seeking art crit and tips!

Posted 3 years, 8 months ago by 23oolong

hiya, i dont really use this platform very often but i just noticed it seems to have an active forum, and im looking for more places to go since dA went eclipse-only. anyway, hi! i use yue-re as my art handle, and im very new to digital art, been doing it for about a year or so but ive been sketching for more.

im currently at a place where I'm not entirely happy with my work, and a lot of my recent stuff has been rather half-hearted. i feel my style is stiff and rather stale, and far from what I like. i personally like very sketchy, messy, more 'watercolor' styles, where the colors are very blended. but whenever i try it ends up looking like an airbrush/blurry catastrophe lol so i would really like some tips on how to achieve that effect, or speedpaint/brushes that i could look up! i feel also my lineart could use some work, as people say it's very clean but i feel it's idk... too clean? like i feel it seems rather lifeless and i want to try to change it up and alter the thickness and add in some breaks, however im not quite sure how to achieve this since i hold my pen with a very heavy grip, and it's been a constant problem of mine since i started off art. 

but anyway, here are some of my works, most are my favorites or most 'complete' imo haha

most recent

whole body fanart

attempted at a 'painted' style

half-body oc design

whole body oc

thank you in advance for any advice you can give! ;v;

WhiskeyWorks

Hello, fellow BlazBlue fan. ;)

Honestly I think your style is very pleasing. Your use of colour is good, and you have a fairly strong sense of anatomy. You're also not afraid to draw hands, which is always a plus in my book. I can't really help with developing a more watercolour style since I'm not very good at it myself, but I think I can help a bit with your stiffness issue.

For developing a more relaxed style, quick and simple sketches are key. Focus on movement, posing, and flow rather than anatomy. Do some very rough, very quick sketches... no more than 5 minutes each just exploring basic shapes. This is called gesture drawing, and it is critical! I found this short video which might be able to help you to explore this more.

If you think your style is too clean, why don't you try colouring some sketches? Just doing a simple sketch and adding colour can also help you develop a 'looser' style. I also notice in your work that your line weight seems to be almost all the same. I'd recommend playing with other line brushes which can add more weight and value to your artwork. I usually set my minimum brush size to 0 pixels and my max brush size to 20, so I can get a lot of variation between line weights, as observed in this coloured sketch. Here you can observe that there is a lot of variation between line weight, with more emphasis on more important lines with inner/less important details utilizing thinner lines. I think your example of a "painted style attempt' is on the right track in this regard, but try pushing a little further.

Anyway, I hope this helps... even just a little bit. Best of luck! :)

polyfragment

i have to say i rather like your art! the colours are nice and soft and your grasp on anatomy is pretty good! i do agree that some of your poses look a little stiff.

what i would recommend to alleviate that, is to look into line of action and try doing quick gestures of more action-y poses. you can alleviate this by thinking about your character's center of balance, and how you can move it to make your characters' poses look more natural. 

for example, in the last link, with the blonde girl in overalls, you have her sitting straight up, making her look like shes rather shocked! if you wanted to do a similar pose with a more relaxed pose, you might want her to slouch a little, or rest herself on her knees or something similar. along with that, in relation to anatomy, i'd pay more attention to the length of her legs and how her calves measure up to her thighs.

here is a similar pose from senshistock! (who i recommend if youre looking for stock photos to reference or practice gestures from)

notice how she looks a lot more relaxed, her back curled so her head is just forward from where her pelvis is rested. 

definitely brush up on your poses! look at how people stand as resting, and how they don't always stand straight and with their balance on both feet. try drawing a pose where they rest their body on one foot and just support with the other. try even taking videos & pictures of yourself or your friends (with permission!) just sitting around or goofing off. 

your 2nd link shows you're completely capable of creating interesting poses! that one doesn't look boring or stiff at all!

as for trying to find ways to invigorate your art, a fun exercise i find is to try drawing in other artists' styles! even try your hand at styles you don't normally draw in! study how they pose their characters, the way they construct the face, the way they use colour and shading.

as for your lineart, i'd look into practicing line weight! just draw lines over and over in different pressures and speeds. you can also try doing coloured lineart to change things up and add interest. i sometimes colour the lineart based on highlighted areas! i know in my program you can colour your lineart by right-clicking the lineart layer and select 'make quick clipping group'and just putting colours on a separate layer above your lineart but im not sure how that'd work on your program.

also please be careful with how you grip your pen! if you're gripping it too hard you can fatigue the muscles in your hands and make it painful to draw! make sure you're stretching your wrists before and after drawing!

now for colouring, one fun way i find to make your art 'pop' is to trying shading and highlighting with colours next to your base colour on the colour wheel! for example, if your base colour is a blue, you might want to shade with a dark purple, and highlight with a light green! heres two tutorials that kinda illustrate what i mean: (one) (two) (i personally love using colours further along the colour wheel to shade hehe)

i'd also recommend studying up on contrast for your colouring! consider how much contrast you want in each art piece and how it works together to create feeling! heres a good tutorial that talks about contrast! a good way to check the contrast in your art is to fill a new layer with grey and put it at the top of your layers and put the blending option to color so it'll make every greyscale without actually getting rid of all the colour.

also if you're feeling your shading looks messy, try looking into other shading styles! such as cell-shading

i really like your art! theyre very pleasing to look at and your characters are so cute! i hope these tips help you :) if want any clarification on anything i said, let me know! i know i said a lot so its no worries if you need me to explain certain parts better!

23oolong

Thank you guys so much! I spent a while trying to figure out if I could tag people, reply to them, or @ them, but I'm going to assume I can't? qq I want to say thank you so much for such detailed and precise tips, they're really helpful! I've always put off the 5 minute gesture drawing exercise but I think I need to start trying that now so that I can loosen up my drawings a bit, I've always been a bit on the lazy side and excused myself since I didn't want to /properly/ learn art, but now I defo will have to if I want to get any better! 

And also tysm for the links to examples and tutorials, I had those shading references a long time ago and I've actually had trouble finding it again, so tysm! qq