Mistakes of Youth: The Blog (Powered by EXCELLENCE!)

You probably can’t tell, but over the past couple of days I’ve devoted a lot of time to drawing practice. Along with that, I also approached this new piece with a different mindset–something I probably should have been keeping in mind for the past 20 years–that is, thinking in 3D. I realized that the first step to being able to project what you want onto the page with your mind simply involves getting into the basic mindset. Come to think of it, my drawing teachers told me this millions of times; I just didn’t really listen. Another thing I tried to was to relax while drawing. I have a terrible habit of tensing up no matter what I do, but I really just tried to take it easy here. I did tense up, but when I realized that I was, I just relaxed again. Relaxing is generally just something good to do in life, so I should probably just take it easy in my normal life!

I think this lineart turned out pretty okay. Hopefully I won’t screw up on the colouring.

My word! I’ve yet to do any Gunslinger Girl fanart! This is an outrage, to be sure.

I still have a ways to go, but this lineart doesn’t look totally horrible. I just looks kind of horrible. I think my main weakness is that I lack the ability to project a 3D image onto the page with my mind, then draw lines around said image accordingly. To be able to draw with such confidence requires, a) confidence, of course and b) experience. I took a few drawing classes back in Freshman year, but in retrospect they weren’t nearly enough. I need more experience in life drawing–learning about how certain things should look in certain situations. So, what’s the best way? I suppose more classes would be the most prudent course of action, but say I don’t have that option available to me at the moment? Should I just start drawing from images of Asian U-15 swimsuit models until I get good? Men in suits? Both?

One thing that really hurts me is when it comes time to clean up my rough linework. I tend to be fairly happy with what I have sketched out, but when the sketch makes the transition to clean lineart by way of the lightbox, it always looks worse. Part of this is because I don’t have a steady hand, so when I trace over with my 0.3mm pencil, my lines are somewhat squiggly. It could also be because I lack a proper drawing table, so I can’t get the kind of support I need to keep a steady hand. Confidence once again plays into this–I find when I trace with more confidence, my strokes look better.

Another couple of things that really screw me up are fabric folds and shadows. It seems every single artist out there but me is good at fabric folds, so the fact that I’m really terrible at them kills a good amount of the soldiers in my Self Esteem army, but I suppose it’s just one of those things that takes practice. And more life drawing. Shadows are probably the easiest thing to be bad yet, yet they’ll still look decent if you have an okay handle over them. Once again, mastering the shadow, and where it falls simply requires more practice.

All this said, I’m a little bit happy between where I used to be and where I am now. This is a generous estimate, but in the next year or two I suspect I’ll get to the level I want to be at if I keep working.

Fixed the face. Hopefully I won’t screw up cleaning it up!

I like where this is going, but I need to fix up some things. I’ll do that tomorrow between copying down every kanji I know 50 times, reviewing Japanese grammar and looking up various bits of vocab.

I think I told you guys I’m doing a comic project for a friend of mine. I’m not sure if I mentioned that it’s a Nogizaka Haruka doujin, but it is. Here’s the penultimate panel. I wrote 目が!! next to Yuuto’s face because he reminded me of the guy from Laputa, a movie I really should see, but only because Nico Nico Douga loves it so much.

I just got the main sketches finished. Next thing to do is to go back through and fix all the dumb looking panels, of which there are six or seven of. I don’t want any QUALITY in a project I’m getting paid for. Made that mistake with Otaku USA! The last panel in the entire comic looks really bad, because at that point I was just sick of drawing and just wanted to be done, so that’ll need some real fixing up. It probably needs a background, too.

After I’m done with that, it should be smooth sailing. Cleaning the lineart won’t be hard, since that’s just tracing over the sketches on the lightbox, then I have to add some shades and stuff, which should take a good week if I’m focused. When that’s all done, all I have to do is make cool back and front covers, then print the sucker off and mail it.

I’ll finish colouring this some time this week, but I got other things to do first. Like finish this comic project I’m doing for money. And make next week’s comic.

It’ll look less crappy eventually.

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