LadyJudgement

Sorry this is late, El, but here's the one I promised you...

Shimu

Barry Windsor Smith
John Buscema (unfortunately no longer with us)
Michael Turner

I've never tried GIMP, my problem had been in Illustrator that every line I drew would redraw itself if I hadn't applied this shortcut. Which was to make it so the line I had just drawn didn't stay selected. This way I can draw line upon line, and Illustrator being a vector program, it allows me to draw fairly straight, or straighter...

I'll have to try this in Photoshop and see if it applies to the freehand pen tool.

Actually my wife got some weird email from Photobucket the other day saying anything with nudity would be removed... she does gradient meshes of my sketches, and made a tutorial for the stock site we're on, so she had been hosting her images there. Now her tutorial is all messed up... I checked out my files, and they weren't effected, but she has a paid account, I don't, so go figure.

LJ is a guy man... that almost sounds like "girly man".

It's okay my old SG didn't know for months... a) nobody asked, and b) I never flirted with anyone.

But back to the art...

I'm really enjoying the detail in this piece, to which I have my wife to thank. She's been teaching me Adobe Illustrator for the longest, and let me in on this one shortcut that makes inking this a dream... I also did this piece today warming up for yours Professor Blues.

warm up Supes

Sorry the version is so light, I had uploaded a 150 dpi, and it was huge...

Here's an update... Head detail

Nice to meet a fan. I just signed on to play my main, something I do once in a while so that I don't get rusty. Fire Stingray introduced "herself" in Atlas and asked if I was LJ the artist.

So I asked her to do me a solid and help me transfer some influence to a new alt in return for some art. I've never drawn the new samurai armor but I have drawn samurai before, so this was going to be fun.

Here's my rough sketch, Fire Stingray sketch, my first one was too static and had no female edge, which is a shame the game can't make more "feminine armor. Anyway this is the second version, and I added the scabbard to give it more authenticity.

The final will have a glaring flame "katana", hello it is a samurai!

LJ

I love Photoshop, but yeah the learning curve from PSP which I started on is immense! PSP does vector work too, I suppose I'd switch back if I hadn't already gotten use to Photoshop.

Corel Painter can't be beat for having much more versatility in that painterly feel to work. But like any program it's the user and not the software.

Recently I've enjoyed the demos of Open Canvas, which is really affordable, and to me is like a Photoshop Lite. It's strictly for CG work, because it's stripped down to brushes, erasers, colors, layers, etc... none of that photo manipulation crap that Photoshop is loaded heavily with...

Also good is Comic Works for just line and inking, the company makes a coloring version, but I found it clunky.

So I made a double of TA on Justice, with his consent... to help me get the armor right. My first version was colored black and blue, but it was still to hard to see the details.

So last night I made an all white version I call "TA's Ghost", and man it's like I had my lenses corrected. Here's a detailed drawing done in Painter & Photoshop...

TA's Ghost

Ack now I have to rework my final sketch... never use the word final for anything. *Sigh*

NO cape on him when I did it 2 years ago... screenie... this is me in my old outfit.

Final sketch

At last, this will be my parting TA shot... will probably take a few weeks to ink and color, but I'm happy with the sketch, hope you like it! I'll keep you posted on the progress...

LJ

I wanted to stress that drawing from life can't be beat. Have someone pose for you and try to capture the pose or expression if you're drawing a face. In my art college anatomy class, we did 30 second drawings, 1 minute drawings, 5 & 10 minute drawings and the excruciating 20 minute drawing.

This was so our brains could be taught to think faster if we only had 30 seconds or 1 minute to draw. With 5 and 10 minute drawings we were told to add more details, so we had to "look" for those details. With a 20 minute piece, it is all about a finished piece of work, composition, lighting, and design, as well as detail and always anatomy, anatomy, anatomy!

SO there you have two methods to teach you different things, and similar things. Oh and don't forget to draw your same drawings over again, once you've learned or felt you have learned more, at least you will be surprised at the progress, at best you will have a drawing that is more thought out and closer to what you want the finishing style to be.

Being a former Art Teacher and more importantly a Huge Comics Fan, I can tell you one thing... Art Classes are for Traditional Formal Artists, your basic painters, sculptors, and in betweens.

If you want to be a Comic Book Artist, that's a whole other thing.

Granted some of the skills overlap, anatomy, perspective, design and color. But your typical art class won't be giving you any immediate satisfaction for being a comic book artist.

They will teach you other things, equally important things that if you want to be a traditional artist would be ideal. Formal training is like having a personal trainer to push you.

But many schools are low on technique and high on individual thinking and motivation. Their goal is not to make you a carbon copy of each other, but to give you the basic tools, the knowledge of those tools, and how to make yourself improve with them through personal exploration of subject matter and thinking.

Do you see how odd this would be if it were applied to a comic book artist, it would be like only giving you half of the goods.

Comic Book Art is specialized training. You HAVE to know your anatomy, that part can't be argued. You HAVE to know your perspective and design, if you're going to do full pages, tell a story AND sell your work. You could forgo the color training but you'd be missing out on a whole new aspect.

Also I'd like to stress the story telling part, great comics do that with even the smallest of expressions on the hero. Why are they smirking, why are they angry, why are they smiling. Each one of those examples is ripe to be filled with some thought balloon and or "heroic tag line". You don't have to be a great writer, but you do have to be universally understood.

If you want to draw a picture of an impaled enemy, the details you put down will tell the story for you.

Kheprera has give you some excellent beginnings, there's so much more to touch on. Materials, Movement in your figures, and I can't stress enough to know your comic history, so that A) you don't repeat what someone else has created or B) that if you do, you do it in your own original way.

An example of that might be an illustration of your character's death scene. Many comic characters have had a death scene in their run, and each one is similiar (for dramatic reasons) and different because of who the character is, what their background is and what makes them fun to read.

Look at the Death of Superman story and the make believe Death of Batman in the Dark Knight stories. You couldn't have them die in the same way, it wouldn't make sense. But a good artist will make you feel the story coming off the page.

From your drawing alone, I can tell you that the arms are the best part, your legs are off, and a little too blocky looking. Look at some leg reference in the same pose. A good example would be a sports magazine, because players are always moving in different positions.

You should be able to find a similar pose. Granted a photograph and a drawing are very different, so you will have to simplify the lines a bit to help you redraw them. By studying the lines, you will learn the form. I could go into bone structure, but that's a different lesson.

Get yourself a piece of tracing paper, a piece of carbon copy paper (this should be at any staples if they still make them), and some good white paper.

Play the carbon copy paper on the white paper, place both of them under the image you want to trace. Place the tracing paper over the image, and with a soft pencil, not a pointy one cuz you'll rip the tracing paper. With a soft pencil apply enough pressure to trace the outline of the form of the body.

If you do it right, the pressure will push down on the carbon copy paper and that will make an exact copy on the white paper. Try not to move the carbon/white paper because if you move it, and start tracing again, the last few lines you placed down, won't be where you left them on the tracing paper.

That is to say if I trace a line of a finger, then look at what I did, accidentally move the paper, then try tracing the rest of my hand, the finger could be off to the left or right, depending on how much I moved the paper.

Try tracing the entire image before you look, I know it will be tempting to look but you'll be better off waiting.

Now is this drawing, no. It's tracing... I'm getting to why I taught you this, something I also taught my 6th grade class on how to draw comics. This is to teach you line, form, structure and why an artist chooses to draw the way they do.

If you do this with a photo, you'll learn the shapes that make up the image. That is just as important as drawing freehand, and looking down occasionally on your page.

If you memorize the lines it takes to create a whole image, you'll eventually be able to apply that to your own style, your own images, your own creations, because your brain will have learned to see the shapes, and remember how to make them.

Is this cheating? Yes it is, but am I grading you, no I'm not. It is a method to make you learn faster what the shapes are. BUT, if you don't take the time to draw without using this method, if you don't apply the lines and forms you're trying to memorize, then you will be cheating yourself. You won't be drawing like you, you'll be drawing like the original artist or photographer.

This method is a practice method. You have to learn the lines, that make up an arm, over and over again, then get yourself a blank page and recreate what you remember.

Naturally this works best with photos if you want to learn more anatomy. And when you use other comics, it teaches you why those artists use the kind of thick or thin lines they do.

This method doesn't work if you don't do the other work it requires, in fact it will do more harm to your drawing skills, because you have to MIX what you remember, what you see in real life (Ie landscapes, people, animals) and the kind of style that inspires you TOGETHER.

Only then will you develop your own style.

The book Kheprera spoke of teach the same thinking, they teach you practice, application and results, but they do not teach you how to draw like you. No one can teach that, drawing is a part of everything that we take in, what we like, what we don't like, your brain will process that as what you want to capture on paper, because part of it is what excites you, what makes you happy when you create something from nothing.

Good Luck.

LJ

Here's a screenie!

Not at all, that's why I made the head larger... feel free to use it. You're very welcome btw, now I'm off to enjoy my electric/energy blaster "The-King"... yes he looks like you know who, complete with my version of "My Way" ala a COH touch in my bio.

See y'all around!

Actually I offered him 200K, the transfer was for 500K... he refused, so I ran away and left him 100K before he could say no. We became friends, and I offered him the free art, here's the screenshot of what I had to work with...

Thanks Roxy, and btw, love that guitar piece of yours...

Elprede

Made up a blaster for the first time today, yeah I know what you're gonna say, you never made one? Anyway, since it was early there weren't too many people around to ask for an influence transfer, and I've learned my lesson from last year when someone stole from me to only ask higher level players, and those from reputable SGs.

So this art gift is for Elprede who was kind enough to do a transfer with no hassles. See it pays to be nice to low levels...

LJ

Happy 50th Juggertha! Here's a little somethin-somethin, hope you like it... it's a different take then the angry smile version of you, but I figure at 50, he'd be looking back on his early days...

LJ

How cool to have Bob Layton as a mentor?! Congrats on learning that demo... now I see why your own work is so clean and professional looking. I'm a fan if I haven't mentioned it before, great poses...

For TA - TA bw

First off an apology to those who've been waiting, and or thought I had abandoned or forgotten you. Believe me my guilt knows no bounds. Truth is real life takes precedence over virtual life, and so that is that as they say.

Anyway, I've been back all of a week, and lo and behold, Art [censored] Extra-ordinaire - TA sent me a kind message on Deviant. The above is my rusty thanks to you TA...

This is not to say I haven't been watching and drooling, some great stuff comes to my Deviant account ala Juggertha, Scarfgirl and Starchasm. So again apologies for being gone, and while I make no immediate promises, I will finish that list of people who were nice enough to ask for some art waaaay back then. I have it around here somewhere... please be patient, and I will hopefully make it worth your while!

OH and if you see any of my alts out on Double XP weekend, give me a shout out on chat!

I have those dice, and about 100 of their friends...

Well if we're going old school, and you can still find them, try to get a lettering brush for inking. The tip has a sort of slanted edge to it like a chisel, and it makes amazing straight lines every time... as well as some even weighted curved ones with some practice. It's a brush used for calligraphy, so it won't be in the normal section... good luck mission art impossibles...

LJ

I seem to recall a certain someone asking me a certain someone else why they don't do watercolors anymore... this is how it starts... nice work my friend.

LJ

I am loving the 5 adjustable "ink" tooks in Comicsworks... this is a study for my son's character - Lycari, a werewolf defender he plays with my namesake on Virtue.

Anyway, CW has 5 tabs that you can slide to your needs for weight, the ability to leave ink splotches, why you would want to I don't know, but it's soooo pressure sensitive, I'm thinking of putting it in my will.

LJ

Sa-weeeeeet! OMG even more drawings now... TA with wings, Rowr with wings, Feral Cat with wings... make it stop!!!!