Template88 2016-03-03 11:36:11

Yes, but if you set your mind to it you can get it right!

Template88 2016-04-13 02:23:24 (Updated 2016-04-13 03:36:21)

My main concern as, is that you appear more as a dabbler in drawing more so than somebody dedicated soley to the craft since you also do many other things, but I'll give it a go anyways because you sought me out and asked.

You seem heavily reliant on the use of a photo as a reference, perhaps photos you've taken of your self or of friends or photos on the internet. While there is nothing whatsoever wrong with doing this as a method to study, ALL of your work has this heavily referenced look to it. References are also not all created equally, knowing how to take a good reference photo is its own skillset, the lighting and composition of your reference dictate what information is available for you to study and thus changes the value of your reference. Good references are extremely hard to come by and valuable assets. You must take what you learn from studying from reference and try to apply it to creations at least partially from your imagination. You have parts in your referenced drawings that you clearly added onto from imagination, but these attributes do not match the level of realism/detail that the parts you referenced have, giving it a clashing amateurish look, and the basis of the drawing is clearly a referenced photo. Which brings me into another aspect i see of your work, it is all portraits close up of the head neck and face, you cannot learn proper human anatomy this way, you must draw the whole figure and see how all the parts of a persons body relate to one another in order to understand how to create the human body from imagination or reference in a realistic believable way. Transitioning to the next point, your work has an unpolished amaturish look due to two glaring aspects, your work lacks a good understanding of color, color is its own giant subsection of study in art and it is very difficult to get the grasp of because it often works in ways you would not expect, such as being able to add shadows to a person of a darker skin tone with dark purples or greens. There are many, many layers of technique to master with color and you are more or less still operating at a beginners level in this regard, you must explore this aspect of your art further and develop it to make this flaw less glaring. Your brush strokes are sloppy and amateurish and detract greatly from your work. You clearly have an idea of how to add detail to your work using fine brush strokes as in your picture with the dog, but you make the beginners mistake of denoting your forms by making a brush stroke for each individual strand of hair or grass. It is very common for people to do this, but in reality we do not see that way, next time you look at somebody you will never pay attention to each individual strand of their hair or each blade of grass on the ground, we form clumps and layers in our minds to visualize these things and thus that must also reflect in our drawings of these things to make it look natural. There is much more I could say, but you have plenty to begin working on already if this is what you desire to do.

Template88 2016-05-05 17:13:16 (Updated 2016-05-13 06:03:51)

SO, sorry for the late reply. A fellow fan of burne hogarth huh? His anatomy is a little inhuman, but i find it very interesting and solid in its foundations, he is a real treat to study from! You obviously have an eye for detail, in fact you might even have the beneficial quality of loving to sit down and spend hours putting in all those extra details, but its a two edged sword. While putting in those details we love its easy to lose sight of the whole. Its good that you are studying anatomy, you should do this more, but arguably more important than anatomy is gesture, and in this facet you are pretty weak. Gesture is what makes human beings seem human, you can perfectly anatomically render a human being beautifully, but if she is stiff as a board with no recognizable expression she will see alien and hard to identify with! You can make something completely inhuman seem human with just gesture alone! http://img12.deviantart.net/37f3/i/2011/030/3/2/mr__tooty_the_flour_sack_by_janesu-d38dee2.jpg

Try to practice this facet as much as you can, because its easy to weaken the gesture of your drawing while you go over it trying to add details, dont make this mistake!

You should also try getting into digital art, its alot easier to make higher quality works with superior line art this way.

Template88 2016-05-09 19:01:10

You feel like the worst huh, well I can safety say you are far from it the number of fans you have should be a sign of this. You are bold with colors and attempt many different subject matters and themes. You seem to be a traditional artist that is transitioning into digital art, or at least you seem to suffer from alot of the same problems I see other artists who are doing that sort of transition suffer from. Your line quality is pretty weak, you seem to be using a soft brush to denote the lines of your figure and because you set them up in backgrounds using the same techniques and methods as your characters, they kind of blend into the backgrounds softly, which is no good if you want them to POP and ZING out at the viewer. You need to understand the uses of and weaknesses of soft and hard brushes. Hard brushes should be used to blocking out highlight and shadows and creating the "lines" of your figures. Remember that lines are mean to signify the boundaries of things in space and should be clear to see, not blend in with each other. Soft brushes are for blending your hard brush strokes so that you can a:blend colors b:give a softer look to denote texture/surface or mood to your subject.
That being said you need to build your characters in a separate way than you build your backgrounds OR give them some kind of contrasting outline so that they can be seen distinctly from your backgrounds. Another thing is note is your construction of faces is very simplistic and similar to each other. You as an artist dont want to fall into the "same face" meme. You should know that the faces of the character you are drawing is the first thing people will look at when they see your character, so it is one of the most important places to focus on and make perfect. You need more variety in them, and to do this you should study the faces of people and character your identify with and like, and see the techniques and methods your peers are using to make these characters you like, so you can absorb their techniques into your own techniques and make your figures have more interesting and diverse faces. Eyes in particular are extremely important. I see a general but not particularly critical lack of solid anatomy in your figures, which would boost the quality of your work dramatically. You'll need to study from life and use references to boost your anatomy progress.

If i had a number one priority for you to work on it would be fixing your line quality, making use of hard brushes to give your characters sharp well defined lines. Alternatively you could stop using lines all together and use a more painters approach of denoting the edges of things with color and value.

Template88 2016-05-11 06:31:06

One of the reasons why I like photoshop and specifically paint tool sai alot is because they offer a diverse range of tools with obvious uses. The program you are using is trying to emulate traditional media, in my opinion this is backwards, as the strength of digital art is the crispness and customization of your line tools and brushes.

Template88 2016-05-13 06:24:55

To grow as an artist you should try (and give a decent shot, and then even if you didnt like it, later when you grow give it another shot and see if anything changed!) to use as many different tools and programs as you have available to you, at least to know what is out there and be knowledgeable about programs as they certainly have strengths and weaknesses for specific tasks.

I've tried all of the programs I've ever heard of, I've actually only heard of krita recently and have not yet tried it. I know what you mean about getting attached to a specific program, but being at least partially knowledgeable with ALL programs is a valuable asset, ESPECIALLY Photoshop/adobe programs.

Template88 2016-05-13 12:36:05

Dont get discouraged by the difficulty of transitioning over to digital work using a tablet, it takes months to get used to using, think of it like learning a new medium, one where the use of other mediums youve gotten used to doesnt translate much over, so you are starting from scratch. its one of the biggest hurdles people have to get over to start making that sweet digital goodness.