And then I think after Cinda posted up her pro cloud drawing, I went into Sketchbook Express (which I hadn't explored in depth before) and started drawing with my stylus, and finished drawing one character in two nights while sitting on my bed while everyone else is asleep.
Note that this is not my character, it a simplified version of a character in the manga "Are you Alice?". I used this page as reference. This is pretty much my first time drawing manga characters, so I reckon I should go with copying for a while and figure out my style on the way. I'm still working on (and practising like mad) to draw eyes like that without looking at the reference.
Here's what came out of it:
The lineart took 2 and a half hours - that's the first night
Then the colouring took 4 and a half hours (last night):
Before I cleaned up the mess, it looked like this:
Those are the colours (the colour picker function is so awesome) and the opacities and size brushes I used. Turns out, you can manage pretty well without the blend tool if you use very low opacity and five different shades of colour. I was also working with only 3 layers, so I had one layer of lineart on top, and then merge the other two layers before going on to another. I imagine that might not work so well for more complicated drawings.
The pupil of her eyes make her look either dead of stoned (maybe some lighter blue on the edges?) and I think I should have done more blending and shadows on the face (it looks too flat), but it's done!
Now I have to work out what to do for the background.
AMG, YOUR FIRST DRAWING AND ITS THIS GOOD... O-O
ReplyDeleteI'M SO PROUD OF YOU!!!! *and jelly of your skills.
The hair on the left should overlap the face more, make it closer to the eyes.
And shade the eyewhites a little more, to give it depth. My fav part is the frills!!! amg, so pretty!
KEEP IT UP!! And yes, copying really helps with drawing. :)
Thank you so much for your encouragement! :D It's not really the usually way of drawing manga style, as you can see I've left the lines on top and the colours aren't in blocks but really blending together. I'm just not confident enough to do that yet. But I will learn! (hopefully) Thank you for the tips, I hadn't realised that about the whites, but it does need depth.
ReplyDeleteHehe, there isn't a specific way to draw and colour manga style really. You seem to prefer the softshade mode, which is good too! You sort of get the idea after doing a lot of shading. My point is, blending can be part of your own style too! The lineart on top is also ok, you should leave it there for the time being. (I always do that because I'm not pro enough to change the lineart colour and make it more integrated) Try to vary the thickness of your lines, by going over corners a bit more, to give it the tablet effect. :D
ReplyDeleteI found reading lots of manga helped with that, LOL.