Fyrewyre's art

Fyrewyre

Some drawings I've done, drawn and inked by hand and then colored in photoshop.



The first is Marina, a character from an original story I'm writing, the second is Starlight, a superhero I occasionally draw.

To show how far I've come, here's a drawing from last year, done with oil pastels:

Iruka

Hey Fyrewyre, Welcome to the forums.

It looks like you have alot to work on, but you are off to a pretty good start! We have a Pretty awesome tutorials thread which will lead you to some new resources. I recommend at this point still spending some time with traditional media, and trying some life drawing.

Do you have any goals as an artist?

NibCrom

What sort of resolution did you scan those drawings in? It looks like you scanned in pure black and white, which I actually recommend, but you should scan it in at a high resolution. It looks like you scanned it in at 72 dpi, when 300 – 600 dpi would have been more appropriate.

HugmasterGeneral

Nib, are you in the right thread?

NibCrom

Ummm... I think so. I was talking about the first two drawings that he inked by hand. They look like they were inked in paint or with the pencil brush in Photoshop. The lines aren't smooth at all. Not sure if he was going for that or not.

Or have I gone completely mad?

Edit: I was probably not specific enough with my first post.

HugmasterGeneral

Ohhhhh I get what you're saying now. My bad.

Fyrewyre, show us your sketchbook, or some other pieces that differ from these so we can get a significant feel for your work.

Fyrewyre

@Iruka: Thank for the link, I'll check it out. My goals as an artist are pretty basic: I like to use a cartoonish style and hope to develop that a bit more.

@NibCrom: I have no idea what it scanned in, I just used whatever settings were on my scanner. I inked the drawings by hand but the reason the lines aren't smooth is probably because of the 'apple-L'ing I did (Make the picture pure black and white, but makes the lines a bit choppy.)

@Rfilyaw: Give me a day or so, I'll be back with some more art, in the meantime, a drawing I did of Megamind and Roxanne from the movie Megamind (Of which I may be a tad obsessed)

I like the blacks on Megamind's costume, but the blues gave me trouble.

Fyrewyre

These are some sketches I've done.
People:



Character notes for a movie I'm writing:


A drawing of a very strange dream:

Expanding on that:


Superhero explosion:

Pukio

I really admire that you're trying out different things with your figures and playing with perspective - which you seem to actually have a pretty good handle on, re: foreshortening and all that business. At the same time, there's a kind of stiffness to a lot of what you're drawing right now that takes a lot of the energy out of your characters. Think about doing lots and lots of gesture drawing as a warmup instead of fully rendering things. Doing ten or twenty two minute gesture sketches every day will really help your sense of fluidity. Think about focusing on curves instead of straight lines, and how to imbue your characters with a sense of weight.

I know the way that I do it is to look through magazines and find dynamic poses but...we've also got dance magazines laying around the house so that may not be feasible.

Iruka

Pukio has some sound advice. Studying realism will also help your cartooning, so dont abandon it even though you want a cartoony style.

You seem to really like that looking down on your charaters angle, but you should try to switch it up to learn new stuff. For some quick places to find reference, I suggest the DA group collections here or Character designs.com Here (warning, nude reference at both of those sites) Studying the nude figure will give you a better understanding of form before you start trying to simplify things.

MagicToaster

Man, your Character bios make them seem like they're almost perfect. Flawed characters are far more interesting than perfect ones. You can dig into their weakness and have them grow into better characters, it makes for better plots.

Fyrewyre

MagicToaster wrote: »

Man, your Character bios make them seem like they're almost perfect. Flawed characters are far more interesting than perfect ones. You can dig into their weakness and have them grow into better characters, it makes for better plots.

Those were actually just quick cliff notes I jotted down while still thinking up the characters, I didn't include everything about them, just quirks and talents that I would try to work in. I wasn't really thinking of flaws when I'd written those. But I do have some in mind. Just didn't mention them.

[strike]And there's an explanation for everything in canon that I couldn't work into the notes.[/strike]

amateurhour

All of your characters seem to be at the same perspective. And props for that perspective, it's better than the straight forward shot and it's a good challenge, but try doing a full 360 on each character until you get more familiar with them.

Fyrewyre

A sketch I did after I found some old drawings from when I was 6/7 about a team of superheroes (and their cat) called the "super skaters." They fought monsters, and aliens, and things that breathed fire, and it was awesome!

simonheros

Some of the perspectives look a little bit wrong ,but its nice.
Errm I think some characters can be a little bit more exaggerated.
But other then those you've done a pretty good job with the details and size proportions.

NibCrom

Like other people said, work on making your characters not so stiff. They all look like tense and uncomfortable/unnatural. Drawing from reference will help break this habit.

Fyrewyre

Holiday page from my webcomic. Done in colored pencils.

Fyrewyre

Fan art for a fan fic I like, it's a Sherlock/Harry Potter crossover (yes) where John and Sherlock raise Harry, it's pretty good.

HugmasterGeneral

I strongly recommend you read these books by Andrew Loomis in this order:

Fun With A Pencil

(NSFW Cover) Figure Drawing For All Its Worth

Drawing The Head And Hands

There are a few more on the page at this link: http://alexhays.com/loomis/

This man is probably one of the greatest pencil artists of all time and was saintly enough to give us these detailed instructional tomes. Many artists get their start here.

If you can't stand to read on your computer, you can usually rent them at your local library or purchase them on Amazon.com

If you want to be truly good, every drawing should be an effort to improve, and you should draw every day.

The_Glad_Hatter

Fyrewyre wrote: »

Fan art for a fan fic I like, it's a Sherlock/Harry Potter crossover (yes) where John and Sherlock raise Harry, it's pretty good.

didn't even know those existed!
Anyway, the books rfilyaw mentioned in his above post should help you get a more realistic natural feel in your drawings (which is needed, especially when drawing fantasy stuff).
SOme small tweaks like the table's thickness (as thick as harry's head!) would do wonders.

Also, are you by any chance using colourerd pencils on smooth/ printer paper?
if you use a paper that's a bit more rough/ more grain the colouring wouldn't end up all streaky like in the scan you uploaded.