YJS, on the brink of turning 28

I'm going to be 28 years old on Saturday.

I am already 29 in Korean age, but Korean age is bullshit and I refuse to live 1-2 years older than everyone else in the world, so 27 going on 28 I am.

And I don't really know who I am asides from that.

I'm not talking about my upbringing - I'm a culturally confused Third Culture Kid and that is okay and I've made peace with that. I mean that I don't know who I AM.

What is my key personality? What am I best known for? Do I have expertise in anything?

I feel like I don't have an answer for any of those questions.

Since I was young, I rather disliked the notion of being known for one thing, whatever it may be. For me, it was usually drawing; I was the Kid Who Draws.

And that felt suffocating. I have other interests and thoughts and feelings other than drawing, I thought. I am me! I refuse to be pigeonholed into just the Kid Who Draws!

Perhaps it was because of this attitude, but I never managed to delve really deep into anything all my life.

I read a lot as a child. I read fiction. But I never challenged myself to read nonfiction nor did I have any favorite authors whose books I obsessively tracked down. I liked stories, not the people or the craft behind it. And eventually I began to read less for leisure.

I like writing. But I don't have anyone whose writing style I love, nor do I have any writing mentors. I only know that I like writing simply and concisely, getting the message across as efficiently as possible, artistic value be damned.

I am doing journalism. But I don't have any favorite reporters whose stories I obsessively follow, nor am I subscribed to a million newspapers (I just read/watch the news like a regular person does). I don't have any grand aspirations of winning a Pulitzer or reporting a challenging story. I don't have some burning drive of Searching For Journalistic Truth.

And drawing. Oh, drawing. I never went to art school - I felt like I would be wasting my writing opportunities if I went to art school. Also, I hated doing what others told me to and only wanted to draw what I wanted, which I reckoned was the wrong attitude to have anyway if I wanted to do art for a living. I also balked at the price of drawing tablets and didn't buy one until I was 26, while most people start drawing digitally at 13 or so. As a result, I know how to draw, but I can and will never draw as well as professional artists, even though it is one of my greatest passions.

I never delved deeply into other long-term hobbies like I should have. Obsessing over things that wasn't school stuff or job stuff felt like a waste of time. I never cared to learn about the kendo spirit or analyze moves beyond the basics. I never practiced my violin in my spare time, and I never poured in my heart and soul when playing, resulting in a soulless, mechanical screech that sounded more like dying chickens than actual music. I never gave 100% when playing tennis, resulting in my skills never improving.

I didn't study deeply into anything I ever did because I wanted spare time. Spare time to do... nothing, essentially; just kill time and sleep and watch cat videos or whatever. I never cared because I didn't want to be known for That One Thing and got lazy with life,  and now I'm here, unable to do a good job of anything.

Maybe I SHOULD have cared more about all the things I did. Maybe then I'd be good at at least one thing by now, or at least have an identity that others can recognize me by. Right now I'm just... me. A lazy, pessimistic, antisocial person who isn't an expert at anything and easily crumbles under the slightest stress. A rather uninteresting and useless person.

It's probably too late to do anything about it by now since I'm nearing 30 and officially getting Too Old for Things.

Doodle Diaries: I don't know what is wrong with my drawings plz help, part 2

(Continued from Part 1)

TL;DR summary: I am really, really bad at lining and coloring my drawings on the computer, despite doing everything that I should be doing. My drawings look okay enough as pencil sketches, but look flat and amateurish once I line and color them.

(Exhibit A: my drawing from July, and a quick replication done by pencil on Dec 31)

After the whole series of critiques from last time, I watched a bunch of lining and coloring tutorials and speedpaint videos on YouTube, just like I did when I first began drawing digitally.

I haven't missed anything; I already do all the things that the videos do. But everyone else's art looks great while mine does not. I do not understand this fuckery.

I was starting to reach the conclusion that my drawings "just suck". Hear me out, I have actual reasons for saying this:

1) My lines just don't look nice and I have trouble with making some parts thick and some parts thin, which adds dimension to drawings.

2) I suck at picking nice colors. Color combos have not been my strong point since childhood.

3) I still suck at details such as clothes folds and clothes wrinkles and skin folds and hair parts.

If this is really the reason that my drawings don't look nice, there isn't much I can do other than draw more until things come out right.

So I tried another test drawing. My goal this time was to do the usual things I do, but 1) be super meticulous with colors, and 2) be better about details like hair and clothes.

Process summary below.

Lineart

Flat colors

Shadows and highlights

Colored the lines instead of having them black

Huh.

Wait.

The end result... doesn't look terrible?

I created layers upon layers for this drawing, constantly adjusting color levels until it looked "right". Was color choice my problem all along?!

I need to try another drawing.

I used an old, old doodle I did on scrap paper in 2016 as reference. 

Lined, colored, background, colored lines.

The drawing looks less refined since I used an old doodle for reference, but this also looks okay...?

So color choice and details are indeed a few of my problems.

Next I tried to work a bit on lines: I used a vector layer to line my next drawing instead of a regular layer, and tried to adjust line thickness.

Yes, I am absolutely going to use every pattern on CSP as backgrounds.
I also forgot to highlight their hair but I spent too much time on this so I'm moving on.

The left looks fine with the black lines; I needed to color the lines on the right for it to look the way I wanted it to.

So lines may also be a factor I need to pay attention to as well.

...

I guess the primary problem with my drawings was that they indeed "sucked" and I need to be more meticulous when I draw.

Okay then.

Whoever said "Drawing digitally makes your drawings look less crappy because you can color them in which hides flaws" needs to have a word with me.

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.