Hello! New to CGtalk. Please have a look at my art

[SpaXe]

Your drawing is solid. If anything, you should try custom brushes and hard brushes more to define your picture into details. For example. I would like to see the woman's portrait (the second one) to have a more defined hair rather than a few blurred patches. You have very nice propositions and clean outlines, which I love. Kudos on that.

Otherwise, I would like to see you come up with your own concept, your own character, your own world, your own style, your own expression. Right now I see copies of real things or things that had been done before by others; and you did a good job recreating them. But, you should take another step forward. Look into things you have never done before and do them. :)

Keep them up!

[Wushuboy]

Thank SpaXe for your comments. I really appreciate it.


I have no idea where to begin with custom brushes or hard brushes. How do these custom brushes work and really what can they do taht the default ones cant? Yeah I know what you mean about the hair on the girl but i didnt put any work into the hair at this point. It's still a work in progress and I only splotched on some hair to give me a spatial idea of how it should be. It's not anywhere near finished. I always do the hair last because that's the easiest thing for me.

I'm not sure about what you're referring to in your second paragraph. Are you alluding that I copied the character art as in or are you just simply stating that I should draw my own characters rather than ones that already exist? I think there's something said into putting you own artistic stamp onto existing properties. I do have my own characters but I feel more comfortable drawing known characters. But I shall take your advice to heart and start to work with my own world. I just want to make it known that I didn't copy the comic book stuff from any existing art. They're just random sketches.

Thanks again SpaXe for looking :)

[eishiya]

I don't think there's a need for you to go into custom brushes just yet, get the hang of basic ones. Stay away from the soft ones for rendering most things, you can do anything with hard brushes. You can make gentle "soft" blends with just the hard brush (and no smudge or anything like that).
I use one brush for most stuff, just varying the size. It's the hard round brush with Opacity controlled by pen pressure and Size controlled by pen pressure but with 70% minimum size. It should be early on in the default brush list. I've deleted most of the other default brushes. I have a bunch of custom brushes, but currently there's only one that you might "need," and that's a speckled brush for hair (and I also use one of mine for smudging). Here's one I just made:

http://www.eishiya.com/random/cgtalk/speckles.jpg

Make that speckly bit a brush, add those settings, voila. Of course it's not enough to use just that for hair (though those three strokes I did do make a decent base), you'd probably take a small hard round brush and make extra strokes, or a brush with 3-4 speckles to add some more hairs. ...honestly, I think I'll keep this brush xD;


I don't think SpaXe was implying that you copied off someone's work, he did say "I would like to see you come up with your own concept, your own character, your own world, your own style, your own expression." I think he just means that instead of drawing comic/movie characters you should make up your own. Personally, I find that drawing my own characters gets the imagination working more and the pictures are more dynamic and much more fun to paint.


OH CRAP. I'm so sorry. I kept thinking you were using Photoshop because your sketches don't look Painter-like at all. There is still a distinction in Painter for hard and soft brushes though. Use some hard ones. A lot of the Acrylic and Oil ones can be considered "hard." In PS there's a clearer distinction because of the brush system, there are less controls. That brush up there is for PS, I just reread your post again and saw that you use Painter. I'm sure there's a way to make a similar brush in Painter, but I'm not familiar with the menus there, I seldom use the program. Go to the Brush Creator (Windows menu), and I draw try to draw some speckley thing in there, with Opacity aty 100% and Expression set to Pressure. If you know a way to import images into that thing, please do tell.

I feel dumb, I think most of the things I said are useless.

[SpaXe]

I use one brush for most stuff, just varying the size. It's the hard round brush with Opacity controlled by pen pressure and Size controlled by pen pressure but with 70% minimum size....I have a bunch of custom brushes, but currently there's only one that you might "need," and that's a speckled brush for hair...you'd probably take a small hard round brush and make extra strokes, or a brush with 3-4 speckles to add some more hairs. ...honestly, I think I'll keep this brush xD;

O.o. For some reason after a few times trying out brushes myself that is exactly what I did. 71% on the minimum is what I have in my menu right now.. :) Good advice.

And I agree with rest of your comment, eishiya. Custom brushes can always wait, but they are fun to draw with. Also, I think your post is very informative. I assumed Photoshop too, and I do not have experience with Painter, either. You'll have to play around with it. ;)

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