Tezkat's Art Training! (2013-02-01: Mateo)

[Tezkat]

So... it's been a few years since I've produced significant quantities of furry art.


Hmm... maybe I should rewind a bit...

I learned to ink a decade ago at a C-ACE workshop run by Chris Goodwin. I dutifully attacked the task with a small army of Micron pens, but it always seemed that my inking transformed previously vibrant, if messy, sketches into lifeless crap. Transitioning to full digital only helped insofar as little mistakes no longer meant ruining an entire piece. I even went through this period from about 2008-2011 where I'd literally just paint over all my lines when colouring because I was too ashamed to let them show. Then, at WTF 2011, I participated in a digital art workshop run by Guest of Honour Demicoeur. (I even got amazing free artz out of it since she picked my character for the workshop because I sang Portal's "Still Alive" for her... hence the portal gun. ) Watching her work live was a kinda "Aha!" moment for me where tablet inking suddenly made sense. I also grabbed Paint Tool Sai shortly after, which as it turns out treats my Wacom pen so much better than Photoshop does. It was a turning point where I became a lot more confident in my drawing skills. I like to think my lines are now slowly but surely becoming expressive enough to reflect the development of a personal style.

I've had the bug to seriously explore making comics since New York Comic Con last October. I've become disillusioned with the direction (or lack thereof) of my novel writing endeavours of late, and writing for a visual medium is a fresh and exciting challenge that could reinvigorate my poor creative juices. I've dabbled in comics in the past, mostly one-shot gag strips, but lately I've been inspired to try something a bit more graphic novelly. As a worldbuilding addict, I've created a number of interesting SF and fantasy worlds that I'm dying to explore. I even have a few hundred pages of a Furrae-based comic (Smoke and Mirrors, the RP character backstory I've been writing off and on for the last 8 years) plotted out and mostly scripted/storyboarded.

Unfortunately, as a brutally realistic appraisal of my art skills, I do not have the artistic chops to do any of these stories justice. The talent might be there, but the skill and experience most certainly are not. Neither is the speed required to work efficiently, which of course goes hand in hand with the previous deficiencies.

What's the solution to that?

Training, of course!


WEEK 1: Dynamic Character Lineart

[Tezkat]

TRAINING CHALLENGE #1 (Week of Monday, January 28, 2013)

For my first project, I want to work on improving (and in particular, speeding up) the process of going from sketch to colour-ready lineart for characters. My colouring has always been better than my lineart, so the latter needs the most work.

Thus, each night, I'll dedicate time to producing an inked sketch of a character doing something interesting.

I've mostly been taking requests from IRC. That saves me from having to wait for inspiration on my own and also provides me with unexpected challenges that can force me to work outside my comfort zone. Plus, of course, that way other folks get something out of my practice as well.

I'm placing three additional constraints to help direct the training:


1. DYNAMIC POSES!

My anatomy is generally decent. I started out on figure drawing with bodybuilders, after all. But I can't pose them worth a damn, and I've great difficulty conveying action in a scene. Nearly all my pre-2010 artz were just characters standing around trying to look cool. Most of the time I avoided even that and just drew busts. Drawing people doing anything interesting is a laborious process involving a lot of posing in front of the mirror, trolling Google images for refs, or (more recently) yanking models around in DAZ 3D. I'd like to get to the point where knowledge of anatomy alone should be enough to figure out where all the bits go.

All characters during this challenge must convey some sense of fluid motion.


2. CLEAN, SIMPLE FORMS!

One of my artistic crutches is that I take refuge in complexity. My technique tends to be very scribbly--rather than getting the shape right the first time, I keep texturing/rendering until I've built up something that looks okay. I guess you could say that's my "style", but it does run somewhat counter to the philosophy guiding my other creative ventures, such as writing, programming, or UI design, where I believe that something is perfect not when you have nothing left to add, but when there's nothing you can afford to take away.

For this challenge, I'll try to describe figures in a minimum of strokes and let the lines speak for themselves.


3. IT'S DONE ALREADY!

I'm a pathological perfectionist. I'll spend maybe an hour drawing a picture and the next ten fiddling with it until everything is just so. No. No. No. For now, we'll be emphasizing speed over quality, though hopefully not sacrificing too much of the latter.

Lineart in this challenge will be done when there's enough of the figure(s) to go ahead and colour, mistakes and all. After each piece, I'll sit down and lay out a list of criticisms for stuff that could be done better for next time.


Monday: Matilda Glomps Dan
Tuesday: Mink With a Zombie Cat
Wednesday: Mab vs. Porcupine
Thursday: Porcupine vs. Mab
Friday: Mateo

[Tezkat]

My first two pieces are DMFA fanart by request (unsurprising given the population fo chatters on llearch's IRC). I've tried to mimic certain elements of Amber's style so the characters would be more recognizable, but not copy her so much that it prevents me from injecting my own personality into the works.

Comments and criticism are most appreciated! Thanks!

I've added a few of my own notes in spoiler text so they won't prejudice your comments. (Alternately, feel free to read them and agree, disagree, or offer suggestions on how to fix them... )


MONDAY: MATILDA GLOMPS DAN

The first request came from techmasterglitch: Matilda glomping Dan. It wasn't really a training project yet at that point. I was just feeling artsy and was taking requests. This was definitely outside my comfort zone. ZOMGWTF tauric anatomy makes no sense to me.



[spoiler]

Dan looks a bit stiff. The effect I was going for was him just going limp to receive the glomp, since he's clearly enjoying it, but the pose is a bit wooden, and the angle around which he's folding isn't where Matilda is applying the most force.

Matilda's head might be stretched a little too far. Dunno. Originally, her torso was a bit further to the left, but that messed up the dynamics of squashing Dan's face against her boobs.

Matilda's midlimbs look off. These were very hard to figure out, since in that position they're structurally both arms and legs. They're probably not long enough to match the proportions of her hindlimbs.

In general, I found it challenging to try to give her body sufficient weight and structure while still maintaining the feminine curves. My Matilda turned out a lot skinnier than Mab's.

I'm so bad at drawing clothes. That should probably be a future challenge of some kind.
[/spoiler]


TUESDAY: MINK WITH A ZOMBIE CAT

So by this point I'd decided my character sketches would be a nightly training exercise. When the time came around to put in requests, Liatai inadvertently asked for a zombie cat. Then she asked for a Mink. And I was like... Mink and a zombie cat? That would be awesome! Mink is the type of squiggly I can picture being utterly delighted by a kitty even if it was rotting all over the place.

I originally had Mink in a standing position holding the cat up, but I decided partway through that that violated principle #1 on dynamic poses and knocked him over instead. As a bonus, from this angle, you can see under the skirt and still be no closer to determining whether Mink's a boy or a girl, which I thought was both deliciously naughty and terribly appropriate.



[spoiler]

Crap! That's not how Mink's feet are supposed to look! For some reason, I completely overlooked Mink's digitigrady when reviewing the reference pictures. Epic fail! In other news, I suck so bad at drawing feet.

By the time I got to inking the cat, it was late, and I'd kinda reverted to my old scribbly style. I suppose it kinda works, even though that's not what I was supposed be doing.

I really don't like how the hair turned out. I think it's partially due to a poor choice of reference comics that showed Mink with those weird flat bangs. For the record, most of the texture is me being too lazy to erase my old lines rather than trying to spice things up with rendering.

Mink's mouth is a little out of alignment with the rest of the face. I actually think it's in the right place, though, and the nose/chin should be moved instead.

The headwings don't look like they attach in the right place, and the "limb" structure appears  too short.

The butt-tail interface looks a bit off. The tail is so thick that it should probably squish more going under and spread the buttocks wider. Gawd, that sounds so dirty out of context...
[/spoiler]


What will Wednesday night's sketch be? Hmm... I don't know yet... Feel free to offer suggestions. Remember, the goal is a specific character (refs need, if applicable) performing some interesting action.

[Tezkat]

WEDNESDAY: MAB VS PORCUPINE (a.k.a. Death From Above)

Ah, it's my old nemesis, Perspective, and her evil spawn, Foreshortening! Sooooo hard!!! Some days I wonder how I'll ever be able to pull this sort of thing off without refs.

I do like to think my ability to draw clothing is improving, though.

Today's sketch comes to you courtesy of Fresnor, who requested "Mab vs Porcupine", and llearch, who suggested "Death From Above" for the pose.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

And to think I was thinking the other way around. *smirk*


For further suggestions, albeit not dynamic, I later thought about two porcupines in bed. The first says to the second "Do you wanna be big spoon, or little?"...

[Tezkat]

THURSDAY: PORCUPINE VS MAB

Food for thought... has Mab been unable to hug the porcupine because it's hard to hug a porcupine or because the porcupine is hard to hug? In the last sketch, we explored the former. Now it's time to give the latter a try...

Behold: Super Aikido Porcupine!!!




So just as soon as I post this, I realize that I've forgotten Mab's tail. Haha... soooo much fail. First Mink's feet, now this. Maybe I should stop doing my art practice at midnight?

[Tezkat]

FRIDAY: MATEO.

I'll have to blame the final picture of the week on Black_angel. Even though he didn't specifically request it, he's been proactively pestering me about rejoining the Flight of Fancy RP. So I decided to draw my character in order to get the creative juices flowing.

Mateo is an ocelot Were who was kidnapped on his way to college and is now stuck in a slave hold awaiting whatever horrible fate his captors/GMs have in store. It's not doing much good for his psychological state. Depressed kitty is depressed.

I suppose he doesn't look very oceloty, but then aside from fairly subtle differences in proportions, ocelots pretty much look like normal cats until you draw their spots (which I add during colouring, not lineart). Being an original character rather than DMFA fanart, this is probably closer to my "normal" art style, whatever that is...





WEEK 1 POST-MORTEM

Since I don't particularly want to burn out on my first week back at the drawing board, so to speak, I'm going to declare this week over. Apologies to those of you who submitted requests I didn't get around to drawing. Maybe next week...

So... what did we learn?


After having deliberately forced myself out of my comfort zone to draw a lot of unusual perspective shots this week, I've determined that my problem with characters is not poses, per se, but rather orienting them in space. Basically, anything beyond mild perspective screws up all the proportions I use to figure out where everything's supposed to go. For most of these sketches, I had to mock up the scene in DAZ first to see what goes where.

Multiple characters are even worse, as I not only have to position them in space but make sure that their bits line up to the corresponding bits on their partners. Those were at least fudged rather than referenced.

I'm not sure if there's really a solution to that other than hankering down and making the time to do a lot of speedsketch figure drawing practice.


I was pleasantly surprised that my feel for clothing folds and such has improved since I last took notice. At the very least, it's good enough to fool me.

My hands and feet still need a lot of work. That's definitely a major weak spot in my drawing that I'll need to practice more.


I failed horribly at trying to fulfill constraints #2 and #3. Old habits are really hard to break. These pictures were far more time consuming that I was expecting, and it didn't help that I usually started them after 10pm.

Fatigue when drawing resulted in two of the five pictures having glaring character errors (inadvertently drawing Mink with plantigrade feet and Mab without a tail). Not sure if there's some kind of process oriented solution to that (checklist maybe?) or if "don't draw when tired" is really the only way.

[ChaosMageX]

I wish I had the discipline to do what you're doing.  Right now I can really only draw when I'm medicated with my concerta.  However, your training is certainly making me want to try some training of my own, so please keep it up.  I'm really looking forward to seeing more of your art.

[Angel]

Not to quibble, but.... I'm a girl. XD

Wonderful drawing, btw.