Ask the Artist #1 - Signomi

[Deleted member 143209]

Ask Signomi

This is where you can ask Signomi any questions related to art and her inspiration when it comes to what she does.
Please do make sure that you make your questions on-topic and directed at Signomi only. This is a rare opportunity which you can ask some of the forum's best artists all about their work and how they do such amazing art. So take the time to take advantage of this intimate Q&A with the very talented graphics, digital and traditional artist Christina.

For me, she has always been a source of inspiration and always the marvel of talent, who makes herself so available to help young aspiring artists. She has been someone I look up to in terms of art and design in all the forms she presents it in. From her stylish graphics, to her breathtaking and atmospheric drawings, Christina is one of the finest artists I have the pleasure of knowing. Click on some of the thumbnails below to view some of her pieces in further detail.

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View her Deviant Art *image removed*.
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[Loki]

Ohhh this is a great idea! ^^

Hey Siggy, I dunno if there's really any answer for this, but when you draw hair, do you tend to line out the strands or just have the outline shape? Cause I usually don't draw the strands, and that always ends up becoming a huge problem when I go to shade/highlight, because then I don't really get any individual strands and it just ends up looking really solid and awkward. .-.

Drawing the strands and figuring out how to shade hair has always been my biggest weakness, but I remember even back when I first started drawing (poorly hahaha) hair was like my favorite part of your art.

tl;dr: We had a super brief MSN convo once and you said I could ask you how to do hair- so now, like, years later, may I take you up on that offer? xDDD

 

[Signomi]

Hair can be a finicky thing to try and draw, and it's no secret that it's my least favourite part of a drawing to outline.

But what I do with any drawing is sketch a base, the rough tide marks that I would freely and aimlessly apply are there to provide a sort of dynamic touch to the sort of hair that I draw on a regular basis, as well as a guideline for how I could possibly execute this in a tidy manner.

For example, when I draw my character, she has long flowing hair that tends to go different directions, so what I could do is grab a light colour and a fairly decent sized brush...and create several swift brush strokes that flow in aimless but fluid directions, here is an example of how I would accomplish this:

This is a rough sketch, and you can see I liked throwing strand abuse in places where I've highlighted. Don't worry, I didn't intend to make thin trace outline around any of the brush strokes lit, what I did was use them as a guideline for where I would like these strands to flow.

When you're drawing hair on a canvas, there are a few things you need to bear in mind. One would be their shape, another would be the way it would flow with your character's body posture. If he or she is being blown in the wind, then the hair would be a good vocal point to determine which direction the air would blow, and you could sketch out the anatomy in accordance to that.

I'm running on a bit of a tangent right now, but I'd like to stress that hair could make a very important visual checkpoint for how you would want your character to be drawn, and whether or not you can adjust your style to match what you think would be visually perfect for that particular hairstyle.

Anyway, as far as outining hair strands, I avoid the use of a tablet.

Reason for this is that tablet strokes could turn out messy and it would take a long time to taper them. In my experience, drawing line art completely by tablet not only draws away my patience, but it also draws away my motivation to keep things tidy, therefore it's very easy to make line art that would appear sloppy.

I'm now going to link you to the line art I made of this drawing:

If you're wondering how I managed to get the lines so clean and crisp, it's no secret, this is viewed at 50% zoom. I work on a 3000x3000 pixel canvas and that guarantees clean and smooth lines when zoomed out.

But although it helps, you cannot rely on a large canvas and a little zooming out to keep your piece tidy, you've got to make your own contribution to keep your line art as clean as possible.

How I outline these hair strands is by use of the Pen tool. The same can be said about the body and my character's other features.

I didn't apply any pen pressure to this drawing, however, I wanted to experiment and see if I could create a formidable drawing without use of pen pressure.

But what I'm about to show you is a way you can utilise pen pressure to give your own line art a bit of an clean edge.

It can be tricky to use, but don't worry, I'll show you a way you can use it to your advantage.

The pen tool can be very handy to use if you want not only crispness, but a more easier time when you colour, shade and highlight.

Right, to start off, you will need these settings:

This is to ensure you are creating paths, and not shape layers.

Create a path by creating a starting point and dragging anywhere else on the canvas, by keeping your finger firmly on the left button of your mouse, you can drag the path and create a curve, as I have done here.

Now, go back to the brush tool and increase your brush size to about 7 or 8 px.

Right click and choose "Stroke Path"

You will see a tickbox that when ticked, will implement a stroke with pressure sensitivity. Check it.

After that, you can freely create another anchor point, and dragging it to create another curve.

This time, you want a smaller brush, so I would say alter the size of the brush tool to about 3 pixels, then go back to the pen tool.

Now, this is important, you must NOT have "Simulate Pressure" checked this time, so untick it.

Stroke your line once more.

As you can see, I've made a solid, straight line while also keeping the width of the pressure I applied.

This is generally how I would draw on pen pressure hair strands. I don't use the same brush widths and sizes as I have just now because these things can vary on a large canvas. I would personally experiment and see what sort of sizes you'd find most comfortable to work with, and use this technique to your advantage. You don't HAVE to use pressure, more often than not I personally don't, but if you DO want to use it and you've not got a tablet handy, this would be quite useful.

Here is another line art I made, the hair especially was pen tooled:

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1215457/Line1.png

 

[Deleted member 143209]

Signomi, do you draw with pencil and paper quite often? Or are you more inclined to do digital work? I'd love to see what you can do with a pencil, and how you do it!

 

[Loki]

Ah- I stopped using photoshop awhile ago. Pentooling was always more something I did with my graphics and I just couldn't lug it over to my artwork. I should've mentioned I use SAI, it would've saved you so much time. OTL Hopefully someone else is interested in inking hair with PS. xD Either way though, I'll keep in mind to use vector layers for hair in the future.

The sketching with thicker lines is great though... *notes*


Also, do you color your lines? I tend to use really thick ink lines, so I don't usually, but in your sig it looks like you did since you upped the saturation and it really sticks out. xD >considering using thinner lines... someday hurrr

 

[Signomi]

Signomi, do you draw with pencil and paper quite often? Or are you more inclined to do digital work? I'd love to see what you can do with a pencil, and how you do it!

I do, but I tend to not like showing off pencil works because they do tend to look very odd when I scan them in or take a photo. When I make something with traditional media, I prefer to line over it and colour it on the computer, but I suppose I could do with experimenting a bit more with just simple pencil and paper.

Ah- I stopped using photoshop awhile ago. Pentooling was always more something I did with my graphics and I just couldn't lug it over to my artwork. I should've mentioned I use SAI, it would've saved you so much time. OTL Hopefully someone else is interested in inking hair with PS. xD Either way though, I'll keep in mind to use vector layers for hair in the future.

The sketching with thicker lines is great though... *notes*


Also, do you color your lines? I tend to use really thick ink lines, so I don't usually, but in your sig it looks like you did since you upped the saturation and it really sticks out. xD >considering using thinner lines... someday hurrr

Ahaha, well it's really not that different in SAI. I'm both an avid Photoshop and SAI user because both have features I find easier to use in either program. I mostly draw line art on Photoshop and use SAI purely for colouring. I've tried using the vector layers on SAI and while they fulfilled their purpose, I found them a bit iffy to work with because I became accustomed to the pen tool on Photoshop.

I do actually colour my lines, but that only happens after I finish colouring in my line art. Beforehand I'm not sure of exactly what sort of shade palette I'll be using, and if I do colour the lines THEN apply shades and base colours...I risk having both the lines and colours blending in far too much, and it would be a pain to revise over them.

 

[Anastasia.R]

Hey, Siggy, definitely love your work! =D I have some questions. (And if they were answered before ... uh ... oops, didn't read all the comments. =x)

What, in your opinion, is the best drawing piece you made? I dunno, I just love lots of your work, whether its a large pieces or a little doodle. x3

Whats your favorite part of making a drawing? I always enjoy coloring, but I've heard other artists like other things.

Did you ever make line-less art pieces or do you enjoy making them? I think there was one drawing I saw where the character didn't have outlines.

If I have anymore questions, I'll let ya know. =D​

 

[Lily]

Ohhhh Signomi. Your art has always astounded me, from way back when, when I was still picking up my tablet pen wondering what it was for. n_n

How did you come to develop your style? Were there specific references you used? I'm particularly interested in your clean vectored line art. I'm dabbling in that but it's hard to decide where to put lines. Everything looks so smooth; how long did it take you to learn how to line hair so naturally like that? Do you have a coloring guide? Do you color with the full sized image or a resized one?

Sorry for the barrage of questions. On another note, you are a really good inspiration. Keep it up. :D

 

[Signomi]

@Anastasia.R
Oh that first question is a bit of a toughy, I'd like to think that all my art can be seen as stepping stones for me to getting better, and because I see my work as forms of progress, I can't say that I could really pick out one from the bunch that would be my best. Each of them have had different elements utilised and a variety of different aesthetic techniques that make them unique to each other, so I would prefer to leave this sort of question to anybody who views my work because everybody has different tastes in visual candy and may favour one picture to be visually better than the other based on those tastes. As for me, I love everything that I make and I look at everything as a way to inspire improvement in what I do.

My favourite part of making a drawing is...well, I would say colouring but that could be a such a bogus lie sometimes. Sketching, drawing and colouring tend to be rather tedious things for me to work with, but it depends on my mood and aspiration on certain days whether I prefer one over the other, and that cycle just carries on. This can be influenced by the range of artists I observe, and it may be that I admire the way they draw their line art or use a particular colouring technique.

I have made lineless art before and I find it great to work with because I've been given that freedom to express myself outside of my usual guidelines. However, I find it a bit tricky as well because it can be difficult to shape and colour what is to be involved in that drawing, and my under-sketch would for the most part be masked by the colour I'd place on the canvas, but this isn't a major handicap as I've still managed to work around it and enjoy doing so.

Keep them coming when you do have something on your mind, before the deadline if possible. :)

@Lily
How I came to develop my style involved looking at plenty of other artist work and being inspired by the way they've laid it out. It was around 2006 time when I picked up a tablet pen for the first time and I can recall my drawing style being rather unpolished and that alone had bothered me, so I looked to rather admirable artists out there to see what I may be doing wrong. From the way they draw their anatomy to the way they lay out colour, I made note of everything in my mind and made plenty of practice sketches and coloured layers to see if I could accomplish similar outcomes. Some would say I was rather slow on the uptake, but I firmly believe that ultimately...an artist should take as much time as they like to continuously practice and develop their style to their personal satisfaction, and I'd say I've done this rather well up until this point, and I'm quite determined to carry that on without any intention of stopping.

My clean and vectorised line work was—once upon a time—quite messy and untidy. That quite literally annoyed the heck out of me, because there was no way I could feel satisfied with colouring and shading when I know my line art is less than presentable. Thick, scribbled lines and overlapping pen pressure lines easily put me off from eventually finishing an artwork. But I guess you could say it depends, because there are some styles out there that make very bold lines work rather well, it's just that in the past I haven't been able to utilise them very well. So now I make it a habit to tidy my line art, and this could be done by using two methods I had explained to Loki in above posts; one being that I work on an extremely large canvas (3000x3000 pixels minimum) and zoom out to 50% to thin out the lines and hide any blemishes, and the next being that I use the pen tool on Photoshop to manoeuvre curves and lines that cascade and take up a large area of the canvas to avoid making wobbly strokes.

Hair was and still IS quite a daunting thing to try and draw, but at the same time it could be one of the most enjoyable things to draw—it really all depends on what you're working on! But when I first started drawing hair (and if you know me and my drawings well enough, you know I draw long hair to a constant) I started off drawing it linear and rather stiffly, the reason for that is because the idea...of drawing very flowy locks of hair absolutely made me groan; I didn't want to do this AT all. But after a while I began to notice that my defiance towards hair has made my drawings look rather stiff and an eyesore because of how out of place it would look with the character. So once again, I looked to other artists for inspiration for how I could deal with this problem, and I gradually became less uptight about the way I draw hair, and found ways I could actually be rather comfortable in drawing it all out.

The colouring guides I use just so happen to be work I see from other artists, there are times that I do still get quite stuck with what sort of technique I should be using and some people out there have very delicious looking types of colouring that give me vague ideas of how I could possibly do this, so that greatly helps me. I also colour with the original sized line art, they are never resized.