Now that it’s summer, I’m happy to say that I can draw daily. I’m in my element once again; woohoo! I haven’t done a lot of traditional art recently simply because I haven’t found my groove with that yet (I lost it over the LONG semester). However, digital art hasn’t been much of an issue, especially since the image is literally right in front of me instead of flat on a table. For those who don’t use a Wacom tablet, believe me, there is a world of difference. Especially when learning how to draw. Sometimes, stores like Best Buy offer a “Try Before You Buy” deal if you ask the sales associate (the hardware is hooked up to one of the in-store computers); if you’re curious, try this.

Anywho, but most of us use programs like Paint.net, GIMP, or Photoshop to create digital art. However, a lot of the default brushes, I find, are not as helpful as one may hope. Personally, I do like the airbrushes because of the soft colors and the softened look to the images, but sometimes, I need a little more than default brushes. Now, occassionally, I use Paint.net and GIMP, but I haven’t in awhile. So today, I’m going to focus mainly on Photoshop. So, Photoshop users, are you tired of default brushes? I am; so I’m going to show you some of the best places to find brushes for Photoshop. Here are my top three.

Obsidian Dawn

Obsidian Dawn is, by far, my most favorite place to go for Photoshop brushes. Not only does she have Photoshop brushes, but GIMP brushes as well, so digital artists of all types will be happy on her site. Obsidian Dawn carries brushes in many Photoshop medians–airbrush, hard brush, and design– and covers several needs and genres–fantasy, nature, clothing, makeup, and shapes. Recently, the Obsidian Dawn site has grown quite large and even includes a request board; so if there’s a brush you’re looking for but can’t find, a brush can be customized for you. Some of my favorite brushes are: glittery swirls, dandelions, eyelashes, light beams, and glitter. Obsidian Dawn also has some new brushes for grass, butterflies, and grunge. However, I could not test these brushes out because the site was down for maintenance as of 1:45AM May 19, 2009.

My Photoshop Brushes

A small sample of My Photoshop Brushes.

With My Photoshop Brushes, I would venture to say, is one of the best on the web. The selection on the website is large, and there are enough brushes here to appeal to anyone’s senses. For those who are into the Punk motif and skulls, check out the skull and punk brush sets. There are brushes for wings, flowers, hearts, lights, stars, handwriting, trees, shoes, swirls, lace, vines, and buildings to name a few. To be honest, there are so many brushes on here, you may find it great just to download them all and play with them. I spent a good two hours on this site just searching through brushes, and I gotta say, I’m not done playing around yet. This site is FANTASTIC! I HIGHLY recommend My Photoshop Brushes is for any digital artist from the beginner to the advanced artists.

Brusheezy

This site is okay for some different brushes, but there’s nothing special here that cannot be found at Obsidian Dawn or MPSB. However, I am a fan of the skin texture brushes because they sure make images of people not so flat. Check out the aurora borealis and handprint brushes, too.

Next time, I will cover where to find great brushes for GIMP. I really hope you  enjoy these sites as much as I do.

Until next time, this is Marisol saying goodnight and good luck!

Alex, Tala, and I have not died or disappeared. We’re still alive and kicking and working on exciting projects for the Sketching House community. But I must tell you, the three of us have been completely bogged down. With our semester coming to a close, the three of us are overloaded with projects, final exams, and papers. However, please don’t worry; our semester ends in two weeks, so we’ll be back and better than ever! We’re still planning on improving the site to make it more user friendly, and we haven’t forgotten about the tutorial requests we’ve received. Furthermore, Tala has a very special project that she will be unveiling very soon. I must say, her project is very elaborate and wonderful, so please check back to see when it’s posted– you WILL NOT be disappointed, I promise!

So please bear with us! The three of us will be back very soon.:)

This is Marisol signing out and going to take care of her first sunburn of the year!

Love always!

Paint.net

Pros

I think Paint.net is the best starter program for those just learning how to do digital art. Paint.net lacks a lot of bells and whistles. The program runs a little faster than Photoshop and much faster than GIMP. In fact, I still use Paint.net for really simple edits because it runs faster. Also, their filters rock almost as much as Photoshop’s and you can download free plugins in order to expand your arsenal.

Cons

Paint.net is kinda skimpy on its features and their brushes really suck. The only brush that’s useful at all is the basic brush, unless you’re creating simplistic designs.Paint.net also doesn’t have a lot of the features that I’ve grown to love and rely on when using Photoshop. They have the lasso tool, which allows you to select specific parts of an image you’re working on. But they lack the polygonal lasso, which is great for artists who don’t have steady hands. They lack the pen tool, which makes it difficult to select very specific sections of the art and also makes it difficult to create complex polygons with curves (though they do have the curves tool). But for me, the most unforgivable sin for Paint.net is that they lack a blur and smudge tool. Without those tools, a lot harder to blend different parts of your image together. They do have the blur filter, which can replace the blur tool if you select certain portions with the lasso tool and you have a really steady hand.

GIMP

Pros

GIMP has most of the really important features on Photoshop. They have the coveted pen tool. They also have the essential blur and smudge tool. I can’t remember if they have the polygonal lasso or not. But that tool can be replaced by the pen tool easily. They have some good filters and plenty of plugins. This is a good program for those who want most of the features of Photoshop but never want to pay for the Photoshop program.

Cons

Oddly enough, the size of GIMP’s brushes are limited. This is a strange feature, since it can’t be that hard to increase the size of the brushes. GIMP also has the slowest running time. When using GIMP, I was met with frequent crashes. Also, for some reason, the lines that I created using the pen tool weren’t always perfectly smooth.

The Moral

Adobe is a little absurd charging nearly $1,000 for their Photoshop programs. Yeah, Photoshop is seen as the absolute best graphics program out there for most digital artists. But how do they expect starving artists to ever afford that much money?

Download GIMP http://downloads.sourceforge.net/gimp-win/gimp-2.6.4-i686-setup.exe

Download Paint.net http://www.dotpdn.com/files/Paint.NET.3.36.zip

Alex

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Hi, everybody! Marisol here. Alex offered some ideas for free programs, but if you are heavy into digital art and you enjoy doing it, there are programs that are under $100 available. Yes, they’re not as fancy as any of the Photoshop CS programs, but they are just as good. Alex mentioned that there is Photoshop Elements and Corel Painter, both of which have their pros and cons. I own both and I was fortunate enough to receive them free with my Wacom Intuos Tablet. However, both programs are well worth the money if you’re willing to spend it, especially if you’re really in to digital art.

Photoshop Elements

I happen to like Elements more than CS. Sure, Elements is what the title implies: the elements–your really basic digital tools. As Alex mentioned, Elements doesn’t have a pen tool, but everything else about it is great. You have your blur and burn tools, which are essential in digital art creation, but you also have the option of creating brushes and downloading brushes like its nobody’s business! Photoshop Elements has fantastic calligrapher brushes which make up for the lack of pen tool. However, I never really understood why the pen tool was so important. Basically, if you use the right pressure and you go along in small strokes, any brush can dublicate the pen tool look, but that is my opinion. I’ve never had a pen tool and when I did use it, I found it difficult to handle.

Photoshop Elements is basically the same as PSCS, just without the bells and whistles. A lot of the features are the same and the program is easy to use. Personally, I love Elements because of some of the cool effects you can create with it. There is a photo fram feature and a feature where you can create Andy Warhol-esque images. Very cool. Photoshop Elements is the best bang for your buck.

Corel Painter

Personally, I am not a fan of Corel Painter mainly because I find it difficult to use. Sure, the features are great, but I find the program to be glitchy and lacks that special oomph that makes it a great program. The drawing feature on Corel Painter is hit and miss because sometimes the lines pick up, others times they don’t, no matter what the pen pressure is. I find it to be very lax on features, however, it’s a great beginner’s tool. If you are a beginning artist, practice with Corel Painter, but I highly recommend you download the free trial. However, a lot of hardcore artists do use Corel Painter and love it, so maybe I have had bad luck.

Marisol

Arm #1

This arm is hanging straight at the character’s side in such a way that the palm of the character’s hand would be facing the character. This is an important arm to learn how to draw, since characters commonly hold their arms this way.

Draw a slightly curving line that travels downwards.

Draw another long curving line parallel to the first line you drew. Make this arm less curvy than the other line and have the line travel farther downward than the other line.

From the bottom of the shorter line, draw a more curving line that slants more towards the other line as it travels downwards.

Arm #2

This arm has the palm facing away from the point of view. This is often the way the arm looks when a character is holding on to an object that is between the character’s body and arm.

Draw a curving line that starts off traveling horizontally and starts to curve until it suddenly travels downwards sharply, very far downwards.

In whatever direction that the previous line curved, on the opposite side draw a line that curves in the opposite direction. This line is not as long as the other line.

At the end of the line that you just drew, draw a second similar curving line. This line is the same only longer than the previous line.

Draw a second line that is similar to the line you just drew but which curves in a different direction.

Arm #3

This arm is similar to the arm above, but the hand is swung more towards the center of the character. Otherwise, this isn’t a much more difficult arm to learn how to draw.

Draw a curving line that travels horizontally and then curves suddenly downwards, traveling vertically and slightly curving outwards.

On the other side of the line you just drew, draw a line that curves outwards slightly, mostly traveling vertically.

From where this line ends, draw another curving line that bulges at first and then tapers off gradually.

From where the opposite line ended, draw a line that curves very slightly and then travels somewhat towards the other line that you just drew.

Arm #4

This is the arm of a character who is swinging her arm, raising it, or stretching her arm out to grab someone’s hand. Her arm looks somewhat curved, like a banana. This is a lightly tricker arm to learn how to draw.

Draw one curving line.

Then draw another. Both of these lines will curve in the same way, curving in a somewhat downward and Eastern or Western direction (depending on which arm you’re drawing).

With the line farther away from the character’s body, draw a smaller line that curves in the opposite direction.

Where the last line left off, draw another line that curves in the opposite direction.

Go to the line opposite of the lines you’ve been working on drawing. Draw another curving line that is similar to the first curving line, but have that line curve more towards the other line.

Arm #5

This is the arm of someone who has his elbow by his waist and is raising his forearm without moving his elbow from its position. This arm might be easier to learn how to draw if you look at your arm in the mirror and experiment with different arm positions.

Draw a curve that looks like a hook. Draw a really small curving line that will represent the shoulder. As the line travels downwards, the line will become almost perfectly vertical with a slight curve to it.

Closer to the human body, draw a line that slants slightly upwards towards the body.

Back to the first line you drew. Draw a line that curves sharply upwards and outwards.

Draw a fourth line that curves in the same way as the third line, but tapers and draws closer to the third line.

Arm #6

This is the arm of someone who is holding her skirt, curtsying. This will be last type of straight arm that I can think of that an artist would want to learn how to draw.

Draw a curving line that travels diagonally across the page.

Draw a second line that curves in an opposite direction and is not as curvy as the first line.

Continue the second line, curving it out slightly a second time.

Continue the first line by drawing a really big bulge that tapers off gradually and travels closer and closer to the other line.

Woo! Next arm tutorial, I’ll be hitting bent arms. I dunno if I’ll do that in the next art tutorial, since writing about the same things all the time gets kinda dull. I’ve spent a lot of time working on drawing the human figure, which is really important. But I’m up for a change. Please email art tutorial requests and specifically drawing tutorial requests if there’s anything specific that you want to have an art tutorial on.

Alex

Start by drawing a curving line that slants towards the head.

On the part of the ear that’s farther away from the head, draw the line as a curve that suddenly goes into a slant that moves towards the head.

Draw a line that starts near the bottom middle near the edge of the ear. This line will travel along the outer edge of the ear until you reach the top corner closest to the head. Then the line will curve downwards and away from the head until it stops.

Where the last line you drew ends, place your drawing tool slightly above the end and draw a curving line that travels downwards. Continue until you draw a half circle.

The next part looks sorta like an upside down S that is a little more elongated and attached to the half circle you drew.

At this point, draw another S that is right-side up and attaches at the bottom to the line that you just drew.

Now locate the inner curving line and draw two curving lines that travel downwards and attach at the tip like a triangle or a strand of hair.

Finish by drawing a line that travels near the inner line that you just drew on the outer side on the inner side of the ear (good thing there’s pictures, this is confusing). At the bottom of the ear, draw a small curving line that curves upwards.

Next, let’s try another type of ear (woo!). Start off by drawing a curving line that looks like a hook. The line will be curving towards wherever the head is supposed to be.

Wherever you want the bottom of your ear to be, draw a line that curves downwards.

On the side of the ear that is away from the head, draw a slightly curving line that connects both of the other lines.

Draw a curving line within the hook part of the line and have that line travel along the outside part of your line until you stop somewhere near the top.

Where the last line ended, move up a little and draw a line that travels downwards and curves, attaching to the outer part of the ear. This line will travel down, slant downwards and to the left and then slant more steeply until it touches the outer part of the ear.

Now head over to the other part of the ear and draw two lines, one that curves upwards and one that curves downwards. These lines will be curving away from each other. The bottom line will slant downwards more and father out than the upper curve.

From where you left off, draw a line that travels downwards and curves towards the character’s head.

From this point, draw a similar curving line that sorta forms a small M but stops early and slants more towards the head.

The next part’s incredibly difficult to describe. Yeah, the ear is kinda tricky. Luckily, most people aren’t experts in what an ear looks like and most people won’t notice if there are minor errors in the ear. Of course, if you’re trying to get the ear really right, you’ll need to draw from an art model.

Now, let’s draw the ear that’s really difficult to see. The ear that is drawn from the back. Start by drawing a slightly curving line.

Draw a second line that makes a pass at the first line. This line travels more downwards and is even less curved.

At the bottom of the last line that you drew, draw a second line that curves in the other direction.

At the bottom of this line, draw a small curving line that travels away from where the ear connects to the side of the head and curves downwards. Then draw a line that travels directly upwards.

Where you left off at the straight line, draw a second line that curves upwards and away from the ear.

Draw a slightly curving line that connects the two lines that are traveling somewhat vertically up. Draw a line that hangs freely to the left of the ear. Find the bottom of the ear and draw a line that curves away from the ear and upwards.

Thanks everyone!

Mari

“FATHER”

A great piece of art always gives an audience a sense of beauty or some particulars such as the finger nail, eye expression may attract people and generate the appreciation. Besides that, if people pay enough heed, people can realize that many works of artists are showing social formation and patterns. A famous artist, Zhongli Luo, painted a remarkable oil painting named Father, which delivers plenty of information about a special age in China: “Time to go to the Countryside.” Have you ever heard of millions of students from junior high, high school, and college moving out of their own cities to remote villages because of a government order? It seems shocking, but this order lasted 25 years and enforced 20 millions students to commit themselves to this high order from central government (Bamiantongsifangxiao).

The general idea about “Time to go to the Countryside” was submitted by Chinese chairman Mao in 1968. Why did this big event happen? Historians said Mao analyzed the situation of China improperly at that time. Back in 1960s, China had an extremely low production capability; people didn’t have enough food to eat and the unemployment rate rose quickly in cities (Qiuxinmu). According to Mao, unemployment is supposed to happen in capitalism countries, not in a socialism country where people share common ideas and the government practices public ownership. In order to get rid of the rising unemployment rate, Mao announced it was that very necessary to let teenagers move to villages to become re-educated. Re-education is the term for city intellectuals moving to villages to get new knowledge (Bamiantongsifangxiao).

Another key point was that Mao was trying to eliminate the differentiation between town and country, industry and agriculture. As soon as the news spread, many cities responded quickly. This was because the local governments had to follow the central government’s order. The main reason why the implement went so well is the idea of “Time to go to the Countryside”, first proposed in 1950s, expanded in 1960s. Finally, Mao’s commandment was finally heard. This was a huge movement which lasted 25 years, however, “students” who experienced enough farming practice started returning home at the end of 1970s. According to the statistics, due to personal willingness and complicated issues, there were about 100,000 of the population resorted.

The artist, Zhongli Luo, was a member of the great migration group. He had to leave his own family and went to a village in the middle of nowhere. Zhongli spent his golden time in the village doing farm work and wandering in the work field. This picture was painted in 1980 when the artist went back to his second family with whom he spent many years on farm. Just as the painting name implies, “Father” was his second father in the reform family (Haohan).

“Father” gives people a special feeling, even though it was finished a couple of decades ago. In the picture, there are three basic colors: white, golden yellow and dark yellow. The image consists of a very experienced farmer holding a cracked white bowl which contained soup. He has very thin grey hair which is covered by a cultural white hat which makes him look like a diligent farmer. Also, one can see a pen, which is half hidden beneath the hat. Perhaps the most important characteristic of this image is his wrinkles, which fill his face and hands. Besides that, most of his front teeth are missing. It seems that his grey mustache does not have a style, for it is just hanging there randomly. However, this old man may have a slightly crooked back, because his head seems to be leaning forward a little bit abnormally. In addition to this main character, the color of the background is golden yellow. Even though “Father” has rough skin at first glance, Zhongli’s realistic style always gives audiences a feeling of awe. The painting is better to comprehend by looking at its hidden meanings.

The art title “Father” has two meanings. Firstly, he is Zhongli’s second father and he can also be regarded as a spiritual father in China. This is because farmers were the major role in the country at that time. From his rough skin and humpback, it is easy to tell that he went through plenty of hardship on the farm. For instance, the fervent sunlight makes his skin darker and the crude farming tools gave him wood-like hands. The background is golden yellow which stands for the harvest time. This aged man may still have to work when the artist returned because the low production capability could not provide farmers a good living standard. On the other hand, this man is so diligent that he kept working at his very age. He may want to try the soup to extinguish the thirst after a long work. The cracked bowl and missing teeth reveal the poorness of China, however, the pen beneath his hat may prove that this man is not illiterate. It seems impossible that this farmer can write or read because most farmers could not. The guess is obvious that the artist may have taught his father how to get rid of illiteracy. We can see the close bond between the two. After looking at this image carefully, “Father” looks like a very kind person who has many stories. How could the painting describe this old farmer so vividly that people feel sympathetic about his situation? This is mainly because after Zhongli had experienced many years of farming, he got a general idea about the toughness on the farm land and wanted to show the close relationship between the second family and most “students”.

Even though the harsh farming can train the students’ endurance of the hardship, their precious golden periods were wasted on the farmland. Maybe their ambitions also faded away because of the dull life in the village. It turned out that some students hated the policy that Mao made and never wanted to visit their second family. However, it did decrease the unemployment rate and in that harsh age, students helped and supported their homeland with their second family. Possibly, the artist was suspicious about the order, but that is not the key point of this piece of art. When “Father” went public at that time, people felt the close bond. Now we may feel sorry about “Father” situation, but there is a gap which is not able to cross. What will the next generation think if they bumped into this oil painting?

Start off by drawing a head. Theoretically, you could just draw the arm. But arms are hard to draw if you aren’t seeing them in proportion to the rest of the body and you might as well get more practice with figure drawing. So draw a circle.

Now, figure out proportions. We’re not going to draw out the entire body, but it helps to get the entire body down when drawing a picture if you have enough room. Bodies are typically seven and a half to 8 and a half heads long. If you are drawing a live model, you can then get the proportions right by using the head as a frame of reference. All you have to do is simply stretch your arm out and close your non-dominant eye, which is the eye in which objects move when you close your other eye.

Once I have the heads all drawn out, I find it easy to create markers at different places on the body in order to know where I’m at. For instance, I know that the breastbone is slightly above the third circle. So draw the whole body out. I didn’t try to draw a perfect body because I want to focus more on the arms, the whole point of this blog post.

When hung straight, the arms usually stretch far enough that the hands are level with the point at which the legs spread apart. You might want to draw these first since then you’ll know where to go with your arms. For this tutorial, do not worry too much about the hands, since we’re not focusing on hand art.

Next, draw the circles where the elbows are supposed to be at. These circles are slightly above the point where the torso and hips meet.

The rest of the arms you can draw in any order. For the outer part of the arms connected to the shoulders, draw the lines with a slight curve. With the human body, everything has a curve in it. So be sure to always include that.

Next, draw the armpits. Why? Because the armpits will connect to the inner part of the arms. Armpits are really simple curving lines that aren’t even noticeable when the arms are close to the body. However, if the arms are raised above the head, the armpits will change greatly. However, this will be covered in a different tutorial.

The elbows, when the arms are straight, have slight curves inwards.

I think the way the arm is drawn works for most drawings. But you might want to get even more realistic with the form of the arm. I decided to redraw the left arm and focus on that solely. The left arm is turned with the top part of the forearm facing outwards. What this is going to create is an arm that has the inner part bulging while the outer part is somewhat flat.

If the arm is twisted in the right way, the outer part will have the bump where the elbow is found visible. From the elbow to the deltoids, there’s a curving line like that shown in the picture that almost goes within the arm, thus the line drawn inside the arm.

For the inner part, there will be more of a bulge if the arm is twisted with the bicep facing the person’s side. The deltoid overlaps the bicep in a way, so more muscular characters with a low body fat index might have a slight fold in the inner arm as well as the outer arm.

Some people find arms easy to draw while others find it wildly hard (like me). One tip for drawing the arm also fits for drawing really anything else. If you get to a part where you’re having trouble drawing, just draw it really slowly. Take your sweet time and focus fully on what the arm should look like.

Another tip for drawing arms is to simplify. This is an especially good idea whenever you draw cartoons. In fact, with cartoon art, there is no limit to how simplified your line drawing can be. Keep the arm as simplified as possible until you have the arm that you’re looking for. Then, you can start adding details and making the arm as you see fit. Just remember that arms are never straight and always have at least some minor curves.

Once you start drawing arms frequently, you will start to notice that arms really only are made of circles. You can really draw an arm in any position as long as you visualize the circles in the arm.

Drawing arms straight isn’t too tough, but what really gets tricky is when you try to draw arms in different positions. That asks for a whole different tutorial for a different day. For now, just practice getting the proportions right and finding the muscles that are found inside the arms.

Hmm, the arms are out of proportion. Make sure that the upper and lower arm are of equal length. Also, make sure that the fingers touch the mid thigh (as quoted by the lovely Marisol! Hi Alex! I took over your post! I’m posting about arms too in a little while).

Alex

Where was I? Working, school and being lazy. I’m sorry! I know, it’s been awhile. Marisol and I were trying to get an apartment but we ended up working so hard that everything started to suffer. From now on I’m going to stick with contributing to our tutorial art gallery.

Anyway, here’s another art drawing tutorial on nothing specific in particular. This tutorial focuses on drawing face art, rather than body art, giving explanations on how to draw out each part. I added advanced sections, even though they’re not really that much more advanced. They’re really just extra things you can look out for when you’re trying to go the extra mile with your art lessons.

Outline of the head

Make light strokes in a slightly curling motion when drawing the line art for the head. Stare at the edge of your reference photo and try to visualize the shape of the outline of the head. Advanced: pay extra attention to special details like whether or not the face is round or sunken. If you can capture each indentation of the face, capture it.

Mouth

Mouths can be an incredibly simple part of line drawing. With the mouth, draw a very simple curving line. The way I drew the mouth gave the character a slight smirk. Now, to draw the lips or not to draw them. Advanced: The mouth is drawn sorta like a small m. There is a dip in the middle, though the dip varies from person to person. Some dips are tiny, while others take up a little more space. Since the lips are not directly facing the camera but are faced slightly to the left, make the left side of the lips more rounded while making the right side more slanted in order to create that illusion.

Why draw the lips? A lot of don’t include the lips, which can create a very cute picture. Some artists even avoid drawing the mouth in order to emphasize the character’s youth. Plus, lips often look somewhat strange on drawn character, though they don’t have to be. Much of the beauty of lips comes from the right shading and highlights, which will be in another tutorial. For now, you can stick with drawing simplistic lips, which work well with ethnic characters.

Eyes

A lot of artists start with the eyes because the eyes often determine whether or not the rest of the picture will end up working. But where you start really does not matter. For these eyes, take the reference picture and try to capture the outline of the eyes. For cartooning, this does not have to be exact and be sure to draw somewhat larger than what is in the real life picture. Draw the bottom part of the eye with a bulge in the middle bulging downward. The outer edges of the eyes can be drawn slanting up or down. Usually they are slanting downwards.

The top part of the eyes curve sharply upward from the outer corners of the eyes and form a gentle round curve. I removed the inner corners of the eyes because they did not look attractive. I then enlarged the eyes because I was worried that the eyes would be too hard to see. Advanced: start cleaning up the eyes. Use an eraser or white coloring to color over the parts of the lines you want to erase. Always erase in a way that will increase the roundness of the eyes.

Choose a color that you would like to use for your eyes. Fill in circles that fill up the entire eye lid. Draw a nice black line around your irises that is somewhat faint. Then switch to white and draw in a glare that is on the same spot for both eyes. This will be a small white circle that represents the light reflecting off of the eye. Advanced: Add a faint white line at the bottom of the irises.

Eyebrows

Add the eyebrows. Much of the individuality and emotion of the character comes from how the eyebrows are drawn. The combination of eyebrows and mouth form a large percentage of the emotions depicted through drawing. Also, since eyebrows vary, you can be somewhat creative with them. For these eyebrows, put a lot of weight on the inner part of the eyebrows in order to make them look thick. As you slant upwards and curve to the outer part of the eyebrow, make the line progressively fainter and thinner.

Hair

Draw the bangs as curving triangles. You can start by drawing the outline of the hair or add the bangs first. Bangs can be drawn in all sorts of ways. The types of bangs I drew were the ones that curve inward and are triangular. With these bangs, the messiness or neatness of your character can be emphasized by whether or not you have the bangs all going in one direction or not.

Coloring

Coloring, one of the most awesome parts of creating an image. This is especially awesome when you are using a Photoshop program. Not only can you choose among a seemingly infinite array of colors, but you can also place different colors on different layers and then alter these colors using hue/saturation.

Regardless of what you use, make sure that you color very carefully by going along the edges without going over them. If you’re drawing traditionally, it is recommended that you go over your artwork lines using and then finish coloring with high-quality markers. Alternatively, you can draw everything using your tablet or mouse and then create new layers for each color. Then, be sure to set each layer to multiply in order to avoid coloring over the lines that you worked so hard to draw.

That’s all it takes to construct a typical face (at least in the anime world). It really all comes down to personal taste. Draw a little here and see if you like it. Erase something there when you realize that it looks really dumb. Slowly clean up every stray pixel or smudge until everything starts to look polished.

Today (well, technically yesterday now) was an obnoxious day. My mom kept talking my head off which resulted in a major headache, Alex got rear-ended coming to pick me up, I almost got hit by a car (and I used very colorful language), Tala was about to pass out at work, and Dunkin Donuts screwed up my coffee order! Now, if you want to me a happy girl, you don’t screw up my coffee order! When Marisol wants a gosh-darn HOT caramel latte, you just better darn-well give it to her! Did she get hot coffee? NO! She got iced. Marisol was unhappy and is now finished referring to herself in third person.

Hmph.

Due to our busy-ness, Alex, Tala, and I have to use tutorials we created for our other jobs. Today, I’m going to begin some jewelry-making tutorials; how does that sound? Today, I’m going to show you how to create a multi-strand lasso necklace. This is super easy, so this will go by quickly. Unfortunately, due to my lack of time, I don’t have any definitive pictures, but I hope to take some this weekend.

Supplies: Beads, Thread, Scissors, Beading Needles, Glue

First, cut two pieces of thread that measure 36 inches long. Fold these threads in half.

1) Take a beading needle and place one end of both threads through it. Do not move the needle down to the center, instead, keep it at the end.

2) Next, depending on how large you want the lasso loop to be, take 13-25 beads and place them on the thread using the beading needle. Move these beads to the center, keeping the threads folded.

3) Now, take the loose pieces of thread and stick them through the beading needle you are currently using. You should have four pieces of thread sticking through the needle. Place five beads on the needles and move them down to the beads you put on the thread in the previous step. If you notice, moving these beads down helped to create a loop–your lasso.

4) Remove all threads from the needle and place each thread through their own individual needles. After you have done this, place beads on each needle and make each bead-filled strand about an inch or two long.

5) Once you completed these bead rows, move all strand to one needle once again. Place another five beads on the one needle and move the beads up to the bead rows. You have just locked the bead rows.

6) Repeat steps four and five until your necklace reaches the desired length. Once this has happened, keep the multi strands loose. Now you keep one bead loose and weave each thread through one bead that is above the last bead.

7) Tie knots above the second to last bead with the loose threads. Dab some glue on the knots to secure the threads and trim the loose ends.

Wear your necklace by wrapping it around your neck and place the dangling ends through the loop.

TADA!

I told you this was easy. I hope you enjoyed creating this necklace with me. These necklaces make great gifts, just so you know.

Thank you so much for reading this post. I hope you enjoyed the project. I have an early class, so I have to go now. Happy creating!

Love always,

Marisol

So I’ve been busy with school work, tutoring and orientations, and freelance work. So far, so good on all fronts. I am able to keep up with everything, I just need to stop procrastinating so much. I have the ability to finish things on time, I seriously do, I just don’t. The other day, I finished 4 articles for one of my jobs in under 30 minutes. This week, it took me 5 days to write a one page paper for a class. Um… bad me!

Okay, now for the art stuff.

Tala asked me for some old drawings of mine, and I was surprised I still had them! Looking at some of those old drawings, I am amazed at how much I improved over the years! Right now, I feel like my drawing ability has been sub par, but overall, it’s improved immensely! My porportions have gotten better and my realism has improved. Let’s take a look, shall we?

ANIME DRAWING

2002:

A picture I drew in 2002... wow!

Wow, this was one of my first anime drawings I did. This was when I first met Tala and we worked on her story, Future Tellings. Kitana’s (silver-haired chick) face looks decent, but everything else is just… off. Look at the arms; they look so wooden! The dresses have no shape nor is there any movement. I didn’t shade much in those days, either. Kitana’s cat ears look stuck on, like little pink triangle-shaped gum. Wow, I can’t believer I thought this was good! And Kojiro, his hair was gold and he a tattoo! And his muscles look like a muscle suit! I should have ditched this! But then again, I’m glad I didn’t because now I know where I need to improve more on.

2002-2003:

Here’s an anime-ish drawing of my OC, Tsuyoi Seishin. She’s cute and an overall improvement from my 2002 attempt at anime drawing. I attempted shading this time, although barely noticeable. To me, the head is too large for the body and the outfit is still shapeless. My light source is a bit eratic and the overall look is sloppy. The lower arm is still too long compared to the upper arm, and the hand is still disproportionate. I improved overall, but there is still room for more improvement.

2003-2004:

So here’s Mayu (left) and Kotou. I improved a lot in 2004. My shading improved a lot with this. My proportions improved also. Notice how my clothes started to have more shape? However, I still feel as if the heads are way too large and Kotou’s legs are bent at an odd angle. I practiced depth, as well. Although there’s shading and a horizon, the image still feels 2-dimensional. My light source is still a little wacky, also. I also enhanced this image digitally; this was when I got Photoshop for Christmas.

2005:

Whoa! Psychodelic! Obviously, I loved Photoshop too much! This was an image I did when I got 7,000 pageviews on Deviant Art. This is my character Kitana. I love this picture! I think my shading was awesome and the proportions are great. My light sourcing also improved. However, I still have the issue of gigantic heads! GRR! But the outfit is cute and there’s more depth. There is still room for improvement.

2006-2007:

This is another favorite picture of mine. I think this shows my improvement the most. I learned to add depth and folds in the clothing more, as well as more detail. And finally, the heads aren’t gigantic! Woo! However, I still need to work on arms…

2008:

This is my most favorite! However, this isn’t really anime, but my own twist on it. This picture shows my growth over the past few years the best. The shading is great and I love the proportions. The hands are beautiful. However, I can still improve on the eyes….

REALISM:

Now realism is my favorite form of drawing, however, I don’t work on it enough. My niece far surpasses me on realistic drawing and I hope to feature her on this site in the future. But for now, let’s see my improvements on realism.

2004:

no shading, no depth, not much of anything here. It’s a cute drawing, but as you can see, I’m still an amatuer at this point. My proportions are off, too. The arms look funny and you can’t really tell that’s she’s sitting. The hair is really stringy. I give this picture a D-!

2005:

This is a very pretty puppy. The fur looks nice, as do the eyes. However, the shading is poor. This is a nice attempt, but I can still improve.

2006:

Ahhh…. BoA Kwon. She’s lovely and I love her music. I did this picture as a tribute to her and if I gave it to her, I bet she would gag! The eyes are messed up! The face looks crooked and the hair is haphazard! Ugh! The hand looks weird and the shading is bad. How sad. Thankfully, I lost the hardcopy for this image.

2007:

This was right after I took my art class. WOW! Mass improvement! I can shade! I can create fur! Do you see?! Look at how I improved over the years! YAY!

Keep all your drawings, folks. Check back over the years and see how you improve! All artists can improve, even good ones. Check your progress weekly, monthly, and yearly. Keep striving for perfection.

Happy drawing,

Goodnight!

Marisol