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Trying to solidify a "style" (+Thoughts)
Down below I'm going to go into detail about some of my thoughts over the past little while regarding my art, styles of drawing and such. Its not super important or anything but I thought it would at the very least be helpful to put it all into written words to help me organize my thoughts. If you would like to, feel free to read through it and put your thoughts in the comments. Even if you decide not to read it I would really appreciate your input. Any critiques are helpful. Let me know what you enjoy or don't enjoy with my work. What should I continue doing, and what should I do less of? Thank you!
(There's also a TLDR at the bottom)
----
Through the past month and a half I have been experimenting a ton with my work. I haven't been able to decide what kind of style I want to commit to. I kept looking at other artists and would think "I want to do something like that". That's not necessarily a bad thing but when I'm so focused on the style I'm using, I can't focus on the fundamentals. It also ends up taking at least twice as long to finish something and that can be super frustrating for everyone(less art posted, wild variety in quality, slower on projects/commissions etc.).
I've been doing so many new things that even when I find something that works, that I want to keep doing, I often forget about it. The majority of it can be broken down into 2 major categories: Shading and Line work.
Shading:
I used to always just use a shade of blue or purple on a multiply layer to do all of my shading but I just wasn't satisfied with it. Recently for a few of my works I've tried doing the whole thing in grey scale first then overlaying the color back on. It worked really well sometimes but most of the time it ended up being super time consuming and frustrating. Even though I kept telling myself I would stop the grey scale method I kept trying to do it again and again? It seems like it would work well in theory but it just doesn't work well for me and I lose a lot of control over my colors. I will say however that drawing in grey scale is super helpful for learning how to shade better. I feel like I can understand textures and lighting better when I don't have to worry about color choices so I guess in the end I don't feel like I've been wasting my time at all with it. I will eventually do more gray scale work but I wont try and color it afterwards. It will just be posted as grey scale.
What I think I'm going to commit to is just picking all my colors by hand. Well I might use blending layers to "pick" the colors but I'll be shading it all by hand. After all the research and practice I've done this month it shouldn't be as huge of a learning curve as I thought and surprisingly, It's not as time consuming as I thought either. The only issues are going to be when doing characters with complicated patterns or rainbow gradients. I might have to resort to blending layers so those parts of the drawing look unified but only for those sections.
Lineart:
I don't have as much to say about this. Its mostly just one realization that I've had. The size of my brush is really important. I personally, can't use a tiny lineart brush. It takes hours to lineart and makes later stages of the drawing so much harder. I end up with so much empty space that I have no idea what to do with. Also any dynamic brush work really isn't noticeable . For the doodles above I doubled the normal size I use and I feel it works just so much better. I also only used one brush. I used to switch between a ton of brushes but honestly its so much easier to just focus on learning one and maybe use fancier ones for special effects at the end.
Thanks for listening to my rambles! These are all just my personal opinions and thoughts of course. I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments if you're willing to share. What style works for you? What kind of brushes do you like to use? What pet peeves do you have in regards to certain art styles or tutorials you see online?
TLDR;
*I'm going to shade manually and not heavily depend on blending layers or grey scale.
*I'll be using a chunkier lineart brush so you can actually see the variation of line width.
*Also there will be less big empty spaces with no details.
(There's also a TLDR at the bottom)
----
Through the past month and a half I have been experimenting a ton with my work. I haven't been able to decide what kind of style I want to commit to. I kept looking at other artists and would think "I want to do something like that". That's not necessarily a bad thing but when I'm so focused on the style I'm using, I can't focus on the fundamentals. It also ends up taking at least twice as long to finish something and that can be super frustrating for everyone(less art posted, wild variety in quality, slower on projects/commissions etc.).
I've been doing so many new things that even when I find something that works, that I want to keep doing, I often forget about it. The majority of it can be broken down into 2 major categories: Shading and Line work.
Shading:
I used to always just use a shade of blue or purple on a multiply layer to do all of my shading but I just wasn't satisfied with it. Recently for a few of my works I've tried doing the whole thing in grey scale first then overlaying the color back on. It worked really well sometimes but most of the time it ended up being super time consuming and frustrating. Even though I kept telling myself I would stop the grey scale method I kept trying to do it again and again? It seems like it would work well in theory but it just doesn't work well for me and I lose a lot of control over my colors. I will say however that drawing in grey scale is super helpful for learning how to shade better. I feel like I can understand textures and lighting better when I don't have to worry about color choices so I guess in the end I don't feel like I've been wasting my time at all with it. I will eventually do more gray scale work but I wont try and color it afterwards. It will just be posted as grey scale.
What I think I'm going to commit to is just picking all my colors by hand. Well I might use blending layers to "pick" the colors but I'll be shading it all by hand. After all the research and practice I've done this month it shouldn't be as huge of a learning curve as I thought and surprisingly, It's not as time consuming as I thought either. The only issues are going to be when doing characters with complicated patterns or rainbow gradients. I might have to resort to blending layers so those parts of the drawing look unified but only for those sections.
Lineart:
I don't have as much to say about this. Its mostly just one realization that I've had. The size of my brush is really important. I personally, can't use a tiny lineart brush. It takes hours to lineart and makes later stages of the drawing so much harder. I end up with so much empty space that I have no idea what to do with. Also any dynamic brush work really isn't noticeable . For the doodles above I doubled the normal size I use and I feel it works just so much better. I also only used one brush. I used to switch between a ton of brushes but honestly its so much easier to just focus on learning one and maybe use fancier ones for special effects at the end.
Thanks for listening to my rambles! These are all just my personal opinions and thoughts of course. I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments if you're willing to share. What style works for you? What kind of brushes do you like to use? What pet peeves do you have in regards to certain art styles or tutorials you see online?
TLDR;
*I'm going to shade manually and not heavily depend on blending layers or grey scale.
*I'll be using a chunkier lineart brush so you can actually see the variation of line width.
*Also there will be less big empty spaces with no details.
Category Artwork (Digital) / All
Species Unspecified / Any
Size 1280 x 770px
File Size 661.5 kB
Listed in Folders
“What should I continue doing, and what should I do less of?” - that’s a good question, but firstly, you should decide that for yourself.
Personally I’m in love with sketches, I see true freedom in art like this. However some people could found this type of work unfinished or lazy. Well... I can understand that point of view.
Back to your question, I think that most important thing in art is do what you like, without thinking about an audience. Why should you worry about frequency of uploading artworks? People judge you not as robot, printing arts again and again, but as artist, with unique style and vision.
Personally I’m in love with sketches, I see true freedom in art like this. However some people could found this type of work unfinished or lazy. Well... I can understand that point of view.
Back to your question, I think that most important thing in art is do what you like, without thinking about an audience. Why should you worry about frequency of uploading artworks? People judge you not as robot, printing arts again and again, but as artist, with unique style and vision.
I really appreciate this viewpoint. I definitely try and draw things I enjoy. Audience is a bit of a concern however because I would love to get to a point where I can do commission work full time. It would be a dream job for me! However it takes a lot of work and an audience. The more I post, the more people can see my work.
I used to think about audience in all the wrong ways on my DA account in high school so I try and not recreate those mistakes. It made drawing much more stressful. Especially when I would rush my work.
As for skeches, I would like to post those more once I'm a little more confident. I have a bad habbit of not finishing artwork that I post W.i.p.s of. I almost feel like it curses them XD I also want to do more work like the doodles above where I can be comfortable posting work that isn't fully rendered but I'm finished with it.
Again, thank you for sharing. I really appreciate it. That last sentence especially is something my mind is going to linger on for a long while. "People judge you not as robot, printing arts again and again, but as artist, with unique style and vision."
I used to think about audience in all the wrong ways on my DA account in high school so I try and not recreate those mistakes. It made drawing much more stressful. Especially when I would rush my work.
As for skeches, I would like to post those more once I'm a little more confident. I have a bad habbit of not finishing artwork that I post W.i.p.s of. I almost feel like it curses them XD I also want to do more work like the doodles above where I can be comfortable posting work that isn't fully rendered but I'm finished with it.
Again, thank you for sharing. I really appreciate it. That last sentence especially is something my mind is going to linger on for a long while. "People judge you not as robot, printing arts again and again, but as artist, with unique style and vision."
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