Comicfanatic83

So it has been a lengthy long drawn out process that throughout the year I have been studying.  Due to my work and how extensive it can be I can not get the practice for drawing or learning to color in.  So throughout the year I have just been compiling, reading , learning (I don't have a full Photoshop, just elements).  So whatever I would learn about through Photoshop I would then have to go and learn about it on my own on Elements.  Finally I started finding places online that would explain Elements which made my life so much easier.

I swear it felt like learning a anew language all over again and learning how things work.  Sometimes it was the most frustrating thing in the world and I would want to through my work computer as I was learning at work during a break but was unable to apply the methods and I learned them and watched things start to come to life.  I couldn't wait for the arrival of summer knowing that I would be home and have all the time in the world to do not only line work but now coloring.  

It would make me happier because its hard to get someone to color your artwork when the lines themselves are not that good.  Seems like some people only like to color the REALLY GOOD LINES and anything else is just not worth their time.  I don't see this as a problem but really as motivation to learn a new art itself and make my own work come to life.  I had no idea how much of an art in itself that coloring was.  It's almost like I was naive in thinking that they hit some magic button and Voila!

Its amazing the amount of time and patience you must have to experience a good coloring job.  I have a new found respect for those that just color because all I see are hours of hard work and FUN.  The feelings that come over you as you watch the many stages of your own work start taking even more shape from pencils, to lines, to flats, to high/low lights, backgrounds, and then the finished piece.

Now...I don't claim to be a professional or amazing at any of it.  So, if anyone reads this and has some advice please feel free to lend me a hand in what to do to improve the work.  I know my work with my pen tablet is a little shaky so definitely will be fixing that.  But if there is anything else that you can think of to help out I'd appreciate it!



-LD 2011

So it's been a while since I was on here because I had some problems with my right hand and have been wearing an arm brace to see if that would help to fix things for me.  Luckily it has worked and since then I was suppose to ease back into using my right hand again so that I don't put too much stress on it.

I have found that a little break really has helped out a lot.  I have recently started sketching again and believe it or not my sketches have turned out better than my previous ones.  I have had to take it slower with the pics so that means I could spend more time making sure that I clean up a lot of the things that I usually never clean up.  This has shown me that I tend to rush when I draw and so now I plan on slowing down.

My question this time is after I have my basics of my sketch, how do I clean it up????? I don't know if the problem lies in the mechanical pencils that I have been using or what.  I use 0.5 or 0.7mm pencils to draw.  I talking about getting rid of the little bits and pieces that you can see and having cleaner lines in the final project so that it looks more sleek and clean cut.

If you have any ideas let me know!!!!!

Well so I have finally lost my mind and for some reason decided to learn how to ink color.  Because I am broke as a joke I downloaded Paint.net :: and have been trying to learn of of that.

First I want to say that this is some hard crap and really am confused.  In most of the tutorials that I find here and on youtube people tend to think that others can read at the speed of light and they take off doing rather than explaining.  I guess everyone wasn't meant to be teachers.  Anywho, I bought a Bamboo Pen and Touch Tablet hoping that that would make things a bit easier but so far not seeing the advantages of it yet.  

Coloring is the hard part.  Every freaking tutorial I read shows this color this color this color but what I'm looking for as a novice is what icons people are clicking on, how to get different paint brushes so that my inks look more natural.  Stuff like that would be a great help.  

So if anybody reads this and you know some great tutorials here or even on youtube please hook me up because I'm really into this coloring thing or I plan on getting as good as possible and I'm not interested in upgrading to Photoshop LOL atleast not right now.

Oh props to whomever created this skin.