Angelic-Garbage - Art Journey

[angelic-garbage]

I am a highly introverted individual and by learning art I hope to become more observant and in-touch with the physical world.

Goals:
- create realistic landscapes
- design beautiful characters
- create above pieces with a dash of horror
- improve self-confidence
- create my own art for my game development projects

I look forward to improving my skills and interacting with the community!

[angelic-garbage]

I'll put these as my starting baseline for improvement:

Character (Jinx' Art Day)

Landscape

Something vaguely horror (Thoughts of Spiders)

[mitsuki-youko]

welcome to the forums!

[daceronine]

Welcome to the forums! Those seem like very achievable goals, bests of luck with your art journey!

[patrycja.lerch]

Welcome to the forums!

[angelic-garbage]

Daily Practice (Day 2)
Stylus w. PC. My pen control is extremely poor. Compared to pencil and paper it feels like suddenly being transported to the moon where physics rules just aren't the same.
I did have a breakthrough after increasing the stylus' firmness, and now it feels much more responsive instead of a 0 - 100 effect instantly.

Though my traditional drawings look better (currently), I'm just going to document my digital journey here and not be tempted to share the traditional things. Hopefully my digital dexterity will catch up soon.

[angelic-garbage]

I continue to work every day. Here's my latest progress:

1 min gestures

Pen control:

I had a lot of trouble with this study.

[mitsuki-youko]

ooh lookin good!

[angelic-garbage]

STATUS REPORT!
Have been faithfully doing exercises every day. Digital lines are randomly messier today but my theory is that its because I'm loosening up on the digital medium so I think its a good thing as long as I can continue to improve on overall accuracy.

Completed my first Lineart Study. Learned some things including:
- Resolution of the ref is important. Mine was a bit too pixelated and it was difficult to see the line properly.
- Finding the 'perfect' brush to simulate the ref lines is prob impossible or at least a waste of time, but I should try out a variety of the strokes first cuz I wasn't happy with how it looked compared to the ref. Also, I took a break for a few days and completely forgot which brush I used.
- Lightly sketching out more bigger parts and then doing finer line details on top would have improved my proportions and accuracy probably. (like her poor broken arm )

Other Exercise Notes:
- Horizontal lines are hard.
- Drawing an acceptable sphere/ellipse out of the blue is easier, but tracing accurately over cylinders is hard. Being able to draw a curve or circle where I actually want will be important, so I should continue this exercise.
- My boxes need work. I need to start Perspective I methinks and maybe use a reference for a bit.
- Blending is getting easier but its still an unpleasant experience I am uncertain about.
- Gestures are super hit or miss. Tho I enjoy it, they still aren't "clicking". I try to sort of "study" how other artists do them because I find it fascinating to see it happen in real time. My favorites are done by Michael Hampton.

The proportions exercise is actually quite fun. I was really dreading starting it but I did it once on paper and suddenly I feel I can add it to my daily work.

Feel free to point out any issues you notice.

-AG

[daceronine]

Overall it all looks like good work! I wouldn't worry too much about brushes, a good part of the copy exercices is not necessarily to accurately render the original, but rather to understand how it's constructed to eventually apply this to our own works. Any brush you use should be fine as long as there is a conscious effort to understand the mind behind the reference.

[Runi_Kazoonie]

I wanted to give a late welcome to the forums xD
but I also was really struggling with boxes, so much so that I looked into some "drawabox" exercises. I started getting it more after that, plus it helped to practice even if some of my boxes were major fails.

Something I'd recommend is to have patience with yourself when you don't get it automatically.

I was also struggling with my gestures; I kept drawing them too long or just not correctly.
For finding the line of movement, it helped me to pull up the reference picture, walk away from my monitor and squint. That made my vision blurry and I could see the reference as more of a silhouette, usually being able to see the line of motion in all limbs easier.

As for length and positioning, I pull up the ref again and study where things hit. for example, if the head lines up with the foot or a hand.
also keep in mind 90% of the time, the torso + head length is usually the length of the legs if the person is standing up.

I wish you luck and fun on this art journey :3

[angelic-garbage]

aha oof and here's a really late reply not keeping up with the forums so well aha. Thanks so much for the comments guys! The drawabox exercises looks like a great recommendation, and your other tips should also prove helpful, ty so much!

[angelic-garbage]

A humble amount of practice this week. Only did daily's about half the time, but quite a bit of doodling. I don't think I'll share the simple pen practices anymore. They're just for me and I feel comfortable with doing them now as needed. I wanted to dive more into values and blending as that has been a major painpoint for me. I also did some portraits.

I think the final egg is much much better than the first egg. 😂 I got lost pretty quickly with the value portrait and wasn't sure what to do next or identify my weaknesses with what I did.

Ideas for next week
- gotta refresh my gestures. I only did 3 or so days of gesture and they've regressed.
pick a char for the Char Study group thats starting in October (on discord) and gather refs.
- I can definitely see improvement in my blending or whatever that is so I'd like to try and do some actual studies of simple objects in lighting.
- do some daily primitives mebbe. Kinda messed up on schedule curriculum-wise cause technically I'm still in term 1 week 3 since I haven't finished assignments but I plan to start perspective in October.

[mitsuki-youko]

awe yea these look good!

i rly like that last egg, it looks so smooth and aesthetic!

could use some more shine but still looks great!

[Kaz_0]

Good job with the studies! I see you even challenged yourself with no erase or undo. The value portrait is great. You mapped out the light and shadow parts well. If you want a next step to it Marco Bucci made a nice video on shading. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQ5QF0q4QqQ
In it, he does study like this as well and then takes it further adding halftones etc.

[angelic-garbage]

Thank you! AHHH this video is exactly what I needed, I super appreciate you sharing!