Drawing Thread

[Little Pirate]

Not quite done but getting there. I'm actually really ecstatic about this piece,now. One of her business partners she is friends with on Facebook noticed me posting my 'work in progress' and I received a message asking how much my work is. I replied I never actually sold my work before, so I'm not really sure what pricing to place on my pieces. He offered to pay me for helping him with some pieces for a show. I've also had co-workers willing to pay me to draw their kids as zombies and the such. I feel overwhelmed with joy. But at the same time, art has always been a hobby and not a business for me. I have zero business knowledge. I'm not sure how much is worth what and I certainly don't want to rip people off...
(Edit: Broken image)

Edited September 2, 2014 by Little Pirate

[TheRevanchist]

Best thing to do is find a person who does this for a living, like a mentor.

[TheFlyingGerbil]

If you go on tumblr and search for commissions you will see a lot of posts by artists with price lists for projects with various levels of detail (e.g bust or full body, with/without shadow, anything background etc.). They're usually just for the digital file - if you were printing it out for them you would obviously charge for that too (at more than just the materials cost as it involves extra work too).If you find some with similar levels of detail to your work you can get an idea what you should charge.

 

Don't think, "it's for friends so I won't charge too much" because when they tell other people they'll expect the same price  and you'll end up resenting doing it for a small amount of money more than if you were doing it for free as you'll have the pressure of supplying a "professional" service and product, without the commensurate rewards.

 

Another way is to think how long it takes you to complete a piece including thinking time and divide it by your price and see how awful that looks - it will almost certainly be below minimum wage so you should certainly not feel bad for what little you would charge.

[Mister Jack]

I read some nice words of wisdom from one of Marvel's artists on Tumblr.  Give it a read if you feel like you need some art advice.

 

http://leseanthomas.tumblr.com/post/96740981551/heres-some-of-the-most-amazing-and-invaluable

[Mal]

Those are good general advice as well.

[Little Pirate]

Catman in the night.

Edited September 20, 2014 by Little Pirate

[Johnnie Walker]

I don't sketch as much as I use to since I my wrist gets more and more screwed up. Tendionitis has been acting up more over the past 2-3 years.

But I never took my sketching too seriously, it's just something I do for fun. I do, however, design my own tattoos.

 

This is my most recent though.

 

[Little Pirate]

[Little Pirate]

Finally finished this piece. Turned out pretty darned close to what I had planned for it.

[Little Pirate]

Album design for a band that doesn't exist

[Little Pirate]

I had a local musician who happened upon a piece of art I made for a friend and messaged me on Facebook to design her a comic book style image. I'm super excited, this is going to be hosted at their next show!

[Mal]

So I've been practicing (and not posting) on and off for a while. I think I can reliably clone a pose, especially if the reference is an actual photo since I can easily spot weirdly drawn posture. Now hair and non-tight clothing are vexing me. They, especially hair, are quite hard to simplify. Take LP's avatar. My usually hair style will blow up. I think it is time to stare are a pile of clothes and actual models (Not lewd*) pictures.  

 

* There is a reason why, if you go through art school, you will draw nude models. The thing though... _{I take the closest thing I have.}

[Little Pirate]

Doodle of Louise

[Mal]

Guess who. And yes, I used an official art as a reference, same pose and all. I'm just drawfagging on some image boards so there is my reason for that and well, how crap it looks. If I tried to draw the entire reference, it wouldn't work. 

 

Squid Girl (Ika Musume) when asked what she wanted most. 

 

Or maybe it is what I want...

 

Edited February 14, 2015 by MaliciousH

[Mal]

http://www.posemaniacs.com/thirtysecond

 

This might interest some of you here. This flashes poses for you to copy and you got to sketch them up in the time limit you set for yourself. I might start doing this nightly for 15-30 minutes. I'm just currently unsure if I should do skeletal work first or just jump right in to do the poses with flesh and all.

[Little Pirate]

I'm happy to say that the reason I've been inactive lately is because I've gotten some form of recognition with local bands after doing some freebies for a starter one. I'm getting told I'm undercharging people, but I honestly have zero business knowledge and how to price my art. I've always done this as a hobby over profit so I have no idea what to charge based on my abilities. But I'm looking into maybe saving up and getting a loan to start a mini-studio so I can actually do two part time jobs rather than trying to juggle my full-time one and then doing commissions on the side.

Anyways, art dump.

[deanb]

So it was questioned on me not posting anything here n mainly cos last time I properly did painting n such was well over a decade ago. But turns out I have photos of stuff so here is two pieces I've managed to dig out from my "Personal Investigation", which was into Van Gogh and accompanied a few thousand word essay alongside it into like his life, inspirations, painting technique n such.

 

(IIRC this is a duplication of one of his smaller works. Man was a fucking machine. Everyone only really knows sunflowers n starry night but he painted like a man possessed...then shot himself in a field. Sad life. He was a preacher by training, for him art was his way of capturing gods beauty n all that.)

 

This was my own work in style of the chosen artist, this is local (not so local anymore) hill "Roseberry Topping". I've been up there at 4AM with a bunch of drunk friends once IIRC this painting is actually based off a photograph by a semi-famous local photographer.

 

Also here's my bigger piece which I love (and so does my grandma) but it's not a drawing or painting (it's an "installation" if you're wanting the arty-farty word. I was big on "installations". I did a shaving cabinet thing too, and also a set of blinds which is a fucking total pain to paint on to). It's called "Material Handling for Rainy Days: Glue, Bleach, Salt and I". Each page is textured in various ways (one is just a chunk of carpet tile) from ...well glue, wallpaper paste (which is great at various viscosities) my own home made paper, various textures done in plaster, some latex (also great to paint with). It's fragile as out like 10 years later n I'm afraid to remove it from it's packaging in my mums loft but oh it's so good. Each page has OHP overlay with instructions like a recipe book put on it. The sort of general concept from it was most pieces in a gallery are "do not touch", and the whole point of this is "touch away". Obviously photos won't do it justice but hey I could dig out the recipes n you can make your own.

 

 

 

 

Also found this which I guess this day n age is probably doable in some free app but this was many hours of work in a £3,000 computer program 10 years ago:

 

 

It was a great cheat. The crystals aren't transparent n refractive, they're all opaque and reflective But you get the same effect at first glance and it renders a shit ton faster (doing this properly in the day would have used up a PC rendering long enough my tutors would be rather upset with me). Also even less impressive I've a render of a paintbrush, which at the time doing hair at the "low" end £3000 package range was brand fire new, I had to teach my tutor how to do it

 

I also found my research photographs from another piece I did, which I don't have anymore cos it weighed like 80lbs n was a good 10ft long but my teacher loved it n took it home with her after the show which was like...I can't remember the artist in question but it was a semi-sculpture of the ex-coal pits near my parents house. So like this scrubby marshland area all gunk n grey browns n dark greens. I suspect, assuming bit rot ain't set in, I might have it on a CD somewhere (that's how old it was, DVD-R was a rich mans toy, n I had my trusty 24MB pen drive). It was like 80% made from MDF hence the weight, n had actual samples from the scrubland used in its construction.

 

 

Anywho, currently working on another painting (Well one of two), which you might have an idea of if you follow my Twitter cos I posted my reference material earlier today.

[deanb]

 

One of the things at the museum event today was taking bits of animal skeletons and mix n matching n tracing over the result. I made this dude, I originally had larger pieces but turns out it didn't fit on an A4 sheet. As you can see this species went extinct due to dragging it's head along the grown on its short crippled legs.

[Mal]

It can't be helped that 1) I am getting old, 2) Krita is a neat drawing software and 3) I naturally go for simple and cutesy style. All the better to contrast it with real life I guess.

Let's see if I can practice out to a more serious style.  And no, I do not have gray hair... yet. That's how I tend to look after neglecting my appearance for a few days combined with not cutting my hair. Cutesy-fied.

[deanb]

I gave it a spin. An excuse to use my otherwise dusty Wacom. I've a few niggles, but otherwise it works kinda nice. Especially for free.

[Mal]

I think this is the first time I really felt that I had control of my stroke direction and size with a tablet. These aren't much but they kind of surprise me during a doodle session.

That cockroach oval. A product of proper mapping and Krita not having any weird and annoying input lag.

You also can have like a much larger brush size than you usually need if you get used to how hard you press. Far easier to adjust thickness on the fly. In other programs, I always felt like I needed to manually adjust more frequently. Then there's the ease of choosing highlight and shadow colors. And no, just using white or black is not the proper way since the tone of the color will be off.

And now I'll have some nightmare about a monster with fleshy eyelashes. It came to mind and now I cannot unsee it. It's pose to be a floating eye with the nerves dangling... a monster with fleshy eyelashes is more terrifying.

Edit: I also realize that I wish a drawing program that can emulate changing thickness and opacity of pencil strokes. Impromptu coloring on the spot. Maybe Krita has it but it seems like the tablet software would need to determine thickness with pen orientation and opacity by how hard you press. Back to fleshy eyelashes monster.

Edited May 16, 2017 by Mal

[Hot Heart]

Found this, which I drew and painted way back in secondary school. It was the brother of the cat who recently died (he died back in 2004, I think) and I quickly sketched him while he slept on the end of my parents' bed one evening then used watercolour "accents" inspired by some guy who did some watercolour sketches of big cats while on safari in Africa.

It's not great, but it's probably the best thing I ever did and I'm proud of it at least. And my parents liked it so they got it framed and now I'll find somewhere to hang it. As a kid, I had a dream of becoming a cartoonist but actual art classes at school were complete bullshit and put me off it forever. So much time deliberately aping other people's styles just sapped my motivation completely.

I did start to do one of his sister that was meant to have a blue or green background, and I've still got the sketch in a book somewhere, but I doubt I'll ever finish it.

[Mal]

1 hour ago, Hot Heart said:

As a kid, I had a dream of becoming a cartoonist

I wanted to be an animator or storyboard/concept artist, specifically for 2D animation. Imagine the soul crushing realization that 2D was pretty damn dead in the United States. Things has gotten better as things mature up a bit but now I'm 28, not 16. Maybe I should've stuck on and be the change that I wanted to see but tell that to a reserve 16 years old me. Now I'll just support the industry with dosh. On a personal level, I'm going to explore cartooning and storyboard/concept art on my own pace and time.

1 hour ago, Hot Heart said:

but actual art classes at school were complete bullshit and put me off it forever. So much time deliberately aping other people's styles just sapped my motivation completely.

Another reason why I got disinterested. Like sure, getting stuff like anatomy and perspective down is important. Exploring different techniques is great too, like how can a person work oil on canvas into this. Art classes felt like they were molding your style into something it is/was not, like how military boot camp mold you personality into something different. Beginner art classes has been described as boot camps but if it destroys what you think your style should be then it's kind of going against the spirit of art and self expression. 

You should really consider doing cartooning or whatever on your own time. It's frustrating at times but it's fun.

[TheMightyEthan]

The art classes I took never left any room for creativity.  Like I get that you want us to learn different techniques, but at least let us choose the subject matter to practice the technique on.

[deanb]

One of the schools I was at their art class had a large selection of things at the back from bowls, plastic fruit, bottles, random car parts too for making still life from and mainly just trying out different techniques for the lessons. Was pretty good.