Ziggy (Nekoflip) - Art School Journey

ziggydas 2020-12-31 08:06:08 UTC #1

(I’ve been pretty intimidated by these forum posts because I’m kind of scared to show my art, but here we go! deep breath)
Hi! I’m Ziggy (Though my art is usually signed with Nekoflip) and I’m pretty new to digital drawing — I’ve mostly just done quick doodles on the corners of school assignments and was not really trying to improve until recently. I started trying some new things after quarantine hit, and I got really into art! I started art school because I really hope I will be able to look back on my work in a year and laugh at how bad it is and think about how much I’ve gotten better
A little bit about me: I'm 15 years old! I've never made a forum post before so please bear with me because I have no idea what I’m doing right now. I live in the US.

ziggydas 2020-12-31 08:12:07 UTC #2

Either way — I suppose I should upload some of the things I did before I realized I should have made a forum post. Here we go!

ziggydas 2020-12-31 08:27:25 UTC #3

Some cylinder practice! I drew a bit of the hair just for fun but I was pretty happy with how these turned out.

Here are some of the proportions. I did this one by memory! I’m probably going to stop practicing these soon because I think I’ve got the hang of it but I might revisit it occasionally in the future.

Finally some gesture drawing! I really didn’t know what to do after I drew a basic stick figure. I still don’t really know what to do in general but hopefully I’ll get better with time. If there are any tips that someone could give they would be much appreciated! (If you’re wondering why there are only 20ish, I accidentally had to make two canvases for all 40 of the ones I did today but the ones on the first canvas were so bad that I decided that I would keep my pride and not show them to the world.)
This is my first bunch I’ve done. I don’t really like these but I’ll keep posting these daily (if I remember).

Julia_J 2020-12-31 11:49:11 UTC #4

Welcome Don't be scared, many of us are total beginners, and the ones that aren't are extremely nice and supportive

ziggydas 2021-01-04 04:00:42 UTC #5

Alright, FINALLY managed to do some reasonable proportions. I know they’re not perfect but this took me like 3 hours and I was tired and just wanted to sleep ;-;

This one is still pretty off but without actively tracing or moving the drawing over the image prior to finishing I couldn’t have done better (I think, at least for now). The hands really threw me off because he had really short fingers, whereas I usually draw hands with long fingers because my fingers are long too. Kept overshooting the length and couldn’t figure it out.

This one I’m pretty satisfied with. Decided not to draw in the wrist braces.

I kind of just did a really rough sketch and then measured it and kept liquefying/distorting/redrawing until it finally seemed like it matched up. Had to do this a lot to make sure all of the minor details fit. It felt kind of like there should have been a faster way but I just brute forced it 😅.

Any feedback/criticism on these would be greatly appreciated! 🙏
Thanks in advance!

ziggydas 2021-01-10 01:02:20 UTC #7

I accidentally painted on my perspectives lineart layer and couldn’t undo it so I unfortunately can’t really post that — however to ensure I got the concept down I tried drawing a landscape with one-point perspective! (I have never drawn a landscape before but I think this turned out pretty well)
As always, critiques and tips are greatly appreciated!

Julia_J 2021-01-10 07:14:31 UTC #8

I love it! It is so atmospheric and calm

dangras-almeida 2021-01-10 11:01:03 UTC #9

Really nice landscape! I also loved the calm atmosphere it brings. One thing to try is to make objects at a distance a bit smaller, to help communicate that perspective coming from a single VP. Other than that, loved how you used the colors and the light, making the piece get brighter further down. Keep up the good work 😃

ziggydas 2021-01-11 02:57:08 UTC #10

Thank you so much for the feedback! I’ll keep it in mind

ziggydas 2021-01-23 06:43:53 UTC #11

Dumping some of my practice studies from the Anatomy lesson!
Pretty comfortable with eyes and almost comfortable with mouths, hopefully I’ll get the hang of noses and ears soon.

(tried painting, but took too long and got impatient)

(these were fun. ~80% are studies from references and the rest were from imagination. Hopefully it’s not too noticeable which is which)

ziggydas 2021-01-23 07:03:24 UTC #12

My first 1.5 portraits and some mouths! Honestly the portrait in the top left was just a nose study but then I just decided to throw in an eye and a mouth for fun. I didn’t actually construct the face but the proportions seem more or less correct (?) The one in the bottom right was a (slightly rushed) portrait that I made at 1 AM. Got lazy with the hair. Proportions are right (I think) but I did liquify it a bit and that could have hurt them. Sorry about the low quality photo, I drew everything super tiny so my I had to take a screenshot D:

As always, please give me criticism if there’s anything off! (Especially because if I keep drawing faces incorrectly that will not bode well for my future art)

ziggydas 2021-01-24 22:33:21 UTC #13

WIP. Realism is annoying. Studying a grayscale picture and trying to turn it into a portrait w/ color. Harder that it looked for sure. I’ll probably regress into a more semi-realism portrait style after I figure out how to draw everything realistically. I have no idea what I’m doing I’m just throwing color everywhere and hoping it looks good (?) so any critiques are much appreciated

Julia_J 2021-01-25 11:45:17 UTC #14

Marco Bucci has some nice videos on youtube, there was one about the different colour sections of the face, If I remember correctly

ziggydas 2021-01-25 14:35:18 UTC #15

Thanks, I'll look at that! Yeah, I realized halfway through that my shadows were not saturated enough and the colors were getting muddy but didn't really know how to get the right colors

ziggydas 2021-01-26 17:43:46 UTC #16

oh my god i’m so tempted to just go back to just eyeballing facial proportions but i’m resisting the temptation until i nail the loomis method either way here’s some more nose practice. i’m getting used to them now...

ziggydas 2021-01-26 22:06:41 UTC #17

I feel like I’m missing out on some sort of basic knowledge right now. Or is it just lack of practice?

STILL, HOW ARE PEOPLE ABLE TO DO THESE PROPERLY AND SO WELL

ziggydas 2021-01-27 05:59:40 UTC #18

Somehow if I just eyeball everything the face ends up looking a lot better than if I do the loomis method...
Either way I think I was in desperate need of a value study to improve my planes so I did one. Used three values instead of 2 to at least try to get some sort of life into the drawing. Ignore the teeth I’m tired and have lots of homework and didn’t feel like correcting it.

ziggydas 2021-01-27 18:57:28 UTC #19

painnnnn i tried to paint without zooming in, actually helped me better understand facial planes. still needs work but it’s kinda inaccurate bc i couldn’t fix the tiny mistakes. i’ll prolly stop posting individual practices and compile them in one img from now on. the chin is really bad, i know

ziggydas 2021-02-02 05:29:53 UTC #20

If you know who this is, you know why I drew it. Quick-ish stylized portrait, had lots of fun playing with colors. Didn’t really know what I was doing but pretty okay with the final result

ziggydas 2021-02-10 06:16:56 UTC #21

Already despise some of my previous work on this thread, which I guess either shows improvement or simply more awareness of the problems. Anyways here’s some 5 minute mouths from the Sinix anatomy lesson. I don’t think I’m ever going to render mouths with a lot of detail so I decided to just have fun with choosing wild colors and trying to pull it off. They’re super rushed and messy but they look like mouths at least haha

(edit: should clarify that the color choice isn’t super wild for the second one but for the first one I threw in a ton of over saturated colors and then tried blending it to add some more life to the drawing.)