Artblogging 1: First Lessons in Tabletting

[seventhe]

Well, as cockeyed_art begins, and I actually start to attempt to use the new tablet, I want to kind-of record some of my thoughts as I work through each piece. Mostly because I suck, but also to keep a record of things that I need to work on each week.

I'm putting it here because I put my writing rambles here too, and brokenprism is mostly for the actual work rather than the rambles. Those of you with no interest in art or drawing or its process, move along! Those of you who do draw and want to possibly just ramble about technique with me, especially on a tablet, you're welcome to go ahead and read my awesome tl;dr. These entries will come as I try new things, and will be under the tag of "artblogging".

- - -

On Me
First of all, I should probably state for the record that I am pretty much completely self-taught when it comes to art. I'm not a total idiot, no; I was very interested in art when I was younger, and studied it in school and on my own with teach-yourself books and the like, so I do have some background and foundation. But by "some" I really mean "stuff from high school" and since I'm now 25 and a completely-un-art-related chemical engineer that should tell you what kind of background I'm really talking about.

(Which of course makes me nervous to be entering the ring with rosencrantz and katmillia, who both studied art for college degrees, but, hey, whatever. XD I'm not a professional writer either, and I post that stuff too, don't I?)

I mean, I was a photography minor, so I studied things like light/shadow and composition, so - again, not a complete art-related idiot, but photography and sketching don't have a lot in common, either. XD

Anyway. I started drawing on the computer because I wanted to learn to draw anime-style, basically. OK, DON'T YELL AT ME. I know anime style is totally overdone, and everybody in FF fandom draws anime style, and OMG HOW COULD YOU? But basically, I LIKE anime-style art. I love manga. I think a lot of it is really pretty, and I like the style of drawing those types of faces and bodies, and I really like the style of hair. I always have. Maybe this is comparable to a love of, I don't know, meaningless pornfic? BECAUSE I LIKE ANIME/MANGA-STYLE ART, KTHX. HA HA.

I'd honed my (realism) skills in high school by drawing figures from magazines - practicing shading faces, drawing bodies and poses, etc. And I'll say I was pretty good at it for someone with no training whatsoever (keep in mind I was working from a reference, so I'm not going to say I was a super awesome artist, but I was decently good). So when I started trying to teach myself anime-style, I started (a) drawing from references, trying to imitate (um, hi, Sailor Moon!) and (b) reading online tutorials on how to draw in particular styles.

I got... well, pretty respectable, for only being self-taught. The things I posted online are from before about 2002-2003 and are pretty sub-par (so please do me a favor and do not go through that old folder of art; it is online to teach me specifically what NOT to do any more). However, I've got a folder of sketches - mostly original characters and stuff - that have turned out pretty well, honestly. I'm proud of that stuff. I just stopped posting things online when I started moving around (2003 - onwards; it is hard to post when your scanner is in a box; see below XD) and never really picked it back up.

Somewhere in here I picked up a pretty sub-par tablet. It worked decently, but it was never really capable of doing everything I asked it to. However, it was a big help for colouring, and eventually I decided that I wanted to learn to draw completely on the tablet.

There were a couple projects to spur this - mostly online comics, until I realized how bad I was at art and how correspondingly bad I was at sticking to projects. So I failed. XD

OKAY, THIS IS ENOUGH BACKGROUND, OH MY GOD.

Basic goals, LOL
My goals here are pretty simple. I don't necessarily want to be able to draw realistic-style; I can draw realism if I have a reference, and what interests me more is developing a comic-like style of my own that's realistic enough to not look weird, but enough of my own style to be cool. This draws on both anime/manga-type style, and typical comic-style stuff (see: RPGWorld, Megatokyo, etc etc for people who have developed fun styles).

My eventual goal is to make an online webcomic/manga out of Seven Beacons. OK, there, I said it.

In the meantime, however, I just want to hone my skills to the point where I can draw decent pictures of characters I like. That's my real goal. They'll be anime-like, and they'll probably be plain and bland, but that's pretty much where I want to go with this right now.

On Technique, and my Tablet Skills
So normally, when I draw, I begin with some light pencil sketches that are full of guidelines. Guidelines, guidelines, happy little guidelines. I start with a pose, or a general idea, or something like that, and then sketch in everything. I've got guidelines that I'm used to to help me with the face, and I've got little tricks to help me with proportioning the body to the head, and usually stuff turns out relatively okay.

I usually start with an exaggerated stick-figure in whatever pose I'm looking for, usually proportioned (using GUIDELINES XD) and hopefully posed semi-acceptably. I then move on to the face, because if I can't get the face close to right, right away, I abandon the picture. The face is pretty much everything to me - it's the center of the pic, and the most important thing, and if it doesn't come out right, I can't go back and edit it later because I fail. The picture revolves around the face, for me. So the face comes first.

Then I sketch in the body, lightly, so I've got a reference for adding clothing. I tend for long and skinny in the body, because I have a more comic/anime-like style overall, but I try to stay realistic (and, more importantly, proportioned!). I then add the clothes/outfit/whatever, and voila, I've got a sketch. Sometimes it takes a couple tries, but usually I come out with something likeable.

Here's the first problem. When I'm doing this on paper, freehand, I can do it with my guidelines and sketches and everything. When I try to do this completely on the computer, 100% tablet, my guidelines fail.

I am doing the same things, really, but the guidelines do not work. I'll draw my circles and oblongs to make the face, and then I go to draw the horizontal and vertical anchor-lines I usually use -- and they don't come out in the right place. I can't get them to line up right. I'm just drawing lines on top of other lines. And because I'm so dependent on my guidelines in my art, this means tablet-based art just comes out wrong.

Same with my body-references. I mean, you can totally see it here (Rosa, FFIV, PG) -- the head/neck are too big for the body. And yet, that was what my reference-lines told me to draw. Granted, I am not an expert artist, but on paper, I am much better than that!

Somehow, working completely on the tablet messes up my perspective somehow. I'm not sure why, but the guideline method I'm used to using doesn't seem to translate over from tablet to computer screen. Things that I do on paper that WORK -- I cannot do them on the tablet. Does anyone else have this problem?

The outline itself came out alright, I guess; better than (a) my old tablet, and (b) mouse-tracing. I still wish I'd had a better shape to outline. I can't draw details on the computer like I do free-hand, either, so outfits come out looking horribly bland rather than full of quirky Amano-like stuff like FF characters should have.

Granted, I am sure I need more practice, for one. My previous tablet-only project, an ill-fated webcomic based on Resonance, another of my original stories, was drawn in a big-head, small-body style -- and so I am probably channeling some of that from, y'know, 4 years ago. So that's also part of it - I'm used to doing things on a tablet that, well, I didn't want to do in this particular picture.

So I think one thing I need more practice on is getting the things I see in my head to show up on the computer screen when I draw them on the tablet. I don't know WHY they don't line up right, but they never seem to. I just don't have the control with the tablet that I do free-hand, I guess. I mean, that's an inherent fact that comes with tablet work. So: practice.

At the same time, I need to dig out my scanner finally, so that Enkida and Katy do not give up on my craptastic art skills!

TEAL DEER
So, in conclusion, and in retrospect, I should've spent my time digging out my scanner and made the picture in the way I'm used to -- hand-sketch, scan, trace and color on the computer -- rather than spending hours drawing and re-drawing and finally realizing things were not going to turn out like I wanted them to and "compromising" on a final picture.

I know there are proportion problems in the picture, huge ones; but the way I was going, they were not resolving themselves. I realize the point of cockeyed_art is just to get A PICTURE out every week, which is why I went forward with this one. It's a good example of the flaws in my all-tablet work, and so it's a good starting point for me to improve things. I'll never get better with the tablet unless I keep at it, really!

People who draw with tablets - do you just sketch and sketch until something looks right? Or do you use tons of guidelines in Photoshop to help you shape an image?

Comments

Re: tablets

[rosencrantz.livejournal.com]

Tablets never do what you want them to because they're a completely different medium than paper.

To be honest, when I sketch on paper and then colour in photoshop, my preferred method of colouring is with my mouse and the gradient tool, and then doing a little quick and dirty shading with a really soft brush where necessary (usually with the mouse, too). I'm just more accurate with the mouse than I am with the stylus.

In my experience, if you want beautiful, smooth, curvy lines on a computer sketch, the only real successful way to do it is with path tools - which are also easier to use with a mouse than a pen (surprise surprise).

I think it's a matter of training, though. I learned on paper first before tablets were even affordable to the common man, and as a result I have an information disconnect when I try to freehand on a tablet. On the other hand people who started on tablets (generally asian - i.e. 'digital products everywhere but paper is expensive' or people significantly younger than me) can do amazing things with the stylus and I still don't know how they manage it.

But HEY THIS IS WHAT OUR COMM IS FOR TO GET OVER THIS LITTLE FINE POINT RITE?

I know a couple of basic things about the tablet. Use long, long strokes and then erase what you don't need to make your lines come out smoother (or even just "straight" in some cases). Tablets don't lend themselves to short strokes the way paper drawings do, things get all choppy and pixellated.

Also, you can see my solution to the 'my stylus don't go where I tell it to!' problem in my own sketches - I just make my finished products messy sketches, and try to cover with shading. ^^; My sketch style has always been messy anyhow so this works quite well for me.

I also do guidelines on a separate 'grey' layer for my tablet drawings - just like I do light sketches for paper drawings. Generally I don't pay attention to details like costume design, hair and fingers when I do my roughs, but one thing I do do is keep on redoing the base sketch until the proportions look right. I also used to do the big head thing (it really is a matter of angle of drawing), but I've gotten better at that from all the comic making I do, since I don't have a tiltotable and tend to draw my comic entirely on flat (necessitated by the kind of architecture pens I use to ink as well, they don't like to flow properly at angles). So the big head in the wrong place thing will go away with enough practice, just keep on sketching and looking and sketching and looking.

Hey this advice is illustrated: check it out, presketch

Notice how totally retarded it is, but it helps me see at least that the position of the body is where I want it to be.

now whether or not that is an anatomically possible position in the first place is a question I NEVER ask myself, but it does look the way I intended it to, for the most part. XD

Re: tablets

[first-seventhe.livejournal.com]

I do basically the same thing! Although my rough pre-sketchings have a lot more lines on them than yours does XD It's the same basic idea, though -- I outline in a lighter color, then usually I trace over it with a darker color to remind myself which lines are the "right" ones, and then I do the final outline in a new layer. (AH, POINTS TO WHOMEVER INVENTED THE LAYER. IT SAVES MY ASS)

I have more problems with proportion, but I think maybe I start with too little -- I'll do a stick figure to pose, and then when I try to rough in shapes like torso, arms, etc sometimes they come out wonky. 500% more likely on the tablet, because I just don't get it. XD

I'll probably be doing a lot on the tablet for the comm, because I want to get better at it; which means you guys will have to put up with a lot of crappy art, but hopefully not for too long!

And the one thing I usually do when sketching free-hand is draw on a clipboard. Yours is the second comment talking about the proportion thing with drawing on a flat surface. I mean, I have horrible posture and when I draw I'm usually curled up in a couch somewhere with a clipboard so that I can angle it wherever I want... now I wonder whether I'm doing it right, or DOING IT WRONG :p

Re: tablets

[rosencrantz.livejournal.com]

There's no wrong or right way to draw, but I will admit for myself it is easier to keep things in proportion when I draw at a 45 (or slightly less) angle rather than in flats. Usually these days I catch in time the proportion disparity in the geometric shapes before I start with the fine-sketch, at least on paper, but in tablets you don't really have that option. At least I don't because my tablet is the size of a farkin' post card waah. ;-)

The other big thing though that tablets mess you up on is the hand eye coordination. You have to draw while looking at your screen, not your hand, and it's harder that a lot of people realize unless you train yourself. You can sort of 'try' to train yourself in traditional media by sketching something from life while not looking at your paper - this is an exercise a teacher would have made you do if you majored in studio art at least once in your life. And not surprisingly, when I do those, they look very similar to what comes out whn I draw with a tablet because it's the same deal - drawing without looking at your paper is effin' hard.

The correct term isn't really hand-eye coordination, but rather... how well your mind's eye can imagine what your hand is doing without seeing it. With tablet it is a bit easier because you can watch your screen make output, but it's still not the same as watching your HAND draw.

To my knowledge there's no cure for this other than draw,draw draw, though. Or start on a tablet before you hit up paper, which is too late for us anyhow. ;-)

Re: tablets

[rosencrantz.livejournal.com]

nerd factoid of the day, that I learned in my digital art courses:

the layer was invented by the Photoshop 4 team. Before then there were no layers. When layers first came out, the program had to be bundled on !5! 3.5" discs.

This is why photoshop costs like 900 bucks or whatnot today, though. Adobe really did invent 'the digital layer.' Respect! ;)

Re: tablets

[first-seventhe.livejournal.com]

GOOD GOD. I throw myself at Adobe's feet.

although I still stole my copy of photoshop

Re: tablets

[rosencrantz.livejournal.com]

Since I know you're attending classes right now, if I were you I'd buy myself a legal copy of photoshop while you have access to the claim that you are a "student", it only costs $199 I believe and is the absolute best deal you will ever get, ever, for photoshop.

AFAIK if you ever want to go into the biz (in any sense of the word) you need a legal copy of your software to work on, and upgrades to photoshop are significantly cheaper than buying the program whole. But for students, buying the program whole is pretty damn cheap. That's what I did while I was a student, and was the best investment I ever made. :-)

I forget how it goes in the US, but in Europe if you hit 31, even if you are still a student you no longer qualify for student prices on software. I think they are more lenient in the US though, so I'd flash that good ol' student ID while you have it. At least one legal copy of your basic lots-used programs is never a bad thing. ;-)

Re: tablets

[first-seventhe.livejournal.com]

Actually, that's an excellent idea. I know UAkron does it because there's this one guy at work who is always trying to bum cheap software out of the part-time students XD

Actually... I wonder if work would pay 50% on programs, like they do on books...