Vices Sketchbook

[vices]

I'll be honest, I'm a 26 year old guy coming from a completely non-art background and want to develop a fusion art style of manga and digital painting. Wish me luck!

Edit: Since these first posts are now the sketchbook introductions I've updated it with current ambitions~

[vices]

refs on all of these- just going to do a hundred of these cute girl poses until they're awesome

[vices]

the manage attachments feature is cool once you get used to it

Used a ref

[vices]

refs until otherwise stated

[Cyberman]

are these pencils, or is this photoshop, There a little hard to see right now, if you have
photoshop a good thing to do is to adjust levels or brightness contrast to make the linework darker.

[vices]

These are photoshops- they look a lot darker on my home laptop screen than my work computer so i'll make sure to darken them up a bit in the future. Thanks for the tip

[vices]

its strange how even when people -do- everything they want to they can still feel unsatisfied

[vices]

I saw someones custom hand key board for photoshop and I couldn't understand why they threw the save button on there..

Until tonight..

[vices]

13 down

[vices]

Am I reading user comments in an overly sensitive way or do most people give backhanded and insecure compliments?


Edit** I just hadn't read enough comments at this point ^^ I'm happy to say most people give awesome comments on peoples works!

[jellyswirl]

Well I think people really try to give a good critique to help out the person. It may sound harsh but no one should take it personally and should only gain and learn from it. But I haven't been reading comments lately and once in a while there is just a troll =p.

But great job practicing since you can always get better and better. I really like how you draw the eyes but in some of them I would watch the portions in the body.

[Justas]

Observe nature more, and draw some easier objects aswell, most of your girls seem like made from rubber, too elastic obstacles

[vices]

jellyswirl: Ideally everyone would do that Thanks about the eyes.. I really like eyes~ I'm glad you mentioned the proportion thing as it's really hard to keep track of sometimes when the picture is larger. (I haven't been using dual windows in photoshop lately)

There was one instance where the girls hand was spread out next to her face and it was really aggravating because in the photo it looked quite big, but in my sketch it looks -too- big.. I think the problem was that because of the way the white light blended at the outline of the hand i wasn't able to tell where to put the line in my sketch.

In other instances i'm just a bad artist

Justas: Interesting.. can you give me an example of something that looks plastic or rubbery?

[vices]

I was afraid of doing this photo because it was complicated- I thought about trying to do something easier.. but there's no time like the present to do what you can't do..

[DairyProduct]

Asian girls (and just Asians in general) rock out loud. :'D

Not a bad start at all, even though some parts still look too stiff/unnatural it's nothing that lots of practice can't fix.

What I notice about your works is that all of them are done with an extremely small brush. Try loosening up a little bit and step out of your comfort zone with a wider range of sizes, it's much better to use tools that allow you to grow instead of stuck with a tiny static brush. Photoshop's like a swiss army knife with about ten billion options anyway, so a day or two messing around with different sizes/effects should fix that up.

You might also be interested doing some quick anatomy studies (from live models or good internet images) and facial structure drills. They'll add to your fundamental understanding of exactly which body part you're drawing, so you'll know what you're doing instead of copying whatever you see in a photograph.

Definitely keep going, can't wait to see more future works from you.

[vices]

Wow thanks Lilly.. it's a strange new feeling to be encouraged by someone who's work I have really admired

Is there a personal bias in that Asian girls remark?

You know it was funny, I was thinking about that brush size thing earlier today. I usually use a 2000x4000 canvas and never go wider than a 4px brush. 4px for everything except the eyelashes.. I thought I would 'mix it up' and try using a 3px brush for the last girl lol ^^

But wow, i'm trying out other sizes and an 8x brush doesn't feel like what I expected at all! It's still nice and thin when I press lightly but has nice 'weight' to it as well

What do you mean exactly by facial structure 'drills' ? Doing only certain parts of the face repeatedly?



This image was one I did for paint practice recently. I traced the outline on another layer to get the proportions exact and then used the image as a reference. I was going for photo-realistic but gave up :/

[vices]

I feel like noses need shading so that's good, i'm hoping that i'll slowly feel like everything needs shading and depth, and do it

[vices]

this whole different sized brush thing feels strange but good- like it will lead somewhere new

[vices]

19 down 81 to go..? Am I really going to keep at this for another 81 days?

[vices]

I guess from 20-30 i'll start doing some shading

[EBrown]

I like this exercise you're doing but maybe you want to try straying away from asian females and play around with different body types? Certainly keep up the 100 days of sketching but wander a bit otherwise you'll lodge yourself into the comfort zone and train yourself to only draw a particular thing.

I think someone mentioned it earlier but exercises of isolating a particular body part can help immensely in developing a more complete understanding. Once you understand how the part works, drawing it can be much less taxing.

Keep it up. It's always fun to see the progression of an artist!

[vices]

Thanks for your encouragement EBrown

I'm actually trying really hard to create a comfort zone, and since I like girls I'd like to be able to draw them really well, if nothing else.

[vices]

I don't understand why I don't think noses look good..

I've always thought those noses in the style of Bevis and Buthead were ugly as hell. Anything other than a hint of a nostril doesn't look good to me unless it's painted. I don't know if it's a psychological effect of expectations about what female faces should look like or what..

The result is that these anime style noses seem to be the most I can manage and it's a little disappointing.

[vices]

I want to do something with color but painting takes SOOO much time..

[vices]

i'm going to give these girls hips even if they don't have them

maybe boobs later too..

I was disappointed with how long these are taking- even though i'm doing the same thing every day it's taking longer and longer

I guess i'm drawing more body now but still I expected it to be going faster..



Later I'm really looking forward to doing crazy creative perspectives and poses

[vices]

1/4th of the way there.. I predict that by number 75 I will be happy with these

[vices]

started doing girls besides asians

[vices]

I like it when people post music so i'll post some too!




Like all popular songs its overplayed but the music video is interesting and "real"

[vices]

i want to start making these more creative b/c when i started to think about what i should add to her to make it more interesting..

I couldn't think of anything

[vices]

I get what people mean by the 'comfort zone'- if they mean "i dont try to make it look any better than this because this is the level that i've come to expect myself to be at.."