Drawing tips? (general)

@Black Market Stray Cat

I want to thank you for the advice, and you're right; it's the best advice I've ever read. I didn't worry about anatomical references or perspective.

(I wanted to add the image here, but it can only be added via URL, and I haven't uploaded it anywhere yet.)

Edit: I'll upload it to my profile

Off-topic: lewdismug is such a great artist.

My best example, although it doesn't fit exactly what i said at the start. I use clipping mask A LOT so assuming you don't, definitely try it for when starting to shade flat colours. 

@Toffee.moon

@Toffee.moon

I remember watching tutorials on rendering in drawing, but I didn't understand anything beyond clipping masks when coloring (apparently it works for line art, too).

Your use of color and lighting is impressive; I’m still just at the sketching stage (I’ll upload one to my profile—it’s the one where I followed another user’s advice). The rendering in this drawing is simply amazing; I don’t understand the technique used, perhaps because I don’t paint by hand.

@San thank you! When it comes to rendering there's lots of techniques. I can try break down what i did but tbh i just wing it. I have one dark colour (dark blue which matches the environment) and one light (off white which matches the flowers in this case but generally its the sun) and i fill the whole canvas with these colours. Erase the light parts from the blue wash and erase the shadow parts from the off-white wash then you already have your lights and darks in. I can see if i can find any other speed paints with stuff in to show you but yeah, i have traditional roots so perhaps its effected by that. 

@Toffee.moon

That makes sense. I think the last time I picked up a paintbrush was in high school, but it wasn't something we did often in class; the technique they taught me was to go from dark to light (that is, the base is dark, and on top of that goes whatever color you're using, and so on, gradually, until you get the result; I never tried painting outside of class or beyond what was required, because I preferred the ease of digital art, even though I was still terrible at it back then)

@San 

My other speedpaints aren't so useful lol. Yeah i can understand not painting outside of school cause paint can be pretty scary, especially due to how quickly it runs out. I use the airbrush a lot (i use the eraser to make sure there's hard lines on one side if needed) which for some reason, people advise against and its possibly the silliest thing ever. I would recommend trying a variety of techniques to see what works, because they're built up through experimentation and change. My art evolved when i abandoned line-art, another ones probably changed for the best when they implemented it. What techniques work is custom to your own skill sets and preferences, you gotta remember that first before anything. 

@Toffee.moon

That's a tip I'll keep in mind when I want to try my hand at rendering again. I also remember that when I first started out, I used the airbrush quite a bit (or rather, I misused it—you know those illustrations where they use an airbrush for every single shadow, and to make matters worse, they just use plain black? Well, that's exactly what I did, though I was still pretty young at the time).

Note: The illustration is fantastic.

@already

What a coincidence—another user is sharing their art using the same technique (rendering, if I'm not mistaken; as far as I understand, the technique is similar to hand-painting). The other user's advice was to clip masks, so that might be helpful for details as well.

You’re right that I’m someone who wants to publish my drawings (I, at least, would like to make some money from this), which is why I’d like to have a high-quality portfolio; but I’ll put your advice to the test and give it a try to see if I can improve.

@San

i looked at your pic and it looks pretty good already, definitely nothing a little rendering can't smooth out. the only artists i see who have better initial line control in their drawings are professional animators whose entire job is drawing with smooth lines on the first try over and over and over again. not a bad goal to strive for, but kind of an unrealistic STANDARD to hold yourself to.

a weird tip for rendering i have is to make a custom eraser brush that uses the texture from your preferred drawing brush. i don't know how easy that is to do in your drawing program, but it can make rendering a lot smoother if your erasing doesn't stand out much from your drawing.

@already

It's a sketch, but I'm not sure if I'll do a solid line art (which is exactly what looks best to me) or a more rough style with hatching and several low-opacity strokes (which I also like—I'm not very good at it, but the result is good; I'll post an example of hatching and solid line art in the photos); When you mention “control over the initial stroke,” are you referring to those illustrators who draw a single continuous line instead of connecting several small ones to form one? You still need a steady hand for that (I’m nowhere near that level). 

Eraser brush—it sounds weird, but I think I get the concept (I don’t think I’ve ever customized a brush or tool in general; I usually just download them. The illustration was done in JumpPaint—same format as Medibang, actually, interface and all—but maybe I should move it to ClipStudioPaint and see what I can do from there). 

“If what I’m erasing isn’t very noticeable,” can you give me an example of how to use it (either a visual example or a description of how the result should look after using it)?

@Mayonaka

I think that's something I used to do, but with my forearm locked in place—just my wrist (and the linework wasn't bad; in the sketch or line art by Nicole Demara that I'll be posting, my graphics tablet is smaller than a TV remote, so I guess I just adapted to that.)