Drawing of Bellissima - Now in Color!

Marie August

This is a drawing I'm working on for a character in my comic. I haven't colored her yet, so I'm happy to receive any criticism for the line drawing if anyone has suggestions for how I could make it better.



Edit on 5/26/12:

I've taken criticism into consideration, and here is my drawing finalized. I've edited the lines a bit and now colored it:

Flay

I like this! The pose has a really interesting flow to it. I'd suggest trying to get a little more variation in the line width within a stroke, currently it makes the drawing feel flat.

Mayday

I really like the clean lines.
I'm a newbie when it comes to varying lineweight, but I believe her right (our left) border of the face is waaay too thick- it stands out and plays a major part in flattening the shape. Her left border is also seemingly thinner, which only makes things worse.

BrainPaint

I also think the pose is really nice. I get what you were going for, but there are a few things that aren't as clear as they could be. Check your structure a bit on her body because I think with such a foreshortened pose that there would be a few things overlapping more. The angle of her waist leads me to believe that I would be seeing a lot more of her left (our right) leg in perspective with the bed. I like the weight of the fabric she is wearing, but I would consider taking another go at some of the wrinkles in a few places like her left (our right) arm. Based on her pose I feel her sleeve would be angled in the opposite way since all of her weight is pushed forward and pulling on the fabric that is connected to the back of it. The hands and feet are nicely rendered too. Good job!

Marie August

Thanks for the feedback!

Mayday wrote: »

I really like the clean lines.
I'm a newbie when it comes to varying lineweight, but I believe her right (our left) border of the face is waaay too thick- it stands out and plays a major part in flattening the shape. Her left border is also seemingly thinner, which only makes things worse.

I'm not really exceptional with line weight. I usually make lines thinner for small detail areas, like in the face or hands. And I try to keep most other areas consistent. I went ahead and made the face line thinner though.

BrainPaint wrote: »

I also think the pose is really nice. I get what you were going for, but there are a few things that aren't as clear as they could be. Check your structure a bit on her body because I think with such a foreshortened pose that there would be a few things overlapping more. The angle of her waist leads me to believe that I would be seeing a lot more of her left (our right) leg in perspective with the bed. I like the weight of the fabric she is wearing, but I would consider taking another go at some of the wrinkles in a few places like her left (our right) arm. Based on her pose I feel her sleeve would be angled in the opposite way since all of her weight is pushed forward and pulling on the fabric that is connected to the back of it. The hands and feet are nicely rendered too. Good job!

With the skirt it isn't incredibly clear, but her left leg is supposed to be bent since she's sitting on a bed. So that's why I figured the leg would not be longer. There is a slight bulge in the skirt where her knee is supposed to be. Maybe it will be more clear when I color it.

The way the sleeve is supposed to work is that it bunches up on one side regardless of how weight hits it. Here's a picture showing kind of what the sleeve is supposed to look like:



Maybe I do need to work on it more...

Smasher

First, a good drawing overall. Now for the nitpicking.

(directions are from her perspective)

Accounting for perspective, her right foot seems to be significantly larger than her left foot.

I tried to get my right arm into the pose she has but it didn't work. To get my hand in the position shown my arm had to be straight, and to get my arm in the right position I couldn't get my hand in the position shown.

Her cleavage suggests large breasts, but her clothes don't reflect that (especially for the left one). Either her cleavage needs to suggest smaller breasts, or her outline needs to match.

Her hair is parted in the middle, but she seems to have quite a bit more hair on her left side than her right.

The gap in her nose seems sort of odd. I feel like it should either be complete or (imo) the top part near her eyes should be smaller vertically, especially for her right side.

Her (tiara? bandana?) looks off. It goes out too wide to seem secure; I would make it go through her hair closer to her head.

Marie August

Smasher wrote: »

First, a good drawing overall. Now for the nitpicking.

(directions are from her perspective)

Accounting for perspective, her right foot seems to be significantly larger than her left foot.

I suppose I could see that. I figured the perspective is looking a bit downward, so her left foot would be a little farther away or perhaps just as far away as her right foot .

I tried to get my right arm into the pose she has but it didn't work. To get my hand in the position shown my arm had to be straight, and to get my arm in the right position I couldn't get my hand in the position shown.

I originally came up with the pose by modeling the position myself. I am very hypermobile, and bend a bit oddly, so maybe my own body isn't always the best source for anatomy. The right shoulder is actually bent forward a bit. I don't know if that makes it make more sense.

Her cleavage suggests large breasts, but her clothes don't reflect that (especially for the left one). Either her cleavage needs to suggest smaller breasts, or her outline needs to match.

She's supposed to be wearing a rather tight corset. This would cause all if her cleavage to be pushed upward without showing any actual roundness in the dress itself where the breasts are. Here's an example:

Her hair is parted in the middle, but she seems to have quite a bit more hair on her left side than her right.

I don't really see this as something easily changed. I think you can see more of her hair on her left side because some of it is in front of her shoulder and some of it you can see behind her arm. I don't know how I could show more hair on her right side without having it fall in front of her shoulder on that side as well. But doing that would hide a lot of the dress.

The gap in her nose seems sort of odd. I feel like it should either be complete or (imo) the top part near her eyes should be smaller vertically, especially for her right side.

Ok, I'll take it out. I can show the gap when I color it anyway.

Her (tiara? bandana?) looks off. It goes out too wide to seem secure; I would make it go through her hair closer to her head.

It's a tiara. I'll try to make it less wide.

Thank you for your very thorough criticism!

Godfather

Unless its already been addresses, I'd say try to focus more attention on the overall direction of the left knee is going. It's really hard to read under the dress, especially since there's no indication of direction in the dress fabric

melting_doll

Watch out for tangents. I spotted three right away. It's when two lines touch but don't cross

Marie August

I've taken criticism into consideration, and here is my drawing finalized. I've edited the lines a bit and now colored it:

Mustang

The figure underneath the dress is still very obscure. The hip area in particular looks twice as wide as it should be, even for a girl with a large bone structure. One tip I can offer is to always draw a rough figure naked first, and then clothe it. This will ensure you nail down all the dimensions of your figure before becoming too involved in the finery.

The main problem you seem to be experiencing is in your foreshortening. Which is a prick of a subject at the best of times, but I would recommend changing the focus of your practice to foreshortening for a while until you feel more confident. This drawing is done and perfectly serviceable, so please don't feel it needs redoing. I'm just pointing out where you can improve for future efforts.

sacreandprofane

Very cool! Right off the bat, one thing that stands out to me is her red nail polish, which competes with and distracts from the bright red highlights on her dress and her lips. (Naturally, I think she'd want her lips to catch more of our attention than her nails.) I suggest a richer and darker shade of red nail polish, such as a deep crimson or maroon.

Iruka

I'd like to comment on your coloring in general, which I hope you don't take the wrong way. I think that you have some strong stuff here, and it looks like the pages of your comic have gotten more complex as you have gone along. I wont dig into the comic since you haven't posted pages and I'm not sure you want advice on them, but I encourage you to post more. The forum has a good track record with improving the structure/pacing/composing of comics, and if your flexible enough it can really do wonders.

Uh, anyways the colors. They are a little plastic-y and your lighting is a little off. The colors are suffering from a bland pallet that is more about the color of each object than it is about the lighting situation itself. The way I tackle this problem is messing with my color picker But the more technical way to solve this problem is to study light. I'd recommend This book and just some focus and study on it.

Getting a more coherent lighting situation going on in your comic will improve it overall. And, even if you plan to stick with the sort of clean, cell shaded style, I'd ditch the gradients and try doing your color blending by hand.

Marie August

Mustang wrote: »

The figure underneath the dress is still very obscure. The hip area in particular looks twice as wide as it should be, even for a girl with a large bone structure. One tip I can offer is to always draw a rough figure naked first, and then clothe it. This will ensure you nail down all the dimensions of your figure before becoming too involved in the finery.

It's funny you should say so, because I did precisely that. I started on this drawing over two years ago, when I had a very different style (a much more tedious, detailed and time consuming style). And I recently went over the previous one and updated it to my current style to use in my webcomic. Here is a very old version where I had not yet finished the skirt. As you can see, I started out drawing the legs before I gave the skirt any detail:



And here's the image in color:



I do like that style of coloring, but oh man! It took forever! My first webcomic used this style for coloring and it was so incredibly stressful to make updates, that I was quite relieved to give it up.

The main problem you seem to be experiencing is in your foreshortening. Which is a prick of a subject at the best of times, but I would recommend changing the focus of your practice to foreshortening for a while until you feel more confident. This drawing is done and perfectly serviceable, so please don't feel it needs redoing. I'm just pointing out where you can improve for future efforts.

Perspective can be quite challenging to get incredibly accurate, but for some reason I think those kinds of poses a lot more interesting.

sacreandprofane wrote: »

Very cool! Right off the bat, one thing that stands out to me is her red nail polish, which competes with and distracts from the bright red highlights on her dress and her lips. (Naturally, I think she'd want her lips to catch more of our attention than her nails.) I suggest a richer and darker shade of red nail polish, such as a deep crimson or maroon.

I can make it darker. I don't know if I like the idea of making it a maroon, since it would contrast with what she is wearing. But a darker shade of the same red could work.

Iruka wrote: »

I'd like to comment on your coloring in general, which I hope you don't take the wrong way. I think that you have some strong stuff here, and it looks like the pages of your comic have gotten more complex as you have gone along. I wont dig into the comic since you haven't posted pages and I'm not sure you want advice on them, but I encourage you to post more. The forum has a good track record with improving the structure/pacing/composing of comics, and if your flexible enough it can really do wonders.

I'm flexible, and would welcome criticism of my comic. Especially the structure/pacing/composing! I admit I don't really have anyone to give me any criticism on such things for my comic. Everyone I know does not read comics (except for occasionally mine), so the best criticism they can give me is on things like the art itself, or maybe the dialogue. The main reason I have not posted my comic itself here is because I don't want to break any rules. What do you think would be the best way to post such a thread? I don't think it would be recommended for me to post a link to my site, but I have over 50 pages of my comic, and it might be a bit awkward loading 50 pages at once in a message board thread.

Uh, anyways the colors. They are a little plastic-y and your lighting is a little off. The colors are suffering from a bland pallet that is more about the color of each object than it is about the lighting situation itself. The way I tackle this problem is messing with my color picker But the more technical way to solve this problem is to study light. I'd recommend This book and just some focus and study on it.

Getting a more coherent lighting situation going on in your comic will improve it overall. And, even if you plan to stick with the sort of clean, cell shaded style, I'd ditch the gradients and try doing your color blending by hand.

I'm afraid I'm currently attached to my clean, cell shaded style. I realize it's a very stylized way of coloring that does not take realistic lighting heavily into consideration.

Your book suggestion looks interesting though. I'm sure that I could benefit from better learning about realistic light and color. It certainly wasn't heavily covered when I took drawing and painting in college.

Iruka

I'd recommend posting a few current pages, and then post the progress for the next, so people can have input on some stuff in progress. If you are actively looking for advice you dont have to worry so much about site whoring.

You can totally be attached to your clean vector style, just know that its a style that lends itself to perfection. The more clean and perfect the style, the more glaring and obvious the smallest of flaws become. Getting your lighting down will also be really necessary. Don't think of it so much as "realistic", its more "shape defining". Seeing where the light falls is how we know what the form we are looking at is. If you let it get all wonky, everything will flatten out. With complex poses its especially important.

Of course, if you want to have a flat feel to the comic, you can, but this is too in the middle. There is plenty of shading that indicates light, but none of it conveys direction. That makes the shading here a sort of meaningless clutter of false information.



If you are trying to light her from the front, I would try something more like this. being more into the light makes figure building much easier as well, trying to light that weird leg would be impossible, her thigh is still angled a bit on the bed while her foot and calf would be getting some light. Thinking stylized doesn't have to abandon fundamentals, the more knowledge you have, the more equipped you'll be to decide what visually works.

Marie August

I took some of your suggestions for coloring the dress. I tried incorporating your lighting suggestion into the hair, but I did not like it that way. It messed up the texture that I use to color hair.