Practicing some Art, need advise

[TemetNosce88]

Much better!

One technique that I use frequently is I will try out a pose in front of a mirror, both to see how everything should look and also to see how it would feel physically. If I come away from it thinking "Wow, that's awkward" I'll change my drawing.

 

[StolenMadWolf]

Much better!

One technique that I use frequently is I will try out a pose in front of a mirror, both to see how everything should look and also to see how it would feel physically. If I come away from it thinking "Wow, that's awkward" I'll change my drawing.

Gotcha.

Meanwhile, I finished off the fullbody. Did a little bit of digging and managed to pull a decent eye effect to use in the future. I can still see a few issues that I need to work on, namely in the legs, but I feel like I'm getting there.

Anyway, this will probably be the last time I post before switching to a regular thread unless I've got a specific question in mind. Here is the full body:

Any tips or advice for a piece like this? Anything outstanding?

 

[ZTcat]

在一年以前我也同样是个新手
在数不计的时间和试错里，可以分别给自己一个长期性的目标与短期性的目标
哪里不舒服就花费一天到每月的时间攻克他。这种练习方法绝对有效的！
目前我给你的建议是：加强结构（体积正确）的理解加强对人体和组织的理解（有时你觉得已经理解完成了很可能是错觉，可以多多对比自己与那些大艺术家的区别，反复对比自己的画面与它们的画面）
仅提供参考意见！祝创作愉快XD
一年前我也是初学者

在几个不计时间和反复试验的情况下，都可以分别制定长期目标和短期目标

一个月度过一天来征服他怎么了？这种做法绝对有效！

现在，我对您的建议是：加强对结构体的理解（正确），增强对人体和组织的理解（有时您认为所做的可能是一种幻想，理解可以将自己与艺术家之间的巨大差异进行比较，反复比较自己的照片）

仅提供参考意见！祝你创作愉快XD

 

[ZTcat]

在一年以前我也同样是个新手
在数不计的时间和试错里，可以分别给自己一个长期性的目标与短期性的目标
哪里不舒服就花费一天到每月的时间攻克他。这种练习方法绝对有效的！
目前我给你的建议是：加强结构（体积正确）的理解加强对人体和组织的理解（有时你觉得已经理解完成了很可能是错觉，可以多多对比自己与那些大艺术家的区别，反复对比自己的画面与它们的画面）
仅提供参考意见！祝创作愉快XD
一年前我也是初学者

在几个不计时间和反复试验的情况下，都可以分别制定长期目标和短期目标

一个月度过一天来征服他怎么了？这种做法绝对有效！

现在，我对您的建议是：加强对结构体的理解（正确），增强对人体和组织的理解（有时您认为所做的可能是一种幻想，理解可以将自己与艺术家之间的巨大差异进行比较，反复比较自己的照片）

仅提供参考意见！祝你创作愉快XD

A year ago I am also a beginner

In several regardless of time and trial and error, can respectively for a long-term goals and short-term goals

What's wrong with to spend one day a month time to conquer him. This kind of practice is absolutely effective!

Now my advice to you is: to strengthen the understanding of the structural volume (right) to strengthen the understanding of the human body and organization (sometimes you think have done is likely to be illusion, understanding can compare yourself with the big difference between artists, repeatedly compared with their own picture)

Only to provide the reference opinion! Wish you a happy creation XD

 

[StolenMadWolf]

A year ago I am also a beginner

In several regardless of time and trial and error, can respectively for a long-term goals and short-term goals

What's wrong with to spend one day a month time to conquer him. This kind of practice is absolutely effective!

Now my advice to you is: to strengthen the understanding of the structural volume (right) to strengthen the understanding of the human body and organization (sometimes you think have done is likely to be illusion, understanding can compare yourself with the big difference between artists, repeatedly compared with their own picture)

Only to provide the reference opinion! Wish you a happy creation XD

Thanks, I'll try and keep that in mind!

 

[StolenMadWolf]

Alright, this will probably be my last post in here for a while. But I figured I would get a final set of opinions on these last few pieces I have done.

First of all, my first attempt at a bird head. Specifically that of a Pheonix modeled after a Falcon and an old school logo.

For only my second try on a bird head, it's so far come out very nicely! I decided also to take a page out of the eye trick from the full body, making the best eye I have done so far. I also went further, and use a similar trick with the feather's to give it a less flat look. Currently just pondering what else I could do with this beyond some kind of shading on the head and highlight on the beak.

Secondly, my first try at a reference sheet for another character of mine. It was originally meant to just be practice. But the way I ended up laying things out made an actual ref sheet make sense.

As for the art itself, it did allow me to try some new things. I always had difficulty with hands and feet, so inspired by a few other artists out there, I decided to simply not draw human hands and optted for smaller feet in the first place with the slimmer look. I also worked on doing smaller details across the entire art piece . I did try some more eye work with the original full body from before and the phoenix head, but then I took a further step forward with that this time by better blending in multiple colours. Not only does it help give the eyes the look of being a 3D shape, but also gives them a more subtle glow effect as well. Oh, and I improved my work on backgrounds as a bonush as well whilst matching the character's colour scheme.

So, any final tips on what you can suggest on these pieces?

 

[StolenMadWolf]

And I'm back again, as I'm left scratching my head at one particular bit of anatomy. Basically, I'm doing a fresh run of my character and have been trying to get his body proportions all right. But doing that has proven to be a massive pain in the side.

Spoiler: Current WIP

So, I've had the suggestion of widening his shoulders and upper torso, but I can't get that to work right at all, as it essentially renders him top heavy, and I can't correct that without changing his entire body which has put me off. But my main concern is his right leg. A few people have told me that the leg is fine, but a few people have said the leg is too thin and lanky. I've tried thickening it, but it just ends up looking worse.

Any advise on the anatomy?

 

[Ziggy Schlacht]

This is an improvement from the first post, that's for sure. The torso is fine, honestly. Not built like a tank, but not weak either. What's wrong is the arms, they're implied as too long. Your elbow joint should be right around level with the bottom of your ribcage, whereas your arms are already at the navel and the bicep hasn't tapered in yet to define the elbow. That's why people keep focusing on the upper torso - the arms throw it off.

The legs, hard to say if they're too short, too long, or right, because I have a single knee. However, the issue isn't thinness or thickness, but rather the shape. Your thigh is not a tube, it's cone (broadly speaking). Your leg doesn't taper to the knee, it's straight. So tapering it would make it look more natural. I would just more or less start at where the left leg connects to the crotch and then go to the knee.

The other issue is the shape of the knee itself. It does more or less bend at a right angle in the back, but thanks to knee caps it's a more graceful curve on the outside. So I would remove that sharp corner and just kinda round it off.

 

[Saokymo]

Overall, the anatomy is pretty spot-on. Ziggy pointed out the shape of the thighs & legs; aside from that the proportions are decent.

If you’re trying to make the character look taller or more fit/muscled, try shrinking the head just a bit. The size is fine as it is, but larger head vs. body proportions tend to make characters look younger & more child-like. Making the head just a bit smaller will naturally help the character look more mature without having to mess with the body proportions or anatomy.

 

[Ziggy Schlacht]

Overall, the anatomy is pretty spot-on. Ziggy pointed out the shape of the thighs & legs; aside from that the proportions are decent.

If you’re trying to make the character look taller or more fit/muscled, try shrinking the head just a bit. The size is fine as it is, but larger head vs. body proportions tend to make characters look younger & more child-like. Making the head just a bit smaller will naturally help the character look more mature without having to mess with the body proportions or anatomy.

Good call. I've generally gotten in the habit of just ignoring head size on anthro characters, because by the time you adapt the animal anatomy to a human body, you end up with large heads. Particularly with dogs.

Last point, I would move the ears forward on the head too. If I trace where the skull is implied, the ears are either huge or floating in space.

 

[StolenMadWolf]

This is an improvement from the first post, that's for sure. The torso is fine, honestly. Not built like a tank, but not weak either. What's wrong is the arms, they're implied as too long. Your elbow joint should be right around level with the bottom of your ribcage, whereas your arms are already at the navel and the bicep hasn't tapered in yet to define the elbow. That's why people keep focusing on the upper torso - the arms throw it off.

The legs, hard to say if they're too short, too long, or right, because I have a single knee. However, the issue isn't thinness or thickness, but rather the shape. Your thigh is not a tube, it's cone (broadly speaking). Your leg doesn't taper to the knee, it's straight. So tapering it would make it look more natural. I would just more or less start at where the left leg connects to the crotch and then go to the knee.

The other issue is the shape of the knee itself. It does more or less bend at a right angle in the back, but thanks to knee caps it's a more graceful curve on the outside. So I would remove that sharp corner and just kinda round it off.

Overall, the anatomy is pretty spot-on. Ziggy pointed out the shape of the thighs & legs; aside from that the proportions are decent.

If you’re trying to make the character look taller or more fit/muscled, try shrinking the head just a bit. The size is fine as it is, but larger head vs. body proportions tend to make characters look younger & more child-like. Making the head just a bit smaller will naturally help the character look more mature without having to mess with the body proportions or anatomy.

Good call. I've generally gotten in the habit of just ignoring head size on anthro characters, because by the time you adapt the animal anatomy to a human body, you end up with large heads. Particularly with dogs.

Last point, I would move the ears forward on the head too. If I trace where the skull is implied, the ears are either huge or floating in space.

Thanks for the pointers! The approach on the leg helped alot, and it looks much better now! I'm also working on outlining the arms more, and getting the proportions sorted out there as well, save for a slight tweak for the actual draw up. I'll have a second look at the ears, although I did intend for them to be fairly big anyway.

Only real challenge now is managing to draw a hand again. Most hands I end up doing end up looking chubby, blocky or too small or large. Normally a combination of all those and even any okayish hands still look rubbish. Going to try and nail that this time around although it will probably take about forty attempts to do it.

 

[Ziggy Schlacht]

Hands suck, plain and simple. The big thing is to break them up, so the palm is a trapezoid, then lines for fingers. Once that looks right, you can fill in the thickness. I would stress breaking the hands up, my guess is you're trying to to draw them straight up, without the step of figuring out what they should look right first.

It may help to look at as many references as you can. Or even just your own hand.

One thing to note - when you draw something too small, it's generally a sign you're nervous drawing it. That's expected, but whatever comes out too small is a good indicator of what you need to work on.

 

[StolenMadWolf]

Hands suck, plain and simple. The big thing is to break them up, so the palm is a trapezoid, then lines for fingers. Once that looks right, you can fill in the thickness. I would stress breaking the hands up, my guess is you're trying to to draw them straight up, without the step of figuring out what they should look right first.

It may help to look at as many references as you can. Or even just your own hand.

One thing to note - when you draw something too small, it's generally a sign you're nervous drawing it. That's expected, but whatever comes out too small is a good indicator of what you need to work on.

Breaking down the hands seemed to help, I've got something workable at least and finished up the inital adjustments to those arms and hoping those proportions are still there after also rounding off the knee.

Just gotta figure out how to draw a different set of clothing than before short of any additional tweaks.

 

[StolenMadWolf]

So, I finished off that piece I was working on. I did end up leaving it for a while, so I might have forgot a few details that I needed to work on.

Here's to hoping that it was a worthy improvement. I tried to take the advise into account, as well as trying some old and new things with shading and highlights.

 

[Ziggy Schlacht]

Oops, lost track of this thread. My bad.

This is much improved, the overall body is good and the shading implies volume well. And you actually drew hands!

Next thing to work on is the head, muzzles suck, but the head is looking directly sideways. There's a utility for that:

Animal Photo Art References Search

Angle the skull as you want, take a picture, then use that as a head reference. That way you can get 3 dimensionality to your head.

 

[Hound-of-chulainn]

Congrats on the new piece, you're doing really good!
This is gonna sound kinda weird, but honestly something I've found really helpful for practicing is shapes. Whenever I have trouble getting the form of something right. I go back, block it out in 2d or 3d shapes, and just trim away at it until I have what I want. Even stuff like faces and eyes have patterns with shapes that give you an idea where to place things. If you ever feel like something's not looking right, hopefully that helps a bit.

Also if you wanna check your own work, mirror your canvas. if you get a fresh perspective on what your working on, it makes it easier to see if something doesn't look right, but you stopped noticing it because you've been staring at it for 5+ hours. xD

 

[StolenMadWolf]

Thanks for the advise and support! I'll give those 2D and 3D shapes and heads a further look at, I simply opted for a side on look at the head then just because I wanted to keep that piece simple (and get some practice on side-on heads). But I will experiement with those and see how that goes!

That being said, a few days ago I just started another piece featuring the same character, but this time I'm hoping to do mutliple versions of this piece of art where the character is in different sets of clothing, using the original base line art and colours as the foundation for those outfit pieces. I also figured that I would stop being overzealous with the line art, lowered the line thickness, used my pen more gently (save the poor touchscreen laptop for good measure) and work to try and do a much neater piece to boot. I also started to draw some inspiration from how some artists have done their characters and have been experimenting to try and develop my own.

So this is what I ultimately came up with as the starting base, and I have to admit I'm actually liking how I am doing this so far:

Spoiler: Kili Outfit Fullbody Base Base

So, as part of neating everything up, I utalised thinner lines across the entire body, even zooming in quite far in to try and get those lines done. My original plan was thicken the lines back up later, and I might still do... but I feel like I might just leave the lines as they are if only a little bit thicker to make them stand out a little bit more. It just has a nice effect that I can't help but like. I've also started to take advantage of Krita's tools more, so using multiple layers to work out where some limbs go or to properly place the tattoos in the right place with the help of the mirror tool.

The plan is to do any adjustments to the lines and finish off part of the colour base, then move onto doing both shading and working on variations of this piece featuring my character in different outfits. Definitely seeing the improvements still.

 

[StolenMadWolf]

Also just for additional comparison, I have gone ahead and done a variation of the original base from before, this time with a variation of his normal outfit.

Spoiler: Kili Basic Base

Spoiler: Kili Outfit 1 Base

So far so good, and I have an idea for shading and making lines stand out later on down the line.

So, how does this look so far?

 

[PercyD]

Keep going~! I also suggest looking at the real animal when you sit down to draw.

You're pretty good with the neck, head and ears. Those can give you trouble. I will say that you tend to make the face more human than animal and slap a snout on it. For wolves, the snout and forehead are one continous line, with little bumps for the eyebrows. Here's a wolf's profile for comparison--

See? Its one line. The forehead, actually, you can raise a bit off this line. I alter the shape here for the eyebows/expressions.

You can make it any shape you want, really, for characterization. Dogs, in comparison, have larger eyes and different shaped snouts. Different breeds of wolves have different snouts too, which is why it's good to look at a real animal when you go to draw your furries.

If it's a hybrid of two species, it's fun to slap aspects of them both! I have a friend who has a jaguar/fox. He has a really intense looking character with the jaguar features, but the floofiness and ears of a fox. It was a nice mix.

Good luck! Keep going!

 

[StolenMadWolf]

@PercyD I will try and keep using those wolf references! I haven't used them for a while so I'll need to go and check that out.

Also did one final variation of the outfit pieces before I do shading work, as any other variations I come up with will be based of the original templates.

Spoiler: Kili V4 Final Variation Base

 

[Ziggy Schlacht]

So without changing anything - proportions, angle, expression, I did a sketch over to who where to add volume to your face and how to think about it. The head is a sphere, the muzzle a brick. You then have to think about the ears in 3 dimensions, yours are slightly skewed. The other think is I established the line of the brow by blocking the far side eye with curve, not a straight.

Hope this helps.