RedCaliburn's Artwork - Forever Road to Improvment

[Gaff]

In my experience, Illustrator doesn't detect pen pressure by default - I have to use a brush set marked as "Wacom 6D" before pen pressure has any effect. I've never had any great success drawing into directly into illustrator though. I've seen other people get really nice results from Illustrator, but I just can't seem to get a brush setting I'm happy with whenever I try it.

[RedCaliburn]

Itll be easier to line art in ps, as for the pen pressure, did you install the drivers?

I have already tried using photoshop's brush's. I just need to tweek around the sensitivity of the tablet settings so that I get the effect that I want. I have not tried using line art in photoshop yet, so I'll draw somthing to get this effect and show it later on. I have a tendency of making my lines way too inconsistent and it's a habbit of mine when I draw on a tablet. Guess it all goes down to practice then.

In my experience, Illustrator doesn't detect pen pressure by default - I have to use a brush set marked as "Wacom 6D" before pen pressure has any effect. I've never had any great success drawing into directly into illustrator though. I've seen other people get really nice results from Illustrator, but I just can't seem to get a brush setting I'm happy with whenever I try it.

Really? I've never used that setting before. I guess it depends on your preferences though. I'll mess around the settings one more time and see what both programs can achieve to my preference. Thanks for letting me know about it.

[doghateburger]

I have already tried using photoshop's brush's. I just need to tweek around the sensitivity of the tablet settings so that I get the effect that I want. I have not tried using line art in photoshop yet, so I'll draw somthing to get this effect and show it later on. I have a tendency of making my lines way too inconsistent and it's a habbit of mine when I draw on a tablet. Guess it all goes down to practice then.

A neat way is to use the pen tool in photoshop, but that thing takes some time to learn. What kind of line effect are you trying to achieve btw? Just curios C:

[RedCaliburn]

A neat way is to use the pen tool in photoshop, but that thing takes some time to learn. What kind of line effect are you trying to achieve btw? Just curios C:

I was just experimenting with the tablet and found about the settings in the pen pressure, wacom properties settings. It feels much much more like an actual pencil now. The lines I'm trying to ahcieve is a little difficult to explain. Some area's may require darker strokes then other area's. The pen tool can sort of achieve that effect, but I'm actually trying to take an effort in learning to ink properly before playing around with the effects too much. It's kinda cheating in a way since it hides that I can't ink very well.

I think the best way is to show a picture right? Below is what I've listed in what I liked about the lines and what I didn't like about the lines. Same picture I posted before and I'm not going for the best looking picture, it's the lines that explain my point:

*Illustrator on the left, photoshop on the right.

[RedCaliburn]

A peice that I finished for the 100 theme challenge. I honestly need to work on my shadowing and lights, they need some adjusting. Also, I did this in photoshop... Goodness, it's alot of work then I thought lol.

http://fav.me/d5wwt18

[nisaren]

So I was just reading your pros and cons to using Illustrator vs Photoshop and thought I'd toss in my 2 cents. As DHB mentioned you can also use the Pen tool in Photoshop to achieve very similar lines as those you would get in Illustrator. But what I'd like to bring to you attention is that there are a few inherent issues with using these tools. Drawing using these tools only makes for a kind of lifeless, sterile image. For certain things drawing by hand can add life to a drawing. The tiny imperfections can make objects appear more organic rather than sterile and perfect. If you look at a lot of drawings and paintings up close, even by professionals, there are tons of imperfections. But most viewers don't examine paintings or drawings very closely. They stand back and take the entire picture in. It's good to pursue perfection, but it's important to realize that there isn't very much in the world that is actually perfect.

If you want to draw better lines without using the pen tool or Illustrator there are a couple things you can do. First and foremost would be to actually practice drawing lines free hand. As you may have read, drawing nice smooth lines usually come from drawing using your whole arm rather than just your wrist. This can be difficult to do if you have a tablet that is small as you run out of space rather quickly. But this is where practicing with traditional mediums, ie pen and paper, can come in handy. Here's a nice video that describes some of this. (About 7:50 into the video is where he starts to describe the techniques if you want to skip through the intro stuff) Another nice trick you can do in is to work at high resolution and then reduce the size. Many line imperfections magically disappear when you do this.

[RedCaliburn]

So I was just reading your pros and cons to using Illustrator vs Photoshop and thought I'd toss in my 2 cents. As DHB mentioned you can also use the Pen tool in Photoshop to achieve very similar lines as those you would get in Illustrator. But what I'd like to bring to you attention is that there are a few inherent issues with using these tools. For certain things drawing by hand can add life to a drawing. The tiny imperfections can make objects appear more organic rather than sterile and perfect. If you look at a lot of drawings and paintings up close, even by professionals, there are tons of imperfections. But most viewers don't examine paintings or drawings very closely. They stand back and take the entire picture in. It's good to pursue perfection, but it's important to realize that there isn't very much in the world that is actually perfect.

If you want to draw better lines without using the pen tool or Illustrator there are a couple things you can do. First and foremost would be to actually practice drawing lines free hand. As you may have read, drawing nice smooth lines usually come from drawing using your whole arm rather than just your wrist. This can be difficult to do if you have a tablet that is small as you run out of space rather quickly. But this is where practicing with traditional mediums, ie pen and paper, can come in handy. Here's a nice video that describes some of this. (About 7:50 into the video is where he starts to describe the techniques if you want to skip through the intro stuff) Another nice trick you can do in is to work at high resolution and then reduce the size. Many line imperfections magically disappear when you do this.

Thanks, that helps explain why my drawings can't seem to draw straight sometimes, I use my wrist a lot. Everything I've sketched is all done by hand drawing with a few occasional tools that I use to move around lines and fix them. With my experience with a tablet, I have trouble drawing without direct contact like pencil to paper. Something like a cintiq would be more feasible, just because I can see where my lines are going. But I do not have the luxury of owning one. I agree nothing is perfect, but the drawings I'm trying to make should not have too many mistakes in them.

I'll try practicing that technique that feng uses. I use a large intuos 4 incase anyone is wondering, so I have a big space to use. I'll have to get used to both mediums one day. I also enjoy the process that I'm going through to get there as well.

[RedCaliburn]

Oh boy, there has been so much work I barely get the chance to post.

So... I was thinking of doing small exercise's to break up what will help make my art skills develop. I got really interested in digital painting, so I'll be learning from the ground up to gain solid fundamentals. I honestly thought I wouldn't be good with digital art, but after searching and exploring more on the internet, it takes a little bit of patience and good practice to make really good painting's and fundamentals that will be with me for life.

I started sketching much more in life outside, but I still need references because there are some objects or things that I'm unable to reach to see in real life.

So I put together 2 pages of stuff that I did in the past month or 2 practicing with various subjects.

the first 2 I was working on a very short comic which involved a lot of pre-conception. I have other works that are related and kind of finished, but I can't release them yet. Did some reference animal sketching with a pen within 2-3 minutes. Quite a bit of mistakes especially the lion and horse, but I had a lot of fun using pen in a while. Also did a submarine... Although, I was just practicing one point perspective, I felt that if it wasn't so blocky, it would have turned out into a piece.


Worked on a landscape piece, although I feel that the perspective or scale is incorrect, I didn't use references, but I wanted to use this time to draw my own idea's without worrying a lot about fundamentals, but keeping it there in mind when drawing. Did some eye's from reference, then I got randomly bored and did a penguin that somehow became oversized and terrorized the Antarctica (I know right?) Then I drew an alien/monster to practice scribbling. I think it looks ok, I wasn't thinking too hard on it.

[Callesthe]

ohhh those drawings look really great!! very nice work i must say :3 pay attention to the anatomy of the different animals. especially your horses need some work i think, the legs aren't defined well enough ^^

also it might be easier for you if you just concentrated on one animal or at least one animal group at the time, studying their anatomy, looks and features once at the time and thoroughly. that way you get the hang of it more easily and you won't get confused and mix things up :

take your time observing, observing and observing even more. look at refs but also try to remember those refs. remember curves, folds and edges at the different positions, why they are there. look at how other artists solve a problem if you get stuck, it helps a lot as well ^^

good luck with your digital painting by the way, it takes some patience indeed but practice lets you improve a lot!!

[Demonfyre]

Hmm, I don't get the feeling that you are simplifying the structures you are drawing before you add the detail. It looks like you have some gestural stuff going on, however it seems to be rather mechanical, but I think you should concentrate on representing complex forms (especially with anatomy of animals and humans) using simple forms like circles, cubes, cuboids, etc before you go on and detail. Once you can simplify, you can build onto it and add the details such as fur or musculature etc - simple to complex.