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 Posted: Fri Feb 19, 2010 9:59 am
So, as you might have seen, I'm Shadow. I'm a sophomore in high school, I'm almost 16 years old and I'm considering graduating high school early (I was a 15-year old freshman when I first posted this xD). I've been into digital art for a while, but really started using my tablet last year.
I've improved a lot, especially since I first posted this thread. I had studied anatomy a lot from January to June 2010, but I feel as though I have a long way to go until I can consider myself to truly be a good animal artist. I've been focusing mainly on canines, but of course I will be studying other animals at some point, and humans at some point as well.
Goals-
-To improve myself as an artist, in general.
-To work on improving my shading abilities.
-To improve my concepts of animal anatomy and human anatomy.
-To get better at drawing backgrounds.
I really like critiques, but I feel as though redlines help me most. biggrin Any kind of constructive criticism is really appreciated, though.
Most recent artwork- http://shadowpal.deviantart.com/#/d2z2u86
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Posted: Fri Feb 19, 2010 6:50 pm
First of all, try flipping this image horizontally and see if you can find some mistakes. Mistakes tend to be more noticeable when you flip your picture. smile
What species is this supposed to resemble? I would recommend studying the anatomy of various cat animals (I assume this is some sort of a catlike animal), focusing on the species that it's supposed to resemble the most. Your picture doesn't have to be realistic, but it does need to look like you chose a cartoony style out of personal preference rather than the inability to draw realistic animals.
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Posted: Sun Feb 21, 2010 7:58 am
keiiii First of all, try flipping this image horizontally and see if you can find some mistakes. Mistakes tend to be more noticeable when you flip your picture. smile What species is this supposed to resemble? I would recommend studying the anatomy of various cat animals (I assume this is some sort of a catlike animal), focusing on the species that it's supposed to resemble the most. Your picture doesn't have to be realistic, but it does need to look like you chose a cartoony style out of personal preference rather than the inability to draw realistic animals. Thanks, this helps. ^_^ It is indeed supposed to resemble a cat as far as I know; the person who requested this didn't say. I do tend to prefer a cartoony style while doing digital art. smile Also, does anybody know any resources I could use to help improve my digital coloring, and shading? I don't have all that much experience with digital art, and as for shading, I have /no/ idea what I'm doing.
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Posted: Sun Feb 21, 2010 10:44 am
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Posted: Sun Feb 21, 2010 9:44 pm
I wouldn't recommend either of them for general shading. They're okay for teaching Photoshop specific tips, though. In order to shade well, you need to know two things: 1) the properties of light and shadow, and 2) the shape/form of the object you're shading. Errol has made a good tutorial post on the first thing right in this guild. Go to the post with the spheres. The other tutorial I would recommend is this one.As for the second one, you just need to do lots and lots of life drawing on the subject, over and over and over again... Photo references are okay, but in general life is a superior learning tool.
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Posted: Tue Mar 09, 2010 4:24 pm
So, I'm working on a quick request for someone on deviantART, and I've just gotten a sketch done. It's their warrior-cats FC, and as cat anatomy is not my specialty (dogs = <3 xD), I'd love it if someone could point me in the right direction with some constructive criticism (redlines and other visual refs are awesome too) on this sketchy thingy: http://i175.photobucket.com/albums/w155/Shadowpal/kittysketchpng.png
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Posted: Wed Mar 31, 2010 7:02 am
So, I've now finished that (^) and would still love some crits (especially in the form of comments on dA but it's not a must <333). Much improvement, yes?
http://shadowpal.deviantart.com/art/Mossfire-for-Phoenixflaym-158420330
Also, as a side note, I realize that I didn't shade this one. razz
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Posted: Fri Apr 09, 2010 3:39 pm
I'm working on my own thing, but I'm procrastinating so I'll redline. xD
It's nice to see people drawing animals. But hopefully you're still active on this guild to see this. >.> Don't want my crit to go to waste.
The main thing is to look at lots of cats and learn their anatomy. There are many good animal anatomy books and you can even find skeletal and muscle structures just by looking them up on google images. But when you're starting out with unfamiliar anatomy, it's okay to use lots of references. I've even taken to saving a ton of animal pictures on my iPod so I've got mini references on the go, just in case. It also helps me to draw out a very basic skeletal structure lightly before drawing the full form on top of it when I'm drawing bodies. Even if you do make them cartoon-y, you still need an understanding in anatomy.
I made a redline for the first picture. Cat muzzles are rather small. I'm not really sure what to do with the fur over the other eye since you don't really see that on a real cat. You'll have to figure out the best way to do that yourself or with the help of someone else. XP But make sure you don't make the cat eye too large. I see this a lot with cartoonized kitties. Cats do have rather large eyes so you don't need to make them much larger. Some do but you should learn your basics before exaggerating features.
The next redline.
The blue is the basic skeleton I was talking about and the red is the surface. See, I try to just outline the spine, shoulder blades and arm bones, then the pelvis and leg bones. It's incredibly simplified because I just want to know where the limbs and things should go. Cat limbs have a lot of zigzag bones. See, under the shoulder blade, the first bone goes towards the back, then the second goes frontwards.
Oh shoot, I screwed up a little. XD I've been staring at the computer screen for too long. It's not too bad. The red part is still pretty accurate. See, there's supposed to be an extra leg bone in the back legs. I accidentally obliterated one. o.o Well, you get the general idea. I'm too lazy to redo it. XD But if you're still not clear, I'll redo it for you.
Here is a feline skeleton for reference and so you understand your, and my, mistake.
Hope it helped. :3
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Posted: Wed Apr 14, 2010 1:52 pm
Thanks so much for your crits! It really helps me a lot, and the redlines also helped a lot. I see where you left out the bone in the leg, so there's no need for you to redo that. ^_^
I'll definitely be saving your redlines to my computer for future reference. I've also wanted to save some things to my iPod for mobile reference, but I've been procrastinating. xD
Anyway, thanks so much for your input! Your comment means a lot to me. :3
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Posted: Sun Apr 25, 2010 11:27 am
Here I am again with another sketch, this time of a dog, and I'm looking for some anatomy crits before I line/color this. :3 As always, redlines are extremely useful to me. http://i175.photobucket.com/albums/w155/Shadowpal/sketchbeginningpng.pngI realize that he's a little bit stocky proportion-wise; we'll say he's a miniature shepherd. xD I'm mainly looking to see if the anatomy of the legs is all correct here, and I'd like some crits on the face too, please. <3
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Posted: Sun Apr 25, 2010 12:28 pm
I see you're sketching out the limb structure~ Yay! xD
I see improvement, especially with the front legs. Though your back legs tend to go too far out. And often, you make the foot (last stretch of bones) bend too much. They would only be in that position when crouching or squatting. A dog's legs are actually a lot more straight than a cat's legs. The face is mostly just having problems with perspective. See how it looks like his muzzle is sort of wandering off to the side? Since his face is sort of 3/4s we should see more of his nose. I'll redline. I'm not too great with dog anatomy but we'll see how it goes.
Dog Redline
Sorry, it's a little hard to see 'cause I forgot to reduce the opacity of the original picture. ._. But well, there you go. The face is a little difficult to make out and I probably screwed up a bit there but you can see that I just wanted to show how you should be able to see more of the nose. Huh..that sounded confusing. Well, I didn't foreshorten correctly so his face is sorta pointing down, but the muzzle should look shorter than it is and with more nose in that position. The thing that will give away that the muzzle is longer than it looks in the sketch would be the shading later on.
I didn't have enough canvas space but his legs should really be a tad longer than that. Miniature shepherds may be stocky but with a body frame that long, the legs should be a bit longer to match. Mostly know that dogs leg bones do not zigzag as much as cat leg bones.
Here's a dog anatomy picture.
Compare that to the cat one I gave you before and you'll see clearly how much straighter a dog's legs are than a cat's.
But I definitely see an improvement so keep at it~ =D
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Posted: Wed Apr 28, 2010 12:40 pm
Thanks so much again for your redlines; it helps me a lot. I have the lineart done, and I'll post the final piece as soon as I have it finished. :3
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Posted: Sat May 01, 2010 7:37 am
Here's the finished piece:
http://shadowpal.deviantart.com/art/Day-at-The-Beach-162405621
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Posted: Sat May 01, 2010 4:00 pm
It's not bad at all. I do think the anatomy is off, however I don't have enough confidence to speak up. sweatdrop Anyway I wanted to address the fur. I noticed that you tend to make it so the fur goes in long strands across. This would be gravity defying. Fur tends to actually come in sort of clumps that fan towards you. The length and the smoothness of the fur depends on the breed really. Here's something that helped me out a bit before. [link] Doing detailed work with an animal can be rather annoying because of how long it takes. But the time is worth it in the end. Keep working on it! You're getting better. 3nodding Pay close attention to detail when you use a reference (I suggest one from time to time).
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Posted: Sun May 02, 2010 6:38 pm
Beach backgrounds are actually really easy to do (i.e. they're kind of the only digital BGs I can do well ^^; ). If you use a mask gradient to make the layer semi-transparent close to the sand and add white lines for the brackish waves, you can have a more realistic looking blend between sand and sea.
The color for the sky is too saturated and solid. Observe pictures of the sky and you'll soon notice that almost all are made up of gradients of distinct colors (not just different values of the same color). Color selection is something you'll learn over time, though.
Other than that, really good effort. The dog's torso is a bit too long, but I think that if you continue to practice and do studies with either real life or photo reference you'll eventually get it. Keep up the good work. : )
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