As was foretold, we've added advertisements to the forums! If you have questions, or if you encounter any bugs, please visit this thread: https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/240191/forum-advertisement-faq-and-reports-thread/
Options
Am I doing this right?
Surfpossum
A nonentitytrying to preserve the anonymity he so richly deserves.Registered User regular
A nonentitytrying to preserve the anonymity he so richly deserves.Registered User regular
The title can refer to so many things.
So I had some heavier type paper lying around, and I decided to try and make paint things. Here is a sketch which I am planning to do this with, and I was wondering if people could poke at it a bit.
(I know Ganon is "too wide", but I wanted him to be bigger in all dimensions.)
Suggestions?
So I had some heavier type paper lying around, and I decided to try and make paint things. Here is a sketch which I am planning to do this with, and I was wondering if people could poke at it a bit.
(I know Ganon is "too wide", but I wanted him to be bigger in all dimensions.)
Suggestions?
Surfpossum on
+4
Posts
Ganon's wearing a two layer getup, though, and that's why the tunic/robe thing is also behind his legs.
Ganon's position on the page bothers me. It seems like he's juuust off center. I'd either make him perfectly centered or obviously not centered. I hope I'm not the only one who thinks that.
edit: for some reason I thought McGibs said to scooch the head to the right. Whoops!
I'm also taking the next month or two to focus on painting stuff, so I've got a couple of things going. Better to not know what I'm doing on multiple projects at once!
I'm working on a series of landscapes from No Man's Sky; the first one is largely done I think, the other two that I've started have substantial work left.
(ref)
(ref)
(ref)
I'm also working on a Dark Souls thing. I think I basically need to go over the whole thing to make it nicer.
Any critiques/advice will be greatly appreciated in 2026.
This is about how much I draw before I start painting; I've been thinking maybe I should put more down first? I dunno!
A trail by my house, and the refinery where I worked. These are the (kinda loose) references for them:
Aaaand some Magic card altering that I've started trying to get back into.
You basically just tape cards down based on what you want to paint, then erase off the part you want to paint on. They're pretty tough, and the print is actually some kind of clay based thing I think, so it should come off pretty nicely.
*checks notes*
... ah yes, agonize incessantly that I will only make them worse from this point on.
I also did a quick paintover of this one; I went to keep it very empty, but the foreground needs something. Maybe just brightening sections of it up will work?
And started a whole new one:
The local climbing gym is gonna let us (my girlfriend makes these wire tree things) put some art up in March, so I have to call a couple of these done by then, right?
I'm calling these three "done enough to go up in the climbing gym but if I have time I'll probably poke at them some more."
This one needs a bit more attention I think, but maybe not much.
And this one I've just started.
I think all the references I've used so far can be found in this folder, if anyone wants to see those.
Calling this one done for now:
And here's a slight revision:
I think the stripes might be too busy, and I can't quite get the ear and mouth right. Not quite sure how to adjust them, tho.
The composition is a little still. Everything is centered and delineated into for, middle and background. It feels basic and in the first underwater painting and the desert there is conflict between the contrasts in the upper right of the painting and the rest of the painting. Its the most interesting part of the painting visually but compositionally the painting is saying you should be looking in the middle.
With the refinery that you worked at should have left the cars off the bottom and the clown should have been pulled all the way down to the edge of the canvas.
Im going to lump colors together with the piecmealing. Several of these look like five or six peices put together. Theres not much unifying the seperate peices and they are not transitioning well between the peices. I would compare a couple of those to your trail painting with the deer.
Sorry im running out of words. Try working more parts of the painting at once and working more colors in subtly.
(That's not actually why I stopped painting, but I did decide to try doing some pet portraits next instead of more landscapes.)
Those observations are going to be very helpful once I get around to practicing stuff that will help fix the issues you mention. But that sounds like a lot of work, so in the meantime I started this:
So the first thing I'm trying to do differently is work more colors in as I go; I think the results are decent so far.
Completely messed up the ears since I was just throwing colors down without my reference or even really paying attention, but that's just a goof.
I was sitting under a tree and traced the sunlight on my screen, then threw a hand in.
Then I looked up and tried to capture one of the branches.
I call it "Mr. Dennis Wojtkiewicz can go right to hell."
@Doodmann here are the layers I ended up with on this. You can tell that I mentally compartmentalized the hair and outfit as different "things," and you can also see where I quickly tried to fix the hair up a bit.
These last couple of things have all been done using the default pencil in Sketchbook; I'm really liking how that feels, and I'm trying to push away the worry that I'm just getting into a comfort zone.
I also just noticed that Sketchbook has a built in timelapse feature, so I'll probably be posting that because 1) it'll probably be cool and 2) I think it will probably be helpful in finding spots to focus on.
I did not realize on the timelapse feature. I'll have to try that for my next project.
Started doodling:
And messing about with Adobe’s free Illustrator thing:
In which I discovered that the slightly oval shape I used originally is within the region where the circle guide snaps to a perfect circle, which is... tremendously annoying.