Rivana's Art Corner

[Rivana]

You draw really nice faces! =3

Thank you ^_^ I love sketching faces when I doodle/on break.

Here's another one I did last night. It's a friend's OC:



(I am drawing female faces in between because the comic pages I am working on atm has all male characters >_>)

[Rivana]

sneak preview of my comic's next page. lol, first time to draw a terrified expression...so yeah >_>



Also sketched this over coffee this morning. Was reading the Improvement thread and found my old Youko Kurama sketch that I did..thought I'd redo it. I ran out of time because I had to get ready for work so this is all I managed to do and it sucked:

[AlkseeyaKC]

I hope you do not mind a small critic. Your art is awesome, I just want to help out a tad. =3
For the screaming/shocked guy, it looks like that's under lighting. In that case the area between the eyes and above the nose would be darker, because they set in more on the face then the nose and cheeks. That's all I have to say, other wise awesome job on the angel and expression. that's a hard one to do. =3

[Rivana]

I hope you do not mind a small critic. Your art is awesome, I just want to help out a tad. =3
For the screaming/shocked guy, it looks like that's under lighting. In that case the area between the eyes and above the nose would be darker, because they set in more on the face then the nose and cheeks. That's all I have to say, other wise awesome job on the angel and expression. that's a hard one to do. =3

Hun, I don't mind at all. This is what this thread is for!

And noted! I didn't shade it because the light was directly on his face but you're right. The bottom of his nose should put some sort of shadow with that angle. Thanks so much

[AlkseeyaKC]

YAY I'm happy you do not mind. I'm happy to help ya out! =3

[Rivana]

Talking about anime in the other thread reminded me of this old speed drawing I did:


And a preview of the 2nd half of the next page. I got a little further than this last night. Still got some stuff to fix (ESP the hand on the lower left panel! ugh..He was missing fingers lol):

[Molly-sama]

O.O Wow I really like your art. The skin and hair always look so awesome.

[blankd]

Spoiler! :

I understand it is still a WIP so you may already know this, but I feel as though the fellow in the chair should be casting a visible shadow on the desk. Also you may want to be careful, that shoulder armor is looking a bit muddy!

Other than that, it's pretty admirable that you're sticking to painting all the pages. It'll be a long road but you'll be a painting master by the end.

[Rivana]

Thanks both of you!

@Blankd - really good catch on that shadow. I didn't think of that. I'll have to look at how armors/metal look IRL. For some reason I always have trouble painting a convincing metal >_<

[Rivana]

So...I drew the same character in two different (consecutive pages so far). I noticed she looks different...It's as if the drawing was done by two different persons. I honestly like the latter/newer one better. Dunno if this is an issue but I am still in the process of finding my style. So I don't mind it as long as the character is recognizable in both styles I suppose.

page 5


page 6 (still working out the colors on this one and some fixes on the arm)

[blankd]

If that is the case you may want to set aside a model/palette/reference sheet so that you don't change too much as you go further along. Change is fine in the long run, but if it's too drastic between pages there could be a problem.

[Pinali]

Hi there! Having a look through your thread. I like the fact you seem to be focusing on painting, that's something I don't see a lot in comics.

If you don't mind a small crit, I suggest using less "black" for shading. Your shadows are all very, well... black black. It makes a lot of your images look very dark, and I think they would benefit from a bit more light! (not pure white though, cause then it risks to have a bleached clinical look)
Also, try putting some colour tints into your shadows. Painting some black on top of a colour isn't a very "interesting" shadow. Try adding a bit of blue, or green, or purple, or anything you like, see how it looks.
Keep up the good work!

Edit: Oh, another thing, I feel like every object in your paintings seem to have the same range of values - I'm going to hazard a guess and say this is because you paint in black/white first and then add the colour afterwards. Think about the "base" value of an object/material before you shade - if it's a dark cloth, then usually the highlights on it shouldn't be such a light colour as the highlights on a lighter coloured cloth (unless it's something like PVC). I hope that's somewhat understandable what I'm trying to say. XD Here is a wonderful tutorial/walkthrough including adding colour to a monochrome painting, you notice he adds the base tones for each colour before he shades: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dib6oA3 ... ideo_title hope it's useful!

[Rivana]

@Blankd- Thanks! Yeah making character reference sheets has been brewing in my head for awhile. I really wanted to do it at some point (and I know I should've done it at the beginning lol). I'll start doing them even if it's just sketchy types. I just need their basic sillhouettes and colors for the most part. Nothing too detailed.

Another thing about those two is that the first one got me in an art block ..and experience has it that my works look different if I am having an art block or not.


Was having an art block

Spoiler! :

No Art Block. I completely re-did the drawing. I just watched 'How to Train A Dragon' here..you can tell by the plushie in the background >_> (and this is my non-painted style. Completely different from what I got used to)

Spoiler! :

Got more examples but those two should send the point across because they are done back to back with the same concept.

@Pinali - Funny thing is that I don't use black to shade. I think it has something to do with my color fixes as the end as well. I have a bad habit of increasing the contrast too much so it turns out black than I initially did. I'll keep an eye on that from now on.

Yes! You're right. I do work in grayscale first. I feel like I am stuck in a rut right now and could really use some new pointers/techniques. I am at work atm so I can't watch the youtube video. I can't wait to watch it at home tonight.

Thanks so much! Both of you

[eishiya]

When you paint, try doing so without any Adjustments whatsoever. Paint your values exactly as you want them, paint your colours exactly as you want them. When something doesn't look good, figure out why and redo it instead of trying to adjust it. It'll slow you down at first, but it'll give you the practice you need. In the future, with this practice, you won't need to waste time doing adjustments :)

If you want to do the Greyscale -> colour method, then do it, but then when you need to fix something, flatten the image and paint over it in colour (Normal blending mode) to get the effect your want. Then, you can use an Overlay layer for some additional colour effects to add some more saturation where it's needed.

You can also try working in colour from the start. It's more difficult to keep track of both your colours and values at once, but it's good to know how to do it, and it might help you avoid a lot of the muddiness you have. There are limitations to colourising B&W, so if you want good colours, you will need to do a lot of painting directly in colour, even if you do start with a greyscale underpainting. If you do it already, then I don't think you're picking your colours carefully enough.


Also, you need to work on separating characters from their backgrounds a little more, they often blend into them. Two good examples are in today's posts. Part of it is because all the shading everywhere is so dark.

[Rivana]

When you paint, try doing so without any Adjustments whatsoever. Paint your values exactly as you want them, paint your colours exactly as you want them. When something doesn't look good, figure out why and redo it instead of trying to adjust it. It'll slow you down at first, but it'll give you the practice you need. In the future, with this practice, you won't need to waste time doing adjustments

If you want to do the Greyscale -> colour method, then do it, but then when you need to fix something, flatten the image and paint over it in colour (Normal blending mode) to get the effect your want. Then, you can use an Overlay layer for some additional colour effects to add some more saturation where it's needed.

You can also try working in colour from the start. It's more difficult to keep track of both your colours and values at once, but it's good to know how to do it, and it might help you avoid a lot of the muddiness you have. There are limitations to colourising B&W, so if you want good colours, you will need to do a lot of painting directly in colour, even if you do start with a greyscale underpainting. If you do it already, then I don't think you're picking your colours carefully enough.


Also, you need to work on separating characters from their backgrounds a little more, they often blend into them. Two good examples are in today's posts. Part of it is because all the shading everywhere is so dark.

Yep I do the flatten image-paint over already for awhile ^^ . After reading your post, I realized something...which I think where all my frutrations come from recently lol:

The reason I feel the need to adjust the colors is because I am working on a cintiq - where the colors look fine and when I preview it on my other monitor, the colors are messed up. ;_; (I am working on dual monitors). So tbh, I am not sure which monitor to follow. I think my recent drawings using cintiq is giving me this issue. I don't want to have to buy that color correction software for $$$ in order to get a consistent color on my monitors. I tried adjusting the gamma and all that but yeah, my two monitors are still not identical.

See. These are artworks I made when I still had my wacom tablet. I personally love how the colors turn out (though they may still have the 'shading is too dark' issue).

Spoiler! :

The one below is drawn/colored with cintiq. Notice how they seem to be more flat. My coloring took quite a bit of a setback here. I do love how the cover turned out but not after tweaking the hell out of the colors. It does look more 2D than my previous works which have more of a semi-realism feel to them. The colors don't seem as complex as my previous works. To this date, I have been wondering what happened. I haven't changed a single thing in my work process:

Spoiler! :

All my comic pages are drawn/colored using cintiq as well.

I am still frustrated with Cintiq on the coloring aspect to this day. But don't get me wrong, I LOVE how quickly I can draw/paint using cintiq but the color selection process for me has really got me all messed up.

I'll sit down on this again tonight and see if I can play with my monitor settings again. Also the color palette I use in photoshop might need a bit of adjusting because I put in limited colors when I started working on the comic (I got this palette from a comic-coloring tutorial book. I think it's a bad idea now). So yeah that could be the issue as well. I am just realizing how these changes have affected my works so much.

I love you guys <3. Your critiques has really given me a lot of insight. Can't thank you enough. I'll post some updated pics based from your critiques and my little epiphany rambling just now lol.