What Hex said. Although for me, the small one works more than well enough. Kind of tiny if you're used to the Bamboo Fun's size, though

Manga is something of an overused style on dA. Not a bad thing, per se, but it's hard to make your work look "unique" there :/

Today I took a risk and worked on something I never usually use. Bright colours~! So used to go from dark to light... starting with midtones is a bit of a challenge.



This post has been edited by DragonReine: Nov 1 2011, 01:44 AM

ADAM HUGH'S LARA CROFT ART IS AWESOME. AS IS HOW HE DRAWS WOMEN WHO ARE ATHLETIC AND STILL SEXY.

That is all

@ Adam

Well it just so happens that most of the characters I like are pretty serious characters, generally. So the result is that they tend to smile very little, if at all, in my paintings of them.

As for commissions... well, my clients apparently like drama LOL.

I do have some exceptions where I draw smiling characters, but the smile is more evil/mischievous/cheeky than "happy" (spoiler because of large images):



@ H4XF4XTOR

What I'd actually suggest is that you use dark AND slightly more saturated colours for your shadows instead of just "darker" versions of the base colour. Right now it just looks very... "gray".

Err... Not really "black"

I'll show you the skintone palette set I used for the painting that I'd posted the WIP for earlier, as an example.



The first four colours above are the ones I basically used for shading, going from highlight -> shadow.

You'll notice that the highlight is a very pale, very DESATURATED yellow, sort of greyish. In contrast, the shadow tone is a dark, SATURATED red-orange (it looks brown here, but it isn't; the greenish tone of the background makes it look "cooler" than it really is)

What's happening here is that I am using a progression of colours that goes from cool to warm. Mixing up cool and warm colours are a good way to give "life" to a painting.
So if cool light, warm shadow. Warm light, cool shadow

The three colours below are the "enrichment" or "enhancing" colours, which I brush lightly over selected areas of the face to give extra colour variety, using very low opacity, almost transparent brushes, with very soft edges. The yellow is most obvious on the forehead (which is usually yellow toned), the pink I used on the brighter parts of the cheeks and nose (the middle of the face is usually ruddy and warm), and the orange on the shadowed areas where skin is near skin (the edge of the nostrils, the underside of the chin) to give the effect of bounced light and the resulting subsurface scattering, which is quite important to make skin look like skin.

EDIT: I actually AVOID black. It's too flat, too dark, and can make your painting look very muddy. It works best if the painting is very, VERY desaturated to begin with, but otherwise it's better to actually use the "dark and saturated" trick again for the darkest parts of the painting. Almost-black deep red, almost-black deep blue, that sort of thing.

This post has been edited by DragonReine: Nov 1 2011, 09:25 PM

This is a very simple, but good colour theory tutorial:

http://katmomma.deviantart.com/art/The-Tom...Theory-77354239

And an good blending tutorial:

http://acidlullaby.deviantart.com/art/Blen...torial-90939400

Progress on Aveline:

Preview of my latest commission.

@ Bonchi

Just finished



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@ Sai91

Aw, shucks, thanks

@ Adam

If they shine, they'd look plastic in this case, considering the generally matte background, it'll look too "sharp"

@ Sai

I like tattoos. I have one, also like designing them.

Although in this case, the games I usually draw for has the option to customise the player character with facial tattoos, and most of my clients prefer getting characters with tattoos.

Likely, yes

@ LingLing

Woops.

Okay, clarification:

I draw game FANART. The games I like to play, which I also like to draw fanart for, has the option to customise player characters with facial markings, in addition to things like the shape of facial features, and skin/hair/eye colouring.

I do, however, design tattoos (usually of the tribal variety) on occasion for RL people. It's not something I do often, however

Nah, I'm not that good. Only started digital painting for just over a year

Hair's too stringy. Looks like she added a mop on her head :/

Been a LONG time since I came here, LOL, damn you ill health.

Anyway, something I'm still working on:

@ Agito

Aiya. Okay, I'm officially blind to certain things. Sorry! D:

I really am glad I tried drawing something beyond the pretty women I usually work with. This is ridiculously fun.

Heh, helping my sister with her modeling career I'm her bodyguard/makeup artist, LOL

Tattoo sketch: NOT SAFE FOR WORK, so it's linked elsewhere

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Added on January 20, 2012, 10:58 pm@ OH-
Right now her hair looks very flat, and doesn't follow the shape of her skull. The eyes, too, look "pasted in", and you've made the common mistake of drawing eyelashes strand by strand. There are other issues with the drawing, but most of it is a result of drawing the face as a flat object rather than a three-dimensional form.

I'll suggest that you take the time to learn the structure of the human face first before directly drawing from photo-refs. Once you know the three-dimensional shape of the human head, "eyeballing" details will be easy, even if the photo reference is less-than spectacular (under/over-exposed, too small, blurry etc)



This post has been edited by DragonReine: Jan 20 2012, 10:58 PM

@ OH-

For the sake of convenience and practicality, most artists don't bother rendering eyelashes strand by strand. Unless you're a CG artist, or someone whose work is going to be blown up to billboard size, or something, LOL, and even then it's still mostly unnecessary.

For example, here's the "final" image of one of my latest paintings:



... and here's the 100% resolution crop of the eyes from the same painting.



You'll see that the actual painting actually has very simply rendered eyes, and the eyelashes are "hinted" at rather than actually detailed in. In this case, the hinting is actually achieved by drawing a thick, dark line over the edges of the upper lid (which is a trick makeup artists also use to give the illusion of thicker eyelashes, haha), and I only needed to draw in several CURVED AND TAPERING strands of eyelashes to give her the look of thick eyelashes.

Now you might be thinking that "oh, this is digital, so it isn't relevant to me." but the "Keep it Simple" rule comes from traditional art teachings. Take these pencil portraits, for example:



Again, note that the "eyelashes" are mostly hinted at, again with thick lines. The woman has the extra strands, the man doesn't (because long eyelashes on a guy tends to look somewhat awkward, unless you're going for a certain 'look').

You may want to take a look at the site where the pencil portraits come from: http://www.portrait-artist.org/face/

It not only tells you the methods of drawing a face, but also the common mistakes beginners make (under their "don't do this" section).

You may also want to take a look at these two pages:

http://www.onlypencil.com/blog/tutorials/d...-the-human-eye/
http://www.artgraphica.net/free-art-lesson...es-tutorial.htm

I suggest reading those two sites at the same time. The first goes into detail about the specific techniques used (line weight, pencil pressure, shading/toning, etc), while the second goes more in depth about the materials used (pencil types/softness).

Hopefully, this will help

@ Adam

That works, yes. If you have the time and patience, it creates a nicely detailed result, as long as you don't overdo it.

My method is more towards speed/workflow optimization also known as "cheating" Again, in the end no one is going to actually see it, so hinting is more useful to me when doing commercial work, where I have time limits.