Black and White Stylized

Kitsy

Heyas

I'm having some difficulty with a style that I'm currently working out -- the majority of the image is to be seen in negative a la Frank Miller, and I'm having some difficulty balancing out wanting to draw the image more carefully and elegantly, or go for a more rough 80s punk style feel to how the outcome looks. Suffice to say that the project involves a bloody magical girl war -- I'm not really sure if context is needed, but, it seemed appropriate to mention.


Is my first rough draft. I'm trying to combine an anime feel with a more... rough edge. My big problem is how to manage a style roughly akin to this without losing a background or losing arms -- does everyone always wear long sleeves? Conviently placed buildings? Would it look better if the style was less hard and there were grey touches adding flourishes to the outfit and more shading to the face?


Advice is welcome, yo.

mr0range

Yeah, you'll almost always see some sort of background with this style. If not, more detail is usually added. But for the most part the background (if blank or sparse) will mainly be black. I can see your main shapes almost defined, but yeah, they sort of make you want to see a bit more, especially when the hands are not present so it seems like she has stumps. Oh, and a bit sharper edges. Your edges (and corners) are very round and bumpy, needs to be a bit sharper ... plus a more dymanic pose.

Kitsy

I'm still desperately trying to find poses where the body doesn't mostly vanish -- so I get these weird stretchy thingies. The only thing I can think of for hands is either having the background always always be grey or having people constantly wearing gloves or sticking their hands through water, etc.

Attempting to incorporate these things, now...

I'm not sure of how to fix the rounded edges -- This is my first time really using a graphics tablet and photoshop (as vista and manga studio hate each other) and I'm having difficulties figuring out how to handle crispness.

tmccool

I'm not sure how relevant this is, but I feel like you should study Aubrey Beardsley, he was a symbolist who did stylized drawings using just black and white. He alternated between spaces of highly detailed ornamentation and wide open negative spaces, so you should look up some of his pictures.

I found this one: Salome thru Google Images, even though it looks different from the one we studied in art history.

Grifter

I've seen similar styles before. However, there's a fine line that you need to examine with little detail and too little detail. I would suggest adding a line or two for her left arm and actually drawing the hands in both places. Otherwise, this piece looks very incomplete.