Forays into purely digital doodles...

[Thaliat Everwood]

How badly do I suck at anatomy? *facepalm* Well, I'm still learning but here is where I am at working with my tablet on character art and comics and icons.

Samples:




And the comic sample: http://fav.me/d5j1016

I've got one of those tablets that lets you see what you're drawing right on the tablet's screen so I'm no longer dealing with the disjointed feeling I used to had drawing on one surface while watching another to gauge my progress. It has helped me improve a lot with my digital drawing, although I'm still having anatomy issues in my drawings.

I've got a base sketch I'm drawing out by hand that I'll later import for digital inking, but mostly now sketchbook work stays in the sketchbook, all the stuff I upload on my dA account is purely digital now, as I no longer need to deal with cleaning up scanned sketches or mucked up inking by hand. Sketchbook work is now just for my personal practice and pleasure at this point. I like how much cleaner digital inking looks, but right now I'm inking with a 5pt brush because if I switch to 3pt I can't get my lines to look as nice and dark. I'll get it figured out eventually. Of course, if anyone has pointers, I'd appreciate any advice you have to share!  

[PangoPrite]

Dude, I don't think your understanding of anatomy is far off! You seem to have it basically figured out, especially for the style you're using; from here you can only keep improving, right? If you're not already doing so I suggest making sure your figure's laid out in form and everything before you add clothes, but if you're already doing that then keep at it, I guess! Haha! 4laugh Always be studying! It's a good thing to do anyway.

Having started to do some completely digital work must be a big but nice change. Personally I like how easy it is to change digital work, whether you're moving something around or erasing something... or if you want to try multiple versions of the same thing... there are a lot of possibilities that just aren't available or as easily done when you're doing purely traditional work. I don't know if I could use the kind of tablet you say you're using, though...! I used to have a laptop whose screen you could turn around and use like a tablet, but it was always just a little off, no matter how much calibration I did. With this regular ol' Wacom, I guess I've used it enough that there's no disconnect for me. It works out pretty well.

If you want to try making thinner lines but want to keep using this brush size for darkness, why don't you try making the image kind of big, "inking" it cleanly, and then shrinking the whole thing down so the lines are thinner? Depending on the program your using the clarity and everything should be left intact, right...? I'm really just guessing, here, but it might be worth a try. whee  

[Thaliat Everwood]

Thank you, and I am a huge fan of working in layers. The figure I posted in the OP was done in layers. I do a place holder rough sketch of the pose, with little to no detail, then fade it, do another layer for inking the body, another layer for the face, another for the hair, then I add under layers for the coloring of the earlier layers. I merge the under color layers to their lines. Then I do the same to create her outfit. This file has an alternate hair style, and a few other clothing/accessory options. She's sort of a fashion doll for me to play with.

I have tried experimenting with taking larger files and shrinking them down and it seems to work nicely. I've done a little for comic work with success, but I'm lazy with my comics sometimes and just draw straight in the frames and forget. And use fewer layers if I'm in a rush, which can lead to wonky looking arms and stuff. But at least that I know is from rushing and taking short cuts. With the pieces I put a lot of effort into, I am finding I am very happy with the digital results.

And, thank goodness for easy editing with digital work. If I had done this by hand, the lines would not have turned out nearly as nicely. I have such shaky hands for traditional line work, lol.