[RobThing]

Hello there!     I'm telling you right now expect homosexual content from this thread.

And my character that is working his way through the incubator at the moment, is gay (Are there any other gay characters here in the Void? >.>)

I usually work in Photoshop, but recently got my hands on a copy of Corel Painter (that program is the love of my life). And I went on sort of a portrait frenzy  xD  I enjoy these the best, painting portraits, and I've only recently started to screw around with the expressions on the character's faces. A blank smile tends to get really boring really fast  ^.^

ANYWAYS.

This is Misha Collins:



This is Alexy (an OC of my friend, Tex):



This is Rob (and OC of my own. I know, it's dorky to have an OC named after yourself):



And Carver (another OC, a bad guy):



And then there's this, which is terribly random to put here, but I'm proud of it. My best friend is a huge fan of impressionism and classical artists, so for christmas, I painted him Van Gogh's Starry Night. It's 8x10 canvas, done with oil and acrylic- because I didn't have white or yellow in oil  >.<  But it turned out better than I expected (the colors are more vivid in real life, as this is just a photograph of the painting):



My friend's OC, John:



My other OC, Sasha.

This was the first painting of him:



And the second, which I think is actually the best portrait I've done to date (It's a scene from a roleplay, his nose is totally broken, which is what all the red and purple veiny stuff is):



I also animate. Just screwing around, nothing epic:

(John & Sasha, lol)


(Alexy, again)

[MyHatsEatPeople]

There are many homosexual/bisexual and so on relationships and character (even artists) on Void so it's no issue about having characters like that. Don't really feel comfortable with "I'm a fan" like they're a spectacle but I know you won't mean if like that.

Your art looks great! I look forward to seeing more.

[Wubble]

First things first: stop using white.

Looks pretty good so far!  You have eye for shapes and can draw from life - a formidable weapon!

Things you could probably benefit from:

- Check your color palettes: vary hue between shades, not just brightness (There's lots of awesome tutorials everywhere)
- More contrast! You are severely lacking with strong shadows and strong highlights
- Stop using white
- Define more clearly where the lights are - you have inconsistent shading and shadows everywhere

Mostly your problems are handling shading and colors, which is very common and normal. Don't be scared to experiement, push and do stupid things when choosing colors.

P.S. I concur with Hats

[RobThing]

It's a little scary, coming onto a new board and not really knowing how people will be. So I tend to go a little overboard with the warnings, just because I'm little very scared terrified of how people will react. Past experience + living in a homophobic small town = a very skittish Rob.

I know my shadows & highlights are shit  xD  I'm getting learned by the beautiful people over in the Incubator. I've just gotten into trying to work on lighting and mood lighting. Apparently you're not supposed to use black or white for shadow/highlights.

So, my next painting should be much better (hopefully).

[RobThing]

Doing an art exchange with a friend, and this one is from a form roleplay we both participate in. L-R: Manny, Rob, Gene, Alexy, Westlake.
(Is swearing okay or this board and in our comics? I swear a lot, usually. But if not, I can contain myself)

The lines and the color:

[Rah]

Hi Rob, welcome to VOID!

Nice to see you posting so much art. You have a good eye for human faces and got some good likenesses down, the Misha Collins one looks just like him. What I would say though is you really need to work on your shading. It's very soft and loose at the moment and doesn't really complement the linework or give any sense of form, leaving your faces looking very flat and really detracting from the actual drawings. I would suggest trying to tighten your shading up, study the way light falls on faces and forms. Some areas will be really solid shadows, where others the light will diffuse over the skin and the shadows will be softer in appearance. I'd also recommend using a LOT more contrast to give more volume to your drawings - don't be afraid to go real dark in places. Also, don't shade just with a darker version of the same colour because not only does it make your faces look really flat and dull, but it's also unrealistic. Skin in particular is full of different hues. I am looking at my hand right now and I can see red, brown, yellow, pink and even hints of blue. Look at photos of people (or better yet look in a mirror or at real people's faces) and study where the red of the blood shows through, or the areas that are cooler in tone (more blues/greens/purples) and the areas that are warmer (more yellows/reds/browns) Here's something that may help, it shows the colour zones on faces: http://cdnimg.visualizeus.com/thumbs/f4/6f/f46fada050fdea56e079eecb6a782658_h.jpg

(here's another version: http://www.guldbaek.dk/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/MartinGuldbaek_Agent-0047_FaceColors_WIP.jpg)

It's very subtle in real life but it's something to take into consideration!

Lastly - the way you shade the hair, particularly in the more painted portraits (last 3) is a bit much. You don't need to draw in every single strand - there's also very little definition of light and shadow areas. Sometimes, less is more!

But you're off to a good start, just keep studying and really try to understand how light and shadow on faces works, as opposed to just memorizing. I hope that makes sense!!

I hope all this helps.

[Mister Kent]

expect homosexual content from this thread.

You had me at hello.

I love the Misha. Actually your style is very unique, we don't see too much of the painterly style around these parts. That's cool! I do concur on varying the color selection. Try taking some of these pieces that you've already colored and playing with the hue/saturation, just to look at the piece with different color choices. It might give you some good color ideas for your next piece!

Keep it up! It's all very nice so far. OH and as for the swearing, yes it's allowed.

[RobThing]

Thank you Becs! Next time I do a face portrait, I'll keep that in mind    My mind is very black & white, just in the sense of "the cat is brown, so I shall paint the cat several shades of brown." and fights against using say, purple. "The cat is not purple, wHY ARE YOU PAINTING IT PURPLE ITS A BROWN CAT". But I'm trying to get out of that.

I love playing with the hue slider  *_*
Mostly for color correction, like if something turned out more blue than I wanted it, then I'll switch it up.
And also. I use it to pretend the characters are aliens  xD
Now that I have you, Mister Kent, I look forward to playing with you <3

Trying to practice my female anatomy. Because I don't draw female characters very much. These are Abby & Neena, my friends' characters in a roleplay. Neena is native American, which is also an all new challenge:





ALSO.

There is this.

I tried some odd color variations, just fucking around, and I did this reeeally sketchy lineart and then tried to paint it using the face zone thing, and it looks a lot better than my other work  *_*  Except. It's porn. Very blantant (lovely) gay porn  xD
So, here's a link, in case you don't want to see it, but I cropped the very pornographic part so its mostly just penis and veryyy suggestive. Yes.
It's still very bad for lighting, no dark shadows or anything.

CLICK FOR THE NSFW

[RobThing]

Hey!
Working on shading stuff (epic huge thanks to puzzlething for putting up with me and patiently explaining shit so I could understand it <3)

So there is this, which is John & Sasha (from a roleplay forum I participate in), and I was trying to give it sort of a sweet romantic mood:



And this, because I saw the chunks of black and wondered how it would look with a painted coloring style. And my partner said that it looked like the style of the really old batman comics. The character is another roleplay character, called Ben Weaver):


I still think I need a lot of practice before either style will look really good, but it's a start anyways.

[RobThing]

What I suck at water, I make up for in butts:



So many butts.

ALL the butts.

(Ignore things other than butts and boobs, because that showering Alexy doodle was more for my own enjoyment, and I was practicing my butt and boob anatomy)

...

Did I mention butts?

[Sabulive]

Ey~

Booty~

[RobThing]

Yes booty! Love the booty! 
I enjoy drawing naked things <3  And I definitely need more practice at it.

In the meantime, an experiment in cell shading, with minimal texture and mostly seeing what odd shading colors look like when they're not soft:



I think it's nice, but it still looks a bit weird.

[RobThing]

I AM IN NEED OF HELP?

I'm doing an oil painting for a friend, cause she loves Stardust, so I'm doing a thing of the airship with the lightning and the wall...
And the lighting really really sucks.
Like.
A LOT.
So I would love LOVE any sort of tips I could get on this, to make it better? Shitty quality webcam shot of the canvas. But I don't know what more to do with the lightning. I was thinking maybe making it a tad less thick, but I still want it to stand out?:

[Fearn]

I think if you have it much less thick it would look more natural. And it will stand out purely because of the contrast of dark sky and the light lightning

What you got there looks very stylised. I would personally avoid the yellow, as they are not necessarily yellow (I think blue or white most of the time - from what I saw anyway ) and this: https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=lightning&client=firefox-a&hs=MZW&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=0BzNUsaxGI-rhAeK9ICABg&ved=0CAkQ_AUoAQ&biw=1252&bih=610

There's hardly any straight/curved lines, it's all like really twisty and... Well you see

The way I would have gone about it is have dark(er) sky and then add thin light lines of the lightning. But idk how oils work and if you could do it.

[crapshoot]

HAI ROB didn't know you posted all your stuff here!!

I don't really have any advice beyond what everyone said already haha I agree with Fern on the lightning for the most part; maybe blur the bulk of the light and add a sharp thin streak of white in the middle to make it stand out? But then I don't know how to do that with oils either xDDDDD

[RobThing]

Not ALL my stuff, Tang  ^.^  Just like, a bunch of it  xD  Not even half of the good of the MELT stuff. Although hoooly shit, looking back at earlier MELT stuff its like... really awful, and I think, I USED TO BE BAD. And it was only a few months  xD  It feels like forever ago.


I'll have to wait for it to dry (it takes like a week to dry because the paint is so thick) and then I can paint over it and try again  ^.^
IN the meanwhile!
Puzzlething was saying about using thicker black for texture and things, and while I don't think I quite got it in ths one, I rather like how the face turned out, with all the colors and I think I'm starting to do well on the face zoning thing.
Alexy, with his fauxhawk:

[RobThing]

Working on story, for Nate's arc, and suddenly Ray:

[RobThing]

Here is some of that explicit homosexual content I was talking about.
I like the idea of making it extremely suggestive, as opposed to cocks right out there.
More sexy this way, somehow.

I really like how the color turned out.
And while the background is a photograph, I altered it, so hopefully it blends well enough that it looks almost natural. I dunno. What do you guys think?
(Although I definately should have put some sort of texture on that tree, damn)

[Red]

And while the background is a photograph

*slaps your wrist*

There's no need to use photos when you are capable of drawing your own! Don't do that again or more slaps will happen.

[Angie]

I think the coloring works well but the pink would have been better as reflective lighting, since it doesn't work quite as well as a highlight.

Also I guess there's just no classy way to say this, but that's some deep throat action going on there.

[Cracking Skulls]

That guy has some good control over his gag reflex. That's some talent going on.


And yeah the pink highlights don't make a whole lot of sense in a scenery of your choice here. The tree might have more shadow on it since the lighting is coming from the left, and the dude getting the blowjob would block the light with his shadow.

[RobThing]

@Red - You promise? 

@Angie - Not sure what reflective lighting is? What color do you think would have been better for highlights? The way I've been doing shadows/hightlights so far, is darker and lighter versions of the same color. Like, light red (pink) for highlights and dark red for the shadows.
Like, there is this one, which uses blue & blue:


@CrackingSkulls - Thats a good point. I should've done the tree a lot darker, damn.


John is the one against the tree, and Sasha is the one with the mad skills   ^.^  Although I am endlessly pleased that you guys just think "Wow Sasha has an awesome gag reflex", as opposed to thinking that John just has a small cock  xD

Now that I think about it, I should maybe try to do maybe two layers of shadow with the cell-shading instead of just one, to add more depth and shape. That will probably be my next doodle (not this one, just because this was one I did previously):

A scene from a roleplay, where Sasha totally got stabbed, and I'd been drawing a lot of angst shit lately for that, which brought on the porn as a sort of "sorry for drawing everyone having their asses kicked" present. There's no background on purpose (Red, feel free to slap me for it), because I liked the white space, and felt it sort of added to the mood of it all, all lonely, nothing around him:

[Cracking Skulls]

What you might wanna look into is mixing colors to get a more natural value when you do highlights and shading. You have a cool-colored setting for the first piece, but the highlights are very unnatural on your character since you're using just one color to highlight. Hope you don't mind me fiddling with your artwork for a minute here, but here's what I mean, with changes to the highlight and shading on the bottom sample.





Of course I'm no expert in this sort of thing, but when you see the comparison between the both, the neon blue doesn't stand out more than the character anymore, rather it blends in better to make the character himself become the focus of attention.

[Pennydox]

It feels like a lot is being thrown at you, and just take a step at a time.

1. There are different kinds of light, like ambient, reflective, direct, bwah. It's easy to figure out on online tutorials, but doesn't mean you can pick up immediately.

2. Some color shading is on purpose, depending on the situation. With your photo backgrounds *slaps your wrist* you already give the situation of the shading to the main character. It's in the forest, it's dark, why the hell is there a bright fluorescent light shining? Try hm....redoing the background (draw it), and shade that with the same colored highlights as your characters. I think that should make sense when you do that.

3. If the highlights are warm colored, the shadows are most likely going to be warm colors. If the highlights are cool colors, the shadows are most likely to be cool colors too. Not 100% all the time because of things like reflecting objects or other stuff, but at the moment, try it out. Also, another simple rule is that if one object has warm shadows, then the rest of the shadows in the image should be warm shadows too (and same with cool shadows)

4. Practice drawing things other than people. Even I have a hard time myself, but do it.

[RobThing]

Is there a secret line-up, people waiting to slap me? (please continue)

So basically, I should use various colors for highlighting/shadows, as long as they are all cool colors, or all warm colors? (For now, anyways)

And yes! I'll start doing backgrounds properly on my doodles and not just on my comic stuff  ^.^