Dee's posting again?!

Is the world ending? The time and space continuum has been disrupted? Did I finally figure out a way to be simultaneously at my laptop and school?

Naw, I'm just bored and feel like typing.

I decided to try drawing something (digitally) with only three colors. Maybe it's cheating to draw an eye. I don't know. I don't care.

Sketch.

Basic colors.

Adding some details and shading on the skin.

Working on the actual eye.

More shading on everything.

Um... It was asking for a scar, okay?

All done.

I want to try this again. I really do. I have so many different way I could color this... Black and white except for the iris, mismatched colors, all neons... I'll probably be here till the world really is over, still drawing and coloring eyes.

(I can just see me during the zombie apocalypse - "Just hang on, I'll look for shelter in a minute. I've almost got this eyebrow all shaded. Do you think blue or purple would be better to accent the colors with?")

Outfit inspired by my sister's character, Jack Bloodrayne. He's a pirate, in case you didn't pick up on it.

Modern genderbent Pitch. I actually have this whole outfit but the jeans... Might have to wear it someday.

Admit it. You knew this one had to get in here somehow.

I just really love Sage.

My laptop is warning me that it's going to self destruct restart in a few minutes to apply some "necessary updates," so I shall bid you all adieu. The last time it did this, I was waiting for an hour for one update. You'd think a new laptop would load a little faster than the old one, but nope. It still acts like a tortoise.*

*Just kidding there--tortoises are actually pretty fast. You should've seen the one we used to have when we set a piece of banana on the floor near her. She could beat a Weeping Angel to it.

Sorry.

I'm out of good apologies and excuses for not posting in weeks a month. So I'm just going to throw artwork at you and pretend that never happened.

Drawing I did for a friend. The character's name is Zandor. I used my Copic markers, because they were feeling lonely and neglected.

Sagey-Chibi. <3 He looks so depressed sometimes... The lineart is traditional, and the coloring digital.

All digital. This is my friend Nixie's character Catherine. Isn't she adorable?

RACHAEL. All digital, again. It's been a while since I drew her, so I doodled this earlier today.

And, uh, I liked her outfit so much that this happened.

Okay, but lets talk about that last picture a minute.

I love designing outfits. It's part of the reason I love drawing so much. Having the freedom to express whoever-I'm-drawing's personality through their clothing, however I want, is an amazing feeling. Recently, I've been paying more attention to what I wear, even though it makes me feel like a clothing-snob. Although I'm not exactly a fashionista, it's fun wearing clothes that reflect who I am.

So as I've been embracing my inner fashion designer, I've been making those sorts of things. Mostly just for characters, though I came up with the idea earlier today to design an outfit for each of the sixteen MBTI personality types.

I'll be posting outfits like this on here more often, I think. Hopefully you guys like them! If you have any suggestions for outfit themes, let me know in a comment. I'd love to design something for you.

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.