General "Art Update" Thread

[damecharlie]

lol Is this a tablet race? xd  

[ThisEmptySoul]

Set up my tablet today, and after a bit of random scribbling to test out the feel and the different nibs, I figured it was time to try a drawing. I decided to start with making a sketch with the pencil tool and then I'll attempt inking from there. This is what I ended up sketching emotion_awesome  

[Lia_Trovaras]

Not bad, I need to get around playing with my tablet......... ninja maybe we should have a tablet war!  

[ThisEmptySoul]

Inked version

The lines aren't as refined and clean as doing it with the pen tool, but inking it by hand is definitely a far more enjoyable process.... even though it also means I have to do a lot more clean up. At least it's more "hands on" than a bunch of clicking.

On an awkward note.... spouse told me last night that they were talking with a coworker that we've had dinner with a few times and said to them that they recently bought me an art tablet. The coworker then wanted the spouse to tell me to email her the art I do with it.......

.... I told the spouse I'm still practicing. ninja  

[ThisEmptySoul]

Flat colors

Time to get to the part I've been waiting for... let's see how shading goes with a tablet.  

[Icy Reign]

Looking good there sir. Real good. Especially the face and hair. I think you two will get along very well.  

[ThisEmptySoul]

The shading is going pretty well so far, though I think I might want to change it to some warmer colors, which may require starting over. When doing shading with my mouse, I would do it all on the same layer, but with the tablet, I was able to put it on a separate layer and already changed the shading color once rather easily. However, after having blended it in a bit more, it's not quite as easy to just change the hue of the shading. I might also want to slightly alter the base skin color to be more like how the color appears in the .jpg I posted. In the file itself, it actually has a slight greenish tinge to it {as does the hair}, which was intentional because I had a certain lighting in mind, but I'm thinking of trying something warmer since the last few pieces {aside from Taus} I went heavy on the cool colors.  

[Kairanha]

I approve of this development.

Inking... I'd rather do without it if I could. After the rough it's the point in my art where I'm most likely to drop a project completely if it drags on too long and I get bored of the concept. I haven't bought a tablet yet myself because I'm under the false idea that doing that stage by hand is more precise for some reason. Even though I know I can edit lines easily an infinite amount of times without having to worry about ruining paper by using a tablet.

Damn my ADD. emotion_facepalm  

[ThisEmptySoul]

Drawing and inking with a tablet definitely is going to take some getting used to. It's not the same as pencil/pen and paper and I might in the end stick with doing my sketches traditionally, but I've been told by several people through the years that if I make myself draw exclusively with the tablet for a while, it'll be much easier to get accustomed to than if I keep switching back and forth.

On another note, I've already gotten one of my nibs stuck in the pen emotion_facepalm Luckily, it was my favorite nib so I'll worry about trying to get it out when it wears down.  

[ThisEmptySoul]

I do believe my tablet and I are getting along quite beautifully so far in the shading emotion_dowant The blending looked nicer before I changed the color of the shadows to what it is now, but I didn't want to try starting over with the new colors and figured next time I'll just make for damn sure that's the color I want to use for the shadows before blending them. I ended up having to merge my shading and skin layer to get a smoother color change, and even then I had to go back over everything to smooth it out again.

... now if I can just stop staring at what I've got so far so that I can finish it sweatdrop ninja emotion_dowant In the original sketch I didn't know what the hell to do with the legs, but now with some shading down, I have a pretty good idea of what I would do with them emotion_dowant ... but it's for the best that I don't draw out what's in my mind right now. ninja  

[ThisEmptySoul]

If you're scared of nipples, click here for the finished version. Otherwise... NSFW  

[Kits Rose]

That turned out really good. cat_3nodding Especially for a practice drawing to get used to a tablet.  

[ThisEmptySoul]

Turned out better than I thought my first tablet drawing would, that's for sure. I got carried away on adding lines to the hair, though emotion_facepalm With my mouse, I usually used a brush that would do multiple lines of varying widths, but for this I just stuck with the basic round brushes to get familiar with my capabilities. The next step is to start experimenting with using other brushes and see if I can find ones that work better for different purposes.

One thing that I really like about this tablet is how easy it is for me to change brush sizes. I've got a wacom intuos5, medium sized. I had to disable one of the buttons on the stylus because I don't hold pens/pencils "properly" and therefore kept accidentally pressing that button emotion_facepalm I had to also disable probably half of the hand gestures because it was going crazy on me and interpreting my hand dragging on it {due to my improper way of holding a pencil} as a variety of hand gestures.

Being able to zoom and scroll using hand gestures is pretty handy, but is taking more getting used to than actually drawing with it. I still use my mouse a lot for picking tools and whatnot, but the more I use my tablet, the more I'll start recognizing what I need to make shortcuts for.

I think in the next experiment, I will also be trying to ink using the freeform pen tool. Freeform pen might not be as tedious as the regular pen tool and may in the end create smoother lines than drawing them by hand {because I can't draw a straight line to save my life stressed } But if it proves just as tedious {which it very well may be}, then I'll probably reserve inking with the pen tool for special projects that I really want to have the smoothest of lines with, since inking is a stage that I get stuck at rather often stare  

[Kits Rose]

I like how the hair turned out, though. That was actually one of the first things I thought of when I looked at it.

Proper way to hold a pencil? cat_ninja That actually depends on what you're doing. When drawing, you're supposed to hold it differently from when you're writing. Unfortunately, it hurts my hand to do it that way. My drawing teacher didn't like it, but oh well. Anyway, getting off subject. I can see how pushing random buttons and having it do strange things because of the gestures would be really annoying.

Straight lines... yeah. Gotta be the hardest thing to draw. cat_gonk cat_stressed  

[Kairanha]

*revelation* Tes! Your ******** brilliant! I love you. This is confusing I know, but I just realized something. Lulz I got some work to do now.