shut up since im probably not helping

@Terabetha: I try to do that, but I can never figure out what that thing is. I&#039;m not disagreeing with you though, because you are very right. I need to stop if something isn&#039;t working and figure out why, and definitely take breaks! your other suggestions about doing something new as a challenge is sound advice and I appreciate your advice. They are helpful, so thank you! :)

@Adjidaumo: Thank you for posting this. I had a good cry over it, and now I feel refreshed and ready to start trying to bridge that gap. I wish you luck with your major and all :) Feel free to message me, since you said you had more to say. I&#039;m always open to talking with people about art (or anything in general really).

@Somaticsilence: I can understand that thinking xD But no, your post was really helpful, especially the suggestion of checking out Sycra. From what I looked at so far, his videos were really informative. I&#039;ve seen a few times in these suggestions that I should vary line weight, so I&#039;m definitely going to be more conscious of that. I try not to use such grey tones for shadow, but I see what you mean, and I&#039;ll definitely try changing that up too! About the smudge and blur tools, I hate them. I&#039;ve tried to make them work a few times, but I&#039;ve never finished a drawing that used them because I really hate them. XD And don&#039;t worry, you were really helpful :) Thank you for the honest critique~

@Nim: Thank you at least for trying to help. You didn&#039;t really have any specific advice, but your words of encouragement and advice to not give up and try to take more breaks was really uplifting and I really appreciate it~ Your art is fantastic too, when I saw your signature banner I immediately went to your deviantART and ogled over your gallery for a bit lol.




Again, thank you to everyone for their encouragement and critiques. This was… well it was really refreshing to get some actual critique for a change. I&#039;m going to be spending a lot more time practicing and improving :) I can&#039;t thank you all enough~ I feel a lot better now ^__^