Rising artist (timelapse videos included)

[Imrooniel]

Hello there! I've been struggling for long time to post around here - I was just not good enough. Now that I hope that I've risen to some kind of decent level I think that I could use honest critique.

So, my goal is to get better (duh!) at digital art (duh! x2). For now I'm doing League of Legends fanarts and there are couple of reasons for that:
1. It gives me something ready to play around with - I don't have to play around with design and then wonder whether problem lies in design or execution of painting.
2. I'm bad with colors. I mean really, I suck at them. For hell of a long time I was just drawing with pencil and eventually ink and just recently I started to dealing with watercolors and stuff... And digital add whole a lot of different problems.
3. I hate backgrounds. Although I have no idea how would it tie do LoL fanarts

Those are going in chronological order and I hope you can already see some progress. What I noticed is that I have problem during refinement stage. I'm doing my sketch, putting down basic values, and then when I zoom in to refine it just... Goes wrong. It can be clearly be seen on videos.

Anyway, without further reduce, here it does(list of videos, chronological order):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tKEW6EMaUc <--anivia
http://youtu.be/WTiYJBtWwF8 <--- Blitzcrank
http://youtu.be/WBFRCOCNI50 <-- Fiddle
http://youtu.be/0Wn2yLFIDdY <-- Corki


P.S. OMG WHY ARE ATTACHMENTS SO BIG?! D:

[TinyBird]

For now I'm doing League of Legends fanarts and there are couple of reasons for that:
1. It gives me something ready to play around with - I don't have to play around with design and then wonder whether problem lies in design or execution of painting.
2. I'm bad with colors. I mean really, I suck at them. For hell of a long time I was just drawing with pencil and eventually ink and just recently I started to dealing with watercolors and stuff... And digital add whole a lot of different problems.

Well, you could avoid those issues by drawing stuff from real life too, and it'd help more. Set up an interesting but simple still life and draw it in grayscale with pencils/graphite/charcoal/black and white acrylics/etc. Then you have a clear reference to check your mistakes and you don't have to worry about the design. And like you said you're adding more problems with digital work.

Also your attachments are that big if you didn't re-size them to be small when you saved them in your program.

[Imrooniel]

Well, you could avoid those issues by drawing stuff from real life too, and it'd help more. Set up an interesting but simple still life and draw it in grayscale with pencils/graphite/charcoal/black and white acrylics/etc. Then you have a clear reference to check your mistakes and you don't have to worry about the design. And like you said you're adding more problems with digital work.

Also your attachments are that big if you didn't re-size them to be small when you saved them in your program.

Is is that bad? I mean, that I have to go all the way back to drawing b&w still life. And about attachments I hoped that they'd be auto-resized... Oh well, lesson for future.

[Star Eater]

Is is that bad? I mean, that I have to go all the way back to drawing b&w still life.

No, its not bad. Don't see it as a setback, but
as a necessity. (Which it is) life studies is how
you flex your artistic muscle and build up your
library of references inside your head to call upon
when doing an imaginative piece. Artists in all skill
levels do studies and life drawings to keep them sharp.

If you really want to see improvement, that's the key.

[look]

Is is that bad? I mean, that I have to go all the way back to drawing b&w still life.

You'll learn the most and fastest by drawing from life.
That being said, if the fan art will keep your interest high, by all means, keep drawing them, but get some practice with life drawings too.

[Imrooniel]

Well my only experience of drawing still life is my art class in high school which is not all that great. I'm fed up with drawing boxes, balls and cylinders.

So you could say that I'm getting trauma response whenever I hear "still life". Heh.

Thank you all for input. I was not really considering still life and I was mostly focusing on trying to analyze reference pictures of various textures. If that's fastest way to advance, then well - still life, ho!

[TinyBird]

Well my only experience of drawing still life is my art class in high school which is not all that great. I'm fed up with drawing boxes, balls and cylinders.

Well, you can always spice it up a little. Like buy couple plastic animal toys, paint them white and add them among the other stuff and make an actual scene.

[Avvatar]

Your ellipses, boxes and cylinders still need a lot of work judging by these pieces. As much as it sucks I'd get a better hold on them first.