My Colored Sketches: Is there a point?

[Test-0]

Well, I wanted to sketch up something else not related to TG (crowd goes aww), so I did up a Kagome shrink pic that I'll be coloring in various ways and post here to see what does and doesn't work. Hopefully that'll tell me more on what to do and not to do. For now, though, here's the sketch without color/background.

http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/56955879/

I didn't want another super shrunken pic, so I only shrank her down about a foot or so. Leads to some nice baggy clothes and lots of folds and whatnot to color in, but not to a full out puddle of clothing. :3 I'll give a few breezes though this and post up all the different types of coloring jobs/background work later.

[Test-0]

Ok, here we are with three types of backgrounds for the pic and some spiffy color on her as well.

First up, the 'googled' background. I image googled for park tree, set the image size for large and picked out a nice tree spot. Then I used some blurring and brush stroking effects to kill the jaggies and make the image less real (it was resized so only a small part was used). Change position to match with Kagome, and voila.

Second, I used the googled background for color samples and basicaly drew the same tree and grass, only with some nice sky too. Very sketchy, much to my own liking.

Finally I kept the sketched background, overlayed the googled one and changed it's render to mix with the sketched. This one looks much more CGed I guess.

So, what do you think? Which one do you like, if any?

[TrumanGrace]

I like the second background of those colored ones. The third one is too dark for me, although it's as distorted as I think backgrounds in those stock photo backgrounds should be. The first is too much like the original image, which I'm not a fan of. I think the second is the best that doesn't clash with the foreground.

I would have liked to see a no background image to compare the colored with though.

[Kojiro Highwind]

how about you make her all sexy like ^^ nya.....

hourglass her maybe? :3

[Test-0]

Originally Posted by Kojiro Highwind

how about you make her all sexy like ^^ nya.....

hourglass her maybe? :3

Agreed. :3

Now, this isn't the one I'll be coloring (maybe later), but hey, can't pass up a good boob get.

[Test-0]

Alrighty, I decided on a compromise with the last Kagura pics and combined them into one sketch that I then colored. Using the best parts from both, I redrew Kagura with AR and BE, no hourglass this time. More detail was added, but not splotched all over the place. Anywho, the background was the hardest part, but I wanted something a bit different from the close up background shots I've been doing.

So, any improvements?

[ZodiacX]

Youre improving, Test

[Grumpy]

Just a question, when you draw; do you draw "freestyle" or do you use the principle shapes as base? (cubes, spheres etc.) If you haven't tried the latter, I think you should. It practices your brain to percieve depth from a 2d image and after a while you learn to give depth through freestyle.

It's just a suggestion.

Regarding the coloring; I think your background got an upgrade but the shading on the character is a little bit odd, shadows on some parts but not on the other. For example, there's shadows under the cheek and arms, but not under her breasts.

I'm sorry if you don't want constructive criticism, so tell me if you don't want any.

[Test-0]

Originally Posted by Denny

Just a question, when you draw; do you draw "freestyle" or do you use the principle shapes as base? (cubes, spheres etc.) If you haven't tried the latter, I think you should. It practices your brain to percieve depth from a 2d image and after a while you learn to give depth through freestyle.

It's just a suggestion.

Regarding the coloring; I think your background got an upgrade but the shading on the character is a little bit odd, shadows on some parts but not on the other. For example, there's shadows under the cheek and arms, but not under her breasts.

I'm sorry if you don't want constructive criticism, so tell me if you don't want any.

Well, technically, if I didn't want criticism, I wouldn't have posted the thread.

Anywho, question one about the sketching tech: I use a bunch of circles for a skeleton, though most of the time I don't even stay within it's bounds. ^^; I think I have a good example of that in one of the pics I did... Ah here we go (attached image). As you might be able to see, the skeleton does kinda match, but not by much (in fact I had to shrink the skeleton down because a lot of times the height of characters I sketch are much taller then I had intended, so I shrink them down a bit after I sketch their body shape in). I prefer to go and freestyle whenever possible, because its just more fun for me to do. :3

On character shading: Yeah, I wanted to work more on the backgrounds then the characters color. The random light sources and whatnot make it look off. ^^; I'll try and do a nice character and background color job as soon as I can.

...come to think of it, I don't think I've ever done a colored version of just regular TGed me.

[edit] Whoops, might help if I press 'upload' after browsing for the image... ^^; [/edit]

[Test-0]

Alright, here's a colored version of this sketch I did, which it in itself is a resketch of this, which was also a resketch of sorts of this, which I didn't even originaly sketch at all. O_o;

No background, just a bit of a shadow painted under her to give depth. Tried to keep the light sources as constant as I could, but I likely notched it up a bit. ^^; Any better?

[TrumanGrace]

I think so, against the white background it pops out quite a bit, rather than having to compete with a rendered background. I'm not an artist, so I can't say if the shading is off, but I think I like that coloring style better than I like the ones with the background.

[Grumpy]

I think you should try to work a bit more on perspective using those simple shapes when drawing your characters. Learning perspective/foreshortnening adds A LOT to a drawing.

Do you use a mouse when you draw?