I just discovered the power of youtube and desktop recording software

I love to write more than anything else in the world. But there are some things that you can’t really show with text and pictures. Also, some people just learn better with video. So to be helpful in that way, we’re going to be posting videos in some of our tutorials on how to draw and create other forms of art. Please comment and let us know what you think.

These tutorials were done using Photoshop CS2. Don’t worry, we’re getting a digital camera soon so that we can post video tutorials on how to draw traditionally.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Tags: Art Tutorial, Digital Art, Photoshop, realistic, shading, Tutorial, Tutorials

Hi everyone. Mari here and I’m very sleepy! It’s 2:17am in my neck of the woods and I’m ready to collapse. Before I go to bed, I thought I would update you guys on some things I’m working on.

UPCOMING TUTORIALS:

I just finished the drawings for the cel shading tutorial. Learning cell shading is really important, especially when learning how to draw with limited colors. Look for that to be posted within the next week.

I did a tutorial on angles in photography. That will be coming up soon.

Finally, I have some origami videos that I plan on posting, once I have my videos updated on Youtube (on Youtube, I am Kit Aisuru).

UPCOMING ART GALLERY ADDITIONS:

I am currently working on my drawing for the song “Vanity.” If you’ve yet to listen to the song, please visit this blog post to hear the song. So far, here’s what I have so far.

It’s a bit of a mess right now, but I promise, it will be cleaned up. So far, I’m happy with it. Thank you Cafir for the reference image. There’s a lot of changes and a lot more to be made. Wish me luck! This is a HUGE project I’m working on, and I want it to be great!

There are my updates. See you all again soon!

Mari

Tags: Art Tutorial, Cafir, Cafir Deviant Art, Deviant Art, Deviant Art Altura-Tears, Digital Art, Photography, Photography Tutorial, Photoshop, photoshop elements, Vanity, Yuki Kajiura

Some days, I wonder why I even bother to wake up; today is one of those days. The coffee pot died, the washer is dying, and the basement toilet is getting worse thanks in part to Alex for flushing the toilet paper holder thingy. To top everything off, I have a load of homework and articles to do, and my beloved best friend hasn’t spoken to me in four days and I don’t understand why. Alex and I have yet to receive an explanation. I texted her and called, but she won’t answer her phone at all, let alone kindly acknowledge the fact that I text messaged even though it costs me a huge sum of money. So, another weekend and more money out the window.

Once upon a time, when I was little girl in old country…

I don’t know where that came from. There’s way too much noise here today and I can’t think straight. My parents are fighting and I’m sitting right in the middle of it all. Why? I have nowhere else to go currently. My computer desk in my room is all cluttered with a lot of stuff that doesn’t even belong to me (spring cleaning, so my room is a storage depot), it’s freezing in my basement (the heater is on the fritz, too. Burning hair anyone?), and my niece is in her room. Sometimes, I just wish I could b*tchslap them all, scream “shut up,” and go on my merry way. I want a car BADLY, then I can escape.

How about a tutorial, guys? I think a tutorial would work; I need to keep my mind off things. Alex did an arm tutorial yesterday, which I was going to do today, but I will shelve that for awhile. How about we work on the lower half of the anatomy and create legs? Legs are fairly easy to draw, so this will be a simple tutorial. We’re just going to draw straight legs today, no bends or movement yet. Ready to begin? Since I’m short on time and have a lot of things to do, I’m going to use an art tutorial I created for another website last summer.

Click to read more …

Tags: Anatomy Drawing, Art Tutorial, Broken Appliances, Chewbacca, Digital Art, drawing tutorial, How to Draw Legs, Leg Definition Drawing, Leg Drawing, Leg Drawing Tutorial, Leg Sketching, Patron Saint of Appliances, Pencil Drawing, Photoshop, Scanner, Simple Leg Tutorial, Sketching Tutorial, Star Wars, traditional Art, Traditional Art Tutorial

My boyfriend is very inconsiderate sometimes. He does not have Internet access (surprise, surprise), so I ask him to PLEASE call me when he gets home from school. Does he? Not at all. Do I know if he got home safely? Not at all. So I called him and left two messages. Does he answer or call back? NOPE! But no, someone on his end can pick up his cell phone and hang up on me. Nice! I call because I care about him and I get treated like garbage. Is it my fault he can’t take some responsibility and pink up a phone? Nope. That would be his. I just hope he knows that that is his ONE REALLY ANNOYING TRAIT THAT I WISH HE WOULD FIX! Stop being an airhead and pick up the phone! It isn’t that hard! Guys, let your girl know you care about them and call when you leave somewhere late at night, okay? They’ll really appreciate the gesture. It’s a very nice thing to do and prevents worry. Not to mention that it helps build trust. Remember that, sweeties. And girls, if your guy asks the same of you, return the favor; maybe your call will help him remember next time. Then again, that last part could be wishful thinking. Who knows.

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? Click to read more …

Tags: anime drawing, anime how to, Art, art blog, artist sketches, artist's blog, Artists, characters, Digital Art, digitaL DRAWING, draw, drawing, drawing faces, Drawing Guidelines, drawing proportions, Drawings, facial features, features, frelance writing, how to draw hair, How to Draw, how to draw anime, how to draw clothes, how to draw faces, how to draw features, how to draw folds in clothes, how to draw fur, how to draw proportions, how to draw shoes, how to indicate light source, Improvements, original characters, Paintings, Photoshop, realism, realistic how to, sketches, sketching

Good morning once again! It’s 2:06am Chicago-time, and it’s 4 days until Christmas Eve–WOOHOO! I’m so excited. Money was tight this year, but if you know where to look, gifts are not hard to find. I got Tala a kick-butt gift, but shhh, I can’t tell anyone. It rocks though! I found it at Artist’s Square and thought it was awesome and perfect, so I got it. I hope you love it Tala!

We’re all artists here at Sketching House, so as artists, we need tools; lots and lots of tools. We need pencils, and pens, and erasers, paints, paper, books, palettes, and on and on down the line until we have everything we ever dreamed of. Well, just in case you haven’t caught on by now, it’s time for the…

…wait for it…

THE ULTIMATE PLUG POST: UTENSILS EVERY ARTIST SHOULD HAVE!

*Bugle*

Hooray! *Throws confetti* I love plugs! This is where I try to get you, oh mysterious viewers, to buy things that I think you should have. Are you ready? Click to read more …

Tags: Amazon, Borders, Digital Art, Donna Dewberry, Flickr, House Drawing, JoAnns, paintbrush, Painters, Pencils, Plugs, Products, tablet, Tags, Tradtional Art, Wacom

Good morning, everyone, if you consider this a good morning. It is currently a balmy 18 degrees out with six inches of fresh powder covering my lawn. The Chicagoland area was inundated with snow last night, and even though it’s pretty, I don’t like it. I’m not a fan of snow; only on Christmas. Christmas snow is magical.

It’s currently really early for me, too. I could not sleep a wink last night for some reason, yet, I was very tired. Personally, it sucks. I’m very tired and I have that somewhat dizzy feeling I usually get when I’m very tired. It sucks more because, today, Alex and I are suppose to go back to Artist’s Square to do some antique shopping. I better get a lot of coffee in me, or else I’m not going to survive the day.

*Yawns*

I have an idea. How about instead of me rambling on about how tired I am, how about we do another tutorial? We’ve done hair–digital, long, short, and medium length–eyes, lips, but we haven’t structured a full face. I have three methods for structuring a face: anime style, unfeatured, and features first. Today, I’m going to use a style that I’m totally unaccustom to: unfeatured. This is going to be scary.

*Rubs eyes and yawns again*

Now, dearest Mari, what is an unfeatured face, you–our wonderful, yet mysterious viewers–may ask. The answer is simple, my friends. An unfeatured face is a face structure you draw BEFORE adding the eyes, nose, and mouth. I usually draw all my facial features before, THEN add the face around it, then a friend of mine–who is totally annoying me at the moment, but that’s a rant for another time–pointed out that, sometimes, my faces look goofy because I do things that way. Well, poo on him. To each their own, I suppose. But anyway, that is besides the point. So, I figured I’d try doing the face structure FIRST, then add the features. Now every character I draw kinda looks like Jennifer Aniston. Hopefully, this will not be the case for you!

Additionally, for this tutorial, I apologize for my shading looking very dark and askew. My family, for some reason, has an aversion to using lights in my house. I think it has to do with NIPSCO raising the electric bill 50% or something. Eep!

Now for the tutorial!

FACE STRUCTURE Click to read more …

Tags: Adobe Photoshop, anime, Art, Artists, Crown Point Indiana, Digital Art, drawing, Eyes, face, guidelines, Lips, midtones, Nose, Pencil Art, Pencil Drawing, Photoshop, photoshop elements, Photoshop Tutorial, shading, traditional Art, Tutorial, wings

Awhile back, I promised that I would create a lip tutorial. Well, I finally arrived at that time. Lips are essential to drawings involving people. Sure, you can draw just a straight line, but on realistic drawings, a straight line can look pretty silly. So, we’re going to create lips and smiles and frowns. Lips are great. With lips, you can kiss, and kissing is nice. Hehehehe. Well, are you ready for the tutorial? Let’s go! Click to read more …

Tags: art books, circles, Digital Art, drawing, drawing books, electric erasers, lines, Lips, Photoshop, traditional Art, Tutorials

Part One of the Hair Trilogy

Part Two of the Hair Trilogy

How to Draw a Long Hair Explosion!

Hello to you all! This is the last hair tutorial from me for awhile. I got really carried away with the drawing, but I created a bunch of new hairstyles that I’m going to put on my characters. Today I’m playing around with long hair. The really great thing about long hair is that there’s really no limit to what you can do with it. And long hair looks so… cool. *(^_^)*

Lengthening the hair on a character means only one thing… HAIR EXPLOSION! That’s right. Bangs, strands, flips, curls, and dos can go all over the place.

I really, really love drawing long hair. Hair can have a fine, coarse, or wirey texture. People with drier hair have all sorts of curls that flow and bounce all over the head like they’re taking over the joint. Wetter hair is long and free-spirited, blowing whereever the wind wants to take it. Some hair-owners try to make their hair symmetrical and pretty, while others let hair go wherever they want it to. The wilder the hair, the more interesting it is to look at.

I’ve seen cartoon hair in three styles. The most common seems to be the angle look, since the really sharp edges of the angle show up really nice on a cartoon. Figure one shows the basic principles of the angles. Lazier artists draw huge gobs of hair and then fill these gobs in with lines. But these gobs of hair can look really great, especially if colored well. You can see the gobs of hair in figure 2. They have a really nice cartoon look to them. But if you’re going for a much more realistic look, you might want to try drawing each strand individually. There’s really no limit to how realistic you can make each strand of hair, but you should keep two things in mind. The more realistic you make your hair, the more realistic you should make the rest of the character. Also, the more realistic you make the hair, the longer it will take to draw the entire head of hair. Really, there’s no limit to how detailed you can make a head of hair.

Figure 1                     Figure 2

Click to read more …

Tags: anime, Art, bangs, cartoon, cartoon drawing, comb, curly, Digital Art, do, draw, drawing tutorial, forehead, hair, hairbrush, hairstyle, how to draw cartoons, illustration, manga, paintbrush tool, scalp, sketch, sketching, spikey, spiky, strands, traditional Art, Tutorial, widow's peak

Photomash 1

Photomash 2

*Collapses*

Wow, Marisol here, back after a short hiatus to work on a new tutorial. It’s been a busy few days here for me, and I am tired! I’ve been working on the tutorials and studying for my psychology final and tying up some loose ends with things. I have great news: I got an A on my psychology paper! Psychology is one of my worst subjects, and I’ve never done well in it–until now! It takes me to get an A now. Yay! That makes me happy.

Alex and I also updated our “About Us” page; we’ve added images of ourselves. Also, please send a warm welcome to Tala, our newest member to the Sketching House family! Tala was suppose to be with us to begin with, but work and school come first. She will be contributing shortly and her profile will be posted in the About Us section in a few days.

Okay, as I have mentioned, I created a new tutorial. After a long wait, I finished the third part of the Photomashing tutorial and the Photomashed outline drawing, so now, after you reach the end of this, you can forget how long and monotonous this tutorial was. I’m kidding, I hope you don’t forget because many of the techniques you learn here can be transferred to other projects. So, without further ado, Photomashing Part Three: Coloring! Click to read more …

Tags: Art, burn tool, Color, coloring, digital, Digital Art, digitally, guidelines, lines, Photomashing, Photoshop, photoshop elements, shading, tools

My semester is officially over! Now all I need to do is take my two finals for my psychology and English classes, then I will sit and wait patiently for my grades. I’m so TIRED from this semester; I’m so glad it’s over finally. Time for Christmas! Woo!

Today, Alex and I went to Dunkin Donuts for coffee before we went to our Literary Study class. While we were there, we were greeted by a guy dressed as a pig. The pig made Alex and I laugh, then we found out that the pig was part of a dance troupe that dresses like animals in order to encourage young people to stay in school and get an education. I really hope they succeed in their mission and that they’re around next year, because Alex and I were planning on hiring the animals to entertain one of our professors! *Giggles.* Click to read more …

Tags: Art, Asian Female, Digital Art, Eyes, Frankenstein, hair, Larry the Cable Guy, Lips, Photomashing, Photoshop, Pigs, profile, traditional Art, Tutorial