The Offcial Help and Assistance + WIP thread for beginners

[Halnodor2]

Well I felt it would be necessary to a start one so I don't "Hijack" anyones thread, also anyone can feel free to post comments and constructive criticism.
Also any future new people can post here for help. So to start this thread up heres my current work

[JarrardKO]

Here's my critic from the other page man. Hope it helps.

Originally Posted by JarrardKO

The proportions are wrong. The shoulders and legs look too low. You're probably gonna have to lower the back and extend the torso and belly lower. The end of his tail seems to be very thin for too long, for a tail it has to be something like big, medium, slightly small, small, tiny

Your's is like: Big, medium, medium, medium, small, small, small, tiny.

I don't know how to explain it any better, so sorry if you can't understand what I'm saying.

The right wing of the creature is longer than the left one, because the ends of both wings are in the same spot - unless he's clapping with his wings.. Which I doubt. Hehe.

The neck doesn't look right either, something with the hair is making it seem wrong. Oh and speaking of the neck, the lower neck/chest area sticks out too far, flattened it slightly a bit and have it placed closer to the arms of the dragon.

[Toink]

Yeah. Make the chest way closer to his front shoulders. He also seems to be on a crash diet, give him some fat on his tummy and his back looks way to awkward. Legs look too fat and seems like it's standing tip toe. Make the jaws more dragon-ish, take a look at the Naga on wc3. Better yet, take a look at some dragon pictures.

[icbm1987]

Erm...

How would the bones be placed? It really doesn't look like you asked yourself that question before you started drawing.

The dragon does not, and will not look right unless it has a believable skeletal structure. I will concede that dragons are imaginary creatures, but they can still have realistic bone structure.

Google is awesome, click this link!

Bones>muscles>skin>other doodads

I'd personally suggest you redo the sketch. Also, listen to whatever TDR says, he's alot better at this art thing than I.

-icbm1987

PS No OMG, uR back posts, please.

[Halnodor2]

Another WIP, I prolly should redo the orginal sketch but could some one help me out and draw me some claws and legs.. I fails at them. They all look stubby.

[TDR]

The biggest mistake EVERYONE makes, and especially newbies, is to draw stuff directly from imagination without any prior study of similar things. This results in some very, very distorted and awkward drawings, like in your case for example.

If nature with it's millions of years of evolution designed nearly perfect elements, why would you reinvent them in a manner you can't justify? I mean look at his legs...how could he even walk with those? Why are all his claws pointing downward, where else did you see that? What purpose could they have? What's with that tail that suddenly breaks at the middle? Why are the legs almost as big as his neck? And for God's sake, what's with those wigs? He couldn't even bend those things. Have you never seen a bat's wing? Why didn't you draw it like a bat's? Because it looks like it works perfectly. Did you thought that mutilating the wing like that would make it interesting? Under what justification? It doesn't even help the composition. And why do the cliffs look like tinfoil? And...is that a sun I see there near his head? If it is, is that how you see the sun? A circle with flames coming out of it? I thought it looked just like a very bright spot and you can't really make something out of it. Seriously, did you ever see flames out of the sun from here on earth? Because if you did, I want pictures. Also look how leaned to the right that dragon is...but that's because you're right handed and it's a natural thing (even erwt does it HA!) but you'll have to get over it in one way or another.

To sum up, you really, really need to have a solid documentation that will help you on what you're going to do. Draw lots of animals and insects so you'll have a broader palette of stuff to mix up and get influenced by and your drawings will look more understandable.

Now onto the coloring...just never ever touch the fucking smudge tool again. I'm sorry i have to be so harsh and sound like a control freak, but this is one of the things that you really must never do: blend colors with smudge. I mean just look how shitty and blurry it looks! I bet it looks great to you now, but trust me it's not. I know what I'm saying, I mean look how shit my first digital "painting" was, 3 years ago, smudged all the way:

Looks like a pile of shit, but at that time I thought it was good. So yeah. THE method to blend colors is this: http://www.wc3campaigns.net/showthread.php?t=82083
If you want an even smoother gradient you can use a little of the healing brush tool on that, it gives it a kinda watercolor feel.

That being said, I say you leave this thing as it is and keep in mind all the things I said so you apply them from now on.

[Halnodor2]

Big Thanks TDR, I will try to apply all this to my drawings and Ill stay away from the smudge tool... This is the first time I actually did an computer coloring. I realize it is god awful.

[TDR]

heh yeah, almost everybody's first digital painting is smudge overkill :P

[Chriz.]

I've never done a digital painting : (

[TDR]

so why the hell do you whine here? go do it!

EDIT: I hereby declare this thread STICKY!

[Halnodor2]

Hey guys I'm back again, Tried to draw a feline today, I'm having trouble blending and can't seem to get that the hang of that tutorial TDR.. many other things still wrong with this but tell me what you guys think

PS No Smudging what so ever used though

[icbm1987]

It's important to practice not just coloring skills, but also your general drawing skills.

I'd suggest that you do one at a time until you get more comfortable doing so.

To facilitate such an end, try coloring a more skilled (I do not mean this in a derogatory manner, we must all accept our limitations in order to improve) artist's linework. Having good linework to color will make it easier to focus just on the coloring process.

Another tutorial you may find useful

Good work on not using smudge, but more practice is never a bad idea.

[TDR]

First and firstly of all you must practice your line work. If you can't draw the lineart and capture the volume of the object, everything else fails. After lineart comes the study of volume. In black & white, by hatching with a pencil, not paint. And finally there's color. Try studying both digital and traditional mediums, see what suits you best. Oh and I didn't just made this whole thing up, that's how I was taught by a professional teacher and it seemed to have worked pretty well for me.

[erwtenpeller]

Okay i cant figure this out: How do i set my settings (photoshop 7) so that pressure sensitivity works on opacity for textured brushes?

I mean i can pick a hard-edged pressure opacity brush from the default brushes, but i cant get to to work for textured/custom ones.

HALP.

[TDR]

what do you mean? You set it like on any other brush.
Oh and get CS3, it's sexy.