~ I can draw with paper and a pencil better than on the computer.
~ I only use Microsoft Paint for digital art since Gimp or anything like that is way too hard for me to use.
~ I mostly like drawing pokemon, but I also draw dragons and sonic the hedgehog.
~ I CANNOT draw people, no matter how hard I try....
~ I sometimes draw things with blood and gore (yep, I'm a messed up 12 year old...) like this for example: http://crystalthehedgewolf.deviantart.com/#/d3gb5td
~ I sometimes use my art for avys here on Pokebeach (I'm using one now...)
~ I get good ideas when I'm bored out of my mind....
(you don't even need to read the whole thing, just the parts on adjusting brush settings and blend modes)
RayquazaMaster said:
Well...
-I'm way better with a sharp pencil and paper than with a computer drawing program. I mostly am just able to combine pictures or crop them on a computer..
Based on personal experience the only difference I find is that you're not looking at the drawing surface in the case of the computer, so you need to train hand-eye coordination with the stylus and screen...
Of course the other difference is that there is no lag in real life. I've lost count of how many times photoshop's smudge brush lags, which is incredible considering mine's running on a core i7 740QM with a mobility radeon 5870. I'm either overestimating my hardware or underestimating photoshop's resource demands (I'm just glad I have surplus RAM because it eats tons of RAM, even more than Firefox 4)
You know, it's normally the opposite with most people. The best artists I know online are pretty much at least half a decade younger than me. When people say it takes half a decade to train art, they're not kidding! Nor are they exaggerating btw. Art requires just about as much training as any other thing out there you can imagine needing to train at (like sports).
But yeah it's not age that matters, the experience and knowledge is what counts.
I guess I still need about 3 years before I can say I've been doing art for half a decade...
A funneh from today: PokeFanJosh commented on a pic I made on DA. I had almost forgotten who PokeFanJosh was. Every time a pokebeach person pings me on DA it takes a while for me to recall that they're pokebeach. I live my life over here separate from DA so it's a bit funny when guys from 1 realm cross over to another realm... did that sound weird?
Yeah, I've been doing art for about 13 years (since I could hold a pencil). I mean I have a good understanding of anatomy and foreshortening, you wouldn't be able to tell from looking at my dA, but I'm pretty good with figure studies, it's just I want my cartoony things to look a lot better than they do.
-I started drawing at the age of 2 (12 years), when my dad gave me a drawing book for my birthday. Surprisingly enough, I still have that book. It's filled with scribbles that vaguely resemble flowers.
-Started seriously drawing at age 9. (Five years)
-Started digital art at 11 (3 years) Loved it.
-Got tablet on X-Mas 2010. That was my gateway really. It was the difference that shot me forward.
-About every month, I look back at my works, think they suck, then gain a huge improvement by studying proffesional artists. (Mine Yoshizaki)
-I can only memes with great motivation. Seriously. Most of the time I just fill out like one question, then give up.
-I've recently gotten into watercolors and I love them. I use them for more professional pieces. Unfortunately, I can't scan them because they're too big for the scanner.
-Art stops me watching tv, doing homework, and plenty of other things.
-I take compliments on art very strangely. Example
Girl: "OMG THAT DRAWING IS SO AMAZING! YOU'RE SO TALENTED!"
Me: "Oh, it's nothing really..." Darn straight it's amazing...
Seriously. It's like I act modest, but in the inside, I'm vain.
-I watch people only to look at thier art and try find ways to improve thier works. My logic is that if I can find improvement room in even the best works, then improving my own work should be no problem. But...I'm not really sure if it works or not.
My foreshortening stinks. It's a recurrent problem when drawing stuff at low angle perspectives for me. It's tough even finding tutorials for that sort of stuff online, even if you google foreshortening you just get strangely lots of drawings of people lying down (most tutorials I found tend to deal with anatomy more). For such drawings I need a ton of guidelines all over to try and visualise perspective.
Some stupid stuff from yesterday, I was doing a comic and scoured the internets looking for a comic font that could possibly replace the one I use now (lafayette comic pro) because that font's upper and lower case letters are all uppercase-styled... and after 1 hour and half a dozen fonts I decided lafayette still looked the best >_>
Also I think I'm too accustomed to internet speak. In aforementioned comic I typed "lol" instead of "haha" into a speech bubble ORZ
I wanna get Photoshop CS5 just to see if it lags any less than CS4. But that sounds stupid.
I used to find it incredible that people would need so many layers to do their art. I understand why now though:
Let's see, this was a really interesting thread, and it allowed me to actually think about my artistic abilities so why not post.
-When I first started drawing, which was about pre-kinder, I have to admit that I really hated it, so I wouldn't draw often, I just did it out of boredom. However I was recognized by teachers for my talent and they allowed me to assist in designing the school mural in 5th grade.
-In middle school, I started to appreciate art more, but I still failed my art class in 6th grade because I couldn't learn the way our teacher taught us; so I discovered that I am more of a self-taught artist
-I can draw a variety of things, but I prefer to draw Pokemon in different styles. But my favorite none Pokemon thing to draw are foxes, realistic waves or clouds.
-Sadly, I don't use my full potential to draw, usually I just doodle or never finish a piece I happened to draw at the time, so I can say that I've never actually finished a drawing.
-As much as I love digital art, I prefer traditional.
-I never take my time on art programs.I rush through the drawing to get it finished, which is why "I" think my drawings on GIMP are crappy.
-Whenever I draw online/on the computer, I'm extremely impatient because I get tired of sitting in the same spot, so by the time I start coloring I already stop caring and I color it like crap and etc.
-whenever people ask me how I drew something GIMP, I tell them I don't know, I just played with the tools....because I really don't know. I just use what looks cool at the time. ^^;
-I CANNOT draw with a normal pencil, if I don't have a mechanical, I ain't drawin. u.u
-I extremely dislike drawing for people, I usually only do it if it's for a friend, out of gratitude, or for art trades.
-Every assignment I turn into a teacher has a drawing on it, if it has more than one object, for some odd reason I'm the only one that doesn't get that assignment back....-.- It's a bad habit, but I do it anyways.
-My weak point is shading, I cannot shade to save my life. If we were going to die and my shading was the key to saving the world....we would all die.
-I feel that everything on my DA is a disgrace and it makes me feel like I have no talent, besides the shaymin that I drew. But then again...most of it is digital art.
-I wish I wasn't so lazy when it came to art, because I would love to get every design down that I have come up with for my T-shirt business. I hope to get over this this summer.
-Over the last 3 years I've been getting back into art majorly, which was influenced majorly by my inspiration heartgold.deviantart.com
-Shannon draws for fun.
Hmmm, I guess that's it for now, gosh now I feel like drawing haha. xD
...Well ok not really... only in cases where they're being annoying about it. I'd say stuff like using extremely specific but meaningless brush settings that produce no special results, and so on
I suck at making clean lines because I dont have good pressure consistency, so some parts of a line may be more opaque than others (and restroking may affect hardness consistency so...)
- My brother, who also drew, taught me how to draw.
- fifty percent of all my art is done directly on paper.
- The other half is done digitally.
- However, I will do full works completely traditionally.
- Up until about three years ago, all I did was fanart.
- Since then, I have done some here and there. But the majority of what I do is draw my original characters for my manga.
I use digital art programs. See spoiler below:
- I mostly use SAI to do my digital works.
- Though sometimes I use Photoshop.
- I hate GIMP with a passion. Its way too laggy for me.
- I've tried other various art programs as well. Such as Paint.Net, and... well I forgot the name to the other one. But it was a Japanese art program.
- I have a Wacom tablet
- I can not draw on my computer with my tablet. Only if I have a scanned picture underneath a layer; then I can then ink my art. But I can do basic things when it comes to doing things from scratch on the computer.
- I mainly use the pen tool, brush, pencil, and paint bucket for my art.
- I am always trying to improve my style.
- I constantly study other artist, and their work.
- I have a DeviantART account.
Uh, this is all I really can think of. Sorry for the lack of information.
- I can not draw on my computer with my tablet. Only if I have a scanned picture underneath a layer; then I can then ink my art. But I can do basic things when it comes to doing things from scratch on the computer.
Most guys only ink when they have a trace layer ready anyway, be it a physical scanned sketch, or one digitally sketched on the computer. For the first month after I went digital, it was the former, then I switched to the latter when I was familiarised enough with tablet use.
What do you guys think about bases? FYI the category in deviantart that actually caters to this is customization > digital dolls > (all subcategores inside)
I fully agree with the topic starter. It corrupts the spirit of illustration, and is blatant plagiarism if the base was traced from someone else's original art. And using someone else's base to do "art" to me, means laziness or lack of skill to draw. Or probably both.
IMO the fact that DA even condones it by making a category for it is really repulsive to me. Then again, DA's standards have always not been very high (read: they pretty much stink there).
...I mean some people try to condone it by saying imitation is the best form of flattery. I wonder if counterfeiters ever consider themselves to be respectively paying complements to original material through flattery.
EDIT: To clarify, I have nothing against design-related bases like TCG blanks, because such bases are templates that exist for a valid reason.
that's not the problem, the problem is when people use them as a "shortcut" to avoid having to put in the effort to do manual illustration when manual illustration is called for, and it gets worse if it's a ripoff from someone else's art.
Typically I tend to only approve of shortcuts that are technical in nature, for example using bucket tool instead of manually painting. Stuff like say... using a bright-to-dark gradient filter in lieu of proper shading... that stuff me no likey (sorry darklucario, I needed an example to highlight my point)
Art advice from one of the girls on my DA watch list. It's basically 4 short paras telling you that practice makes perfect, but it's good advice, because people tend to forget about practice and need reminding (try asking Xous for art advice, he'll only say "practice")
I should practice something. I tend to be rather lazy in practising shading/highlights cos those are the final stages of a CG and it means I need to draw and colour something to practice light diffusion
that's not the problem, the problem is when people use them as a "shortcut" to avoid having to put in the effort to do manual illustration when manual illustration is called for, and it gets worse if it's a ripoff from someone else's art.
...
Art advice from one of the girls on my DA watch list. It's basically 4 short paras telling you that practice makes perfect, but it's good advice, because people tend to forget about practice and need reminding (try asking Xous for art advice, he'll only say "practice")
Well, I figured that point was already made obvious...so why repeat it?
Also...crayon-chewer is a girl? I so thought she was a dude...
Anyways, yes, practice and references from the proffessionals tends to work from me. About once a month I take another look at Mine Yoshizaki's anatomy style...and BAM! I'm back in business with better style.
OFFPOINT:
Who knew simply changing the size of the brush would allow me to create better works like this?
I dont see the difference compared to your usual art tbh...
Typically brush size for lineart is dependent on object resolution or image resolution, usually the latter for the sake of simplicity. I use a 2px size for resolutions between 1000 and 2000 (I operate in the lower 1000s for resolution)
Random art facts about me (in no particular order):
- I used to draw and paint things randomly (not very good things), but I didn't decide to pursue art until 1999, when I first watched Pokemon the First Movie. This being my inspiration, Pokemon and anime has nearly taken over my art style.
- I often draw things one day, thinking they look great, but when I look at it the next day, I hate them.
- I want to become either an art/graphics teacher (I'm often helping people in my Graphic Art classes in place of my teacher, mostly telling/showing how to use the programs and giving them my opinions) or a concept artist for cartoons, movies and/or video games. However, I don't think I have quite enough skill for the latter. I don't really want to be the person doing the finalized artwork that everyone sees (I don't think I'm that good). I like coming up with character and story ideas, but I have trouble "filling in the gaps".
- Though I'm nearly certain neither will happen, my dreams include, A. Designing an official Pokemon and, B. Illustrating an official Pokemon TCG card.
- I do not have/use a tablet. I tried my sister's out before, but I didn't like the "feel" of it. I much prefer the feel of pencil drawing on paper.
- I have a really bad habit of avoiding things I have trouble drawing, such as females, clothes, hands, and feet.
- It's not that I think GIMP is better than Photoshop, but I have a hard time using Photoshop compared to GIMP. I've taken a Photoshop class, but I guess I prefer GIMP because I learned to use it on my own.
- I used to pencil shade nearly all of my drawings, but I stopped when I started coloring my works digitally.
- When I'm digitizing my artwork, though I know it would be easier to do it all in a vector program, I "trace" my traditional drawings in MS Paint using the line and curve line tools, extract the leftover sketch lines via GIMP, copy it back to Paint, use the bucket fill to color in solid cells, then use the line and curve line tools again to draw cell shading divisions, filling those as well, them import the "pixel art" into InkScape, where I then simply use the "Trace Bitmap" option to smooth my lines.
- Sometimes I tamper around with programs that aren't typically used for art to make drawings, such as Microsoft PowerPoint and Publisher.
- Almost never do I spend over 3 hours on a drawing.
Totally do that too (but only for design, not illustration). Especially with projects involving drawing diagrams, I use powerpoint's tools like autoshapes. It's just so convenient
Last semester during a project, my friends recommended me cacoo, a japanese site used for collaborative diagramming. 20 minutes into cacoo, I quit and went back to powerpoint 07, and I was like "screw this jap crap, you want collaborative, I'll stick the powerpoint file in a dropbox folder"
A long time ago when I was young and noobish I used powerpoint's speech bubble autoshapes in my comic art (although I avoided the blasphemy of comic sans ms). Currently all my speech bubbles are hand-drawn.
What my current speech bubbles look like. I actually find that hand-drawing them makes them blend in better with lineart because they have the same line consistency as the lineart instead of having a super-clean line like what you'd get from templates.
Nekoban Ryo said:
It's not that I think GIMP is better than Photoshop, but I have a hard time using Photoshop compared to GIMP. I've taken a Photoshop class, but I guess I prefer GIMP because I learned to use it on my own.
I learned both on my own (heck I learned everything art-related on my own with no formal teaching).
But yeah Gimp definitely works better than photoshop in some areas, including...
- You just need to hold the spacebar and move the mouse/stylus to pan. In Photoshop you need to click and drag. Not having to drag the pic around makes quite a difference.
- The brush tool in gimp has guidelines when you hold-shift (to draw straight lines)
- In gimp, tool cursors can have a radius indicator and tool indicator (so you can see what tool you're using by simply looking at the cursor). In PS, it can be one or the other, but not both
- Gimp has anti-erase. In photoshop if you erase wrongly, you have to re-draw. In gimp, just hold Alt and stroke with the eraser. Gimp also lets you erase when opacity is locked. Photoshop and SAI don't allow that (which I hate)
- Gimp lets you save brush presets which include colour and opacity. Very useful for things like saving a specific brush setting for lineart. In PS, the presets are only for brush dimensions, meaning you have to manually recall the opacity and colour you wanna use
- Gimp (and SAI) preserves XY orientation and does not autocrop when you do a selection. Photoshop does not do this, and it's a huge source of annoyance for me, probably one of the top things I hate about PS.
- Transforming selections in Gimp is more convenient. In PS you still need to click a "transform selection" button, and then press the "ok" button when done.
- Gimp (and SAI) lets you undo repeatedly by holding the undo button down which is useful if you wanna undo a ton of brush strokes in a hurry. In PS you have to press the undo key over and over.
- You can remap single keys to zoom in for gimp (and SAI) (I use E and D). In photoshop it has to be Alt+[something] which is totally gay.
etc. you get the idea.
Seriously my only motivation to use photoshop is it has more blend modes and a superior brush tool (even then it's still second to SAI's brush tool)
Nekoban Ryo said:
When I'm digitizing my artwork, though I know it would be easier to do it all in a vector program, I "trace" my traditional drawings in MS Paint using the line and curve line tools, extract the leftover sketch lines via GIMP, copy it back to Paint, use the bucket fill to color in solid cells, then use the line and curve line tools again to draw cell shading divisions, filling those as well, them import the "pixel art" into InkScape, where I then simply use the "Trace Bitmap" option to smooth my lines.
You don't need paint to do that, Gimp can handle it because it has its own line and curve tools.
...
I've tried a bunch of funny things to try and see if I can reduce the brush lag on my photoshop, including a modest overclock on my GPU's shader clock by 50MHz to tweaking the amount of RAM usage, to raising the process priority in task manager. I can confirm the priority thing doesn't make a difference >_>
The more I use photoshop the more I wish I had a professional GPU, unfortunately the only laptops fielding that are mobile workstations like the Dell Precision and HP Elitebook, and they're very costly. People who use them are typically CAD/CAM workers who probably get subsidies from their companies
