Lomgren's Art (updated Nov. 29, 2006)

[Lomgren]

Greetings and hello everyone.  It was a bit difficult for me to work up the nerve to post something here, as I still consider myself a beginner at things.  Anyway, a while back a friend requested a drawing of Jyrras from DMFA about to be glomped, without him realizing it.  I thought I would see how I could do, and the result was this (click for a larger version):



Originally done in pencil and scanned, I then ended up tracing over the lines in the GIMP freehand (crude, I know) and digitally coloring it.  I know the shading isn't the best either. Comments and advice are welcomed .  And no, I don't have a tablet, just a regular mouse.



*edit*  Listing all the posts where I've posted art here, besides this first post:

Fancomic for EGS
Brokenhearted
Brokenhearted, color version

[Netami]

Haha. You gon' get glomped.

[xHaZxMaTx]

Wow, you did that with a mouse?!

[Lomgren]

Tracing the pencil lines with a mouse, which made things easier.  I doubt I could do it without a reference.

[xHaZxMaTx]

Still, that seems ridiculously difficult, you must have a really steady hand.

[Lomgren]

It's definitely not easy.  And if you look at the normal-size version, you can see minor bobbles in the tracing... it's not something I usually do, actually.  In previous fanarts and drawings (such as for El Goonish Shive, which I don't know if I'll post here or not) I just tried to mess with the levels in the GIMP to get the lines black.  But this one had light enough lines that I deemed it necessary to trace to get it to look good.  I'm glad I did.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

Optical mouse, then?

optical tend to be easier to hold steady than ball mice, overall. Trackballs are easier again, but drawing smooth lines with them is an art that requires practice.

And, of course, there's your photoshop/gimp technique. Handy use of the undo, and doing your drawing in lots of small chunks is what *I* personally find most efficient. That way, when you undo, you undo in bits, rather than whole segments...

I expect Lomgren has a better technique, and more experience, than I do, however. I'm a curious dabbler, so I tend to know how, but not have practiced. :-)

[Zedd]

Too bad he wont see it

[Lomgren]

Optical mouse, then?

optical tend to be easier to hold steady than ball mice, overall. Trackballs are easier again, but drawing smooth lines with them is an art that requires practice.

And, of course, there's your photoshop/gimp technique. Handy use of the undo, and doing your drawing in lots of small chunks is what *I* personally find most efficient. That way, when you undo, you undo in bits, rather than whole segments...

I expect Lomgren has a better technique, and more experience, than I do, however. I'm a curious dabbler, so I tend to know how, but not have practiced. :-)

Yes, I do use an optical mouse.  And I do agree that they are a lot more precise than an older ball-style mouse.  I've used a trackball a little bit, but I prefer a mouse.  And Undo is definitely good, though I tended to trace in longer, more flowing movements.  If I messed it up, I did Undo it.  Though I think this is the first time I tried tracing stuff in the GIMP on such a large scale, so to speak.  Another option I've been thinking of is to use paths, since you can set them a lot more accurately... though I think that would actually take longer to do.

I think I'm better at digitally coloring than digitally drawing.  But my techniques there could probably also use work.

[Nikki]

0w0 wooooowwwww....

[Lomgren]

*blushes a bit*  Now you're making me feel a bit embarrassed... I know there are some problems with the piece such as the shadows on her face, and possibly along her body.  If anyone can give me some constructive criticism on it, it would be appreciated.

[Zedd]

Not "so" bad but I stil llike it..Do you do requests?

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

*blushes a bit*  Now you're making me feel a bit embarrassed... I know there are some problems with the piece such as the shadows on her face, and possibly along her body.  If anyone can give me some constructive criticism on it, it would be appreciated.

Well, if you -want-... Jy-Jy's neck is too long, and he has no shoulders. His chest is possibly undersize - I'd have to compare to some original art, perhaps the DDR pic on mabsland?

And, as you say, the shadows. Remember, shadows on the underside of the body aren't clean-edged, they fade in as you move underneath. Hold your arm up to the light and look at the underside, and see how it fades in? There's a clean edge, but because of the roundness of the arm, it _looks_ like it fades in, as all the vertical bits at the same time means the ege is spread out a bit...

In the pic, I'd say "smudging" the shadow line down the body might help, blurring the line between light and shadow. The other thing is her left foot has no apparent light above it, yet her right foot does...


... All in all, a great pic, but there's a couple points you could work on. Helpful?

[Boog]

Really nice pic. The fact that you did it with a mouse is freakin' impressive, and the shadow underneath the pouncing fangirl's a nice touch. My only critique is some anatomy and detail stuff; the arms and legs you draw seem a tad disproportionate, and the faces are shaped a little funny. Otherwise though, as stated, freakin' impressive.

[Lomgren]

Not "so" bad but I stil llike it..Do you do requests?

I can do requests, but I'm going to wait to open them.  I've got a large backlog right now of stuff I'm trying to do from another forum, if I can ever get to it all.

Well, if you -want-... Jy-Jy's neck is too long, and he has no shoulders. His chest is possibly undersize - I'd have to compare to some original art, perhaps the DDR pic on mabsland?

And, as you say, the shadows. Remember, shadows on the underside of the body aren't clean-edged, they fade in as you move underneath. Hold your arm up to the light and look at the underside, and see how it fades in? There's a clean edge, but because of the roundness of the arm, it _looks_ like it fades in, as all the vertical bits at the same time means the ege is spread out a bit...

In the pic, I'd say "smudging" the shadow line down the body might help, blurring the line between light and shadow. The other thing is her left foot has no apparent light above it, yet her right foot does...


... All in all, a great pic, but there's a couple points you could work on. Helpful?

Yes, that's definitely helpful.  I can easily work on the shadows to improve it a bit, as it's in layers in a .xcf file.  And it wouldn't surprise me on proportions... I only started drawing again after I started reading El Goonish Shive, after years of not drawing.  If you are curious, you can see how I progressed a bit by checking out my deviantart page, http://lomgren.deviantart.com, as I did join very recently.

Really nice pic. The fact that you did it with a mouse is freakin' impressive, and the shadow underneath the pouncing fangirl's a nice touch. My only critique is some anatomy and detail stuff; the arms and legs you draw seem a tad disproportionate, and the faces are shaped a little funny. Otherwise though, as stated, freakin' impressive.

As I said before, the original was drawn in pencil and scanned... it's not just using a mouse, it's tracing a previously existing line with a mouse.  Let me link the original scan for comparison (click for a larger size):


If you take a look at Anna, the glomper, you can see why I thought tracing would be better in the long run.  The lines on her were... let's just say not done well, and not darkened at all.

[Tapewolf]

Well, I can't really add anything constructive.  The shadows do need work, but I can't really explain why.  I do know from study and what I've read that Amber's technique is mostly to add different colours rather than by using the burn tool.  That might not necessarily be the style you're after anyway.  But do keep it up.

[Lomgren]

I don't use the burn or dodge tool... what I do is have a pure black layer, set on a transparency value that varies depending on how deep I feel the shadows should be.  So far it's worked well for me, but I might need to look at a different technique for what I want to do.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

I was going to recommend against the burn or smudge tool, since it probably won't do what you're trying to accomplish. Or, at least, in my unskilled hands it won't :-)

[Zedd]

Wow and I am still learining how to use photoshop at college/school

[James StarRunner]

Most impressive! [/darth vader voice]

[Shadrok]

[Yoda voice] Hmm, good with mouse you are, yes. [/yoda voice]

[Lomgren]

Well, I don't know how many of you read El Goonish Shive, but I recently finished up a fancomic for it, and thought I'd go ahead and post it here to get some comments on it.  I know that there are some proportion issues already, and her face on the last panel is off, but I'm happy with the result.  Click for the full-size version.



Technical specs - drawn on paper with pencil during ComicCon, and scanned at a high resolution.  Traced using a mouse in the GIMP and digitally colored, with text added during the same process, and then reduced to 25% width and height, 1/16th original size.

[Zedd]

Yikes...Nice pounce

[Drake Manaweilder]

I think you coulda' added some shadows on the ground for the trees, and Grace looks a litle man-ish for reasons I can't explain, but other than that it's very good!

[Lomgren]

Well, I'm still trying to get back into drawing things  .  I didn't have a lot of practice drawing people, realistically or otherwise, in high school or elementary school, unfortunately.  So she probably does look a bit masculine, but it's something I'm working on.

And I debated on the tree shadows, as I wasn't sure about adding them in.  In the end, I didn't, and I've already posted it over at the EGS forums, so I'll just leave it as is.  But I'll keep it in mind for future work.

[Lomgren]

I know I haven't been around a lot lately, because I have a tendency to be... well... really active over at KeenSpot, mainly in EGS Mayhem there.  So I don't draw a lot.  But... I have something new to post.

On Monday, I got the news that my Grandma had passed away.  Today, I finally had to break down and draw something about it.  Click on the pic for the slightly larger version.

[Zedd]

*gives you a big warm cubi based hug*

[Jim Halisstrad]

 

You have my condolences.

[Lomgren]

Thanks, I appreciate it.  I finally got around to digitally coloring it... lineart and everything done with the GIMP and a mouse.  Click on the pic for the slightly larger version.

[Zedd]

Dont you cry no more my dear friend....This too shall pass...