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Internet Kraken
Apr 24, 2010

slightly amused
I'm mostly doing crappy figure drawing and getting depressed because drawing people is too loving hard.

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Internet Kraken
Apr 24, 2010

slightly amused

Propitious Jerk posted:

Whenever I get disgruntled with my current work I open up a folder of stuff from two or three years ago and boy does it cheer me up to see how much I've improved.

I suppose. Its just disheartening to try and start a new picture and struggle so much with it. You think you've reached a point where you can mostly realize your visions but nope basic anatomy still eludes you.

Also I've decided the absolute worst feeling is spending hours working on a picture, finishing it, and feeling really happy with the results. Then you notice a perspective problem that ruins the whole thing and the picture falls apart.

Internet Kraken
Apr 24, 2010

slightly amused
Strange, all this art tastes like trash...

Internet Kraken
Apr 24, 2010

slightly amused
I've decided that I can never juggle more than one drawing at once and also I need to keep actively working on any picture I start. Anytime I stop working on a drawing all my motivation drains away and it becomes so much harder to actually complete it.

Internet Kraken
Apr 24, 2010

slightly amused
It warms my heart for a bunch of people to only just now discover the absurdity of that artist.

My favorite one of his pics is Trump trying to teach a COMMUNIST MILLENNIAL how to fish, as if Trump has ever held a fishing rod in his entire goddamn life.

Internet Kraken
Apr 24, 2010

slightly amused
I know inking your lineart is important but goddamn if it doesn't get tedious. Wish my sketches didn't look like poo poo so I could colour those in sometimes rather than spend over an hour tracing over my lines.

Sharpest Crayon posted:

Us lefties worship Communism and Marx is our only god.

Man, have I been wrong about the amount of right-wing artists. I've been well protected by staying off Facebook. That's right, you heard me. I'm one of the cool ones. :smuggo:

There are significantly less right-wing artists than left-wing ones though, as art is a creative endeavor of expression and modern conservatism stifles that kind of thinking.

But you go to the right places you can find them. Some have amazing levels of talent used for stupidity while others...

https://twitter.com/PrettyBadLefty/status/1006562085482958849

Internet Kraken fucked around with this message at 22:20 on Jun 22, 2018

Internet Kraken
Apr 24, 2010

slightly amused
Does anyone have advice on how to "see" a head without hair? Something that's consistently loving up my attempts at figure drawing is I feel like I get the shape of the head completely wrong. Its hard to tell what shape someone's head has when its obscured by a ton of hair though.

Internet Kraken
Apr 24, 2010

slightly amused
I just want to live my life doing stupid drawings that make me and a handful of other people happy. Instead I have to get a pointless education and a retail job that will drain my soul because my art sucks and you need to be the best of the best to make a reliable living off of it.

And the sad thing is I probably could of loving done it if I'd kept practicing when I was a teenager instead of dropping art for over 10 years :sigh:

Internet Kraken fucked around with this message at 09:41 on Jun 30, 2018

Internet Kraken
Apr 24, 2010

slightly amused

lofi posted:

As a counterpoint to the art-despair chat, what does art-enlightenment feel like to y'all? To me there's a groove I can sometimes hit, where I have a load of parts of a project on the go, and I'm bouncing between them, spinning a bunch of plates with the lightest touch, and it feels like I'm flying somehow, or surfing a wave, no effort needed.

I feel the best about my art when I get some light, casual comment about people enjoying it.

I've had people shower me in ridiculous amounts of praise for doing drawings for them and my brain never buys it. Anytime I get huge amounts of praise I always mentally interpret it as sarcasm. But just having someone say something simple like "hey I think your designs are pretty creative" makes me feel really happy. Don't really get it but whatever.

Internet Kraken
Apr 24, 2010

slightly amused

mutata posted:

IK, I'm specifically gonna suggest you especially read that book I linked to. I'll buy you a copy.


*glances at unfinished books in other tabs*

I'm uh...not exactly great at reading long stuff. Why do you think I should read this anyways?

Internet Kraken
Apr 24, 2010

slightly amused

Kanine posted:

quick question: do u like to listen to music when you work, if so what kind?

I always listen to something when I draw. Usually its videogame soundtracks because I'm a nerrrrrrrrd.

If I'm really trying to focus on my work (he initial sketch phase to get my lines right mostly) then I'll usually listen to something that is low-key and ambient. If I'm doing something that is relatively easy, such as inking the lines or doing colouring in my usual style, I'll listen to whatever I want. Often I put on a stream in the background and listen to that instead.

Internet Kraken
Apr 24, 2010

slightly amused

FunkyAl posted:

If like twenty disgruntled pixar employees saved and invested and pooled together a little money over a few years, they could leave and produce their own movie at their own studio, in some garage. Places like bisney/bixar are held together by the false contention that only they know how to make an animated movie, and that animating a movie requires constantly the most cutting-edge technology ("magic") and a huge isolating campus with eight million amenities. Its a lot riskier and theres no garuntee itll work or anyone will make money, but it seems like more fun to me than making increasingly bland cgi funventures for your two bosses, a rapist and an algorithm

So then they do that and it bombs because, regardless of quality, movies live and die by their advertising budget. Sure the quality of the movie might be amazing and it could be a cult classic but that's small comfort when you are suddenly unemployed and have to claw your way back into a highly-competitive job market.

It'd be nice if we lived in a society where people could freely explore creative interests without worry but the world can't even agree that putting children in cages is bad so that's not gonna happen. I'm pretty sure most people at Pixar are quite happy to have gotten a job with their talents, even if it they don't get to be the creative director. Besides, every day at work they build skills that will help their own personal creative pursuits, which I think is pretty desirable.

Internet Kraken
Apr 24, 2010

slightly amused
You know, some people in the art thread were talking about doing fanart to try and boost their views and I just had an experience about the futility of that.

I do a lot of fanart just for fun/because I'm an unoriginal hack. Like 3 months ago I drew fanart of Link's Awakening and it got like, 3 notes on tumblr over the course of months. Whatever, that's all I expect from my crummy art. Then randomly yesterday it got reblogged by one of those big fanart blogs and suddenly it has 83 notes. A bunch of people suddenly showered attention on a piece that had been sitting there. But not one of those people looked at any of my other pieces. Or if they did look at my other pieces they thought they were bad. So effectively nothing has changed in terms of people actually looking at my art.

I really don't care about popularity or anything but stuff like this fucks with my idiot brain because I can't tell what people liked about my art or what they ddin't like about the rest of my art and ah gently caress it I'll just go back to doing more crummy doodles that go nowhere :words:

Internet Kraken
Apr 24, 2010

slightly amused
Anyone that uses Clip Studio Paint know if there is a way to select an area and say "hey blur it by x amount"? Blurring background stuff can be inconsistent when I do it by hand but more importantly if I'm trying to blur a large area the program lags like hell.

Internet Kraken
Apr 24, 2010

slightly amused

Mirage posted:

Select the layer you want to blur and select Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur. This also works on a selection if you don't want to do the whole layer.

Hey thanks.

Internet Kraken
Apr 24, 2010

slightly amused
Anyone have advice about learning to control the weight of your lines? I'm thinking more about my lineart and why I hate it. I thought it was just because I got proportions wrong, and it is to some degree, but even when I get the proportions rights I don't really like my lines. I think a big reason is that I don't vary the weight of my strokes enough. I do try and use thicker and thinner lines in places to convey depth/lighting/whatever but I'd been doing that just by increasing or decreasing the size of the pen. Maybe I should stop doing that.

Internet Kraken
Apr 24, 2010

slightly amused
I tried doing some sketchier art rather than turning everything into a completed picture and I loving hate it.

Maybe one day I'll figure out how to not be poo poo at the most basic part of art.

Internet Kraken
Apr 24, 2010

slightly amused

avshalemon posted:

i would draw porn of my characters for patreon dollars but all my characters are sad and fat

You say that as if there isn't a market for fatties.

COMPLETELY UNRELATED: I got paid to do art for the first time. Sure its smut but at least I finally made some money. Feels good.

Internet Kraken fucked around with this message at 02:21 on Jul 28, 2018

Internet Kraken
Apr 24, 2010

slightly amused

avshalemon posted:

mazel tov!

i've tried to work my way up to doing smut a few times but, i've literally never drawn such a thing, not even a cheeky bj, and i couldn't bring myself to do it

I'd never drawn it before either. Hell, I'd almost never drawn humans up until a few months ago. I only did it out of curiosity to see if I could and then, much to my shock, it actually turned out to be...fun? Its weird as hell but also enjoyable. It helps that most of the stuff I draw is characters I invented solely for the purpose of kink art rather than endless fanart of whatever anime is popular at the moment. Only gonna draw that if someone pays me for it.

I actually think, purely from an objective standpoint, that doing this has improved my art significantly. I've learned how to draw stuff I never touched before and developed some techniques that translate just fine to "normal" stuff.

Internet Kraken
Apr 24, 2010

slightly amused
Though honestly at the risk of alienating myself I have to ask; do you guys care if an artist you like draws kink stuff on the side? And I mean really weird poo poo, not some busty fox girls that are downright wholesome nowadays.

I've tried to adopt the mentality of "if they keep it to themselves then who cares" as long as its not anything illegal. I think some artists have a problem of letting their fetishes slip into their work in some not-so subtle ways, but you can avoid that if you're conscientious about it. Also I've found a lot of artists I really like and if I never looked at their art just because they are into stuff I'm not then I feel like I'd miss out on a lot of neat content.

Internet Kraken
Apr 24, 2010

slightly amused
Anyone have a good tutorial on how to go about doing colored lighting? I can do shading fine when I'm working with black for shadows and white for highlights, but trying to use any other colours just looks weird. But if I wanted something to be illuminated by, say, a campfire then it should have an orange glow.

Internet Kraken
Apr 24, 2010

slightly amused
I'm trying to understand colour theory and running into a pretty big issue.

so I understand the concept of warm and light colours. I get that you usually want your lighting and shadows to be close to opposite on the colour wheel. What I don't get is, when you go to actually apply this to a drawing, what shade of these colours you should use. Cause if I just use coloured lighting near its max hue value it looks weird as hell in most cases. How close to white are supposed to make it? How close is the shadow supposed to be to black? Am I missing something obvious here? It just feels weird.

Internet Kraken
Apr 24, 2010

slightly amused

gmc9987 posted:

I have some words but it might help you get better feedback if you post an example of what you're doing that looks weird, any chance for a quick screenshot or example? Your last few questions are all very subjective and depend entirely on what you're trying to convey.

I've been really apprehensive about posting anything here since I'm so poo poo compared to everyone else but fine;



I'm still trying to figure shading and poo poo out. I basically ignored doing additional shadows in my older pieces entirely and haven't figured out how I want to portray them yet. But stuff like the purple hue of the shadow feels way to visible too me and I dunno, sometimes I feel like I'd be better served ignoring this poo poo entirely and trying to grind out my lineart until it looks less poo poo. But that's just so boring.

Art is hard.

Internet Kraken
Apr 24, 2010

slightly amused
I don't really get how you're supposed to add shadows before adding colour. I always design my pictures with a lightsource in mind but trying to do the shadows first is difficult to understand.

Internet Kraken
Apr 24, 2010

slightly amused
So I wanna get into more traditional art. Really, I just wanna have a sketchbook that's of higher quality than my fuckin college notebook doodles. I'd like to make marker drawings that look somewhat presentable just for fun, but also because I feel learning to draw better traditionally will help with my art in general.

I'm a total idiot when it comes to art supplies though. Do you guys have any recommendations for sketch kits I could buy that would have the supplies I need to do decent marker drawings in a sketchbook? I really have no idea what that would entail.

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Internet Kraken
Apr 24, 2010

slightly amused

lofi posted:

You can get sets of markers for pretty cheap, I use 'Uni pin fine line' and they work just fine, the set cost me £5. As long as you get a variety of thicknesses, you're set (When I'm working A4, I mostly use 0.5, 0.3, and 0.1mm pens, with 0.8 and 0.05 for emphasis-touches). I'd also recommend a couple of Gelliroll white pens (I use a medium and fine) for corrections and working white-on-black. And you'll want something to fill in big areas of black - I use a Pentel brush pen or just a sharpie for that, depending on if I care about bleed and how big the area is. The brush pen is good for when you want a bit more fluidity to your lines, too.

Sketchbook-wise, you don't need anything too fancy because you're not getting the page too wet. Anything sold as a sketchbook in an art store should be able to handle markers. What you get is mostly going to depend on if you prefer smooth or textured paper, and what size/format you prefer. Hard-bound is more durable, spiral-bound folds over for convenience.

Don't buy premade kits, they're all a massive rip-off and have lovely materials for the money.

Thanks. Now to figure out what all this means :downs:

dupersaurus posted:

By markers do you mean water-based or fancy stuff like prismacolor?

I don't need or want anything fancy. Just some markers that are a level that a real artist might use when doing inkwork and not, say, the crap I used for my school projects when I was 10.

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