[Showcase] CoolKid575's Art Gallery

[PoryKid575]

I've never been good at art, and have often felt very self-conscious about that fact over the past few years as well as feeling like its hamstrung my other creative pursuits. However, I've decided that it's time to stop just wishing I was better and start putting in the work to actually improve my skills. I'm making this thread both as a place to chart my progress, and also to hold me accountable since I plan on posting a piece here at least once a week. Since I don't want to put down a bunch of money on a tablet atm and the internet says using a mouse to draw is a shortcut to carpal tunnel syndrome, I'm starting with good 'ol pen & paper. Below is a quick drawing I made of one of my favorite Pokemon heavily inspired from it's official art, Yanmega! Any feedback on how I could improve would also be greatly appreciated!

 

[Alex_Among_Foxes]

That's a nice sketch! And while I'm not even capable of drawing even decent looking stick people, I'm looking forward to seeing how your skills improve over time!

 

[♡Lavemu☆]

I've never been good at art, and have often felt very self-conscious about that fact over the past few years as well as feeling like its hamstrung my other creative pursuits. However, I've decided that it's time to stop just wishing I was better and start putting in the work to actually improve my skills. I'm making this thread both as a place to chart my progress, and also to hold me accountable since I plan on posting a piece here at least once a week. Since I don't want to put down a bunch of money on a tablet atm and the internet says using a mouse to draw is a shortcut to carpal tunnel syndrome, I'm starting with good 'ol pen & paper. Below is a quick drawing I made of one of my favorite Pokemon heavily inspired from it's official art, Yanmega! Any feedback on how I could improve would also be greatly appreciated!
View attachment 162515

This is great for someone who doesn't draw much! And as for improvements, the best way is to just draw over and over! it'll take awhile but you'll get better ;) I wish you luck on your future art! <3

 

[PoryKid575]

That's a nice sketch! And while I'm not even capable of drawing even decent looking stick people, I'm looking forward to seeing how your skills improve over time!

This is great for someone who doesn't draw much! And as for improvements, the best way is to just draw over and over! it'll take awhile but you'll get better ;) I wish you luck on your future art! <3

Thank you for the encouragement!

 

[Cosmega]

I've never been good at art, and have often felt very self-conscious about that fact over the past few years as well as feeling like its hamstrung my other creative pursuits. However, I've decided that it's time to stop just wishing I was better and start putting in the work to actually improve my skills. I'm making this thread both as a place to chart my progress, and also to hold me accountable since I plan on posting a piece here at least once a week. Since I don't want to put down a bunch of money on a tablet atm and the internet says using a mouse to draw is a shortcut to carpal tunnel syndrome, I'm starting with good 'ol pen & paper. Below is a quick drawing I made of one of my favorite Pokemon heavily inspired from it's official art, Yanmega! Any feedback on how I could improve would also be greatly appreciated!
View attachment 162515

Hey dude, that's great! Do work on your skills!

If you'd like any advice, I really recommend a personal favourite of mine: try breaking your drawing idea into simple shapes (like circles, squares, triangles, etc.). That way, you'll have a better understanding of the structure of your drawing and you won't stress yourself as much when trying to get it right.

 

[PoryKid575]

I feel decently happy about how this one turned out, I struggled with depth in my last drawing (it was originally supposed to be from an angle, but I made it 2D/top-down since it didn't look right); so I decided I would try to draw a Pokeball in 3D. After searching how to draw a sphere, trying a few videos, practicing drawing reasonably good circles and shading them to mimic light; I drew this image. My line art could definitely use some work, and I was so focused on shading that I didn't bother distinguishing the red and white halves to avoid things being too crowded. But I'm really glad that it actually came out looking like a 3D object in the end.

 

[♡Lavemu☆]

Ah depth, probably my greatest weakness when it comes to art lol. but you did extremely well! good job!

 

[PoryKid575]

I was tied up with GT for most of the past week and have had a sore shoulder for the past few days, but I still didn't want to break my streak, so I drew this Oddish! I feel pretty happy with how it turned out, I didn't need any new tutorials for this one, although I did reference this image from the official Pokemon website pretty heavily to help with the leaves and general pose. No tracing though, it was 100% freestyled. The Oddish is supposed to look like it's walking directly towards the camera, which I don't think I quite nailed; and the coloring could've used more polish. But I can always work on that next time.

 

[Alex_Among_Foxes]

That's a really nice Oddish sketch!

 

[PoryKid575]

This is admittedly not my best work, I've been practicing perspective over the past few days, but underestimated how busy I'd be today. This was originally supposed to be a Japanese train station but I changed it to a simple top down view of 2 buildings over a street so I wouldn't break my streak. I think this once a week thing has really helped me stay accountable and on track, and I want to try and maintain it as long as possible. Should have something better up within a few days.

 

[PoryKid575]

Time to revive this thread! I recently got a drawing tablet since digital art was always my ultimate goal anyway. I really want to get back in the groove of posting once per week, so I made a little test drawing of me trying to draw some squares in perspective. I've never used a drawing tablet before, and it felt really awkward to be honest, everything felt perfectly responsive and I didn't have any issues with the program I was using (Krita); but it was a very different feel from paper. With paper / pencil you can be really rough, lean down with your full weight, easily make sketch marks before you commit, etc. Meanwhile you have to be careful with a drawing tablet and there isn't a 1-1 correlation between your pen and where the mark actually ends up. I think I'll be able to get used to it, but it'll definitely take some practice since these squares came out really rough and my blurry phone camera won't cover up minor imperfections it did for my paper drawings.

 

[PoryKid575]

Over the past few days, I've been working through the "DrawABox" course, though with pen / paper instead of a tablet as it recommends. Apparently you're supposed to spend at least the amount of time you spend doing coursework free-drawing though, so I figured I could get in some tablet practice there. I decided to draw my laptop since I'm already staring at while drawing anyway, and it seemed like a good challenge while not being overwhelming. It's supposed to be in perspective, with it looking like it's set on a table and flipped open at about 100 degrees. I struggled a lot with the linework, especially the keyboard. The bottom frame was drawn by hand, but I made heavy use of the line tool for the keyboard, top half and various smaller details since I had a lot of trouble drawing straight. The screen is a bit smaller than my actual laptop, and it could be a lot neater; but overall I'm pretty happy considering I'm still learning the ropes of how to use a tablet / digital tools.

 

[PoryKid575]

I'm still struggling to draw straight lines digitally, it's not as hard when I'm using a pen / paper; but I always end up with really wobbly lines even when drawing from the shoulder and all that. In any case, I think this one came out OK; I initially used much longer strokes for the grass, but it ended up looking super overgrown so I decided to use short strokes instead. It took a good while to fill everything in, but it was worth the effort imo



It also snowed in my area a few days ago, so I tried to make a snow covered grassy plain on Jan. 11; I didn't put as much thought / effort into it as the image above, but frankly I think it looks better overall.

 

[♡Lavemu☆]

just wanted to say i've been loving getting to see your journey so far! <3

 

[Dally-Ogami]

I'm still struggling to draw straight lines digitally, it's not as hard when I'm using a pen / paper; but I always end up with really wobbly lines even when drawing from the shoulder and all that. In any case, I think this one came out OK; I initially used much longer strokes for the grass, but it ended up looking super overgrown so I decided to use short strokes instead. It took a good while to fill everything in, but it was worth the effort imo

View attachment 170243

It also snowed in my area a few days ago, so I tried to make a snow covered grassy plain on Jan. 11; I didn't put as much thought / effort into it as the image above, but frankly I think it looks better overall.

View attachment 170244

As the saying goes: "Practice makes perfect!" -- you're brave to share your work with the world, kudos!

 

[PoryKid575]

Another week, another submission to this thread. The drawabox lessons have shifted to focusing on ellipses, so I figured I'd try to incorporate pipes into my drawing for this week. I wasn't a huge fan of how it turned out though, the pipe looks kinda 3D, but my brain flip-flops between seeing it as a pipe and as just 3 lines in a trenchcoat. I wanted to draw them out manually, but I ended up resorting to the line tool since I'm still really struggling to draw straight with my tablet. I don't think the tablet is malfunctioning, but for some reason, I've found it incredibly difficult to get smooth looking marks down with it compared to paper. The idea is that the pipe is transporting water from one lake to another, I couldn't figure out how to show the water's depth, so I decided to just have a smaller mini-pool of water in the lake that's filling to convey the direction the water's supposed to be heading. As for the water itself, I tried a wave form, but it made it look too empty for me, so I put in squiggle lines to help convey that the pipe's supposed to be full.


Here's another pipe-related drawing I made yesterday as well:

 

[Alex_Among_Foxes]

Nice job PK!

 

[PoryKid575]

I like how this drawing turned out, so I figured I'd submit it to the thread. Don't have much to say about it, but I'm hoping to enter the whimsical world of color soon, since the B/W style is starting to feel stifling.