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At 2/1/15 01:14 PM, Cairos wrote: There's so much dope in here someone could die from overdose.

Oh me, oh my.

One of three Valentine's Day cards I made for a student government event that my friends and I are hosting at school because I apparently have way too much time on my hands this semester. I guess I should maybe do my homework or something.

At 12/27/14 12:46 PM, CypressDahlia wrote: The proportions on that minotaur are bangin

Thanks, frand.

I really like this one, it's easy imagining scenarios to what happening to him. ( I'm imagining alien abduction :3)

Oh, thank you. I wish I was that creative. Haha, I was just tired of drawing people experiencing gravity.

But then I did... because it has been a long while since I've done so.

Oh, I haven't posted since October. How did that happen?

About a month ago I bought a new sketchbook and have been doing a pretty decent job of filling it up, but the binding on it always makes everything scan terribly. I can never get a nice, flat scan, so I've been feeling pretty "eh" about posting up things that I haven't been able to clean up. Oh well. I miss the forums, so I'll just have to get over it.

At 10/28/14 02:17 PM, RationLlama wrote: So something like this?

Hello! Just jumping into the conversation.

First, way to go on making an effort to improve! It's always nice to see someone come into the forum so eager to learn.

As far as your drawing goes, I would try focusing solely on the body for now. Clothing and drapery is a beast of its own, and if your focusing on anatomy along with that big trench coat, it might be a little more challenging to pick up. Once you draw a figure that you're really happy with, drape the clothes around it, and I think you'll have a much easier time of it.

Posting up a silly jeep. We're working with vehicles in one of my classes, and this was the result of a little exercise.

Minotaur design. Looking at the thumbnail while posting, I can see that he's off balance a bit. I'll probably fix that up after class today.

Sketchity sketch that I colored and put in the art portal (which I'm trying really hard to use more).

Colored Image!

At 10/5/14 05:39 PM, Havegum wrote: Your characters are so full of life and expression, I love it! Have you got any tips for practicing drawing more dynamic expressions?

Thanks! And I think the best tip I could give is to study life. Use your own face! Any facial expression that you could do, your character should be able to do too. When drawing cartoons though, you should pay attention to how things squash and stretch. It's an important technique that teaches you how to exaggerate while still keeping your character looking like the same character now matter what face they are making. Preston Blair has some pretty helpful stuff about this if you look up his animation book. I think you could find a pdf online.

You might've answered this already but what school are you attending, and how is it like?
Did you consider any other schools when applying?

I'm attending school at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit! And I adore it. It's more famous for its design programs (product design, graphic design, and especially transportation design), but all of the programs that the school offers are excellent. I love studying animation in the Entertainment Arts department. It has been extremely easy to build relationships with the faculty members and get them invested in my career, and I feel like I've gotten a surplus of great advice over my last two years here.

And yeah. I considered other schools: CalArts, RISD, SCAD and some other ones. I ended up picking CCS though because of how much help I got from their admissions team and from the chairman of the Entertainment Arts department at the time. They really helped me build my portfolio to cater to what the school was looking for and I got an amazing scholarship opportunity as a result. It's a smaller school than the ones previously mentioned, but it ended up being exactly what I was looking for.

And randomly throwing in some character design homework because it kind of applies.

At 10/5/14 01:02 AM, 123mine123 wrote: Whoa nice layouts!
Ugh, really need to work on mine.

Thanks! I don't do environments nearly enough, so this little 3 layer exercise was really helpful. Definitely try it if you don't feel too confident about doing backgrounds or working with perspective.

And more featuring windmills

Bleh. Not much from me lately. I've been really busy with school and have quite a bit to show, but I haven't really had the opportunity to upload the stuff I'm working on. I just finished up with some random layout exercises though, so here's a few of those.

Walang problema, Fifty! You're definitely one of my favorite artists on here. I'm always happy to see you post, and I really admire your willingness to help others improve on the forums as well. I've seen that you're someone who's really eager to learn, so I know no bit of advice will be wasted.

In regard to your action poses, I think the biggest thing to grasp is how to properly draw gestures. When a lot of people do practice gestures from references, they approach it like they need to have a finished product by the end of the minute (or however long you give yourself), but the first point of doing gesture drawings is to have your figure feel right, which means having them balanced and weighted properly. Start every drawing with an action line, and go on to add the chest and hips then legs. The arms and head could actually be removed entirely from the gesture. If you want a strong action pose, you need to be able to tell what the body is supposed to be doing without the arms and head doing all of the work.

Try doing some ten second gestures. We did this all the time in my figure illustration class, and personally, it was the most effective (and most fun) way for me to study bodies. Its just enough time to put down the essentials and make sure your pose feels right.

Figure Drawing: Design and Invention is a book that I found to be very useful when studying figures. I actually didn't find it until last year, but it's been an invaluable resource for me ever since. The pdf I linked to seems like an older version than the one that I have, but a lot of the information seems pretty much the same. I think it'll be really useful for you in breaking down the figure. :)

Your rendering skills and use of color are really something special. Your style of painting is so unique to you, which is such a difficult thing to achieve! You've come such a long way in a short amount of time.

I have to wonder though if you use any kind of under drawings for your paintings. You seem to have some trouble keeping your proportions right, short arms or long torsos being the big issues I noticed. Also, some of your poses, such as your last action painting with the two guys attacking each other, have unnatural or stiff bodies. Do you use action lines and draw out the basic gestures before painting, or do you just go right into it?

Same girl as the last image. I've been reading Grimm's fairy tales lately, and this girl from Seven Ravens made such a strong impression on me. I guess I'm just being stupid, but I really love that this girl thought to bring a chair on her journey. Then she could always have a place to sit no matter where she is!

I'm pretty sure I've raved about and advertised these here before, but I really can't get enough of Kyle Webster's watercolor brushes for Photoshop. Watercolors were always my favorite thing to use for coloring before I started getting into digital art, and these emulate them perfectly! They make my incomplete style of drawing look complete, and that's kind of miraculous to me. I'd like to try them out on a piece with more saturated colors in the future, but for now there's this.

At 7/23/14 08:31 AM, bigjonny13 wrote:

At 7/22/14 05:40 PM, monsterparty wrote: It's been a long time. :)

Ain't no party like a monserparty

So if you want to help a sister get back on the right path, drop me a comment or image or whatever of something or someone you'd like to see me draw, and I will be very grateful!

How about a dinosaur with monocle and top hat?

Mmmm. Dapper.
Also after adding the one layer of color to this drawing, I felt guilty about not doing it for the other, so here is a layer of color for the skateboard girl.

At 7/22/14 05:46 PM, Luwano wrote: Welcome back! Great to see your thread back on top.

Looking good. Inspired by your sketch, I'd like to request a female skateboarder doing some sort of trick in mid-air. Thanks in advance. :D

Thanks! I was really happy to see a request come up so fast! I hope I didn't disappoint.

It's been a long time. :)

I feel like animation has kind of ruined me for illustration. I've gotten so comfortable with having to draw hundreds of gestures at a time that I don't really have the patience to finish a drawing anymore. That's not something I feel too good about, so in hopes of changing my attitude through obligation, I'd like to take a handful of requests to get me going again. How much is a handful? Is that five? Five. I'll take five requests.

So if you want to help a sister get back on the right path, drop me a comment or image or whatever of something or someone you'd like to see me draw, and I will be very grateful! And if you would do me a solid on top of the other solid and keep the requests clean for me, that would make me the happiest of campers. Note: The finished drawing may or may not be colored. All I can promise for now are finished lines.

I guess also... here's the only decent sketch I did this summer! YAY.

Another sketchbook doodle

Thanks everyone. :)
About the pedestal robot on the pedestal... I totally get what you're saying. Haha, it was honestly intentional though. I was totally amused by everything being rectangles because I'm an idiot, but I think you're completely right. I think fixing up the edges like you suggested though would make a huge difference.

And Zane, I also agree with you. I initially intended to put a person there, but I was unsure of how it was going to look. With my layout drawing prior to this, there were already so many perspective lines on the page that I couldn't help but think it would be too overwhelming. Now that it's all clean though, the empty spot displeases me.

But yes, thanks for the critique everyone! I really appreciate it, and those are all things I'd like to try with the piece when I take it into Photoshop.

In the meantime, I drew a picture of myself as a magical girl to celebrate the last day of school for the summer!

beep bop boop

The new thing and a slightly larger picture of it.

The background is kind of empty, but I was running out of time for working on this project. I worked on drawing more attention to the foreground to distract from that. Now I'm telling you it's a thing though, so it doesn't really matter.

At 3/27/14 12:04 PM, ThePsychoSheep wrote: Haven't checked this thread in a while.Really love the neat character designs combined with this really elegant and soft but detailed style of yours :D.Keep it up!

Thanks! That's really cool to hear from you, man. Your work never fails to impress me.

I'm trying out a different style with this next project. Hopefully everything turns out okay because this is going to be a really busy one.

At 3/27/14 08:13 AM, Nacco wrote: Awesome stuff as always! Is it some kind of apocalyptic scenario? I see zombies or something similar attacking that house.

Thanks! And yes? I'm honestly not a hundred percent sure what scenario is taking place. I didn't really have a plan as I was drawing this. I had some characters that I wanted to use in an image, and everything else kind of just happened around them. But my friends who have looked at it say either zombies or gun smugglers, so it's gotta be in that line of thought somewhere.

At 3/27/14 09:47 AM, ZaneZansorrow wrote: With all that tall trees and leaves, I can imagine shadows cast by those leaves.

This is just the line drawing for now, but I definitely want to color and shade this eventually. There's a lot that I want to do with it. I don't have a whole lot of time on my hands though, so that's something that has to wait for once I get out of school for the semester.

Stuff. I'd like to get a more detailed shot of some of the stuff in here, but the lighting is just too bad at the moment. I'll have to wait til the morning to get some good natural light.

Bleh. Environment stuff.

More portraits, but these or from picture references. I actually would really like to color these at some point, but there's not really any time for it at the moment.

Some portraits of friends at a gesture drawing party.

At 3/16/14 11:14 AM, Flowers10 wrote: Exercise how to plot curves in draw through.
This gave me an headache, especially if you have to do 8 of these... could use ruler for this one tho!

Ah, I feel for you! I'm currently taking a perspective class, and all of the grid drawing is killing me. I've dedicated more time to that than any other of my classes. But keep up the great work! It looks like you've been learning a lot already.

At 3/11/14 09:47 PM, ImChase wrote: You are seriously one of my favorite artist! I love your style and your line work is just amazing. Keep up the good work! c:

Thank you so much!
Dropping off a WIP that I've hardly scratched the surface of. I'm working more with the watercolor brushes that I absolutely adore.