A tutorial thing.

I go back and forth on whether I'm qualified to do tutorials. Sometimes I'm like, No, Dee, you've barely been drawing for a full year. Wait until you actually have a real qualification to make tutorials. And then someone asks me something about how I draw, and I'm like ALL THE TUTORIALS!!!

So I spent far too long this morning putting together this thing...

Step one: Figure out your poses. This is just a very basic sketch, and you might even want to do it a few times with a few different poses, just to make sure this is the one you want to us.

Step two: Add the basic body shapes. Let it still be really sketchy, since this isn't going to be in your final drawing.

Step four: Add clothing, hair, and facial features. This is where your characters' personalities come out--choose clothes and hairstyles that reflect how they act and think.
If you like sketchy outlines, this could be your lineart and you could skip the next step. I prefer cleaner lines, though.

Step five: Ink the sketch. I drew this digitally, so I just made a new layer and went over the whole thing on the top layer.

Step six: Pick your colors. I have all of the color swatches on a separate later, so I can just delete that layer and get rid of the spots later on.

Step seven: Add flat colors. Each of these colors were done on a separate layer, but then I flattened the whole image after it was all colored. If you'd rather shade each individual color, don't flatten it yet and add the shading on the right layer.

Step eight: Add shading. (On a new layer, if you're coloring digitally. Layers are a digital artist's best friend.) I was experimenting with shading styles one this one, so it's a little different than how I usually do things.
I picked a low-saturation purple for the girl on the right, set the layer opacity for about 20%, and went over all of the places that I wanted shadows at with that color. I had to go darker for her shorts, as the lighter purple didn't show up.
For the girl on the left, I used a dark red, because I didn't like how the purple looked on her coat.

(Being a goofball and setting the shading opacity at 100%. Ain't they pretty.)

I saved my favorite part for last so I could do an in-depth tutorial on it.
(Just kidding. I forgot to shade the eyes until the end.)
At the top of this lovely triangle is the base color for the eyes. Going down to the left are two progressively darker shades of that color, and on the right are lighter shades.

Lay on the shade-darker color first...

 

...then the darkest color. You should know where your light source is at this point, so add the shadows accordingly.

Now put on the shade-lighter color, remembering where your light is coming from...

...and then use just a bit of your lightest color for more emphasis.

Blur all of the colors together. (I used the airbrush for this step.)

Add some highlights, and you're done!

Now, remember. This is just my style of coloring eyes. You'll find a different method of this for every artist out there. Have fun playing with the different styles, and use the one you like best!

Final step: Touch ups, sign, and you're done! I blurred the blush on their cheeks, because I didn't like how flat it looked, and added some highlights there as well. I also shaded the girl on the left's right boot a little more, as well.

I need a life.

Nah, actually, I don't. Well, maybe I do. But I don't want one. I'm quite happy to live on my couch for the rest of my life and draw and write these ridiculously long and rambly blog posts. Maybe I'll even start selling commissions someday and pay my parents rent to make up for the loss of their couch.

Okay, speaking of commissions though.

In case you hadn't picked up on it yet, the rain date was enacted. You see, apparently you only get a temporary ID at first, and then your actual one comes in the mail later. And you can't use your temporary to open a bank account. Which means I couldn't open the account last week as I had hoped.

I now have my permanent ID, however, and hope to stop at the bank tomorrow and open the account. Once that's done, I can finally open my Etsy store.

I think I can list things and start setting up the shop before actually opening it, though... I'm going to go see if I can do that and add some commission listings.

I'm just going to rant about PhotoShop for a minute. Or thirty.

So I recently decided that SketchBook is holding back my art skills. (Total lie, as you will soon see.) It has a limited number of brushes, layers, and other options. So I decided to try out a different art program.

I opened PhotoShop (because I am completely done with ArtRage, and I was too lazy to go find my Manga Studio 8 disc to download so I could download it on my new laptop), and started doodling.

After a few practice sketches, I buckled down and started rereating a pencil drawing I did the other day. And, I must admit, she turned out pretty gosh darn adorable.

Mira (girl with kitty) at the Myers-Briggs Academy. She's ENFP.

Lineart = success.

I plowed ahead and started coloring, even though I knew I had archery practice in less than half an hour. I got about half of the base colors down before it was time to leave, so then I closed the laptop lid--not shutting it down, mind you--and headed off to practice.

AND STUPID ME FORGOT TO SAVE THE DRAWING, JUST IN CASE.

So you know, the impossible happened, PhotoShop crashed at some point during archery practice, and ate the drawing. Now the only thing I have left is the single-layer .jpg lineart attached to this post.

Someday, when I don't have anything better to do, I'll pull this picture up and retrace the lineart and color it. Saving my progress every few minutes, obviously.

Anyway. Enough ranting.

I don't know. And I now see that I forgot to color the brushes.

My style's been going crazy lately. My full-body sketches are either short, round little almost-chibis, or stick people. And I won't even talk about the faces. The only thing that's fairly consistent is how I draw hair...

I see really good pieces of art sometimes, and at first I'm depressed. Why can't I draw like that? Then I study the drawing, pick apart their shading techniques and how they outline and whatever else I've been working on in my own drawings. And then I pull out my pen tablet with a new fire of passion and start drawing.

I think it's working, as I've noticed so much improvement over the last few months that it's insane.

OH. AND.

Etsy store hopeful open date: Saturday, February 7, 2015 (Rain date Saturday February 14)

Yes folks, you heard that right. This Saturday.

I'm hoping to get my ID on Thursday, open my bank account sometime after that, and then get the store up and running on Saturday. If it turns out that we don't go to the license place this week, I'll make next Saturday my goal.

Sketch dump, and a mini-rant on jobs, college, and art.

Hi there, stranger. Do I know you?

...

I'm sorry I haven't posted in so long. I've been pretty busy with all sorts of insanity--piano and archery and, you know, drawing--and every time I sit down with my laptop, the last thing I feel like doing is writing a blog post.

But now I'm sick, and all I can really do is sit on the sofa anyway. And I'm tired of reading my Dietrich Bonhoeffer biography - though it's a very well written biography - so I'm finally going to post these doodles I've done lately.

Headshots.

 Left to right: Rachael, Annie, and Poppy.

Hopefully you already know who Poppy is. If you don't, she's my personality-less little scholar from my MBTI dystopian society.

Rachael is a random character I came up with recently while I was hanging out at a friend's house, and Annie is her best friend.

Sagey-love. <3

 Yeah, I totally have a crush on this character. He's my baby, okay?

Rachael.

And this is the first drawing I did of Rachael. I have a few other sketches of her, but I forgot to scan them.

Her proportions are a little off, but she's a fun character to draw. I may or may not be a little bit obsessed with her...

I was going to post my Magic Thief fanart too, but I think I'm going to save it for it's own post, in which I'll also review that series. Because they're actually pretty good, but almost no one has read them.

I'm thinking about doing art commissions once I start my Etsy store. Okay, I've been doing more than just think about it. I'm pretty much certain that I'll be doing them. In fact, that'll probably end up being the main focus of the store.

I just love drawing--and being able to make money off of something I already do every day, and love doing, just sounds like a smart option. You know? Even if I'll never "make any real money" doing it. Even if I have to get a "real job" once I graduate. (Or before, if I decide I need one.)

This is the way I see it--I don't need a job right now. I still have two years till I'm done with high school, and I don't really plan to go to college. (It's still technically up in the air, but I don't think I'll be going.) There's nothing I want that's too expensive to get for Christmas or my birthday. So why waste the few years of freedom I have left on some minimum-wage part time job, when I could just as easily be making similar money on something that I love to do, not to mention earning experience in the field I want to go into? Doesn't this way just make more sense?

Sorry, I'm starting to rant. This is something that's been on my mind a lot lately, and I just needed to get it out.

Monochrome.

My memory card broke recently, so I can't scan any pictures until I get a new one. *sigh* This is frustrating, since I have several sketches I want to show you guys (including some Magic Thief fanart and my first attempt at using the Sharpies my little brother got me for Christmas). I guess you'll just have to wait until I find a new memory card. Or steal one of my siblings'.

I have an obsession with monochrome. I keep drawing things like this...

I was at a friend's house for the weekend to celebrate her birthday, and while I was there I doodled this on her sister's iPad.

A few things you should know about Spike:

• His real name is Matthew J. Scott. Nobody's really sure when or where he acquired his nickname.
• He likes pink. Don't judge.
• Some people are intimidated by his spiky white hair and punk-ish clothing, but they shouldn't be. He's really sweet.
• I just came up with him yesterday so he's not very developed.

That's all the new artwork I have to post at the minute... I'm in a drawing mood, though, so I might end up pulling out my pen tablet and doodling something. If that happens, you guys could end up with two posts from me in one day. :O

NOT MY ART. But isn't it adorable? <3

Also, Josie and I did an art swap during the December drawing challenge (er, well, not really during. She just finished mine up last week, and I haven't gotten hers emailed off yet, because broken memory card. >.<). AND LOOK AT ME I AM SO CUTE. She's such a good artist I can't even. *fangirls over drawing*

Dystopian world-building involving MBTI, school uniforms, and a curly-haired girl.

I don't know why, but this idea has been pestering me like crazy for the past few days. What if, in the future, there was a country whose society revolved around personality types?

Wouldn't be too far-fetched for an INTJ to decide that s/he wanted to organize the world a little better, and type everyone in it to find their "ideal" location in the country. Trust me. I'm already on that path.

So I've been doodling characters and maps and floorplans to a ridiculous extent. I have a document made just for random observations I make on personality types - which has mostly digressed into me rambling about the different between "F" and "T" types - and I just finished up a quick sketch of a school crest.

A school for ISTJs, mind you.

World-building aside, this is what I have so far for the story:

"At the age of fifteen, every one in the country of ___ takes an important test. This test - or inventory, if you want to be specific - will determine their future. After their personality type has been recorded, they are sent to a school, where they will learns skills specific for their type. During their senior year, they will choose from a list of possible professions, and, after graduation, begin working in that job.

It's a foolproof plan, except for one thing.

There is no personality type that matches Poppy Wynd."

So basically since I decided my world wasn't interesting enough, I had to make up some conflict. Meaning I have a "personality-less" fifteen-year-old named Poppy.
(She actually does have a personality type, but that's a bit of a spoiler. I'm still figuring out how much of the story I want to give away.)

Some pictures to illustrate:

Miss Poppy. If she had a determined personality type, there would be a crest on her jacket. Since she has no type, she gets no crest.

This looks really confusing now, but it made perfect sense when I drew it. The colors are for the various personality type "groups," and the crest is what an ISTJ would wear. And there's a big splotch around the crest because my art program decided to spaz.

Haha, Maebh (Mave). She has nothing to do with the aforementioned story. Just a character in a book I'm hoping to illustrate.

I hope you've enjoyed this trip into Dee's brain. Tune in next time for "A Ramble on MBTI Types, and the Slight Differences Between INTPs and INTJs."

(I'm being serious here, though. I might post that.)