oh yeah, just in case you haven't gotten pressure sensitivity working in photoshop yet
in CS4, the way I had to enable it was by clicking on "windows" in the top menu bar and opening the "brushes" tab
then enabling "shape dynamics"
and i'm pretty sure that setting will then be saved so you never need to worry about it again
I did it, set stuff to pen pressure, but it doesn't seem to be doing anything. Is there some wacom preference I have to enable?
EDIT: Nevermind, the minimum diameter was set to 70% thats why it wasnt working. Thanks Fletch.
EDIT: Do you have to double tap to make it work? If I just put pen to tabletit just draws at whatever diamater it is. I seem to have to double tap to make it take pressure into account.
DarkWarrior on
0
MustangArbiter of Unpopular OpinionsRegistered Userregular
edited April 2010
You shouldn't. Pen pressure can be screwy though, try updating your drivers to the latest version. I had all manner of issues with mine last week, I won't go into all the freaky details because they are boring.
Bit of a pain, you spend 70£ on a new tablet and use CS4, you expect this stuff to just work. If I double tap (Which without pressure makes a thinner line) the pressure starts to work but without it wont. Awkward. I think I already have the latest wacom drivers but Illl go take a look, I'm willing to bet its an Adobe setting somewhere though.
Also worked through 4 chapters of How to Draw the Marvel Way and the first 43 pages of how to draw Heads and Hands by Andrew Loomis. I've already improved significantly by learning this technique for positioning heads and some of the musculature beneath the flesh.
Haven't got a scanner unfortunately. I contemplated doing it all digitally but thought that would be missig the point. Ill see if I can get my friend to scan them for me.
DarkWarrior on
0
MustangArbiter of Unpopular OpinionsRegistered Userregular
edited April 2010
Do a full uninstall of your wacom drivers in control panel -> System-> Hardware -> device manager -> human interface devices.
Unplug your Wacom
Restart your PC
Install the drivers
Restart Again
Plug in your Wacom
Start PS CS4 while holding down the Ctrl+Alt+Shift keys to clear out any preferences.
Okay so lets try this again. Im sure many of you thought you were being positively critical but you weren't, you were being mean doody heads. However, it did make me go away and work through some art books which is a good thing I guess, so thankyou. So here are...I think 15 pages of readings from them so far and in the interim Ive worked on more comic scripts which I think rectify a lot of the complaints that were given so when Ive worked through some more sketches (Next up is the female face then anatomy) I will attempt to draw up comics again.
I'm aware of four things:
1) I need a ruler
2) I need a pencil sharpener
3) Some of the eyes are wonky, thats my fault for drawing while on my side onto a flat surface.
4) Some of the images seem shorter than they do on paper, don't know if thats my eyes but I know at least one face looks squashed.
Since Ive got a scanner now, heres some much older stuff, from 2002. I'm mostly proud of the Hobgoblin, I just think he looks cool. A few comic book studies and then some original stuff.
And when I was a kid I used to draw characters with two biceps and like 16 abs.
Only two biceps? Man that's weak, my guy had like 6 biceps per arm.
I'd have to go find it, I think it was two biceps, two triceps, giant shoulders, 16 abs all the way to the groun and god knows how many quadraceps.
And a dual-bladed lightsabre.
I actually found this picture, he actually has all the right muscles, they're just ridiculously huge and misshapen and his legs are about 4 times as tall as his body.
MustangArbiter of Unpopular OpinionsRegistered Userregular
edited July 2010
I think you're certainly improving. Your structural work is a 1000 times better.
Try pushing your values a bit more though, you may even want to get a softer lead to give your darker tones more impact. This is a bit of a rubbish mouse job, but it gives you an idea what I'm talking about.
Well the lines stand out a lot, unless you just made them that dark to show me the areas you were talking about.
Oh right, well obviously the tonal differences would be less dramatic when using the same medium. There would be more of a spread between light and dark. But the idea of pushing values is to give your structure more form. A small tonal range will result in a flat looking image.
Well the lines stand out a lot, unless you just made them that dark to show me the areas you were talking about.
Oh right, well obviously the tonal differences would be less dramatic when using the same medium. There would be more of a spread between light and dark. But the idea of pushing values is to give your structure more form. A small tonal range will result in a flat looking image.
I still want to have sex with it though. I do have more pencil tones but I really need to grab a sharpener, they're too blunt to use effectively right now, Ill try to update that picture when I get the chance.
If you have the time, what do you think of the original piece?
Looking closely at it, there is a fainter tone on it, the scanner doesn't seem to have picked it up well though I had to strain to see it. The mark twain looking guys chin and left cheek (Viewer perspective) look white but theres actually shading there. Will try to sort that when I add darker stuff to it.
I'm not a huge fan of the styles you're referencing- Marvel for the anatomy and Family Guy for the more cartoony stuff, it seems, with a sprinkling of DBZ in the hair- but as long as you've got STRUCTURE and LINE QUALITY, I'll forgive you almost anything. Line quality is tricky because it almost never comes up in discussion for some reason, but I've found that often it's the only thing separating amateur work from the professionals.
LINE OF ACTION: Work those arrows! I don't care if his pants re tucked into his boots or if he looks like a Penny Arcade character, at least make sure all elements of the pose are flowing in the same direction.
TAPERING LINES: A huge part of line quality is learning to taper your lines from thick to thin. In a lot of your pictures, event though the structure may seem solid, the line quality is killing the drawing. Especially your cartoons on the left there. The lines are wobbly and uncertain. Try to drive the point home a little harder. Make every line a statement! Otherwise your drawings will have a flat, dull quality.
EXPRESSION: That guy with the horns. He's rather lifeless. Again, the lines are not saying anything, besides sitting on the page. WHAT IS YOUR INTENT, SOLDIER? If he's going to be grimacing angrily, the lines should express that quality. Also the pose says nothing. I'll leave the design alone for now. Same thing with the cartoon guy on the left; what is his attitude? Is he smiling or what? I took a guess at it, but you should keep your intentions in mind before you put pencil to paper.
HAIR, EYES, SHADOWS: That realistic guy with the moustache... I haven't seen the original reference so my do-over probably deviated somewhat from it, but I mainly wanted to address the hair and eyes. His hair looks like melting ice cream in places, and I'm not sure where he's looking. I don't really like my version all that much but your shadows and cross-hatching should follow the form rather than acting like an inking job where you plot out the area of shadow and just fill it in with the same kinds of strokes.
Also, try to stay away from the Family Guy eyes. Personally I don't think anyone should be looking to FG for any sort of visual inspiration, but personal bias aside, just drawing an eyelid line on top of a flat circle is going to result in a very flat quality. Use overlapping lines to show form.
CROSSHATCHING: In the bald guy sketch, there's a bunch of lines on his face. What do they mean? A line is not just a line. They are statements, describing form. I can see where you were going with it, but again, you can push your ideas harder. Each line should express a statement like "I AM DESCRIBING A CHEEKBONE WHILE ALSO DEFINING MUSCLE!!" rather than "Hey, um, I think there's a shadow somewhere around here. Here's some of my friends, who I think are age lines, I guess. I dunno." Otherwise you get a bunch of vague worm-like squiggles. Other than that, the profile is quite good.
SCANNING: Do yourself a favour and desaturate and adjust contrast on your scans. It'll make your drawings look a lot cleaner and will show them off in a better light.
Meh... Some of these do-overs aren't great... but they do offer some solutions to common beginner's problems.
Automatic, that is an awesome and very useful critique, thankyou very much.
The guy with the moustache and profile, Ive literally looked at the Loomis book and duplicated them as close as possible so my lines followed his images but Im very fond of the style of shading you've used on the old man in particular and how realistic the hair looked on Moustachio.
Im relatively new to more detailed shading so while I'm going more for what yhou've done on the realistic drawings, I struggle to achieve it just yet but I am working on it.
The Horned-Man was just a pose, if you've read How to Draw the Marvel Way, the difference between yours and my own would be that mine is workable but yours is dynamic, it implies action.
Thankyou muchly for the advice, I'll definitely take it on board as well as the scanning tip.
EDIT: And I've always, always struggled with legs, I dont know why and it throws my whole anatomy off so I end up with awkward poses, but Im working on it.
Yeah, legs are tough. Probably because they're the viewer's visual guide to how the character is interacting with gravity and the ground.
As for shading, I've noticed that a lot of people who were brought up on superhero comic art tend to shade as if they're inking; i.e. blocking out an area and just filling it in. While it works for something like, say, Hellboy, where you're not going to see the individual strokes of the ink after it's printed, if you're shading with pencil, you usually have to treat shading the same way you treat any other line: Direction, tapering and flow must all be consistent with the rest of the drawing.
There are some inking styles where you have to pay attention to this, but if you're going to try to pencil shade the same you you did that Spawn picture, you'll have to switch it up a little.
The Spawn pic and most of those accompanying it I think I drew during my comic period where Marvel really was my biggest influence, so more solid shading than the more finessed type you used. Im moving onto female faces now so I'm going to practice shading a lot more and see if I can get your finer style.
A few cartoony character sketches. I tried to have fun with it and be more freeform instead of using any references and just kinda do what came to mind.
A few cartoony character sketches. I tried to have fun with it and be more freeform instead of using any references and just kinda do what came to mind.
It made me giggle like a little idiot to see fletcher action arms on another style of character.
Posts
I did it, set stuff to pen pressure, but it doesn't seem to be doing anything. Is there some wacom preference I have to enable?
EDIT: Nevermind, the minimum diameter was set to 70% thats why it wasnt working. Thanks Fletch.
EDIT: Do you have to double tap to make it work? If I just put pen to tabletit just draws at whatever diamater it is. I seem to have to double tap to make it take pressure into account.
Also worked through 4 chapters of How to Draw the Marvel Way and the first 43 pages of how to draw Heads and Hands by Andrew Loomis. I've already improved significantly by learning this technique for positioning heads and some of the musculature beneath the flesh.
Haven't got a scanner unfortunately. I contemplated doing it all digitally but thought that would be missig the point. Ill see if I can get my friend to scan them for me.
Unplug your Wacom
Restart your PC
Install the drivers
Restart Again
Plug in your Wacom
Start PS CS4 while holding down the Ctrl+Alt+Shift keys to clear out any preferences.
I'm aware of four things:
1) I need a ruler
2) I need a pencil sharpener
3) Some of the eyes are wonky, thats my fault for drawing while on my side onto a flat surface.
4) Some of the images seem shorter than they do on paper, don't know if thats my eyes but I know at least one face looks squashed.
Since Ive got a scanner now, heres some much older stuff, from 2002. I'm mostly proud of the Hobgoblin, I just think he looks cool. A few comic book studies and then some original stuff.
I actually found this picture, he actually has all the right muscles, they're just ridiculously huge and misshapen and his legs are about 4 times as tall as his body.
Looks bad-ass.
EDIT: ANd my Spawn pic.
Try pushing your values a bit more though, you may even want to get a softer lead to give your darker tones more impact. This is a bit of a rubbish mouse job, but it gives you an idea what I'm talking about.
EDIT: Though I can see the benefit on the pupils and eyebrows.
Oh right, well obviously the tonal differences would be less dramatic when using the same medium. There would be more of a spread between light and dark. But the idea of pushing values is to give your structure more form. A small tonal range will result in a flat looking image.
I still want to have sex with it though. I do have more pencil tones but I really need to grab a sharpener, they're too blunt to use effectively right now, Ill try to update that picture when I get the chance.
If you have the time, what do you think of the original piece?
The same, structurally okay. Needs moar tones!
Also buy a pencil sharpener, they're like 30 cents.
I'm not saying they are bad or anything. I'm just saying your trash talk of JRjr was ridiculous.
Not of that particular page that was posted it wasn't. It was a mess.
Still. My heart is broken Douglas. I won't forget this.
LINE OF ACTION: Work those arrows! I don't care if his pants re tucked into his boots or if he looks like a Penny Arcade character, at least make sure all elements of the pose are flowing in the same direction.
TAPERING LINES: A huge part of line quality is learning to taper your lines from thick to thin. In a lot of your pictures, event though the structure may seem solid, the line quality is killing the drawing. Especially your cartoons on the left there. The lines are wobbly and uncertain. Try to drive the point home a little harder. Make every line a statement! Otherwise your drawings will have a flat, dull quality.
EXPRESSION: That guy with the horns. He's rather lifeless. Again, the lines are not saying anything, besides sitting on the page. WHAT IS YOUR INTENT, SOLDIER? If he's going to be grimacing angrily, the lines should express that quality. Also the pose says nothing. I'll leave the design alone for now. Same thing with the cartoon guy on the left; what is his attitude? Is he smiling or what? I took a guess at it, but you should keep your intentions in mind before you put pencil to paper.
HAIR, EYES, SHADOWS: That realistic guy with the moustache... I haven't seen the original reference so my do-over probably deviated somewhat from it, but I mainly wanted to address the hair and eyes. His hair looks like melting ice cream in places, and I'm not sure where he's looking. I don't really like my version all that much but your shadows and cross-hatching should follow the form rather than acting like an inking job where you plot out the area of shadow and just fill it in with the same kinds of strokes.
Also, try to stay away from the Family Guy eyes. Personally I don't think anyone should be looking to FG for any sort of visual inspiration, but personal bias aside, just drawing an eyelid line on top of a flat circle is going to result in a very flat quality. Use overlapping lines to show form.
CROSSHATCHING: In the bald guy sketch, there's a bunch of lines on his face. What do they mean? A line is not just a line. They are statements, describing form. I can see where you were going with it, but again, you can push your ideas harder. Each line should express a statement like "I AM DESCRIBING A CHEEKBONE WHILE ALSO DEFINING MUSCLE!!" rather than "Hey, um, I think there's a shadow somewhere around here. Here's some of my friends, who I think are age lines, I guess. I dunno." Otherwise you get a bunch of vague worm-like squiggles. Other than that, the profile is quite good.
SCANNING: Do yourself a favour and desaturate and adjust contrast on your scans. It'll make your drawings look a lot cleaner and will show them off in a better light.
Meh... Some of these do-overs aren't great... but they do offer some solutions to common beginner's problems.
The guy with the moustache and profile, Ive literally looked at the Loomis book and duplicated them as close as possible so my lines followed his images but Im very fond of the style of shading you've used on the old man in particular and how realistic the hair looked on Moustachio.
Im relatively new to more detailed shading so while I'm going more for what yhou've done on the realistic drawings, I struggle to achieve it just yet but I am working on it.
The Horned-Man was just a pose, if you've read How to Draw the Marvel Way, the difference between yours and my own would be that mine is workable but yours is dynamic, it implies action.
Thankyou muchly for the advice, I'll definitely take it on board as well as the scanning tip.
EDIT: And I've always, always struggled with legs, I dont know why and it throws my whole anatomy off so I end up with awkward poses, but Im working on it.
As for shading, I've noticed that a lot of people who were brought up on superhero comic art tend to shade as if they're inking; i.e. blocking out an area and just filling it in. While it works for something like, say, Hellboy, where you're not going to see the individual strokes of the ink after it's printed, if you're shading with pencil, you usually have to treat shading the same way you treat any other line: Direction, tapering and flow must all be consistent with the rest of the drawing.
There are some inking styles where you have to pay attention to this, but if you're going to try to pencil shade the same you you did that Spawn picture, you'll have to switch it up a little.
It made me giggle like a little idiot to see fletcher action arms on another style of character.