Aug 1, 2014
After installing Arch Linux on my machine the other day, I decided I wanted to try Kubuntu instead. However, I didn't come to that conclusion before reading in the Arch Wikipedia that it's relatively easy to customize the bootloader GRUB. At least, it's easy to change some colors and put a background image on it.
In plain terms: I wanted to make it pretty just because.
As a result, I booted into Windows and spent several hours drawing this elk. After I got started, I realized the background, which I had taken from somewhere else, wasn't good enough. I went outside and took a picture of my balcony, adjusted the colors a bit, and there we go.
Of course, credit where credit is due. I can't draw an elk that well-proportioned off the top of my head. This was my reference: http://www.montaneelk.com/images/elk_gallery_12.jpg
Now, I'm planning a series in identical style and imagery with different animals. It's good practice for my reference drawing (copy) skills.
May 14, 2014
So my friend Kat on my roleplay forum made this awesome line art for one of my characters. I've drawn her before; she's a kitsune who can transform into a fox, a werefox, and a human.
This is already awesome, and I decided, because I'm not always the brightest, to color it with a mouse at 300dpi.
This was a bad plan.
Now, most digital artists are experienced enough to realize that 300dpi is a good resolution to work in. If you don't want to put much detail in, then you don't have to if you're going to be shrinking it down anyway. However, most artists aren't me, and most of them don't use a mouse to do things. They all have tablets.
I'm a very detail-oriented artist. If you've looked at anything I've drawn that has fur on it, you'll notice that I have a tendency to draw as many of the actual fibers as possible. This is one of the reasons why until this point, I've been avoiding working with any resolution higher than 72dpi, the default in Photoshop. I drive anyone in the room completely nuts by the sheer number of clicks I make while drawing with my mouse.
So I got this far before basically giving up, which was in late December when I received a tablet for Christmas:
This is so outrageous I'm actually a little angry at myself, because the results are full of flaws despite the stupid amount of time spent on detail.
I tried. Oh how I tried. And it's not that the results aren't perfect and I'm a perfectionist; that's only slightly the problem. The real problem is that I started coloring this thing, not joking, almost a year ago.
And I really haven't gotten much further than these images show, because I gave up.
Thankfully, I now have a tablet and can just go back and try to fix the mistakes as well as, I don't know, finish.
I'll be posting more process photos if I do end up summoning the energy to go back and finish this project. I'd really like to because it's a great line art and I need the practice with clothing. Textiles are my bane, really. Also the amount of laces. Kat has a lace fetish.
Dec 28, 2013
For Christmas I got a drawing tablet, which was a welcome surprise. It's a Wacom Intuos, which is the successor to the Bamboo tablet. I have the medium version, the basic. It's all I needed for what I do.
I was always told that using a tablet takes some getting used to, but I really didn't experience that at all. I opened it up, plugged it in, and started drawing away. I did change a few configuration options for Photoshop, mostly the pressure sensitivity. Drawing with it was almost immediate.
For those of you who don't know, prior to this I've always drawn with a mouse. It's not a special mouse, just a mouse like any other. Patience is virtue when your tools are limited, but over time I started getting annoyed that I couldn't get the texture exactly right when drawing. I like to draw long, thin lines very repetitively when I use pens and pencils. That's something that's much more difficult to do with a mouse. I got around it for years by using the smudge tool in Photoshop to extend my lines and make them thinner.
Behold! The unfinished process!
The subject and anatomical errors are not important. The important thing is the amount of detail I was able to get in the face, because working in 300dpi is no longer the most pain-staking thing on earth!
Needless to say (well, not completely needless), I'm pretty happy with my tablet and hopefully will be using it more and more. In fact, the tablet was a large part of the reason why I started redoing my portfolio! This way I can post process pictures like this one!