[Angie]

Okay, so pretty much my least favorite thing to hear about my art is that I suck because I use Photoshop and color, so going into this new semester I've pretty much made my focus at school black and white art. I've finally gotten around to scanning all this stuff I've been working on, since it's mostly 18X24 I had to track down the big scanners on campus. (and what lovely scanners they are, oh man like 1 second to scan a huge picture) This is all from figure drawing since my other classes I'm just working on my senior thesis animation. The thing about my figure drawing class that makes it awesome, is the teacher lets us work with whatever we want and we can draw whatever we want and use the model as a reference. Since in the past I've always been forced to use pencil or charcoal and do refined renderings and all, I was thrilled to finally get to work with ink in a class.

Now one thing that makes me laugh is that everyone online tells me to stop relying on Photoshop so much but my teacher has recently been like "okay, you should mess around with these all in Photoshop and do stuff with them digitally because you're a digital artist" since most of this stuff was done with the intent on just being in black and white, I'll have to do some experimenting. When I do stuff to them I'll put the results up here. Since this teacher asked me to help teach a digital art class after seeing my pages for Void I figured I should see what I can do with them. Hopefully all these images work since imageshack likes to break images, this is starting from when I started the class in September to the present so the images are in order


-early September. It was pretty rushed since we were doing two poses that day, by the time I got to the legs I was almost out of time so there's all kinds of anatomy issues everywhere. Not using this for my final portfolio for the class


-during that same class period, zoomed in quite a bit on the model. Probably gonna do some stuff to it digitally, might or might not hold onto it


-think this was like mid September. We'd been drawing the same model a ton and I was getting bored so I was like okay I'll draw her as a robot type thing. I really rushed the background though and regretted only having like one sized pen at the time. This is about 18X24 and I'll be coloring it probably


-late September I think. I need to crop it a little as there feels like there's a lot of negative space and may rework the background some since there's nothing there so it feels empty.


-early October. Won't be touching this one digitally. My teacher kept encouraging me to really push the shadows and stuff so that's what I did.


-early October. Felt like doing something a little different. I was wearing a shirt Mickey designed so I was like heys I'll draw a wolf person.


-mid October. I again forgot my thinner pens so getting those little white areas was pretty tedious, don't think I'll do anything to this one digitally. Probably going to add some more to the background as I ran out of time that day.


-late October. This one was done with the intent of being colored since my teacher really wants me to color something. That day I just wanted to draw ridiculous things since that was like the same model I've had in all my drawing classes throughout college so I was so tired of drawing her. Went more stylized than I'd wanted to.


-from the same day as the above image. I messed up the anatomy on her a bit and I'm not really happy with the composition. I didn't have a ruler on me so I really winged the perspective and buildings. Not sure if I'll hold onto it for my portfolio unless I can make it ultra sexy with color.


-from this past Wednesday. The teacher was like okay we're going to do three quick poses today so you have to work fast. So I was like okay, and just tried to make them one composition. I went with a much different way of inking on this one and may continue to try doing something like this in the future. The scanner demolished it though, I really should have scanned it at grayscale instead of black and white.

[squid]

this one is my favorite :D
The last one is pretty nice, too.

On the picture with the sword-weilding person, the perspective is really messed up on the left arm; it wouldn't be that tiny... I'm not sure that you would even see the whole arm; I think much of it would be hidden by the person's torso.

I was trying to figure out why I don't like this stark black-and-white, heavy-shadows style.. and I wonder if it's like, too balanced between the black and white areas? Like you know how they say when a picture is too "balanced," it gets boring? Maybe you have about the same amount of black areas as white areas, and you need to throw it one way or the other. The pictures aren't TOTALLY balanced, some pictures clearly are more black than white, but maybe try to push it even further?

[Angie]

Yeah, I'm trying to work on that since it's something my teacher pointed out too. Since I never really do just plain black and white I'm trying to get better with it, I want to try to do more like the last image in the future

[Aluísio C. Santos]

Super nice blacks, Really digging it so far.

A cool tip, maybe would when you try to make it super black, try not to make highlights in the black heavy areas, such as the girl hugging her leg, the highlight below her, between her leg and the shadow, could be done witout it, and it would make it even darker, and, dunno how to explain, less polluted is not the correct word, but it would be a more clearer image, maybe. I mean, making the dark really dark and the light, more light, it will make it look better (though its already really good!).

I like youre really drawing the muscles and bones and such, keep on!

[Angie]

Thanks dude, I'll try that out! I've been mostly winging the lighting because my teacher's been pretty bad about giving us good lighting conditions so I've been trying to spot the shadows

[Angie]

Nothing necessarily new, but I've started to do the digital stuff to the previous pics, figured I'd show what I have thus far

First off I apologize if any of these are crazy dark on your screen, I colored these all on my laptop which I've never colored on before. They look alright on my desktop monitor so I'm assuming they're alright


-Just did this one quick and cheap really haha I wanted to do something like I did on the BB cover that I'm working on. It's alright and made the picture a little less boring


-Nothing new technique wise here, just recycled some things I did for a page in the Frank battle really. I have no idea how this one will look on most monitors, it looked fine on my laptop but dark on my desktop so I lightened it a little in hopes that it'll look okay on most monitors.


-Tried to do something a little different than I usually do. I normally don't step away from my cel shaded stuff but I'd been wanting to experiment a little for a while since I always do this kind of thing in black and white and was happy with the results.

[webrynth]

 Art goes a long way Angj...

It is amazing what you can do digitising your stinging, paper cuts! They look a world different once you've invested effort into them with your LapTop or what ever it is. I realy do mean that they are altered so much as to seem to go from Drab Folder Quality to Damnear Gallery print and frame.

 Accept this statement however you like. You are Free; but only to the degree of choice no?

I know-I know; "what" right?

[Angie]

Nah, that made sense. Like I was trying not to go digital but since my teacher knew I primarily do digital stuff she pushed me to do it and I was happy with the results

[Angie]

And doing digital stuff to my portfolio continues. As usual warn me if something looks too dark, since I colored these all on my laptop in class the stuff tends to look lighter on that monitor so I tried to lighten these up a little when I brought them onto my desktop.




-This one is pretty much an exercise in doing everything people on Void tell me not to do haha I pretty much took something that looked like shit and prettied it up in Photoshop to make it not look so bad. Since the semester is almost over I'm not sure if I'll have time to do more new pictures before my portfolio is due so I quickly prettied this one up as a standby just incase. Whether or not I use it in my portfolio for the class depends on time but hey, my teacher liked it so I'll probably use it anyways as lazy as it is.

[Jack]

That one with the robot parts showing through the skin is probably the best thing I've ever seen from you, it looks really really cool. There's still some perspective issues, like the bottom corner of the stand and the placement of the wall, but overall it looks really great. I'd get to working on perspective a bit, and slowing down a little more when drawing clothes, paying attention to exactly how they sit on people.

[PONBIKI]

i like seeing you do something else is very refreshing.and i like what i see keep at it.. i say do more pencil drawing with out inking too..or just grab a ball point pen and use it to draw in a new sketch book i say new because it wont have any of your other drawing helping influence u. and when drawing with a pen you pay more attention to line weight since you cant erase.
just trust me it helps when tring to do figures and perspective..i only draw in my sketch books in ball point pen.

[Angie]

Thanks guys! Jack, yeah, clothes and perspective are things I need to work on and that's what I'm going to try to focus on next since I was trying to focus on getting better with anatomy this semester. Ponbiki, yeah I do do stuff that isn't for Void haha but I normally don't put it online because it's normally a pain to get scanned or for my animation thesis. I'll try the ballpoint pen thing and see how that goes

[Dimension]

Ang, I really like your coloring, it looks pretty nice. What I'd suggest you work on though, would be inking; I'd say you could work on your line widths a bit more. Aaand I know foreshortening isn't easy, but that'd be another thing I suggest working on, like the guy's left arm (with the swords and monsters) looks too small even though it was just supposed to seem further away, I still feel it's smaller than it should be.

...It would also be nice to see some of your traditionally colored stuff  ;3

[Angie]

Well I have no traditionally colored stuff because it's fairly rare I do it anymore haha. I used to do a lot of oil and acrylic painting but don't really do it much anymore. I do have some older paintings I did back in my DA but nothing recent, doesn't help a lot of my traditional stuff is a state away right now. Pretty much everything I know about doing digital art I learned through doing traditional work. I have always believed that people should have a background in traditionals before they take the plunge to digital and obviously I'm no different. But because I have that foundation in traditionals from doing them so much in high school and college, I'm versatile enough to use them if need be and I'm a better digital artist because of what I've learned through them.

And yeah, I'm always working on my inking, that was pretty much my focus for the semester and while I think I've improved loads there will always be room for improvement. Foreshortening is always a pain so I'll try to keep working on it so I can make my stuff more dynamic and realistic.

Thanks for the feedback dude!

[Angie]

Just finished classes for the semester


-Busted this one out super fast because I needed one more thing for my portfolio. There is one other piece that I haven't finished that I'll finish up and share with you guys in a bit.

And because I'm nice, here's a WIP for my BB I'm working on



Obviously no it's not finished but shows the style I'm going with on this battle color wise.

[squid]

oh man, that page looks awesome..

[Angie]

Thanks! Here's the page complete



Back to work on the BB. This and the following page both have way too much time spent coloring them haha so don't plan on any battles looking like this color wise until I can get faster with this method

[webrynth]

 I'm really liking the softness of your work here.
You have still managed to keep it looking sharp as well.
How did you do that?

The Only thing I'd mention is that the Horn in the upper left hand side of the page seems to have the need to be free selected, copied, pasted, and buffed up a little higher and maybe back along the Skull. Like it sorta looks like it's bonering out of her eye socket. Ghod! Where do I come up with this Ghastly - Crass rhetoric?

[Angie]

Been mostly busy doing my final student film, since I needed to save copies of the backgrounds I figured I'd show what I have thus far as well as some figure drawing work





(my apologies if these are enormous or too dark, I'm on the ginormous 30 inch school monitors and the lighting is a bit different than I'm used to)

These are just 2 of the backgrounds for the film. My teacher told me to just do backgrounds like I normally do but since I'm not crazy I did tone down the details just a little since I have to do 40 seconds in 1 semester. Since I'd gotten into the class 2 weeks late I had to pull a story out of my ass to show my teacher in like 10 minutes so I decided to expand on a scene from the Robin BB so yeah. I'll have more later, these are just the 2 I drew and colored for today. I have some character sheets and a few other backgrounds but nothing finished at the moment.

And these have both been shown in the figure drawing jam





I decided to continue to work on inking for Figure Drawing 4 this semester. I'm going to try to work in this style for about a month and move onto something else from there hopefully. The first one was my first attempt, I was originally going to do actual hatching but went with just going one direction with the lines. The second one is my second attempt which came out a lot better. It's a huge pain in the ass forcing myself to not make horizontal lines when I'm shading but it's never bad to try something new. I'd originally wanted to not have any outlines on the second one but my teacher suggested I just do a more subtle outline so I went with it.

[jho]

the inks ones are more alive to me, the first one has amazing form

[Angie]

Thanks dude! Yeah, the first 2 are just meant to be backgrounds for a film

[schupfnudel]

The detail in your bgs is amazing ... And I really like that style you're using in the figure drawing pics. More?

[Red]

dammit angie your pieced together metal backgrounds are so awesome. The only thing that bugs me about the epic door background is that some of the highlights seem strange. When I look at this I think 'ok there is some light coming up top, and also some tiny lights shining embedded in the wall.' So particularly that patch of light halfway down the page on the right side... it kinda looks like there's a hole in the wall and the light is shining through, and right below it there are two little lights that look they are are small bulbs, and above it it looks the the light from above is shining on the metal. You've got a lot of soft lights and shadows, but I think you need more hard. Annnnd, on the left side is a pipe thing running horizontally, I think if you made a more defined highlight on the top there is would make it more 3-d. And mmmm maybe some sharper edged shadows to really stress the layering of the walls. I know OH GOD IM BEING SO NITPICKY IT STILL LOOKS AWESOME

[Angie]

Yeah I can see what you mean Red, I'll try and work on that

[grim-amentia]

That first background is pretty awesome. The scratched-up metal texture on the door is really great...God, your coloring just keeps improving by crazy leaps and bounds.