Hey, I suck at drawing

I think that one looks better. you are getting better. there is emotion in the eyes of this one. you can start to try some shading in the darker areas. this will make it pop out. then some shading in the background where its darker to make the light areas pop.

JTbo said:

Oh, problem with rotating is that to rotate canvas I would need to enter to menus choose rotate, then input number of degrees, figuring out which way to rotate, then it rotates.

With Photoshop I guess there is single key solution to that, which makes it a lot nicer already.

With Corel it sounds like it is being somehow automated?

It might be that your bundled Corel has some functions less than those versions they sell, I would be actually happy to buy such limited version if price would be below 50, but haven't found such offers, so I'm considering Clip Studio, I'm just not sure if vector part would be as nice as with Corel, but it is quite nice what little I have looked into it with Clip Studio.

There seems to be lot of tutorials about clip studio on yt too and many things from more common tools apply of course, exact way to do things might differ, but idea behind technique should be quite similar between different software.

It seems to be that in Clip studio, you hit Shift+space and keep those down while using stylus to drag canvas around, seems to be easy enough.

There is also quite a lot of materials and other support stuff available to download, so I guess that with price of 50 this might be my best bet to get things straight to digital format. Erasing is so much nicer when doing digital sketch as well as seeing what I'm doing because I can zoom in.

I think that my drawing tablet did cost less than 50 almost 10 years ago. Plastic cover it has is too sticky, my hand sticks to it badly, so I'm taping often paper to it so my hand can slide on it, without that it is almost useless.

I'm really starting to like this Clip Studio, trial version can't save work and canvas was quite low resolution, but I took photo of my drawing with camera, then cut character only to image and imported it to one layer into clip studio, after that made new Vector layer and did some testing, it is quite easy to work with from there, simplify tool helps a lot in cleaning, I still need to figure out how to connect different lines, but I'm kind of leaning towards buying it, much more fun to work with than Inkscape+Gimp, that is for sure.


Doesn't make my drawing much better though, only practice helps with that and I guess some reading about anatomy, I want to make better limbs.

Click to expand...

The tablet I have is from Wacom, it was $100 and it's specifically one of the artist or studio versions that comes with Corel. I will try to find the box so that I can tell you the exact model number. I had to register and then I was given a serial number for Corel.

As far as moving the canvas, with my tablet it moves with literally a gesture on the tablet itself. The problem for me is that it moves too easily sometimes. I'm the type of "artist" who keeps the side of my palm against the surface as I sketch, and sometimes that triggers the canvas to angle itself...I'm self taught and basically started by sketching stuff out of comic books as a kid in the 90s...lots and lots of Jim Lee stuff, Whilce Portacio, Todd McFarlane, etc.

Since I got the tablet, I've been trying to force myself out of my comfort zone and draw vegetation, trees, jungles and really learn how to convincingly draw "light" as reflected on the things I draw. The other thing I've been doing is drawing maps, since I've had this idea for a fantasy story in my head.

I will try to find that model number and see if I've got anything worth sharing, sketch-wise. I like your stuff. Cats are NOT easy to draw lol. I've tried and failed miserably.

I really need to get back to drawing. been drawing since I learned how to write. I can't do abstract. I used to only  draw faces from magazine covers. I tried doing other things but if I don't find it appealing to my eye I have a hard time. It sounds so silly and its why I haven't done any drawing in a long time. I should just put the pencil or pen to paper and try. Even if it looks silly. my problem is I am a perfectionist. If its wrong I wont fix it because to erase changes the paper's surface. I had a classmate who could draw xmen and it looked even better. He now is a tattoo artist and is worlds better than I could ever be. So glad to see him using his gift. Bill RhineTattoos. He has been in those competitions and is really good. Even though I am not crazy for that style-it is something to admire-I always liked watching someone draw-that helps me more than anything.

Plan said:

The tablet I have is from Wacom, it was $100 and it's specifically one of the artist or studio versions that comes with Corel. I will try to find the box so that I can tell you the exact model number. I had to register and then I was given a serial number for Corel.

As far as moving the canvas, with my tablet it moves with literally a gesture on the tablet itself. The problem for me is that it moves too easily sometimes. I'm the type of "artist" who keeps the side of my palm against the surface as I sketch, and sometimes that triggers the canvas to angle itself...I'm self taught and basically started by sketching stuff out of comic books as a kid in the 90s...lots and lots of Jim Lee stuff, Whilce Portacio, Todd McFarlane, etc.

Since I got the tablet, I've been trying to force myself out of my comfort zone and draw vegetation, trees, jungles and really learn how to convincingly draw "light" as reflected on the things I draw. The other thing I've been doing is drawing maps, since I've had this idea for a fantasy story in my head.

I will try to find that model number and see if I've got anything worth sharing, sketch-wise. I like your stuff. Cats are NOT easy to draw lol. I've tried and failed miserably.

Click to expand...

Mine is Wacom Graphire 4, this one has only 512 pressure levels compared to today's low cost models that have 1024, also this one has clear plastic cover, so small drawings I can place under the cover and trace from there if I want, but haven't done much of such.
Some information from net claims that this tablet should of had Corel with it, but I can't remember having such, then again I'm quite happy with Clip Studio Paint, so easy to fix my not so good drawing there.

I like to rest side of my hand against tablet too, I saw pics of new Wacom versions Art and Comic, where they used finger to tablet surface to do things, my first thought was that it can't really work, maybe there is option to turn feature off?

Only way to improve is really to just draw lot of different things, that is what net says at least and I guess it is largely true, some technique can be of course be learned, but the lines itself are not ending up where one wants no matter how much technique one knows, it is all about training eye to see things differently and hand to move better, or that is what my experience so far is. Although, I'm not much of an artist, everything I draw tends to be unique as I just can't draw enough precisely to get two same looking things :lol3:

Practice, little something every day and there is improvement, same as with everything it just takes time, I have never been able to get my ideas to paper, so with this practice I'm slowly starting to get better at it, I have also this scifi/fantasy story in my mind and lot of drawing for that kind of helps to get things done story wise too.

Easy way to start with a map, took screen grab from google earth, then pasted that to Inkscape, put some vectors on top of that to make up different kind of terrains etc. Then I hid the screen grab and started working from there.
Problem with Inkscape is that it does not work too well for me, buttons are dead most of the time and it takes lot of clicking to get something done, so might try to redo map in CPS. Nice thing with vector is that one can scale them up quite nicely.

SAI is another program like Clip Paint Studio (that is also sold as Manga Studio in packaged form), but what I read is that it is bit more limited and price is about the same if not finding an offer.

Of course one is not limited to manga style, but quite free to explore any style one likes to.

I'm currently at this stage of inking, changed head a bit and ears were so poorly that I had to look few reference images and see how those lines really go which helped a lot, might still do some changes though, when tracing pencil drawing I found out blue or other color than black makes it lot easier to see what I'm doing:

Funny thing, at earlier half of 90's they could not teach me anything in school as I knew too much about computers, so I mostly self taught myself and learned Visual Basic programming as well as some image manipulation, they then figured out that I could make new transparent film documents from old ones that were in poor condition. I used same resolution and dpi as with that drawing above, those computers of that time had slightly more difficulties to handle that amount of data though, my new computer seems not to even notice there was some jobs when handling A4 size at 300dpi, I guess that is progress

I use Sweet Home 3D to make buildings for my story, I'm thinking of upgrading CPU for that as it takes about 30 minutes from computer to calculate this kind of images:

I'm bit between the two if I get i7-6700 to replace i3-6100 or swapping to X99 series motherboard and Haswell-E, that would be stupidly expensive though, or then I just go do other tasks while computer is working, which might be most cost effective solution. It might of taken days from those computers at 90's to calculate such images though.

Haha I remember learning Visual Basic in the 90s too...were you a warez kiddie? I hung out with that scene as a kid/young teen, which is where I learned the basics of coding, and how I got my start with Photoshop by pirating it. Man, to think of how slow and crappy my computer was back then. I did make a few simple programs though, but TBH I was more interested in the aspect of designing UIs.

That 3D render looks awesome. Now THAT is something I would love to get into. Is there much of a learning curve?

Plan said:

Haha I remember learning Visual Basic in the 90s too...were you a warez kiddie? I hung out with that scene as a kid/young teen, which is where I learned the basics of coding, and how I got my start with Photoshop by pirating it. Man, to think of how slow and crappy my computer was back then. I did make a few simple programs though, but TBH I was more interested in the aspect of designing UIs.

That 3D render looks awesome. Now THAT is something I would love to get into. Is there much of a learning curve?

Click to expand...

I did not have own computer until later times, at farming school they had Visual Basic and such, nobody just could use those, I read the manuals, did some experimenting and learned that way, no internet on that school back then, that all become much later. I wish that I would of had Visual basic and my own computer, I would of done so much with it by now, my memory does not hold text or numbers so well anymore, but image stuff seem to be better.
I have Visual Studio Community edition these days and I do simple C# coding, someday I hope to get one spreadsheet into software form, but don't know if it ever happens.

Sweet Home 3D has hardly any learning curve, it is free and very easy to use, just make sure to download extra furniture:
http://www.sweethome3d.com/

Easiest way to get backgrounds for interior scenes, imo.

I can use bit of Blender too, that is 3d modelling tool, it is actually possible to export what you make in Sweet Home 3d and import into Blender, that might save bit of time, but I have a dream to be able to put some of my stuff to 3d form, maybe some day.

It just takes so much time to make simple model that it is hard to keep at it.

If I could make that, it would open up again interesting possibilities as using Unity 3D (game engine that can be programmed with C#) I could make kind of interactive story.

Ability to understand what I see and transform that to lines and shapes on paper has been one great obstacle though, but I think that I have cracked at least a bit of it lately, just need to do more of drawing now to get more constant results.

Looking really good jtbo :bigthumb: Love seeing how this is progressing

I did go trough my old CD's and found out there was Corel Draw 4 OEM CD, didn't even remember that had came with something along the years.

So happily I put disc into drive and except to have working Corel Draw in seconds, except I faced a message this application can't run.

I'm running 64bit Windows 8.1, I did look date of files on that CD and there were from 1993, I think that Windows 95 came at 1995 or so, thus this Corel Draw 4 must be Windows 3.1 program, I still could run it if I would have 32bit Windows 8, but now no luck.

It is like someone would of taken candy from a kid, that happened often when I was a kid and it still hurts

I started also to do concepts of nasty guys for my story, it should be fishy, but not too fishy, not much of cuteness and so on, it will take many different attempts to find design I'm happy with, also I guess I need to find out bit more about bones and stuff, something is clearly off :lol3:

Oh and I was trying to find 8B pencil of good quality, it starts to look that I have to travel more than 100 miles to find ANY kind of 8B pencil, who knows how far to find good quality ones. No our nation is around 745 miles long and around 200 miles wide, to give you bit of perspective.

I need to find some proper artist supply store within EU, only stuff sold here are made in China by Disney and meant for kids it seems. I got one sketch book to keep my drawings from scattering every planar surface, but I always prefer to work with good quality tools. Grit in pencils is annoying.

Is this any good jtbo ? http://www.artsuppliesfinland.com/category/11/derwent-pencils

Oh, your nasty guys remind me of Japanese Kappa. They're some kind of turtle monster that live under bridges (Or in the Tokyo subway tunnels if you believe modern fiction) They're known for stealing cucumbers, pushing horses into swamps and killing people by ripping out their livers. The little rascals!

 

Norachan said:

Oh, your nasty guys remind me of Japanese Kappa. They're some kind of turtle monster that live under bridges (Or in the Tokyo subway tunnels if you believe modern fiction) They're known for stealing cucumbers, pushing horses into swamps and killing people by ripping out their livers. The little rascals!

 

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I think Japan has everything different and interesting weird things, I had never heard about Kappa before, when I searched more about it I ended up on this quality tabloid page which says something about mummified Kappa remains being put on display:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet...r-demon-Remains-mythological-Kappa-Japan.html

Also in that article they write about hanzaki which I had never heard about before either and it looks quite scary thing too.


@Columbine, thanks from the link!

I'm not quite sure yet, but it starts to look like order would be Mitsubishi Hi-Uni, Faber-Castell 9000, Staedler Mars Lumograph, Koh-i-noor, Derwent, from most desirable to least desirable. I have read some tests and I think I need to read little more.

Too bad this shop does not have softest set, this is softest they have and it is medium from three different sets being made, however I quess I could manage with that too, even Faber-Castell seem to be little lighter color on harder ones, 5B is quite ok already.
https://www.verkkokauppa.com/fi/product/35899/cxqhd/Faber-Castel-Design-Set-9000-5B-5H-12-kynaa

My current set is ACME brand, very old, lots of grit and makes ton of dust that spreads all over the paper.

I drooled Mitsubishi pencils on one dutch online-shop, those are available from Amazon too, but the price is quite a lot, however it is the best I hear:
https://www.penstore.nl/potloden-en...-potloden-set-van-22?search=mitsubishi hi-uni

If I would live in Japan, I could get those easily at half the price, maybe even for less. Tombow in US is similar quality I read, but not very available in here.

Of course pencils are not going to make me any better, but how would I do by with something that is not best for the money, of course weeks of research is needed for that....

I too prefer better quality pencils. 8B is almost as soft as charcoal. Do you have any charcoal pencils around? if you want to blend-roll up a piece of paper to make a cone like shape and use the tip to spread the graphite in whatever direction you want-be sure the strokes are all going in one direction otherwise it will look like a scratchy mess. 

I prefer pencils from Germany and Europe. If it says made in China I usually pass. Yes it has more pieces of whatever in the pencil which is very annoying and once you mark the paper-if its a hard waxy substance then it leaves a crease on the paper which drives me batty.

Keep going! Good job!!

Here are two pencil sketches, the two most recent I've done.

This one is supposed to be Marion Cotillard. Every time I see her in a movie I think she's absolutely striking, so I wanted to see if I could sketch her. As you can see I have a lot to learn about lighting and depth.  I'm going to try again, but with a different photo.


This one is supposed to be an aged map, something that might have existed in antiquity or in the inside pages of a fantasy novel. As you can see, I haven't even started on the map itself, except for the cartouche and two quickly sketched mountains with a bit of shading to test how map features would contrast with the scroll and cartouche. The cartouche itself is one of those old, neoclassical types, which require a lot of detail work and extremely precise lines. I'm gonna have to "bend" it at the top, but I wanted to focus on actually getting the cartouche right, at an appropriate scale, and I'll come back to it after.

The scroll itself is supposed to appear extremely old and worn, and that's all line shading and cross-hatching along the edges to hopefully get it to look that way. I have a lot more work to do on the right side of the scroll, and after the map's drawn in I'm gonna have to make a decision about what to do with white space on the map edges.


Anyway, trying to do this sort of thing digitally (and I have been practicing!) is easier in some ways, and much more difficult in others. Easier because you can zoom several levels in and do really precise detail work. More difficult because I still haven't mastered how much pressure to put on the stylus, It's a transition, that's for sure.

foxxycat said:

I too prefer better quality pencils. 8B is almost as soft as charcoal. Do you have any charcoal pencils around? if you want to blend-roll up a piece of paper to make a cone like shape and use the tip to spread the graphite in whatever direction you want-be sure the strokes are all going in one direction otherwise it will look like a scratchy mess. 

I prefer pencils from Germany and Europe. If it says made in China I usually pass. Yes it has more pieces of whatever in the pencil which is very annoying and once you mark the paper-if its a hard waxy substance then it leaves a crease on the paper which drives me batty.

Keep going! Good job!!

Click to expand...

I don't have any experience with charcoal except in grill, also not sure if I really need 8B, but 6B is quite nice to sketch with as I don't need to use pressure to make faint lines. Of course this is with my Acme brand pencils, I try to get those Faber-Castell ones as cost is not too much with the delivery.

Plan said:

Here are two pencil sketches, the two most recent I've done.

This one is supposed to be Marion Cotillard. Every time I see her in a movie I think she's absolutely striking, so I wanted to see if I could sketch her. As you can see I have a lot to learn about lighting and depth.  I'm going to try again, but with a different photo.

mcotillardsketch.jpg

• plan
• Jul 16, 2016

This one is supposed to be an aged map, something that might have existed in antiquity or in the inside pages of a fantasy novel. As you can see, I haven't even started on the map itself, except for the cartouche and two quickly sketched mountains with a bit of shading to test how map features would contrast with the scroll and cartouche. The cartouche itself is one of those old, neoclassical types, which require a lot of detail work and extremely precise lines. I'm gonna have to "bend" it at the top, but I wanted to focus on actually getting the cartouche right, at an appropriate scale, and I'll come back to it after.

The scroll itself is supposed to appear extremely old and worn, and that's all line shading and cross-hatching along the edges to hopefully get it to look that way. I have a lot more work to do on the right side of the scroll, and after the map's drawn in I'm gonna have to make a decision about what to do with white space on the map edges.

mapsketch.jpg

• plan
• Jul 16, 2016

Anyway, trying to do this sort of thing digitally (and I have been practicing!) is easier in some ways, and much more difficult in others. Easier because you can zoom several levels in and do really precise detail work. More difficult because I still haven't mastered how much pressure to put on the stylus, It's a transition, that's for sure.

Click to expand...

Your drawings are incredibly good, practicing to see things and getting some sort of blueprint of how to draw before drawing is perhaps what helps a lot, but takes time to develop that skill.


My biggest issue at the moment is my seat, it is old wooden kitchen chair from 60's and really painful to sit any more than 20 minutes. I need to figure out how to solve that, maybe I just take off one seat from old car and fabricate some kind of base to that.

Thanks for the kind words, JTBo.

I know what you mean about needing a comfortable place to draw. Currently I sit down at my kitchen table to draw both pencil and paper, and digitally. It's definitely not the best set-up and I end up hunched over the canvas or pad. Do you have a decent computer chair? That might help.

As far as blueprints, I drew the Marion Cotillard sketch from a photo, but the scroll was just something from my imagination. All I do is get the general outline right, get the border lines looking decent, and then start to work on detail. Detail is 90% of it for me...all that cross-hatching and shading is pure Jim Lee influence from my days as a comic book reading kid.

But..cross hatching and simple shading doesn't cut it for color, or for things like trying to illustrate verdant jungles. That's why I'm really trying to learn lighting and layering now, and why I really really want to get comfortable with the various digital medium types. There's so much more you can do with the airbrush and painting tools, it just takes a lot of patience to learn that stuff. That's my problem, keeping at it so I really learn and trying not to get frustrated and stop, which I do sometimes.

I sorted the seat issue, not perhaps pretties solution, but hey, adjustable seat, has even adjustable lower back support and heating for colder days, which I can run from computer UPS or by adding extra 12V power supply

I don't like seats that I could buy with my budget, too flimsy and won't last long, this seat has not been sat on much at all, despite it being over 20 years old, also base is such that you can't buy anything that is as strong.

No wheels, but then again, there is no space to move this chair, backrest is against my loft bed and corner of seat is against a cabinet, I might need to do little reorganizing again.

Anyway, I have been working on bit with new ship, I'm modeling it in Blender 3D free software, it is mostly just a exploring what if thought pattern. I made side view of ship with pencil, then took photo of that and put as background image into Blender, then started modeling and adjusting while modeling, I still need to adjust it quite a bit until I model rest of the ship. It is very slow, but not too difficult at least yet. Challenge is in how one can see how lines should run along the surface.

I haven't mastered lights yet, so I'm getting just dark or darker renders so far.

I think you could find a tabletop easel or build one. I think that is a genius idea! I love it! I did something similar to my couch because it's so hard to get out of. We built blocks and raised it up so now its easier to get off of.

keep up the good work folks! 

Looks great, dude. Anything with rounded edges is difficult to build in 3D. Are you going for a starship type look or more of a plane? Also, does Blender 3D let you texture the polygons?

Plan said:

Looks great, dude. Anything with rounded edges is difficult to build in 3D. Are you going for a starship type look or more of a plane? Also, does Blender 3D let you texture the polygons?

Click to expand...

Blender can do whole lot, I don't even know how much, but sure texturing can be done, there are some demos of what it can do:
https://www.blender.org/download/demo-files/

There are some tutorials, but favorite video site probably has a lot more, some very good ones also.
http://www.creativebloq.com/3d-tips/blender-tutorials-1232739

Only thing with blender is that one really has to forget about using menus and such, it is all by keys, but when you master few of them, like w for weld menu and e for extrude, it starts to be quite easy to work with. From some totally freakish reason selecting object is done with right mouse button and if you click with left mouse button it moves quite useless 3d cursor around, so it has some annoyances, but completely free and works, in many way much better than Sketchup, so can't complain too much.


I need to adjust quite few things with that ship model, eventually it should not look so much plane like, but with my lack of skill, you never know what you end up with :lol3:
I remember one old Donald Duck story that had space ship with nice shape, in this link there is a toy that has bit similar shape, but I haven't found actual Donald Duck, so my failing memory is not helping too much when I made sketches:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/disney-plas...p-quack-mini-figures-space-ship-/251764036050

I guess that basic shape that interests me in that is 3 triangles which I can simplify to this form made in PowerPoint:

For me it is far easier to just do it and then iterate to find final form and style than trying to make definite plan.

Digital media is great in there as I can have all sort of experiments and studies of what if:

Sheesh. Camera tracking, greenscreen masking, bump-masking textures...that's pro-level stuff.

I watched that video with the Australian dude explaining how he textured that street scene with the cobblestones and sunlight. That is some really awesome stuff you can do with it. I mean, that's stuff that gaming companies rely on to make realistic graphics. Amazing.