Guild Of Arts

[Cunegonde she/her]

No, you are Shallan. There is no escaping it.

 

Thank you, I feel honoured to be compared to Shallan   Speaking of whom, I am currently inking my Shallan sketch so I'll be able to share it soon. I'm actually adapting my style so as to enhance Shallan's stare, since eyes are so important for Alethi culture. It will be so interesting to try those ideas I have. If I am successful I'll ink all my other Stormlight portraits with this style.

[Kestrel she/her]

I wish you luck; inking is a pain.

Meh, I've got a ton of commissions piling up that I really need to start on.

[Cunegonde she/her]

I wish you luck; inking is a pain.

Meh, I've got a ton of commissions piling up that I really need to start on.

 

Thank you! I'm used to ink, I can spend 30 hours to ink some portraits. For my Stormlight portraits I'm thinking about adding watercolours and acrylic paint, which is completely new to me. This is most interesting but as well a great challenge because I'm not used to adding colours to my drawings.

 

Good luck with commissions! Oh, and I see that you're on Tumblr as well!

[Kestrel she/her]

hahahh watercolor hahahhhaah I hate it sooo much. Practice like mad before you put it on one of those beautiful sketches/inkings.

Yep, I am. Its a mess, though. My cosmere art blog is hoidsflute if you want to filter out the crap I usually post.

Bleh, when you want to ink your sketch but all the animation department has is photoshop which is crap for inking and sketchbook pro which is crap in general and illustrator that DOESN'T WORK PERIOD so you just. Sit there and maybe try a bit but your hopes aren't high.

[Burnt Spaghetti she/her]

meep.... accidentally broke the banner links. fixed the original post but here's the banner again anyway for those who use it

[Cunegonde she/her]

hahahh watercolor hahahhhaah I hate it sooo much. Practice like mad before you put it on one of those beautiful sketches/inkings.

Yep, I am. Its a mess, though. My cosmere art blog is hoidsflute if you want to filter out the crap I usually post.

Bleh, when you want to ink your sketch but all the animation department has is photoshop which is crap for inking and sketchbook pro which is crap in general and illustrator that DOESN'T WORK PERIOD so you just. Sit there and maybe try a bit but your hopes aren't high.

 

...

Edited February 9, 2016 by Cunegonde

[Kestrel she/her]

To get traditional art looking better online you will need Photoshop or Gimp, honestly. And a scanner, if you don't already have it. But scanning does reduce so much quality in the image. You really can't print digital or put traditional on the computer without quality loss, sadly. Sticking it into an editing software can help with that, change colors, correct saturation/brightness values.

Edit;;

Some recents I'm finally getting around to posting. I haven't had any time lately.

Red fox spread I did in my new sketchbook.

Space-y cat for a friend

Forgot if i posted this or not, but a Vasher for another friend

http://larkoftheriver.tumblr.com/image/135862148577

Edit: and the link is not copying right. Whatever click it and you should get to it

Edited January 20, 2016 by LarkoftheRiver

[Cunegonde she/her]

To get traditional art looking better online you will need Photoshop or Gimp, honestly. And a scanner, if you don't already have it. But scanning does reduce so much quality in the image. You really can't print digital or put traditional on the computer without quality loss, sadly. Sticking it into an editing software can help with that, change colors, correct saturation/brightness values.

 

I have my final drawings scanned by a professional (600 dpi and .tif format, so the highest resolution possible). Then I retouch them a bit (contrast, brightness and colour levels) but they still don't look as stunning as digital art on internet. It's something I have to get used to, I suppose. My lack of knowledge in softwares such as gimp or photoshop doesn't help. I can do only basic editing

[Kestrel she/her]

I could help you a bit with retouching, but its mostly a personal preference with how you want it done.

I actually retouch in Lightroom, which is for photography and offers more correction options than photoshop.

[Cunegonde she/her]

I could help you a bit with retouching, but its mostly a personal preference with how you want it done.

I actually retouch in Lightroom, which is for photography and offers more correction options than photoshop.

 

Lightroom? I'll check for it, thanks. And thank you for your offer, I would gladly receive a bit of help. I don't have any requirements, just to have them look good on a computer screen. I don't really know what are the possibilities, to be perfectly honest.

[Coinshooter he/him]

I love all the different styles that are beginning to show up here in the Guild. Which reminds me - I drew a picture of Vin a few weeks back that I still need to post.

 

But seriously though, good job everyone!

[Kestrel she/her]

Lightroom? I'll check for it, thanks. And thank you for your offer, I would gladly receive a bit of help. I don't have any requirements, just to have them look good on a computer screen. I don't really know what are the possibilities, to be perfectly honest.

If you need anything done, just let me know. Computer work is always hard due to possible changes in monitor settings/quality, too. ;-; Lightroom is basically Photoshop without the gimics. Its easier to find things and edit the whole image, rather than retouching a single part of it.

[Alomantisist he/him]

Honestly, it's all really cool when it comes together. Except for atonal stuff; that can all go die in a fire.

But have you listened to Anton Wabern? His music is very interesting, he is probably the only member of the German Avant Guard that I appreciate.

Edited January 23, 2016 by Alomantisist

[Kaymyth she/her]

I learned to crochet!  Yay!

 

[ChickenPlague he/him]

It's sooooo cute! It's even cuter when you imagine it slicing up storm-troopers.

[CarolaDavar she/her]

Luna/Nightmare Moon

And my OC Shatter Shot

Edited January 23, 2016 by CarolaDavar

[Kestrel she/her]

ahh that is so cute!

i actually have a cool friend who does crochet, she made me a soonie pup! i'll have to post photos of it.

 

anyway, commissions. sighs

fire is not my strong point.

[Cunegonde she/her]

...

Edited February 9, 2016 by Cunegonde

[Cunegonde she/her]

...

Edited February 9, 2016 by Cunegonde

[Ookla the Absent]

A remix of the Dreidel Song I did in a Witch House style...

[sheep]

On the subject of digital art and traditional media, I've always thought that it's a good idea to familiarise yourself with the features of both - you could be pleasantly surprised by all the options and techniques to experiment with.  Pencil and paper is much more intuitive and responsive, but has its limits when you are freehanding big curved shapes and then hit the edge of the paper.  Digital allows a lot more fiddling about, since you don't have to wait for paint to dry or worry about erasing one section so much you rub a hole right through the paper. 

 

If anyone wants to see, I have some pictures of my process.  A bit image heavy so spoilered.

 

Late night pencil sketch.  The bad lighting is from a fluorescent desk lamp.  I use Sanford/Prismacolor Col-Erase in Carmine.  A lot of animators like it because it's got wax in the lead which makes it sketch smoothly without smudging like graphite.  It's harder than regular coloured pencils as well.  Spoilers - it does smudge and doesn't erase completely if you press too heavily.  I'm down to a tiny nub.

 

I went over with a ballpoint pen and erased the red lines.  Which don't fully erase as you can see here.  It's super duper messy and there are bits (Shardbearer's arm is way too long and his hand is too big) where I saw I messed up but you can't erase ballpoint...

 

So I switched to a different picture.  Same process though.  You can scan in a sketchy mess that was a tiny 5cm tall on paper but it gets a lot bigger once scanned.  It doesn't matter if there were folds on the paper, the paper was dirty from smeared pencil, or there was eraser residue stuck to it.  You can open it up on your Trusty Image Editing Software and fiddle with the levels and contrast until you have a picture that is black lines on white.  The red lines you can easily remove by fiddling with the Color Balance options.  On the computer you can easily mirror image reverse pictures in order to see where your symmetry was off, and cut off sections and move them around.  If you look closely at the left side arm, I cut a piece off and moved it more left.  It doesn't matter that I'm wrecking the original sketch, it's just a guideline or concept at this point.

 

Using Trusty Image Editing Software I change the sketch's color and start outlining in a layer on top.  I use something that is light but I can still see.  Sometimes I am not happy with a sketch and sketch on top instead of directly going to outlining, and end up with 4-6 layers in light sea foam green, light lavender and other such colours.    The sketch may look messy but here's a secret:

 

The bigger the image you have when you outline it, the clearer and cleaner the lines look when you're ready to upload a copy to the internet.  This is the actual working size on the computer.

 

 

This is the size when you want to upload to your Tumblr or whatever.   Actually this is pretty big and most people go smaller, but you get what I mean.  No one can see your wobbly lines!   It's like magic.

 

 

 

When I colour, I do it in layers on top of the background and underneath the outline layer.  Choose a colour scheme, lay down your base colours (blocking), figure out your highlight and shadow tones and how they will interact with the material you are colouring and how they reflect off the background and other elements.  Colour theory stuff.  Shiny materials have sharp shadows and highlights and reflect colours from things nearby.  Soft things like fabric and skin follow the same rules but less dramatically.

 

 

Anyways, what I wanted to say is that digital and traditional are both great.  Using a pencil on paper is so natural feeling compared to using the small working area of a drawing tablet and having to scroll from side to side to draw a long line.  But I like how editing is so easy with digital.  Weird looking ballpoint faces are not permanent!  You can sketch on top of a sketch and directly compare which one you like the most instead of having to flip from page to page or redraw the whole thing.   

 

Yeah I know learning is scary.    I looked at the Adobe Creative Cloud new version and I don't even know what half the features do.

 

Thanks for reading.  Ask questions if you have any.

[Kestrel she/her]

I looked at the Adobe Creative Cloud new version and I don't even know what half the features do.

If you need help with it just ask me. I'm about to get Adobe Photoshop certified, actually.

In any case, as I continue my dragging task to find a nice program for clean lines (I would use the pen tool in Photoshop or Illustrator, but I'm not interested in vector art right now.) I stumbled across Krita. Its open sourced, free, and awesome. No fun without a tablet, but if you have one I'd highly suggest looking into it. It doesn't have much as far as effects go, but it has a massive (and I mean massive) brush library for painting, inking, and smuding, along with several smoothing options and stabilizers. And it also has a huge brush engine so you can make your own brushes easily. Its pretty storming sweet.

[sheep]

...

 

Thanks, I'll look it up.  I've downloaded heaps of brush packs from other artists, but for some reason I just keep defaulting to the same half dozen.  A lot of the rough grungy/chalk looking brushes look the same when I use them, and I figured if I wanted a specific section to be rough and aged looking looking I'd just layer a texture afterwards rather than switch back and forth between 4 different concrete styled brushes.

 

Do you regularly use all your brushes?  I want to try and do that and I've been looking for a good watercolour style set to experiment with.

[Kestrel she/her]

I have a custom brush pack you can find my deviantart under resources (sadly my kindle has hit stupid level and can't copy and paste links), which has what I usually use in Photoshop, along with a chalk brush. I experiment a lot with custom brushwork.

I don't regularly use all in photoshop, no. I use about five or six. A lot of the default ones are rather corny and I don't work with them. Haven't done any painting stuff with Krita yet, save for some experimental thing I posted on deviantart as well. I'm currently working on a cell-shaded piece in it and the linework is coming out wonderfully.

[ChickenPlague he/him]

This is my first attempt at a low poly landscape in blender. It's an Ashmount and some trees.