Tutorial on Manga will be continued....

Hey, just wanted to quickly post that I haven't forgotten about this tutorial.  I have tons of crap going on and just can't seem to get around to this.  I shall be back after Christmas to finish up the manga tutorial, promise. ;)

Hope everyone has a great Christmas!!!

Check ya later!!

Drawing Manga/Anime p4: The Hair

Alrighty, so we've got all of the head done but now we need hair.  Well, I'm awful at hair. Really.  Doesn't matter if it's cartoon hair or real people hair, I just suck at it.  I'm going to show my understanding of it (which isn't much) and then guide you to better tutorials.

So my take on manga hair.... it usually has a wispy and wild look.  There's almost a pointiness to it.  See below.

Drawing Manga/Anime p3: The mouth

Hiya!

Last time we talked about the noses on the different gender.  It's all fairly simple stuff.  So now that we have the head, face, and nose drawn we need to get some lips on there.  The mouth is much more fun than the nose.  Drawing out all those noses was quite boring.  Eh, I'm not a nose person.  Ok, on with it then!

Chick mouths

Usually girls mouths are fuller and not as wide as boys. Not always buy, yeah.  Here be a few examples. 

• The curved mouth - Here I've drawn it straight faced.  Of course you can draw it with more of  a frown or smile and you can make the mouth look fuller or thinner by where you place the bottom lip.  
• The slanted line - This mouth works on either gender.  Not much to this one. 
• The smirk - this is basically the same as the curved mouth but with a half smile.  

Drawing Manga/Anime p2: Noses

Hello!

So, last time we barely started working on manga. We discussed the very basics, drew the head and started working on eyes.  Today we're going to look at the nose.  This will be a pretty short blog so yay for everyone who hates long ones.  

Ok, there's going to be slight differences with the nose depending on gender.  Honestly you can use any nose for any character but I'm going to show you my preferences.  A nose on a guy will be slightly bigger than a chick.  

Chick noses

Here be a few examples of what I think looks good on girls. 

Drawing Manga/Anime p1: Basics, head, and eyes

It's been a couple days since I told you guys we're going to be working on Manga/Anime so I guess we shall get started.  Yay.  I can barely contain my enthusiasm. Just so you know, I'm really breaking this up into small parts.  So you may want to check back in a week or so.  Today we're going to go over the things to keep in mind about manga/anime, drawing the face and getting the eyes done.  If you want the entire tutorial all at once come back later.  (I'm breaking it up like this to give myself more time.)

There are a few things to keep in mind when it comes to manga/anime. 

• They eyes are almost always huge
• The nose and mouth are small
• The face comes to a point (or nearly) at the chin.
• The hair is usually wispy and wild. 
• The height (proportion) is basically the same as drawing a real person (6-8 head lengths) and they are always unnaturally skinny (unless you're drawing a fat one). 

So.... what's next?

Hey there!  

Is everyone glad we've made it into December?? I'm not.  I always get so depressed this time of year.  I'm another year older and no closer to my dreams then when I was 3 and that leaves me feeling like crap.  I don't understand how anyone can enjoy this time of year, really.  If it's not bad enough knowing we're leaving this year behind, you've got the holidays in your face.  Family get togethers. Ugh! It's not that I hate seeing my family, really it's not.  It's the inevitable questions like, "what have you been up to?" that drive me nuts.  Getting to reply with a sigh and say "not much" is just so not fun to me.  Basically, I hate catching people up on what's up with me and my life.  There's never anything to say lol.  Then you have the shopping.  Well, that's gotten easier thanks to the internet. But I did go out on Black Friday this year and let me tell you, I will NEVER do it again.  Too many people.  Way too many people.  Nuh uh. Nope. I'm not doing it. No. lol.  Even worse, the Christmas music. Makes my ears bleed man!  After about 15 years of hearing the same songs over and over and over and over again, I was done with that.  Elvis Christmas is about all I can tolerate now.  Yeah maybe I'm a scrooge. I dunno.  

Alrighty, done with my little rant.  So, what are we going to do next?  We got one type of cartoon out of the way but there are other styles to discuss.  Manga/Anime has become quite popular in the last ten years (why I don't know) so I figure we'll go over that a little bit.  I'm no expert on it since I'm not really fond of it.  But I will do my best to explain it and I'll probably search for some good tutorials to teach you further.  I'll cover the basics. 

After that I may go into caricatures. I love drawing caricatures.  It's been awhile since I have though.  I discovered that I was pretty good at it when I was in high school. I was super sick and since I couldn't do much I got my yearbook and drew a caricature for just about everyone in my class. Sadly, I've lost that sketch pad but it was awesome.  So, since it's been on my mind lately we may do that and it falls into the cartoon category too. 

Alrighty, expect something in the next couple of days. 

Check ya later!!

Learning to Draw: Coloring

Alrighty, now we want to color. Coloring can be scary for beginners, believe me I know.  Unfortunately, I never really tried coloring with traditional art (other than crayons). It scared the poo out of me.  I tried watercolors once and it was absolute crap so I decided it wasn't my thing.  So, point here is, I'm not going to be able to help the pencil and paper folks interested in coloring.  All I can say is grab some colored pencils and experiments!

Digital art gave me the freedom to try because you can create a new layer.  If your colors are terrible, you don't screw up any of your line art and can try again.  Since I've started I have a much better understanding of colors and I think I would be less intimidated to try again on paper.  Someday, I'll have to do that and share my experience with you.  But for now, for all you digital artists, I can give instructions.

The technique I chose for coloring Chris is totally different than what you'll see in most of my artwork.  I'm not drawing cartoons anymore so I want it to look more realistic.  You will use just a standard painbrush and color in each layer and erase any mistakes.  For shadows and highlights you will do the same, using black for shadows and white for highlights, then adjust the layer opacity for both.  It's pretty simple stuff. Ok here we go.

Learning to Draw: Shading

Hello Hello!

Ok so we got the sketch done and got it ready for shading or coloring. Shading a cartoon is pretty simple because there's really not a lot of depth to it.  The shadows and highlights have clear lines instead of blending into another shade.

Pencil and Paper

Ok so here's where it's really good to have a graphite pencil set but if not that's ok too.  It would also be really good to have a kneaded eraser.  That eraser is used for the highlights but if you don't have one there's other ways to go about highlighting on a cartoon.

What you need:

• 3 shades of graphite pencils (personally I would use 2H, HB, and 2B) or a #2 pencil
• Kneaded eraser
• Blending stump (if you don't have one, you can make your own with a piece of paper. Click here and it will take you to a site that shows you how.)

Learning to Draw: Cleaning the Sketch

Hello there!

So we talked about 3 different ways to sketch and now we need to clean it up.  This is pretty simple but you want to take your time and do it as perfect as possible.  Since it's a cartoon, your outline is going to be pretty heavy and dark.

Before we go further, make sure you have sketched in the shadows and highlights (I forgot to do this in the sketching tutorials).  I usually only do this for a cartoon because shading on a cartoon doesn't blend like a real person or object.

What you're going to need

Learning to Draw: Sketching a Cartoon Part 3 of 3

Ok so in step 1 we just tried to draw without guides and in step 2 we tried using lined guides and shapes and that made things a bit easier.  I used those methods for years until I discovered the grid.  (If you have checked out the first 2 steps I recommend to at least check step 1 since that lets you know all the materials needed.)

This is my favorite method.  I've used this method in most of my recent drawings and I'm always pretty content with the results.  Basically what you're doing is creating squares and then drawing the image that goes in that particular square.  Of course you do have to zoom out with your eyes to see the whole picture to check it.  If you don't, something will get messed up along the way and look stupid.  Doing it on paper is more difficult because you have to draw the grid out so it's definitely time consuming.  But I have done it many times. In photoshop it's a breeze because you simply turn on the grid and use the count tool.

Pencil and paper

If you cannot draw on your reference image then use tracing paper or a gallon sized ziplock bag.

Learning to Draw: Sketching a Cartoon Part 2 of 3

Alrighty part 1 was nothing. Here we're going to get into more detail. Awesomeness. Yes.

Ok, so we tried drawing by just looking at a reference.  It may have been a disaster or it may have been pretty good.  But, honestly there are easier ways.  The next thing you can do is use guides.  With guides you're just drawing out lines on your reference image and then just drawing them out on your sketch pad exactly as you did on your reference.  Here's where you use your tracing paper.  You'll put the tracing paper over the image and then draw the lines on the tracing paper.

Paper and Pencil peoples

Preparing the reference image:

• Draw a vertical line down the center of Chris (or image of choice).
• Draw a horizontal line across the center of Chris
• Next, draw a horizontal line across the center of his nose

Learning To Draw: Sketching A Cartoon Part 1 of 3

First let me say that I was going to make this just one blog but it's super long so I'm breaking it into three parts. This first part isn't really a tutorial. It's more of a "here try this" with a video that I tried. But, it does include some things you'll need for the other two parts. Ok, on with it then!

Ok, so here's the first little tutorial thingy on how to draw. When you begin to draw, I think it's best to start drawing from a reference. Drawing from your mind is a bit more complicated if you want it to look realistic, so let's do the reference for now.  Later down the road we'll talk about drawing from your mind. I chose a cartoon to draw first because I think those are the easiest to draw. I just did a quick google search for Chris Griffin so we're going to go with this pic of him playing air guitar.

We're not going to be doing his reflection as that can be way scary for beginners.  Alrighty, obviously if you're using pencil and paper you'll need to print this out. If you don't want to waste all that black ink, I quickly took the black out of it for you.

Joining Blogger

Hey there!

I have decided to join blogger, blogspot, whatever. Joy right? Why am I joining? Hmmm, well I'm trying to get my art out and what better way to do than a blog? I do have a website up. It is still being worked on but you can go ahead and check it out here.

Alrighty, let me tell you a bit about myself and what I plan to do with this blog. My name is Stephenie and I'm 29 years old (for a couple more weeks *frown face*). I'm totally not thrilled to be turning 30 and not having even come close to accomplishing my dreams. Well, how can you when you don't even try? So, now it's time for me to get my butt in gear.

I consider myself to be a digital artist. I started drawing the traditional way with pencil and paper when I was 8 years old but it wasn't something I did very often. I considered myself to be a dancer and singer. I never considered myself an artist at all. Everything changed Christmas 2007. That year I got a Wacom tablet. I didn't break it out until late January but when I did I immediately loved it. Since then, I am constantly drawing. Nearly 3 years later I have tons of art to share. It still seems weird to consider myself an artist but when my husband was telling his friend that I was an artist, I figured it was official lol. Believe me, if you suck, he lets you know lol. Do I still consider myself a dancer? Yes, but I don't do it often anymore (other than chair dancing). A singer? No, but I still love to sing.