Doodle Diaries: I don't know what is wrong with my drawings plz help (feat. tiny reaction pics)

It's been almost two years since I tried my hand at digital drawing, but I still wasn't satisfied with how they came out.

I looked at how other people lined and colored and I replicated that in my own drawings, but it did not come out the way I wanted it to. At times it looked worse than my simple pencil doodles. I could not figure out why.

Robert kept telling me that my end results kept on looking flat, despite my coloring and shading.

"I dunno, it just needs more... dimension?" Robert said.

Dimension? How?

I drew a bunch of test pictures and pestered asked Robert for critique.

"Color scheme okay. I think it fits as decent. But the colors and so need to be worked on. What are you aiming for?" Robert asked.

"Just looking like not done by a n00b on deviantart. Like if you look at the picture you'd assume I downloaded it from a tumblr site of a semi-known online artist."

"What would a semi known artist be?"

"Good enough to make cheap prints and sell at a con,"

"Ah, not quite yet," Robert said, providing honest feedback.

(Yeah, I know.)

If my pictures apparently lack dimension, maybe I should try adding a buttload of textures on hair and stuff. I always did neglect coloring on hair.

"I haven't seen you use more than two colors for hair," Robert had told me before.

But despite putting in a lot of effort, I didn't really like how Test 2 came out.

Y: Still looks kinda flat, even though that hair took fucking forever. So much for texture. There is something else going on and idk what.

R: It does look better.

Y: Something about face is odd.

R: The face looks kind of not attached to the head? But I think the other parts are better.

Y: I see.

R: I don't think it looks flat so much as the face looks blank. Idk why but that shows up more in your colored pictures.

ARGH.

A few days later, I drew two more test pictures and sent them to Robert.

They both looked amateurish to me still, but I felt like I was getting closer to the look I am aiming for.

Y: So how is test 3 and 4?

R: They are good, but as you said something to improve on. Posture in 3 is fine but I think the shadows on chin make it look like she has a goatee, and makes it seem too much. I think where you placed the neck in 4 seems a bit off.

Y: Do they look like they have dimension?

R: 4 a bit, 3 not quite.

Y: What about coloring and shading?

R: I think the shading relates to dimension

Y: ...I don't get what you're saying

R: In terms of do things feel like they have dimension

Y: Do I just suck at shading????

R: I wouldn't say that

Y: HOW DO I NEED TO MAKE THINGS LOOK LIKE IT HAS DIMENSION

R: Ask the internet?

Y: orz

R: I think you have less issues in black and white.

Y: Why do i have problems when I color then?! What is wrong with me?!

R: Nothing is wrong with you, maybe it's how you color?

Y: But what do I need to do tho?

R: Idk, figure out color shading

(To be continued in Part 2)

Doodle Diaries: More drawing with tablets

(Part 1 here)

Still drawing with a tablet, still wondering what I need to do to achieve the look I am going for in my digital drawings.

Once more, here are hours of work and comments on drawings that no one asked for!

2017.07.24 

I wanted to work on shading, I'm not sure if I got it right. Still kind of don't like how the lines and colors came out.

2017.08.06

The rare one where I do kind of like how the colors came out. It was fun playing around with lighting on this one. I don't think school dances are usually this flashy.

*

During the summer, my go-to drawing program Medibang became buggy. I uninstalled and reinstalled the program about 3-4 times and also sent a number of help requests to the people there, but there was no response and the program remained fundamentally buggy.

It got to the point that I decided to jump ship to another drawing program.

I heard that all the cool kids use Clip Studio Paint, and although it was not free, it cost $25 when it was on sale, which is affordable. All drawings from here on out have been drawn using Clip Studio Paint.

2017/09/10

This was more of a test drawing to check out how CSP worked more than being a carefully thought-out drawing. But even with the crude lining and coloring, the end result looked... okay? The coloring/lining mystery continues.

2017/11/05

I wanted to try out some stuff I saw on YouTube art tutorials. I like the colors at least.

2017/12/10

Still trying. There isn't anything super wrong with the picture, but it doesn't look particularly fantastic either. I am starting to lose my patience.

The blueberry cheesecake is the only part of the drawing that came out like I intended. I just wanted to show it off because it's too small in the original drawing. Everything else in this drawing looks amateurish except for the blueberry cheesecake. WHAT IS GOING ON.

2017/12/17

Cute macaron print background! The lines and colors are better-looking than the cheesecake drawing, but something still seems off. The drawing still looks flat despite the shading and whatnot. 

There is something I am clearly missing in my lining/coloring technique and I would like to know what it is.

Doodle Diaries: Prompted by Facebook Memories

So I was browsing Facebook like I always do, when Facebook decided to show me this post from last year:

Oh god.

Seeing the progress pics side to side, I was curious as to how I would draw/color now, a year later. So I did a doodle again, because it's always fun to compare things, and also because I have no life outside of doodling in my free time.

April 2016
App: SketchBook X
Samsung Galaxy Note 4

September 2016
App: Medibang
Samsung Galaxy Note 4

October 2017
App: Medibang
Samsung Galaxy Note 4

April-September 2016 has a huge improvement curve, but Sept 2016-Oct 2017... has it improved...? Lining and coloring is a chore and I still don't have the hang of it.

And yes, the running joke is that Thomas is always caught in a semi-chokehold in these progress pictures.

Doodle Diaries: Progress in 3 pages, a comic

There is a certain way that I want my digital art to look, but I can never get it to look the way I intended.

I keep looking at how other people draw, but for some reason it still looks terrible when I do it. I can't figure out why.

I decided to draw a 3-page comic based on a mini scene I wrote for fun to get the lining and coloring right on my digital drawings.

Page 1: (Finished July 9)

I should probably have finished the background. But I was working on it for literally hours and I had enough. I don't know how I'm going to draw backgrounds in the future.

I just filled the rest of the panels with very large lockers as backgrounds.

---

Page 2: (Finished July 10)

Realized there was no getting away from drawing other backgrounds, so I tried. Managed to find a few shortcuts to make the process somewhat less painful, but you can tell I barely put any effort.

The lines and colors are still so flat! I've seen other artists line/color/shade like this but theirs look just fine! What's the issue here?! Am I missing something?! Do my drawings just suck?!

---

Page 3: (Finished July 22 - I didn't have the time and motivation inbetween)

Made the lineart off-black instead of black. Tried to put more effort in shading. Played around with the gradation tool and airbrush as well.

It looks slightly better, but it's not there yet, not even close. I need to experiment more.

The background in the last panel is a result of me fiddling with a photo and adding colors, you can probably tell. Fuck backgrounds.

---

Some day, I'll manage to churn out something halfway decent... some day.

Doodle Diaries: How I drew this one particular picture

Decided to show a step-by-step just because.

Back when I didn't know anything about digital drawing, I thought it wouldn't be that long a process. Boy was I wrong.

This one started as a pencil drawing. I start by drawing a rough sketch.

Flesh out details from rough sketch and start drawing more defined pencil lines.

Pencil drawing done! I liked it enough that I decided to color it digitally.

Scanned the drawing, began lining over the original drawing. On a separate layer, of course. Layers are important. You can never have too many layers.

Provided closeups of process below.

It's a lot harder to get away with flaws when drawing digitally compared to pencil. Googled torso anatomy and tried to approximate where muscles should be going, fixed anatomy.

Continued lining. I just lined the clothes part blue so I can fix mistakes if I find them, but it doesn't really matter what color you use.

Feet and loudspeaker position still looked weird so I continued fixing.

Made all my lineart black, filled in flat colors on the drawing.

Found a nice manga style sparkly tone from one of Medibang's background sets (Medibang offers a few dozen manga style backgrounds/tones). Added purple gradation effect on the background.

Background put in. Added lighting. Drew harsh lighting to convey the feeling of being under bright stage lights.

The last time I exclusively used airbrush to highlight/shade, it looked like a child's drawing on Deviantart. Somehow it does not look as terrible this time around.

Added shadows. I lowered the opacity levels on the shadow layer for the skin because having it at 100% opacity looked like he rolled around in a mud puddle rather than it looking like shadows.

It might not be super obvious, but I colored my lineart. The loudspeaker now has a dark gray and dark red outline, the skin has a light brown outline, the hair has a light gray outline, etc.

Added finish date and decided to try out the glowy effect I saw on a YouTube tutorial.

Done.

Doodle Diaries: Drawing with a Tablet, Oh Fun

I bought my tablet as a Christmas present for myself and I love it to bits.

Drawing digitally, however, has been a major pain in the butt with a pretty steep learning curve.

I haven't drawn on the tablet as much as I would have liked, but since 2017 is already half over, here are progress pics from the past six months.

2016/12/25
Literally first ever tablet drawing

Drawing with a tablet is VERY different from drawing on paper, or even drawing with a phone. 

This took more time and effort than you think it would. It takes time getting used to the tablet.

2016/12/25

I took a photo of some pencil drawings I did and lined/colored them in.

It looks a lot better than the cat, but still looks sloppy. I still have no idea how to color.

2016/12/26

I started to rough sketch, lineart, and color entirely by tablet. My drawings did not come out the way I wanted them to, everyone had weird faces and proportions.

2016/12/26

Mom: Is that a girl? That looks like a girl.
Me: It's supposed to be a guy...
Robert: Why does he have Trump hands?
Me: *cries*

2016/12/30

Mom: That's a guy right?
Me: IT'S A GIRL.

After spending the last week of 2016 getting a hang of the tablet and fiddling with lining/coloring styles, I decided to churn out some drawings with actual effort as 2017 rolled in.

The sunflowers took forever to draw, and they also came out looking better than the guy.

2017/02/06 

Whoops I guess I never finished this - I wanted to draw a height chart/group picture of my OCs. At least you can see how I rough sketch and then line things.

2017/02/13

Not really a full-fledged drawing, but I did a study on some action poses and tried coloring my lineart to see how it looked like. I didn't like how the colored lines came out.

2017/03/05

Tried a whole bunch of new techniques! They look like they're actually in the dark outdoors! I meant to add more light reflected on the two but I never got around to it.

Youtube is your friend when you want to know how to draw certain effects.

1. YJS FINALLY realizes you can control opacity levels when shading so the shadows don't look harsh.

2. Using phone pictures for drawing may work if you're drawing on a phone, but not when you're drawing on a PC with a larger image file.

3. Perspective drawing is a bitch.

2017/06/04

1. Tried other tools (air brush, gradation, blur etc) for coloring and shading instead of solely relying on pen tool.

2. "Drew" the bench by taking a Google image result of an actual bench and fiddling with various tools and effects. I need to find a faster, more efficient way for this.

My most recent drawing, hot off the press. Coloring still needs work, but it's been looking less and less awful now! Still need to figure out what to do with my lineart for that perfect balance of smooth yet defined lines.

I hope it doesn't take too long to get better at this.

Akihabara Diaries

Last month I went to Tokyo. It was a lot of fun!

About half the time my brother and I were at Akihabara fulfilling our nerd needs by browsing and buying figures. I decided to record some of the stuff that happened because why not.

1. Mother

We warned her! She said she was fine with it!
She waited for us at cafes and restaurants after the first time.

2. Figure shopping

I found a few great figures browsing like this.
"You can crouch around because you're not tall," my brother said.

3. Anime idol groups

There were a LOT of anime idol groups, both boys and girls, all across Akihabara.

I don't even know if they're from a show or a game or what. There were just a lot.

After seeing a number of them, my brother and I found some similarities among them.

Girl Idols: Round face, round eyes, cute/innocent looking, cute/frilly clothing
Boy Idols: Pointier face, pointier eyes, pretty/handsome looking, fabulous hair

4. Questionable

I'm still not sure why he decided to tell me about that particular scantily clad girl.

SHUT UP SOME OF THEM ARE DRAWN REALLY NICELY OKAY

5. Haul

My brother: 59% creatures, 41% girls, 0% boys. Figures and plushies of various sizes.

The Tokyo Station Pikachu is not part of the haul, it's from my Japan trip last year.

Me: 78% boys, 13% girls, 9% cat. Small, cute figures and plushies.

Yeah, I bought a lot...
I REGRET NOTHING.