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ant (allegedly) learns how to draw

ant4456

ant4456

i'm newish to drawing and i was working hard from like october-february grinding it daily, and then i kinda just burnt out. and then today i drew something. and it was fun, so imma do that more and post stuff hopefully because hopefully there will be stuff to post

when i post stuff i might yap and post some WIPs along words, that will be a second spoiler dropdown, i will use this as a diary and have notes on shit. pls feel free to give feedback, i really value it, esp. direction in learning

some stuff from before I burnt out:

in order of oldest to newest
Illustration38.jpeg

sylveon

birthion52.jpeg

bday gift art for the goat

Illustration50.jpeg

i dont really know what this one is tbh. just kinda did it

image.png

i think i was practicing eyes

Illustration80.jpeg

did like a mage sylveon thing

Illustration87.jpeg

"nuh uh im totally not burnt out im just drawing this because my mental is very normal and healthy rn"

and then today, I drew this

IMG_5082.jpeg


so I actually wasn't gonna do a full piece today because I'm lazy, but I kept coming back to it after I drew the initial idea which was this and my friends said it gave a neat vibe

image.png


now do not ask what the thing in the middle is I just like poses where a character is holding something, maybe it's a black hole, i dunno

i lined it out pretty quickly and found that due to how kinda bad i drew the jirachi itself, when i used the color scheme of jirachi it looked bad, so i tried to cheat and use weird colors and ended up with this super noisy thing

IMG_5086.jpeg


now i kinda fuck w this and its because i think the outlines make it stick out, and i said i wasnt gonna finish it or polish it so of course i came back to it a bit later

i redid the outline twice and this is where the real vod review begins, i found that these colors didn't actually work with the new outline and im not really sure. i tried similar colors, and even colorpicked from this worse version (imo at least), and it just didn't look the same

i tried some other colors before going back to using the official jirachi colors (bdsp's model screenshot) and it looked much better, so i was like uh i guess im doin this instead. im glad i did because it felt like the weird colors i used were not because i understood colors or lighting or anything, nor did i feel i learned much from using them, it felt like a way for my brain to escape how well i knew jirachi (goat mon love it) and therefore be less distasteful of the result in my head

Illustration106.png

the next outline

i focused a lot on the nub feet and trying to make the ribbons on the side more dynamic, also i felt the arms especially weren't well-done, another thing i was able to soft-cheat and hide behind the Demon Ball Of Death or Whatever The Fuck, this time since it was multiple layers i put more effort into it and like the result more

also i spent more time judging the volume and ratio for the head shapes in general. i find that im really bad at making things even and i need to work on drawing things across the picture, for some reason i struggle with drawing the side that my left hand is worse at (im left handed), but when ive asked some artists before they've told me their handedness doesn't really effect their drawings. i feel like i gotta be missing something or its just a fundamentals thing (almost certainly true either way)

next i did the layer with all the noisy shit on top, at first i tried those squiggly lines from all directions with different colors, but it felt really unfocused, also you can tell i really like the noise brush which i dont think is probably good, i just like it LMAO

IMG_5090.jpeg

without shading

so im really bad at lighting/volume and its one thing im tryna work on hard, but i feel like it takes me a while because i only usually practice it when doing one of these larger pieces, and only at the end when im usually tired. i also kinda usually just bullshit it and pray it works

if i were to redo the shading on this one i'd try something more focused around the death ball

IMG_5082.jpeg

final result

so i am mixed on this. one thing i hate and is part of why i burnt out is there's a lack of polish or that next level of understanding that i, obviously, dont understand

of course the line quality could be much better, but i think a lot of it is in fact in the lighting quality, and maybe even just composition. its giving mspaint (no knock to ms paint ive seen the insane shit people can do in it), its giving flat (imo). maybe the background esp. its supposed to be giving a sort of space vibe, maybe it should have stars to help sell depth- i usually dont go hard on backgrounds

for the next time i do a full piece i want to do more with the background and lighting, i might need to do more of the (in my opinion some like them) boring exercises with volume and lighting stuff

also just line quality but whenever i do those exercises my wrist starts to get tired/feel pain quickly which makes me not wanna do it, but it really is important

something im not sure how i feel: the actual star-hat-whatever is slightly crooked, part of the whole bad at doing uneven bits, but i actually think it looks nice and when i was gonna fix it i kinda left it a bit more crooked on purpose than i couldve made it. i think i wanna play with tilting stuff more
 

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heya, cool post! noticed you mentioned pls feel free to give feedback so here's some stuff :P

(it is a bit long)

seeing different stages of the process was nice to see how you approached making the piece! the color experimentation might not have worked out, but i like the attempt at trying something different. the final version has a lot of varying components like the death ball and all the lines coming out of it, jirachi also looks pretty pissed. i like the left/right blue ribbons flowing and twisted in the wind, the back yellow ribbons also have super chaotic zig zag shapes which helps emphasise the power of the death ball.

colors - a bit of a huge topic lol, not really sure which part you're looking for in particular. marco bucci in general has a lot of quality videos on color theory.
dynamic posing - gesture drawings, references, you can also try making the pose yourself and taking a picture to see how it'd actually work and whether that matches your vision
lighting - light source and draw arrows to each part of the character/object you're drawing to figure out which parts are lit up/in shadow
composition - can try out a couple different thumbnails, then pick one that's most interesting. consider alternate croppings of the piece, usually having the center of attention be a bit off centered can enhance visual interest
background - consider how the character interacts with the background so it feels like they fit in, check out some references for the kind of background you're going for
line quality - be confident in your lines! i notice you draw many short lines instead of one longer, continuous line especially in your first sketch of the piece, and your later lines are somewhat shaky. draw a box practice is good, you did mention your wrist getting tired/pained and this does happen esp when you're not used to making the movements often. take it easy and take breaks, it does take practice and time.

references are really good!! use them! they're very helpful for understanding how cool dynamic poses look like, how a character's form looks like from different angles/poses/lighting, ideas for backgrounds, inspiration, etc!

doing studies specifically on the thing you'd like to improve, e.g. lighting studies where you draw something with the light source being in different places, having multiple light sources, to practice one particular skill is a good way to practically do things. it can be useful to pick one or two topics you're most interested in improving and work on those first to not get overwhelmed.

it'd be helpful to know artists/pieces you're inspired by, what you'd want to achieve.

id be down to do a paintover of the jirachi piece to visually show what i mean about a particular topic if you're interested!

color - marco bucci (https://www.youtube.com/user/marcobucci)
dynamic posing - gesture drawing (https://line-of-action.com, https://quickposes.com)
line quality - drawabox (https://drawabox.com)
general - proko (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClM2LuQ1q5WEc23462tQzBg)

hope this was helpful^^
 
Audiino said:
heya, cool post! noticed you mentioned pls feel free to give feedback so here's some stuff :P

(it is a bit long)

seeing different stages of the process was nice to see how you approached making the piece! the color experimentation might not have worked out, but i like the attempt at trying something different. the final version has a lot of varying components like the death ball and all the lines coming out of it, jirachi also looks pretty pissed. i like the left/right blue ribbons flowing and twisted in the wind, the back yellow ribbons also have super chaotic zig zag shapes which helps emphasise the power of the death ball.

colors - a bit of a huge topic lol, not really sure which part you're looking for in particular. marco bucci in general has a lot of quality videos on color theory.
dynamic posing - gesture drawings, references, you can also try making the pose yourself and taking a picture to see how it'd actually work and whether that matches your vision
lighting - light source and draw arrows to each part of the character/object you're drawing to figure out which parts are lit up/in shadow
composition - can try out a couple different thumbnails, then pick one that's most interesting. consider alternate croppings of the piece, usually having the center of attention be a bit off centered can enhance visual interest
background - consider how the character interacts with the background so it feels like they fit in, check out some references for the kind of background you're going for
line quality - be confident in your lines! i notice you draw many short lines instead of one longer, continuous line especially in your first sketch of the piece, and your later lines are somewhat shaky. draw a box practice is good, you did mention your wrist getting tired/pained and this does happen esp when you're not used to making the movements often. take it easy and take breaks, it does take practice and time.

references are really good!! use them! they're very helpful for understanding how cool dynamic poses look like, how a character's form looks like from different angles/poses/lighting, ideas for backgrounds, inspiration, etc!

doing studies specifically on the thing you'd like to improve, e.g. lighting studies where you draw something with the light source being in different places, having multiple light sources, to practice one particular skill is a good way to practically do things. it can be useful to pick one or two topics you're most interested in improving and work on those first to not get overwhelmed.

it'd be helpful to know artists/pieces you're inspired by, what you'd want to achieve.

id be down to do a paintover of the jirachi piece to visually show what i mean about a particular topic if you're interested!

color - marco bucci (https://www.youtube.com/user/marcobucci)
dynamic posing - gesture drawing (https://line-of-action.com, https://quickposes.com)
line quality - drawabox (https://drawabox.com)
general - proko (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClM2LuQ1q5WEc23462tQzBg)

hope this was helpful^^
Click to expand...
Click to collapse...
Thank you!!!!

I'm going to probably do some drawabox + I want to maybe try and redo the lighting today, so I'll try to keep all of this in mind!
 
i think im done w this

i made two versions, first one is my original vers and the second is w/ input from other people on composition and is unpolished

still could be a lot better but i can live with this

glaceon4.jpg




glaceon45.jpg




my goal with this was to draw smth where people would go "hey this person is an artist" bc i didnt feel that way about my previous work, and to try and found out what The Sauce is, and understanding of the fundamentals. did I do that? you can be the judge, but I kinda think I did

either way I will keep trying to improve

genuinely curious on yalls thoughts
 
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