Tryin' to Make Sketch Happen

there are a bunch of free monitor tests, but here’s an easy one you can use. the passmark and eizo tests are also pretty good, though passmark doesn’t work in your browser. be warned that some tests may cause eye strain.

In all my art classes, I was never taught HOW to use the various tools of art.

Like yes, form, and shape and space and color theory and figure drawing is important, but so is KNOWING what different tools do.

I’m 29 and I JUST learned this past month that India Ink is fucking waterproof when it dries. Why is this important? Because I can line something in India Ink and then go over it with watercolors. And that has CHANGED the ENTIRE way I art and the ease I can create with.

heres some of mine, pls take with a grain of salt im a total gotdamn amateur:

a lot of the time, the ability for colored ink to bleed will vary wildly WITHIN A SINGLE BRAND OF COLORED INKS. my cobalts bleed like fucking CRAZY compared to my reds, which, when u reference manuscripts that tend to put white ink ON TOP of either red or blue… you see where shit gets real and real annoying. 

u can buy an aeresol, fully transparent workable sealant for like 5-10 dollars at your local art store. when i realize a piece ive been working on needs a color on TOP of a bleed happy ink, i give it a layer of this stuff. trouble is it CAN warp the paper so its important as soon as it dries to use heavy things (paperweights, books) to counteract the paper curling.

WD40, found at your local hardware store, will remove Sharpie marker from almost any hard surface. 

 Acrylic inks will show brush strokes in large areas but are waterproof and quick-drying. 

 Acrylic gouache is vivid, fluid, dried matte, is UTTERLY opaque on black paper, handles exactly like watercolor, and is waterproof. 

Putting an oil painting in the sun will turn the yellowed portions back to their original white and wont hurt the painting. 

 Cheap acrylic paintings will bleach out if left in the sun - get UV protectant spray or varnish. Nicer acrylic paints are less prone to sun bleaching, but they still do. Plan accordingly. Oil paints are much less prone to this. 

Solvent-based markers blend together MUSH MORE SMOOTHLY than alcohol-based markers. 

There is an acrylic paint medium for literally every effect you can conceivably think of (fabric paint medium, gloss medium, fluid medium, sand medium, fast-dying/slow-drying medium, etc.). 

 If you’re going to buy student-grade paint to save cash, buy earth-tones (burnt sienna, ochre, etc.); they are made with cheap pigments already, and you wont tell a difference. You WILL tell a difference between student-grade and artist-grade bright colors (all yellows, blues, and reds). 

If you’re working with markers but aren’t using marker paper, you need to switch. Markers don’t blend on printer paper, they just layer (even expensive markers). 

If you want a glass palette for paint mixing but don’t want to shell out the cash, buy a giant picture frame at Goodwill, take the glass out, and electrical tape it to a piece of foam board the same size for stability. 

 Hog bristle brushes are for oil paint, sable brushes are for watercolor, and synthetic brushes are for acrylic and oil (but not watercolor because synthetic bristles can’t absorb water). 

- Palette knives are for mixing paint and TRUST ME you want to learn how to use them. When you mix with your brush you loose paint and it’s hard in your brushes.

- DO NOT FIX YOUR ARTWORK WITH HAIRSPRAY. If you’re proud of your work and want to keep it, buy the actual spray fix. Hairspray is not archival in the slightest and will damage your work.

- On top of that, be careful how you store your work. Newsprint is handy and cheap, but also not acid-free and it will yellow your paper. Foamboard? Matboard? Also not always acid-free (but you can get them acid-free).

- There is no food-safe paint. Period. There are lots of ways you can decorate pottery that aren’t glazes, but only glazes are food safe (and even some of those aren’t).

- Also not food safe: Polymer clay (sculpey), air dry clay, oil-based clay, ceramics that have not been glaze fired, oil pastels, sharpie, glues of any kind, or mod podge (even the ‘dishwasher safe’ kind).

- Don’t even get me started on mod podge. It’s not consistent. It’s not archival. It’s not a sealant, it’s a glue (setting aside some of the weird hyper-specific ones they make that I’ve literally never seen in real life).

- If your glue isn’t archival or at least acid-free, don’t use it in your artwork.

- There are so many different kinds of paper out there, just go try them. But also make sure you know if it’s acid-free or not (it probably is).

- Marker paper is usually 15 to 20 lbs. News print is usually 30 to 35 lbs. Tracing paper is usually 25 lbs. Rice paper can range from 20 to 50 lbs. Printer paper is 20 lbs. Vellum paper is usually 48 to 55 lbs. Sketchbook paper is usually 50 to 60 lbs. Drawing paper is usually 70 to 80 lbs. Cardstock can range from 50 to 110 lbs. Charcoal paper is usually 50 to 65 lbs. Pastel paper can range from 70 lbs to board. Bristol paper can range from 50 lbs to board. Mixed media paper can range from 90 to 140 lbs. Printmaking paper can range from lbs 90 to 300 lbs. Watercolor paper can range from 90 to 500 lbs.

- The heavier and rougher the paper is, the more it will absorb. If you’re using a paper too smooth for your medium it will take forever to dry and may smudge. If you’re using a paper too light for your medium, it will warp and curl.

- If you’re working heavily with water, you need to stretch your paper (aka seal down your edges of the paper to a hard, water resistant surface). If you don’t like doing that because it’s a hassle, buy a watercolor block instead of a pad/individual peices.

- If you’re working on a thicker paper, and make a mistake that your can’t erase or cover- you can scrape and/or cut it out! With a really sharp exacto knife, you can very CAREFULLY remove the top layer of paper fibers on most paper.

- DO NOT USE ACRYLIC AS BODY PAINT. It’s plastic.

- If you paint with oil, buy a silicoil jar. It’s the best $10 you’ve ever spent.

- Acrylic paint is basically water-based plastic. It will basically fuse with anything plastic (like a plastic palette), and will not stick to anything oil-based.

People, who show off their "good sketchbook" also have one, if not multiple of these stashed away somewhere you'll not see. But obviously they are not going to present it to you, the public. It's for THEIR and THEIR EYES ONLY.

The sketchbook they are presenting to you is a well crafted and curated mini gallery (I know artists who often tear off drawings which are not to their standards) These sketchbooks are artworks themselves, you should NEVER EVER take them as regular ones, and I have yet to come across an artist who claim them as such.

I have inktober sketchbooks, they are pristine and clean. Because the conceptualisation, thumbnailing and everything happened in A DIFFERENT SKETCHBOOK, the one I'm never goin to show you. It's not pretty, but it helped make the pretty, it's for me and me only.

When you are sketchbooking, it's supposed to be for you, it's never supposed to be for, OK, maybe I'd show it to people, and they need not to be a small well curated gallery of beautiful artworks, BUT they can be, there is no harm in having a third or fifth sketchbook that you want to.show off, but that's not gonna be your regular, it never is.

Lastly, you know we are using internet wrong if seeing other people's great work lowers our self esteem instead of inspiring us (It happens to me a lot, happens less now that I've accepted that the people I'm looking at have been mastering their crafts for years, where I'm still learning)

If you feel like that, put more effort into your work and set a goal of where you want to be at the end of a certain time period, and compare your works from.now with your own works from like two years ago. You'll see how much you've improved. Or just draw for fun, not for "I need to be as good as them".

These are pages from my Inktober 2020 sketchbook. Every page is filled with work that are somewhat close to these, in terms of detail and cleanliness

On the other hand

These are pages from my 2020-21 handheld sketchbook. These pages have everything. Ink test, coffee wash, drafts for characters and stories, comic thumbs, furniture designs, to do lists, food recipe, studies even class lectures. It also has varying levels of details and cleanliness, ranging from "Ok, that's quite decent" to "it literally is a foreign language and only the artist will understand what they meant by it"

The second sketchbook is for my eyes only. Where the first one was clearly for showcasing.

Now, some artist's rough sketchbook might look way better than me, and to some of you even mine will look pristine. It's simply because some of us have been drawing and learning for so long that our roughs might sometimes not look too rough, it's something you develop with time. But just because another artist's two line marker drawing looks better than my pen and ink drawing, I'd be like, "yeah, that's clearly a fully rendered piece they're selling as rough" (stop that, they're not selling you anything, it's really truly a 2 minute rough drawing, I've seen people do it with my own two eyes)

Or, "Their least effort sketches look better than my full 1 hour render, I should just stop drawing"

For drawing references 

I made a thing! I was thinking about this for a few days - because I realized that when I was young, I was also frustrated about being given the same advice over and over - without really knowing what it meant!!

Here’s 5 techniques which I have done before which have helped me grow as an artist, which are good for 5-minute warmups or just straight up challenges for your sketchbook! 

Obviously, these are not the ONLY techniques - they’re just the ones I find most fun! And maybe they’re not the most ‘correct’ ones out there, but it’s better than another comic about practicing more, right? 

this is a pretty broad question and im guessing/hoping you meant “how do you color in black and white in your comics” so have a few random tips about values and paneling and stuff i guess

A mouth-watering fuck-ton of hand references.

disclaimer: I am east asian. if anyone who is not white sees anything wrong with my phrasing, inaccuracies, or insensitivity, or something I missed, please feel free to add on. I'm just one person with one perspective; none of what I say should be taken as The Singular way to draw an Asian character. if you havent done so already, please take the effort to expand your view of Asian culture outside this one tutorial.

 For example if a wanted to make a cartoon character realistic and use a real person for reference or to edit the photo to look like them?

https://generated.photos/faces

This site probably has what you’re looking for!

Look at what you can sort by!

had to change a pose because it was too difficult to draw? it “didn’t work” compositionally!

feel like something is off about the background? it doesn’t suck, it’s just not working for the piece!

i dont see a lot of people talking about how to healthily self-critique, which is a really important thing for artists to learn (considering we’re all so incredibly critical of our own work)

ask yourself first what IS working. what elements do you want to keep? do you need to keep working on this piece that’s frustrating you, or can you incorporate that part you really like into a different setting?

then move on to what ISN’T working. find references for things you’re not sure how to draw! learn how to let go of the things that just won’t work no matter how many times you try them. sometimes an idea for a drawing is really cool, but the execution won’t match what you’re imagining. (not even sometimes, but a LOT of times.)

check all of the principles of design in your piece– this infographic is really helpful. go down the list and ask yourself which principles are present in your piece, and if closer attention to any of them could make your piece start working.