My attempts at Art (Suggestions Welcome, I may post more)

[IZ42]

I've decided to stop being a pansy about my art and to show it to you guys on the forums. I'm not that talented of an artist, and learned most of my skills from Mark Kistler, who I seriously look up to, so less-cartooney images aren't really my specialty, so anyway, here goes!

http://i.imgur.com/QGFJTcr.png
This is an unfinished (?) image I made to. Nothing really special. It's a dude holding a sword. I took a stab at using a style closer to anime, I guess, for the face, and it turned out rather better than most of my attempts at faces.


http://i.imgur.com/M2Zd80u.png
This is my take on Death, the Grim Reaper, etc. I think I like this one more than Omen. More of a loose, flowing style than what I normally do, which was intentional. I wanted to try something new. Only thing I don't really like in the image is the mask, which feels a bit weird to look at.

I might upload more images that I find interesting in the future. Opinions, comments, suggestions, etc. are always welcome! I'm also willing to take advice on drawing hands and faces, which are my two big weaknesses, and are why I mostly like to draw cool looking weapons, locations, and some creatures instead of people. Thanks!

[Artman77]

Your art looks a lot like mine did in middle school and high school. I did a lot of weapons too. For the exact same reason! :smalltongue:

I went through some of my old stuff and was surprised at the amount of progress I made in just a few years. (granted, in high school I did nothing but draw and went from a straight-A student to C's and D's...) I took two years of art in college which I thought was boring and a waste of time cuz I "was soooo talented" but looking back, that helped a lot too.

A quick note about your line work; the short gestural strokes like the ones you used on the reaper are okay once in awhile if you're doing a quick and dirty sketch, but try not to use them too much. My old art teacher said it would hamper my ability to draw smooth lines. If you want to draw a woman, for instance. You don't want it to look like she has fur, you want one smooth, thin line that gently follows the curves of her body. Just something to keep in mind.

Faces and hands are two of the hardest things to do. Understand these proportions regarding the face:
Face Proportions (http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_ht-_Ooy0Uxk/TPFTEEcE7iI/AAAAAAAAAAk/2u5xB26s9n8/s1600/Proportions+of+the+Face+Information+Sheet.jpg)
The first time my art teacher told showed us this, I totally rolled my eyes and thought 'this is the stupidest thing i've ever seen. Peoples faces are totally NOT the same...'
Now, if you straight up draw a face from these measurements it will probably look pretty ugly. If you compare these proportions to pictures of people though, you'll see they are pretty close. Once you understand the underlying structure, drawing faces becomes easier. Also, if you are drawing fictional characters, it can help you maintain some consistency. Stacey's eyes are slightly larger than 2/5th's of her head. Bob's nose is wider than the inside corners of his eyes. John's mouth is halfway between nose and chin, instead of one third, etc...
Another way to improve is to spend a week on just eyes. Draw a hundred of them. Then do ears, then lips, then the nose, until you get comfortable with all of them.

Hands are physically more complex, but require less subtlety to perfect. Constant practice. Draw with one hand while looking at the other. Fist, open, front, back, holding a spoon, giving the finger, peace sign, etc.

If you have any questions for me specifically, I would love to help. You can swing by my thread any time, or send me a PM. I'm looking forward to seeing more of your work!

[IZ42]

First of all, thanks for the kind words!

To answer your question from your thread, I really only find art a hobby, and am fine with it staying that way, though a career in digital art and animation (like creating models and concept art for games, which I would love to do) may end up being my career, despite the rest of my family being mostly science, which I also love.

Now, onto these questions. I may have similar drawing style to yours because I still am in high school. I mostly learned to draw weapons way better than everything else because of partly the reason I gave in the OP, partly because of my above stated dream career (designing weapons for a video game? Hello yeah), and partly because I've always found weapons history and design fascinating (as evidenced by the fact that I have countless books about weapons and war lying around my house, as well as around 3/4 of my pages in my various sketchbooks being weapons). I have yet to take an art class mainly because of my own laziness, the amount of stuff it would add to my already insane schedule (all Advanced Classes+Martial Arts+Swimming+Music), and the horror stories I've heard about my school's art teachers.

My usual drawings tend to be shorter, darker, and heavier lines, which is why these two are such a deviant for me, so I've been trying to loosen up my hand.

I remember seeing something similar a while back, and yeah, my trying to carbon copy it probably why I hate drawing faces so much. I learned how to sort of draw basic eyes through my elementary school art club teacher (whom I still look up to, she's a great lady), and haven't really progressed from there. So that's why my eyes always appear dull/lifeless/mildly mentally stunted, most likely.

That's usually how I approach drawing hands, as I'm drawing one, I look at the other and try to copy it down to paper, with varying results. Still not that good, since I haven't had enough practice yet, I guess.

Thanks for your help, again, man. I'm looking at posting a cityscape next, based off of a D&D adventure I've been slowly working on. Should be interesting. I, too, look forward to seeing more of your stuff.

[IZ42]

This next art sample was really more me screwing around with layering and shading than an actual attempt at something, but still turned out mildly interesting. Based on the city in which a campaign I'm writing up is based in, I aimed for a gloomier feel. However, I think I screwed up the contrast on the scan and got a yellow-ish image. Anyway, here it is:

http://i.imgur.com/6o34oJk.png
I tried using some shading techniques I learned from Mark Kistler to darken the image by lighting scribbling over the drawing and then going back with my hand and smudging the lines out, slightly shading the image. Creates a really smooth pattern and can be really cool in some cases.

I've also discovered some of my older images on my external hard drive, done in more of a cartoon-y style. They'll get uploaded soon.

Actually, viewing the images again, I realized they contain my actual name, which I do not wish to divulge because I'm a paranoid bastard, and they're pretty blegh in terms of scan quality (extremely pixelated for some reason) as well. Sorry!