Sketches

Catching up, after neglect

Alright, I started letting this fall by the wayside in mid-October? And this is supposed to help document my growth--so let's work on that.

Mid-November:

Never finished it. Very cute, surprisingly good left hand, but I was disappointed by the face, the head, and importantly, this process. Really, really big fan of these InCase-style highlights though. Also I adore the way her pussy looks here.

(I know I rely on Case too singularly as an inspiration, but since getting a twitter I've diversified my inspirations a little, shut up.)

December:

A sketch that was good enough for me to polish up. I'm doing the same sort of highlights and shadows here. These hands are trash, and I had to reshape and resize her head a bunch once importing it into Clip Studio. Other than that, a fun sketch. But those thighs...I wanted to draw a thick trans girl with a dynamic pose but I should've done more creative work into making her thick than just making her thighs thicker than her torso.

Was in a femdom mood recently. I feel like this is the best work I've done in my life. Obviously I see some things I could've done better (funky line width, not sure that's how hips/armpits work, highlights/hair are kind of mushy... I'll stop there) but I'm seriously proud of this.

Some of my main inspirations for the creative choices I made here are @BoxOfWant and @taamyra.

January (i.e. today)

Twink with a sword! I'm standing up, chanting. Twink with a sword! Twink with a sword! I'm on top of the table now, shouting.
A fun, quick sketch, messy as hell.

So here's the takeaway: I'm still bad. Or, at least, I'm not yet making the kind of art that compares with my initial inspirations. I need to improve in gesture, workflow, perspective, anatomy, thinking with forms, hair, composition, framing, style, color, etc. etc. etc..

What excites me is that looking back at myself from last year I can see a ton of improvement. Even since the summer, I can tell from looking at my first finished work--compared to what I can do right now, it looks very flawed. Here's to another year of growth!

October 12, 13

Shhhh.....

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October 9-11

I did 10 as well but not posting it just yet.

This had a good concept but came out poorly. Turns out painting is important and lineart might not be able to do all jobs. Or maybe I'm just not good enough yet.

I'm really happy with this one! Kept it simple, did some basic painting, looks really good. Her head is kind of silly-looking though, not a huge fan of how I stylized her eyes.

October 7 & 8

Happy with the second one, not so much with the first, yet again.

October 5 & 6

OK. Good dick but flubbed the shading a bit.

Love this one, I had a good time doing it and it came out well.

October 4

OOH BOY I'M HAVING TROUBLE KEEPING UP AND IT'S ONLY DAY 4
Tbh I quite liked this one, I think I'm making a lot of improvement.

EDIT:
I like this version better

October 3

I'm catching up! Pure lineart here, cross-hatch shading. Practiced using a pose from https://line-of-action.com/practice-tools/figure-drawing/

Transgirl--but it's the spooky month

October 1&2

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1HS #4

This is about as high-effort as I get
Some thighs!

I cannot believe how good this turned out. I cheated again and just gave myself a little more time...and then it was 1AM.
I gotta get some sleep, I'll write some takeaways tomorrow.
EDIT: I forgot

This is as low-effort as I get

A message featuring Jerall of Riverwood:

1HS #3

Finally, some good okay fucking art!
I'm pretty happy with this, especially for only my third study.

I wanted to study from a heavier model because here we stan all body types and by that I mean I will produce fetishistic art of literally everyone. Which...is a little weird? But I hope people will see it as "hey, that sexy person looks like me" and not "hey, this is creepy and weird".

Also by plus-sized I mean this was kind of the highest-quality erotic reference I could find after looking at pictures of naked women for like an hour. I need to try better/source reference from a better place.

Anyway.

Some takeaways:

• I made some new brushes, they're pretty good.
• Good gesture
• Value is ok but not great--I squinted a little but need to squint even more.
• Taking advantage of layers and digital tools is great, I don't know why I ruled it out before
• Drawing an outline first was sooo soooo useful. Do that all the time.
• I feel like this process is going to be not useful for me when I do comic-style art, which is what I prefer...feel that out more next time. Still, value studies will never go to waste.
• The airbrush, it turns out, is amazing. This next picture is the first one but after airbrushing for like five minutes.
   

  

  YOOOOOO

Yeah, this was heartening! Gonna keep working on it.

EDIT: Oh yeah haha I also cheated on this one and took like 30 extra minutes whooops

1HS: #2

#2, pretty bad

So I took probably 1h20 with this because I'm a cheater.

Takeaways: 

• I didn't like the opaque watercolor brush as much as I thought
• Squint more! I cannot overstate this, holy shit
• Because I didn't squint enough, the contrast on this is garbo
• Things got a lot easier when I
• Drew an outline. Maybe I'm just used to drawing instead of painting, but having a well-defined outline helped a lot. The face is much less trash than expected mostly because of this.
• Drew shapes of value instead of trying to capture gradient. I'm not sure I'm explaining this right, but blending between blocked out shapes is a lot easier than just guessing value gradients.
• Work in layers. I know I probably should understand how to paint a character over a background because it'll help me with composition even when working in layers but goddamn, I fuck up a lot, and fucking up the foreground fucks up the background. Take advantage of the tech.
• Speaking of, I'm trying to learn more about skin than I am about backgrounds--keep them vague and don't worry about perspective/detailing for these exercises that much.

Ok, so this is hard. And it's probably going to be hard for months.
That's ok! I can already tell I'm understanding more than I was two days ago.

-V