Forums » Art & Creativity » In need of some opinions!

So I just started picking up my Wacom and I am trying my hand at drawing realistic artwork. This started off being Kuro, turned into Zoe but now is ending up to my friend Rhythm's character Nathan. But I want to know what you guys think. Am I trying to hard? Does something seem off?



Also, the reason the eyes and eyebrows look off is because it is suppose to be slightly look in a direction.

Here's some adviiiiice that may help in the future idk. ;v;.

Touch your face.

Feel around.

Where does the top of your ears reach? About to your brow right? The bottoms go to the lips too, right? Make a doodle page where you work on just little things like that. Placements and stuff - don't try to do anything too serious until you've doodled a toooooon, because that practice will help a lot!

Also, mirrors come in handy. And so do tutorials on deviantart or on youtube (there are hundreds and hundreds! It's great).

To get eye spacing right, draw another eye between your eyes. That's a fun trick I learned.

Ah... I'm so bad at just writing this. I made a tutorial but it's sorta crappy.

http://fav.me/d4esqly
http://fav.me/d4chlet

Looks like I made two!

Hope this helps a little bit ;-;. There are many, many more tutorials - ones so much better at explaining and demonstrating than I can ever hope to pull off.

I just read the first three sentences and started laughing. I'm sorry, I just HAD to say that.

But thank you for the tips and suggestions. I will remember them for future use. ^w^ I have drawn toon style on paper but right now, my wacom has been moving slow with the pen movements and it is pretty annoying so I am just working on the outline with just my mouse(I figured out how to do that. I am so happy. )

This method has done wonders for me.



Especially when I was working on the demon form of your character Zoey.



Your ears will always be leveled with your eyes and lips near the nose, unless for some sort of reason you want your character to look very different. Usually on a guy their neck is thick, however a woman's would be thin and slender if you want to give her that sort of sexy appeal.

I see you were looking to give cheekbones. The outline of the face is rounded, so to add in those lines it would be best if you add curves to the sides of his/her face on where you want those indents to be.

Lastly, the shoulders could be any which way you like, but here's something I think will make it easy. As you see in Zoey's picture, her collarbone soon extends to the shoulders. I think that's a good way to even them out.

Watching tutorials would really help and just looking at other people's art styles. I'm sure within a couple months drawing will come to you easily.

Too add, my wacom worked fine earlier today, but I just used it and my pen movements are awfully slow.. Wondering how to fix it.

For a first attempt, it's not bad! With some practice and study of real people, you'll probably improve very quickly!

A little hint that helps a lot of beginners is to flip the artwork horizontally. After working on a piece for so long, your eyes become accustomed to it, and it becomes more difficult to spot the errors. However, by flipping it, everything will instantly change and it'll be much easier to find mistakes such eyes that aren't aligned.

Recently, PIXELovely added a face and expression drawing tool! I know I advertise Kim's art site a lot, but I use it all the time, and it's always been such a good help for my artwork! What you're supposed to do is set a time - such as one or two minutes, and copy the face in that time. It'll be hard at first, but you'll very quickly improve! When the time is up, another face will be shown. By drawing many faces in a short amount of time, you'll have more practice than just spending a lot of time on a single picture!

That's great information too! .

One thing I used to do was trace. People tell you it's bad to trace and I think so, too, but not when you're trying to learn. Things like free stock photos and stuff are good for that! It helped me a lot growing up. Now, it'd be a shameful thing to do should I trace and upload it, but I think for personal practice it's okay.

If it's already made artwork of people you admire, you may want to ask them first, unless you don't intend to display it online and claim it as your own or something. Give credit where it's due n' all that.

Basically: It's a no-no if you're trying to steal art, but to learn art, I think it's fine. Just don't claim it's yours and blahblahblah.

Plop.

@SpilledInk: Omg. I saw the picture of Zoe(Just a littler far warning, her name is Zoe not Zoey. Her only nicknames are Zane and Z.) and my jaw dropped. You are very good at art. It isn't hard for me to draw realistic work on paper because the shading is easier for me but on the Manga Studio Debut 4.0 I have, it is kinda harder because I am not use to it yet.

The same thing is happening with mine and it is pretty irritating. It has happened before when I last used it a couple months back so I think it just something with my USB cord. I decided to just work on the outline of the picture and then I am going to play around with the colors and layers, I might add shading, not sure yet.

@Claine: Thank you! It is my first attempt on the Wacom but my first try I think is on my Facebook and if I find it, I will post on this thread.

Thank you for the tip. I will keep it in mind. I usually move my paper around quite a bit so I can work on the way bits and pieces are shaped. Like with the eyebrows, I had tiled the page I used a bit so I could arch them just right.

Also, I am going to check out that little thing you were talking about maybe later after I reply to everything. Thankfully I have a good bit of the week to work on my realistic style. I might try doing a few toons as well, just for fun.

@Novalyyn: I will probably read all that later. Thank you for putting it here.

For programs, I'll toss out there that Paint Tool SAI, which appears to be roughly $50 presently, has easy rotation functionality. While Photoshop (I can't compare to other art programs, including the one you presently have.) restrict you to a rectangle only able to turn 90 degrees at a time, SAI allows full rotation to any degree. There's also a quick mirror-flip button, so you can make sure it looks right either way (reverses often look weird, which means something is off). Based on screenshots, a program I've been eyeballing, Clip Studio Paint (roughly $50-220 depending on version), looks like it might have similar functionality. It was built to be able to import .sai files, in any case.

Both SAI and Clip Studio have free trials, so that's/ always nice. Wen searching for SAI, there also appears to be a "fan-made" English version. I have no idea what to think of it or how legal it may be, but it appears to have been openly up long enough that it'd have been taken down if there were any legal problems... *shrugs* Dunno.

You can also use the free transform tool in Photoshop (just like SAI has) to move the layer or canvas around, and even expand or compress it. It's not limited to a specific amount of degrees.

It's a different kind of rotation. ^^ Simpler and less chance of cutting anything off.

If you're computer can handle it or if I think its called opengl or something... if your comp can work with a version of photoshop that has it, there is a rotate tool like the one in paint tool sai.

Otherwise the tool is still there but you can't utilize it.

On phone so there are probably errors c:

Oh! I forgot there's also GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program). It's been ages since I used it, but it's relatable to Photoshop, but free. There's also Inkscape, a free program relatable to Illustrator, but pure-vector programs like those can be really tricky for actual illustration since you don't really "draw" in them.

I'll have to check that out. (Isn't OpenGL a licence or something, though?) 'Course, that's only useful if you have/can afford Photoshop to begin with. And no worries, you aren't trying to foreplay again. ;P

Here is the finished work of Nathan. ^w^ He belongs to Rhythm, not me.

Haha! God, I'm never going to live that down, am I? X)

I'm not really sure what OpenGL is. I just know in my computers with better graphics cards, I can support it in photoshop and can use the fancy shmancy tools there.

Half of them I have no use for though so idk....

YES GIMP. Gimp is good. There're a lot of free drawing programs out there! Just look around. C:.

Kuro - A nice start. As you go, you'll prolly notice that in addition to proportions (and MadRatBird previously pointed out), determining which lines to include and how is a point of trickiness. I've had trouble with noses for years, for example; they always looked wrong even if I was certain the proportions were right. So I started paying more attention to various ways others drew noses, and I actually have pages now just filled with noses for practice. (I've improved, but it's still a weak point. )

MadRatBird - Not this soon, at least. Do you have CS6 or something, though? If I remember right, they did put it into Photoshop recently (recently enough that I consider it too expensive; I've got 5.5, and only because I had a huge student discount).