I love drawing process

if youre only planning on posting your art online, them please save it as .png ;this is also better for transparencies as well

BUT

please, if youre planning of printing your art, NEVER use png. it makes the quality of the image pretty shitty. use jpeg or pdf instead. and always set your work at 300dpi to get a better printing quality - this means, the images are crisper and sharper and theres no slight blurriness. i had a talk with my friend who is currently taking design, and pdf is much better to use when youre working with a bigger publishing company because it still has the layers intact, but if youre only planning on printing your stuff at staples or at some small publishing store, the jpeg is the way to go.

This is all utter bullshit.

I’m sorry but if your qualification is working on the school yearbook, you have no qualifications. Do not pretend otherwise. As a former professional photo manipulator for advertising brochures, I can say that you’re not comparing apples to oranges here - if anything, you’re comparing fruit to farmyard machinery:

JPEG is a lossy format. It is suitable for web imagery because it sacrifices detail for reduced file sizes, but in doing so it introduces artifacts that weren’t in the original; if you load a JPEG for editing, then save it as a different JPEG, then you’re adding more artifacts formed from those first artifacts. Do this often enough and you end up with a horrid glitchy mess that looks like a puddle’s reflection after a stone’s been thrown in. You’ve seen those memes that have 3 or 4 different “found at” tags along the bottom, that look like fingerpainted copies of the original? That’s why.

PNG is a lossless format that comes in two primary flavours, PNG-8 and PNG-24, which use 8 and 24 bit colour respectively. 8-bit colour is what you have in GIFs, a limit of just 256 different colours in a predetermined palette, usually automatically chosen by your software when saving. These files will look the same as GIFs, potentially with large patches of solid colour instead of the usual gradual shading seen in 24-bit imagery. This is usually better for small banners or pixel art, as it can yield smaller filesizes than GIF format. (There is an animated version called MNG but it has very little web support, hence the continued use of GIFs.)

PNG-24 is great for larger images where detail is as important as colour depth, as well as printable RGB images and (if supported by the client) full colour images with gradient transparencies. It most certainly does not make “the quality of the image pretty shitty,” as it preserves every nuance. File sizes can be smaller than JPEG for small images, or significantly larger for large images.

PDF is a container file, whatever you put into it will be pretty much preserved as it was, so you gain nothing but lose nothing.

TIFF is what you need to be using for archival or print-quality imagery. It has support for multiple layers, multiple colour channels (RGB as well as CMYK, which is essential for accurate print rendering), and everything is preserved exactly as it was seen on-screen when being composed. There are compressed versions available, they use similar methods to PNG in order to maintain detail without sacrifice; next to whatever your graphics program uses natively, this is the most interchangeable format available for professional use.

DPI is important only when used in combination with image dimensions; in and of itself it serves no purpose. If you make a brilliantly detailed 640x480 image & set it to 300dpi, you’ll receive a brilliantly detailed 2 inch x 1.6 inch print. This is great if you want to make a postage stamp, but not if you’re creating an A4 flyer! Determine the image’s dimension then set the DPI accordingly; 72dpi isn’t hideous especially for text-heavy work (it’s ~3 pixels per millimeter), and 150dpi can be suitable for many images. Unless you’re interested in photo realism, 300dpi is usually overkill - for our hypothetical A4 flyer, you’d need a file of 2490x3510 pixels for edge to edge printing, with a correspondingly high memory requirement and filesize even if using a compressed format.

Keeping the layers intact is utterly unimportant for print work unless you want to use a separated colour print method that requires multiple passes to lay down each ink. If you send a file with all the layers, masks, etc. off for printing you’re liable to get it sent back unactioned, as they won’t want to take responsibility for choosing the wrong elements for printing. Save your work with everything intact, then save a flattened copy especially for printing purposes - this is one of the reasons Save Copy As… is a common option in graphics manipulation software.

As a designer who’s worked a few years for a newspaper, I cannot begin to tell you how much OP’s post made me cringe. I would have killed to get a photo as a TIFF for once instead of having to tear apart PDFs only to find a 50x100px 72dpi shitty JPEG inside for the 5 millionth time…

SenshiStock’s gallery consists of millions of pictures that are free to use as reference.

Hey folks! Paul here with another PDF for Tutor Tuesday / Whoops It’s Wednesday…

TUTOR TUESDAY COLLECTION: Specific Anatomy!

More to come, and here again is a list of all the PDFs so far:

TutorTues_PDF_01_Fundamentals1.pdf

TutorTues_PDF_02_Fundamentals2.pdf

TutorTues_PDF_03_Environments.pdf

TutorTues_PDF_04_Scenery_and_Props.pdf

TutorTues_PDF_05_Positivity.pdf

TutorTues_PDF_06_Color_Theory.pdf

TutorTues_PDF_07_Digital_Color.pdf

TutorTues_PDF_08_Digital_Tools.pdf

TutorTues_PDF_09_Human_Anatomy.pdf

TutorTues_PDF_10_Specific_Anatomy.pdf

Feedback’s welcome as always, and Meg and I appreciate for your support! Thanks,

Again, not mine. But omg this is so good aaaaaaaaaah

Thank you so much!<3 

To be honest I’m not sure if I can help you much with this, because I guess I tend to shade with a hard brush because I just really don’t like how my blended in and blurred colouring looks on the first place, so I just tend to do everything to avoid it.

As for tips…Say, you need a good gradient effect sometimes when you shade with a hard brush, just so it has a good balance between looking hard and completely blurred. I tend to copy the darker colour, and (very lightly) make a few strokes over the light colour, and then copy the colour I end up getting! And making more tight strokes in that gradient area. So instead of taking a blur brush to blend, I make one more colour? And sometimes more, if I feel like it needs even more gradient (with the same technique).

Also the brush I use has absolutely no blending properties, so it doesn’t drag a colour after it when you don’t want it. So set the blending settings of yours to a minimum as well.

Also I know I am not too great at actually PAINTING, so even when I paint it still looks quite graphic. Like I’m good at thinking in lines and shapes, but not general…colour/tone spots? I was told that in Uni a few times, so I hope it makes at least a bit of sense.

When you have flat colours, layer shadows above with various layer settings, and once you have that done you’ll have a messy general picture. To proceed and to understand where your shadows and everything should lay you can try making lots of thin strokes over body shape or like, a dress, just so you can get an image of how it’s going to look painted and if certain shadow works at that place or not? God, it’s so hard to explain I really don’t know if it can make any sense to anyone but me;__;

My general rule is: if you need something a bit darker - copy the dark colour nearby and make thin light strokes above the light colour, and copy the colour you end up with. If you need to go lighter - copy the light colour and layer atop darker one. That’s pretty much all I do over and over again when I do my painting. After it I just clean up a little (a lot) so there is close to none visual leftover strokes. I kind of end up with a lot of different coloured shapes? 

On the body they are softer, and on clothing they are harsher. 

I really hope it can help at least a tiny bit;__;

Ray Frenden reviews the too-cheap-to-be-true Monoprice graphics tablets. How do they stack up to industry standard Wacoms?

Hey!  Usually when I start a sketch of a person, I begin with their face–some artists like Kim Jung Gi can begin with any body part and just continue from there, but it’s easier for me to work on the head first.  Now I don’t use a circle, but I do use some form of construction to start the face, such as a double trapezoid (explained in this post). I always try to establish three main things at the beginning; in order of priority:

1, angle of the head.  I need to know first and foremost if the head is looking up, turned to the right, angled down, cocked to the side, staring straight ahead, etc.   Angle affects the shape of the features massively and adds a lot of personality to a sketch, which will be important down the line.

2, sex of the subject.  Very useful in the beginning–you want to know what the eye sockets look like  (I personally use the outlines of the eyebrows to place the eyes, see the pic below), how the jaw is shaped, so on.  If you’re still getting used to visualizing faces, it can be helpful to learn the characteristics of the two sexes.  As you get better, you learn to branch out from stereotypical ‘male’ and ‘female’ looks (to more accurately mimic reality), and how to mix and match them without pushing your sketches into the uncanny valley.

3, the placement and proportion of features.  If you look below, you’ll see that with only a few lines in the sketch on the far left, I convey a lot of information (mostly to myself, for future reference).  The person is facing left, and the high arch of the eyebrow and smooth curve of the forehead suggest that it’s a woman.  

In the next step, I sort of ‘connect the dots’ by further developing the eyes, nose, and lips, and I draw a line or two to hint at the rest of the head and the neck.  I clean up some of the features in the penultimate step, and I add shape to the neck and shoulder area.  Midtone values add dimension to the face.  Lastly, some simple blocks of darker value hint at clothing and hair, and I add more midtown values to the face to give it volume.

((If you’re getting a bit of a “draw the rest of the fucking owl” vibe from that picture, just know that going from the third pic to the fourth pic is much easier than going from the first to the second or the second to the third.  The more of a foundation that you have laid down for yourself, the easier it is to keep going.))

I’d recommend that you look at drawing processes for other artists and just test out a bunch of them (examples: full Loomis construction with a sphere and cross, the whole nine yards; laying down values to establish shapes and an overall composition; jumping right into details; blocking out shapes as with a Bargue plate).  Also remember that starting a drawing traditionally may call for different techniques than drawing digitally.  Oftentimes I just paint random values when I begin sketches in Photoshop (knowing I can easily undo or erase them), whereas I’m much more cautious on a physical piece of paper.

That’s a fair amount to take in, but hopefully it’s of use!

*STANDARD DISCLAIMER* I’m not handing down life lessons or trying to assert that there’s a ‘correct way’ to draw. I’m just trying to make perspective more approachable for thems that want to tackle it.

Okay. Let’s do this.

1. Understand what perspective is and what it’s for. Stay away from rulers while you get comfortable.

Everyone struggles with perspective because 1. it’s not well or widely taught and 2. artists tend to see linear perspective as a set of rules rather than a set of tools.

Linear perspective is a TOOL we use to create and depict SPACE. That’s it. That’s all it is. Your goal is not to draw in ‘accurate linear perspective.’ Stay away from the ruler and precision for as long as you can. Your goal is to create the illusion of three-dimensional space on a two-dimensional surface. Perspective is just a tool to help you construct and correct that space.

2. Know in your bones that you can ONLY learn to draw in perspective through physical practice. There is no other way.

Grab some paper and draw with me. If you match me drawing for drawing you will be more fluent in linear perspective and spatial drawing by the end of this post. Unfortunately if you don’t, you won’t be.

3. Sketch around in rough perspective. NO RULERS.

So let’s make some simple space. let’s start with a two dimensional surface…

K. We have a flat, 2D surface. Let’s create some depth by putting a vanishing point in the middle, and having parallel lines converge towards it. Make a gridded plane inside that space.

Good. Let’s make that space meaningful by adding a dude and a road or something. (Again, parallel ‘depth lines’ will converge into the vanishing point along the horizon)

And now we have the rough illusion of some space. I didn’t use any rulers, and it’s not perfectly accurate, but we got our depth from that vanishing point right in the middle of the page. And since we have a little dude in there, we’ve got human scale, which allows us to gauge the size of the space we’ve created. Gives it meaning.

You need people or cars or some recognizable, human-scale THING in there as a frame of reference or your space won’t mean much to your viewer. Watch. We can make that same basic space a whole lot bigger like this:

Same vanishing point in the same place, completely different scale, and a totally different feeling of space. Cool, right?

3. Sketch around in rough perspective MORE. STAY LOOSE.

See what sort of spaces and feelings you can create with vanishing points and gridded planes on a post-it or something. Super small, super rough. Feel it out. Pick a vanishing point or lay out a grid in perspective, and MAKE SOME SPACE. Do it. Draw, I don’t know, a lady and her dog in a desert. I’ll do it, too.

Good job. LOOK AT YOU creating the illusion of space! This is how you’ll thumbnail and plan anything you want to draw in space. All of my drawings start this way. I think about how I want the viewer to feel and then play around with space and composition until I find something that works.

Once you have a sketch you like, and space that you feel, THEN you can take out the ruler and make it more accurate and convincing.

4. Draw environments from life.

I cannot stress this enough. Draw the world around you, try to draw the shapes and angles as you see them, and you will ‘get’ how and why perspective is used. Use something permanent so that you’ll move fast and commit. I usually use black prismacolor pencil.

You’ll learn or reinforce something with every drawing. I learned a lot about multiple vanishing points from this drawing:

Learned from the receding, winding space I tired to draw here:

Layered, interior spaces:

You get the idea.

Life drawing will also help you develop your own shorthand and language for depicting textures, materials, details, natural and architectural features, etc. Do it. Do it all the time. Go to pretty or interesting places just to draw them.

Take a second and just draw a quick sketch of whatever room you’re in.

5. Perspective in formal Illustration: apply what you’ve learned.

1. I always start with research. For this particular location I looked at Angkor Wat.

2. Once I had enough reference, I did a bunch of little thumbnail sketches with a very loose sense of space and picked the one I liked best.

3. Scanned the thumbnail and drew a little more clearly over it. Worked out the rough space before using formal perspective.

4. Reinforced the space with formal perspective. I dropped in pre-made vanishing points over my drawing. If I were drawing in real media here’s where I’d get out the ruler to sketch in some accurate space.

5. Drew the damn thing. Because I do my research, draw from life, and am comfortable drawing in perspective, I can wing it. I just sort of ‘build’ the ruins freehand in the space I’ve established, keeping it more or less accurate, experimenting and playing with details along the way. I erase a lot, too, both in PS and when drawing in pencil. Keeps it fun for me.