Oct '16

@achronic I have 2 tips that you might find helpful.
First tip (and most important) : be confident. Quickly drawn lines tend to be smoother. Imagine if you want to draw a circle. If you take it slowly it's probably going to look wrong. However if you draw it with a single quick line chances are it's going to look like a circle. If not, you'll certainly get it right after a few tries. So, whenever you want to draw something, don't hesitate and start wondering if the line you're about to draw is going to look right. Just draw it. Eventually by practising a lot you'll know exactly where and how to draw your lines so you will be really confident when doing it. I can see in my own drawings that the line quality is a lot better when i'm drawing something that i'm familiar with.

Second tip : Practise you line weight. In case you are not familiar, line weight means that the same line will be thicker or thinner in different areas. For example say you want to draw an arm. The side of the arm that is in shadow or further away from the light source can be drawn thicker than the side of the arm that faces the light or is closer to the light source. And there are more ways to use line weight. A lot of comic book artists tend to draw the shillouette of their characters with a thicker line in order to make them pop out of the background. If used right this teqnique will not only make your drawings a lot 'cleaner' and easier to read but it will also give them a lot of life.
i'd recomend studing black and white comics or watching some tutorials on this.

I'm also trying to get better at both those things so be sure to do further research if you're really interested in the topic. Nevertheless i hope this helped and thanks for the comment :smile: .

Oct '16

Hey! Thank you for the reply, it means a lot to me. This is very useful, and it is awesome of you to take your time to help! :smile:

Oct '16

woow!!!!! very cool drawings, I love your style!

Oct '16

So occasionaly i try and do studies on some of my favorite artist's work. Think it's a great way to pick up things from their style aswell as 'get in their head' and understand how they work. This Orc is a study i did on Laurel D Austin (who is my favorite artist). You can check the original sketch along with her process on her instagram. https://www.instagram.com/ldaustinart/

laurel study 2.jpg3205x2448 175 KB

Oct '16

Your sketches reminds me a lot of Joe Mad, guy who worked on Darksiders :smile:

Oct '16

Really? He's one of my favorite artists i'm happy to hear that :stuck_out_tongue:.

Oct '16

Looks cool, but maybe you should've kept the same eye and hair color and perhaps another hair style? Was not aware that this was Junkrat until I read the text!

Oct '16

I agree she doesn't look like junkrat at all. Maybe her expression should change to something more crazy aswell. Thanks for the feedback i appreciate it :smile:

Nov '16

Beautiful linework as always! Loved the "-> Chains" :wink:

Nov '16

Reply to

Firathion

Really like these two sketches! The musculature on the guy is very impressive, and the girl's expression is super cute. An i agree with @achronic your drawings do remind me of Joe Madureira

Nov '16

Quick sketches done in the subway train. The girl is supposed to be some short of badass steampunk mechanic or something. Love comic up with quick designs like this :stuck_out_tongue:

Nov '16

I really love the way you do noses! Especially the line that separates its bottom from the rest! I've struggled with them quite a bit, it is quite difficult to create their shapes without making them look wrong for some reason! I guess I need to observe them more haha :smile:

Nov '16

Check out ''Bridgeman's complete guide to drawing from life'' .It's my favorite book when it comes to figure drawing and anatomy. I learned so much from it, including how to draw noses. I just copied every single picture of the book again and again to the point that i got pretty comfortable with drawing most parts of the human body. Marc's video is also pretty helpful. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=waRIdUDvIQ4 :smile:

Nov '16

So i did this demon hunter on the subway train and i decided to redo ti digitally. Here's the results. Hope ya like :smiley:

cedricgoModerator
Nov '16

It looks awesome! :laughing:

Nov '16

Quick Drakie sketch.. Man do i love dragons.

Nov '16

Mmm, your painting style reminds me a lot of laurel d austin, an amazing blizzard artist! :smile: Really awesome

Nov '16

cries with joy She's my favorite :smile:. Her and Ryan Metcalf.

Nov '16

YESS! Ryan is awesome, but you're definintely growing something awesome yourself :smile: Keep up the great work!

Nov '16

Doing some Laurel Studies. Her painterly style looks so beautiful. And the colors are so fun and alive. Also. Dragons drools ..Unfortunately i'm not happy with my result :confused: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QuNhTLVgV2Y . Maybe it's the edge control? Not even sure but i'll keep at it :sunny:

Nov '16

Overall, it is quite bright and lacks form, as it seems flat. Edge control is possibly it, but if you refer back to your previous dragon study, you see a lot more shapes going on. I think for the kind of style that you're going for, you'll have to either invent or force certain shapes on characters. You're very keen on expressing the shapes around the eyes, wrinkles, the brows, the cheekbones, forehead and so on. And this is great, because it shows that you understand the form and that you like playing with it. Where you struggle though, is places of low detail. In the last thing you did, the dragon in the middle had more edges than the last one. Alexstrasza's jaw had a few bright planes, but those were removed in the last one. That is why it has more of a cel-shaded look, for it really lacks the values and texture/plane detail that you usually put out. Either way, the dragon in the middle definitely has more shapes, with bright oranges and dark reds, which are all killed in the last one.

This means you were probably not satisfied with the way form was presented, and you decided to simply smooth them out/remove that. I probably don't have to say this, but if you indeed were not satisfied, then it means you lacked knowledge about dragons (even though they aren't real), reptilian heads and the planes on them. Which means, you need more references! Or to study that kind of stuff more I guess :smiley: Either way, its great.

And as a last note, Laurel is quite interesting, as she kind of gave birth to this modern blizzard look. Now, she made many paintings but I'll refer to this one for simple reasons (it's old, quite close to when this style went complex).

Now, picturing blizzard art in our minds, we always imagine over exaggerated forms and sharp edges with heavily saturated darks. But, this stuff is on so much crack that you really can't imagine it imo. The style is hyper stylized, and you really have to keep in mind how intensely they've crafted this stuff. They really do push it to the point of where it almost looks wrong, as far as they can go. Now, this hogger painting is really nice I think. It's from 2011 and really shows the basics of this style, how hard the edges usually are, which shapes are ever shown/formed out, where the focus is and such.

Sorry for the ramble, keep being awesome! Looking forward to more Laurel studies :blush:

Nov '16

Thanks for the feedback, i really appreciate the time you took to write this. You made a lot of good points :blush: .Hogger really is a great example. The edges are so hard that it kinda looks like a comic book cover. I'll definately study it at some point. Unfortunately i don't think i'm good enough to paint something that detailed yet. But i'll definately work hard to get there so do expect to see more. :smile:

Dec '16

My entry for this week's contest. My original character Firathion from whom my profile name comes from. Will definately do more regarding the character :smiley: