The Easel

Why hello :>

I've held off making my own thread because most of everything I draw is a comic page, and I like to be sneaky about them until they go live! But sometimes, very rarely, I draw something that is not a comic page :>


An art trade with a friend! I was kind of nervous because I'm not very experienced drawing this kind of character but I think it turned out OK :>


A rare occurrence of a commission.



Some comic related doodles. Get a boy who can do both.

Ooh I love that yellow lantern lighting!

Thank you

Phew I've done quite a lot of illustrations recently.

This DTIYS to celibate my friend's comic launch. (It's small resolution because I'm letting her distribute the full size herself)



This was the image I was referencing



This was for Mercy for the summer art trade!



And some art fight attacks.

For the same friend above.



For Krispy who illustrates Ghost Junk Sickness and Lunar Blight


And for DnDMama here on RPR

First of all, WOW, I love how dynamic your style is! Despite drawing some drawings with "stationary" poses, you always add something to make the artwork catch someone's eye. Usually, I love dynamic art, where many things happen, but cow humanization won my heart in this topic. Mainly because I am highly biased, as I love cows and bulls with my entire heart I love the personality you gave her. I look at her and already get the vibes of her being a kind, caring, maybe even hard-working lady. Exactly how I imagine cows as humans. Among all of the "anime waifu cows", this art managed to win my heart without having *ahem* a stereotypical, comically thick lady in a cow bikini that may lack some organs, lol
I seriously would go on an entire positive rant about how wonderfully this artwork is done, but I already wrote a really long post.
Since you often draw dynamic poses, which requires more effort and training, I can write a longer feedback/constructive criticism if you want me to. Don't worry lol, when someone draws dynamic art, then even the most professional and famous artists usually "slip", since it's a really tricky thing.

I also see that you participate in Art Fight! Do you have any tips for me? I want to participate next year, and I'm scared that I won't be able to keep up with revenges. It happened to me once, no one was angry for that, but I got a big sip o' depresso from not being able to draw for all these cool people, lmao...

Oh thank you for the compliments! I wish I could claim the cow satyr's design but that was 100% on MercyinReach! You should let her know that you like the character!

I'm actually kind of surprised that you picked dynamism as one of my strengths because I feel it's something I really struggle with. I was actually thinking of really focusing on practicing it next month and using this group as a means to hold myself accountable.

As for more in depth critique, sorry but I'll pass for now. Especially in comic work, I'm working at such a rapid pace and I often tell myself that I know it's not perfect but I need to move on. I have to finish two pages this week and it's not worth picking at this one unimportant pose in an unimportant panel for any longer. So I know there are a lot of anatomical errors. I actually reflect on my work as I go and I feel like I have an understanding of where I need to improve.

When it comes to Art Fight... Revenges are NEVER required. If you ever feel overwhelmed you CAN just step away. However I think unless you're actively advertising yourself in their Discord you're probably not going to get too many random attacks from strangers, so you can put in as much energy as you want.

I have decided that for the month of August I'm going to focus on gesture study. I generally don't enjoy it very much, and I feel like my aversion to it is apparent in my art orz. There's a real struggle to draw even fairly simple poses and everyone ends up looking stiff

Like in this page I'm currently working on.



That a stiff man. 😭

So the rules I'm laying down are
Poses are to be two minutes or less. I feel like quantity is what I need right now.
30 minutes per day excluding days when I don't draw at all. If I come home from work and immediately go out again and don't even have a second to work on the comic, I'm not magically finding 30 minutes to work on gesture studies.
Challenge runs until the end of August

I'm wondering if I should study with paper or on my tablet. I feel like I'm primarily a digital artist and it makes sense for me to work in the medium I'll be utilising in the future, but I feel like using paper forces me to be less cheat-y by taking away undo functions and things like that.

As for art I can share -
Here's my final piece for Art Fight


I tapped out fairly early this year because due family reasons I had limited time to work on pages, combined with increased complexity in the scene I was working on, I was chewing through my backlog too hard and fast.

Hooo it is the 31st of August and I am pleased to say I successfully followed through with this challenge. I filled a A4 sketchbook and about 1.5 A3 sketchbooks.

And thanks, I hated it Overall, I did 5-6 days every week and only missed days where I didn't draw at all. So I did about 11 hours of study in total (I didn't date my work, and can't remember precisely, so this is an estimate).

I sit at work all day thinking about the comic, finally get home, and there's another 30 minute chore I have to do before I can finally work on it. Not to mention, this has been another bad month for output and having 11 hours of additional comic drawing time would've been fantastic. And in fact, I think that's a low estimate because I dislike doing the studies so much, I put them off for ages whereas if I could go straight to comic work, I'd start drawing so much sooner.

And I always can't help but wonder "does this even have any value?" The output of these studies are usually so bad I can't help but feel like I'm wasting time. But every single artist who knows what's what says to do them and who am I to argue with the pros.

I'm not going to show any of studies I did during this month ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ They're trash, this isn't a portfolio sketch book. You'll just have to believe me that I've done it. I feel like I should continue, even though I struggle to see the value all the time. But I'll reduce the session time to 15 minutes to try and lessen the resistance to doing them.

As for other art, I drew this for my friend's comic hiatus. Small res, because I'll let them share the full size image.


And a pencil sketch of eyepatch jock from a day I was too tired to draw comic