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JohnTWM's Awesome Thread(NewPortrait, largest piece of work to date)
JohnTWM
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Ok maybe not that awesome, but here is all the doodles/finished stuff I could find on short notice. Finally decided to make a thread of my own instead of just lurking and occasionally posting stuff in doodle.
HoboHero
Progress Shots spoilered
Om-nom-inable Snowman
Satan's Teapot
Sketchdump (spoilered for H-scroll pwn)
HoboHero
Progress Shots spoilered
Sketchdump (spoilered for H-scroll pwn)
JohnTWM on
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Either you're not drawing enough to maintain your skill level or you're being lazy with a lot of them.
Anyway, your pie drawing is the best of this bunch, you should try to maintain that level of quality for all your drawings and improve from there.
This seems like an excellent suggestion. I wish there was a way to edit the post where it still had the images shown, because honestly they aren't named in a way that will tell me what they are >.>
EDIT: Done. (But it's hard to judge my own stuff so I might have left somethings that still aren't up to my current level)
of the two works above, the line art in the first one is incredibly inconsistent with the superior line art in the second one. the first one could not have been done with photoshop, correct? yet the second one appears to have been done with photoshop, and is very pleasing to look at. good line weight, and an overall better drawing. work on form and anatomy more for cartoony characters like that first one; it's not doing to well. it's pretty blocky and boring, whereas the forms in the second are a little more dynamic and appealing.
I think those ballpoint TF2 sketches are my favorite of the lot.
@srsizzy: I actually did both of them in Gimp. Significantly more time was spent on the second one's line art.
@ Poj: It's B. I do not own a tablet or (currently) a scanner, so I just took a picture of the lineart and then put it in gimp, blow it up and copy over with a mouse. The reason the second one is so superior, is that the first one I took a medium size pen tool and just copied over. The second one I did the same thing for the most part, but I used thinner lines for the detail bits, and then I spent about an hour (possibly more, I honestly don't know) using the eraser tool to thin out the lines, make the tips on the hair bits, all that. If someone knows a better way, then by all means let me know, but I do not own photoshop or any other imaging software (also mspaint).
As for traditional inking, I would love to do it that way, but then I would feel weird coloring it digitally, I also do not own any good inking or coloring tools other than colored pencils which you can see from the 3rd image, I am no expert with. If you can suggest something that is good for inking and is also cheap I might check it out, cause that would be fun, but right now I'm focusing on improving my pencil work, specifically crosshatching tutorials because I cannot do it so save my life.
Don't have a scanner? Hmm, that would make the whole process a lot more difficult. I'd say if you're really interested in digital work, you should definitely invest in one because it makes the whole process a lot easier to get into. When you do, you can really use any kind of inking tool you're comfortable with and then scan it in black and white (or maybe grayscale, if you wanted to scan those ballpoint sketches). I'm kind of a noob when it comes to the finer points of digital work myself, but the first passable program I acquainted myself with was OpenCanas 1.1. You'll have to use another program if you want to add text, but it's a great beginning program, I think. I've actually spent many a long hour with the eraser tool the way you have, and I'd say in the long term you should definitely go out and buy a tablet. You'll save yourself hours of pain that way.
By the way, stay away from MS Paint unless you want something to look intentionally low-budget. I've been able to find a free program online (without pirating anything) that has trumped MS Paint in some way on every single thing it can do. If you're interested in a complete list or want to know how to do something without resorting to MS Paint, PM me and I'd be happy to tell you an alternative.
I would really like to get a tablet, it is one of my goals, but I am in school and only working part time, so pretty much all of my money goes to food and rent. But someday one shall be mine!
I actually own two scanners, but they are both currently not functioning. I'm working on the problem.
I actually DID have an MS Paint phase. It was horrible. I'm never sure if people are kidding about that because it happened to me.
Ill have to try that, converting the picture to B&W that is. My biggest problem with actually taking the pictures is finding a decent light source to illuminate the picture. All the lighting in my apartment is super yellow so that is why I usually just digitally ink over the photo and dump everything else.
You could try setting a custom white-balance on your camera based on a blank sheet of paper from your sketchbook (how you do that depends on what camera you've got), or, like you said, you could make it greyscale, which is really the better (easier) option, since you don't need your picture to be color to ink it, anyway. What I meant by the black-and-white was literally only black and white--it's kind of the quick-and-dirty way of getting cleaner lines on the computer. The threshold refers to the point at which the program decides what's white and what's black, which you can adjust to get as much of the lines without too much of the paper. It's easier if you actually ink it (because the black is blacker, so it stands out more, and because ink lines are generally cleaner than pencil), but it ought to work either way.
Also, all things considered, as long as you've got a steady place to rest your camera (and a self-timer option), you can get by with suprisingly little light; you just have to make sure it falls reasonably evenly on the paper.
Aaaaaghhurgh! THE LIGHT, IT BURNS USSSssss...
Done after reading S_O Inking Tutorial in an attempt to apply some of the techniques described.
also shoes