Thanks Sami from Flickr!

Snow is falling, acting as prelude to the bitter cold that is arriving in a few days. I’m tired of cold weather, and sometimes, I’m tired of the snow even though it’s so pretty. I’m not a fan of winter; it’s depressing and drags on too long. All the bleakness makes it hard for me to feel fervent, which, if you think about it, fervent sounds the opposite of what it truly means. Anymore, I just feel so down and hopeless and it’s hard to find that silver lining or little glimmer of joy. Click to read more …

Tags: anger, Birds, Boyfriend, clothes, clothing, Depression, Disney, do, Dreams, Dying, expression, expressions, Family, Flickr, Food, Freem, game, Graduate School, guy, hope, Issues, Japan, Kyoto, lines, Love, Lyrics, Married, Night, personality, reading, real, relationship, Relationships, Santa, school, side, sky, Snow, song, Star, Tala, teaching, Travel, University, view, Weather, wing, winged, wings, Work, write, Writing

Hello everyone. It’s time to upload part 3. This time I’m going to town on the wings. They’re flat out boring and not really that well defined. So I spent yesterday transforming them from the left to the right.

A lot bigger change. The feathers could be made more realistic and slender. Maybe I’ll redraw them again next time in the same way that I redrew everything else except the hair :p

My inspiration for the wings was derived from J Peffer’s angel character, though I tried hard to make my wings look distinct from hers. For me, the hardest part was getting the reflection of light on the feathers to pop out, which means that i have to tweak the shadings and highlights. He needs better shading to make him look more 3D too. Maybe a background would help (hint, hint). Click to read more …

Tags: angel, Art, character, drawing, Photoshop, shading, sketching, staff, Tutorial, wings

Welcome to part 2 of my How to Draw Characters series. This time, I’m putting this guy in technicolor. But before that, I’m going to try to make his body more anatomically correct. Below is what we left off with last time.

Distorted angel, arms, hands, and feet badly drawn.

His wings could be better drawn, but drawing wings can be an entire tutorial on its own (hint, hint). But I was really unhappy with his hands and feet. His left hand (our left) was not even complete and wasn’t correctly connected to the wrist. His right hand was ginormous and his fingers weren’t proportionate at all. His feet seemed a little too long and his toes were tiny. His right arm was way too long. I also didn’t like how his right side curved in more than his left side, like he only got love handles on one side. Click to read more …

Tags: Art, cell style, character conception, coloring, drawing, highlights, Photoshop, shading, sketching, Tutorial, wings

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

I got my first A as a final grade in psychology! How exciting is that?! On the final exam, I got 105 out of 100 points: a perfect score plus the extra credit! And guess what, I barely studied! That’s nothing to be proud of; when in graduate school, you should ALWAYS study. That’s Marisol’s school lesson of the day! Now on to the tutorial…

Noses– most people have them and like lips and eyes, they are very useful. People can steal noses (hehehe, got your nose!), or get smacked in the nose every winter at least once. I get smacked in the nose at least once per winter because my boyfriend slips on the ice and I have to catch him, only to have him accidentally hit me in the nose and mouth. Ouch.

Some people have anxiety when it comes to drawing noses, but have no fear, noses are easy! In fact, noses are so easy that they can be drawn in four steps. This is going to be a short tutorial, folks. Click to read more …

Tags: drawing, Drawing the Face, Eyes, face, guidelines, light, Lips, Noses, Photoshop, sketching, Tutorial, wings

I decided to create a digital character and see how far I could go in a drawing tutorial. First a little sketching. Then some line cleanup. Lay over some lineart. Erase the sketches beneath. Add details. Add color. Do cell style shading. I don’t get how professional digital artists pull that off in 6 hours. I worked on this guy for 6 hours and I was able to get the lineart done only. Now at 11 o’clock, I’m yawning too much to even see my keyboard. Since I’m on break, I want to see how far I can take him. Maybe I’ll even add a background.

When drawing or painting, the artist has a boatload of choices. Painters can choose between watercolor, acrylic, and oils. Sketchers can use graphite pencils, regular pencils, or go straight to pen. Digital artists can use a mouse, tablet, or pen tool. You can even combine different tools. For instance, you can start off with graphite pencils on drawing paper, then scan the drawing with a really good scanner, and then use the pen tool to replace the rough sketch with smooth lines. You can even print out a piece of digital art, fix a mistake, and then scan the image again. Click to read more …

Tags: angel, Art, character, drawing, fantasy, figure, halberd, sketch, sketching, staff, wand, wing, winged, wings