Bone Wasp for the big art trade thing!!

Linky! Sorry it doesn't look all that much like him, I made him look a bit more like a real skeleton... Or I tried...


Anyway, tell me whatcha think, Serengeti!

Do more.

Work on it for.... 12 hours!

Work on WHAT for 12 hours?

The arty art! Add more shading, more bones, clean up those shakey lines, etc

I would... But Serengeti has been waiting wayyyy too long for this, and I've got comic strip stuff to work on, and other people's drawings, and... the group pic, and avatars, chibis... Aaaagh...

at least work on it for as long as you think pep will work on yours

I have no clue how long Pep is going to work on mine. I don't know if I've even seen her artwork.

And when I shade, bad things happen. The world will end. People will spontaneously combust. Like, as soon as I start shading. @.@



I really can't shade, though. I'm terrible at it. It messes up my drawings.

So put it in a different layer! Practice! You know why you're terrible at it? You need to do it more! Get feedback from people. we'll help you get better at it!

*is trying to be encouraging!*

The problem though is I have no idea how to start shading something. What do I make shadows cast from, how do I make some places lighter..?

Here -- the whole page.

Exactly!

What you need to do is set up a still life, and stare at it for a while. See where the shadows are falling from your light source. See where there is reflected light. It is really hard to explain in text.
http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/40473828/

Like I did there (well ignore that stupid square under the handle, my prof told me to put that there so i did, i don't understand it).

I'd say start with simple shapes and figure out how to shade those. Cube, Cylinder, Cone, and Sphere.
Shapes!
(but again, I don't understand the shading on the back side of the cube, it should really be flipped around but... eh, that's the way professor wanted it, but since you're not in a class you can do whatever you want )

And apolgies for the crummy camera phone pictures, the shading IS more indepth than all of that.

But give it a try!

Derek, Rowr is trying to encourage you to try harder, to push yourself a little, to get better.

Not to be mean, but in response it sounds like you're just making excuses for NOT trying to get better.

I'm saying this because I have seen this same thing in a dear friend of mine - they bemoan how bad they are at this thing, but when I offer her advice, she comes up with dozens of excuses why she cannot change anything.

Do not be afraid to put in some extra effort to improve. Do not wait to begin trying to improve. Do not fear change. You are the only thing holding you back. It will take some time, but if you don't push, even just a little, you'll never improve.

You CAN do this. Really. We believe in you. But you gotta try.

What program are you using? MS Paint? There are some great FREE art applications out there (I remember seeing a thread about this a while agao).

Yeah remember when I started Derek! I was one of the many people who ALWAYS said I couldn't even draw a stick figure!!!!

Heck I -still- say that even though I know better. Granted I have a long way to go but I'd say I have improved a great deal. Just gotta try new things and even it if doesn't work out you've learned something too!

I think you might be like me. You want perfection from the FIRST moment you put down the pencil. Weeeeelll ain't gonna happen. Someone once told me that you have to push through 100 bad drawings for every 1 good one.

I'm still on drawing #10 or so

Thanks, that helps.



I need to get a picture of my brother or somebody and figure out shading on a human body...

no! do shapes first!!!!!!!

Human body is one of the most difficult things to draw!

Do shapes! Then do a human body MADE up of those shapes? Like cylinders and boxes and spheres, you may have seen sketches like that.

You're the artist, you decide where the light comes from. Pick an area of the page and designate that as the lightsource. Or actually have a light source in the composition.

One of the first things you do in a formal art training is to learn how to shade basic shapes (spheres, cones, boxes, etc.) A good thing to try would be a sphere. Draw a circle, pick a corner of the page to be the light source. Then draw five little boxes near the top of the page and have the first one be a light grey. Then have each one after that be a couple shades darker.

When you do the sphere, the brightest point will be white, with no shading. Then you move a bit farther away on the surface of the sphere and cover the rest with the light tone from the first box. Then move a lttle farther in and use the second tone, and so on. Be sure that you shading follows the contour of the ball to suggest volume. The darkest shadow on the ball will be somewhere just below the middle. The ball will actually lighten a bit as you reach the bottom due to reflected light from the ground.

Good art requires a knowledge of shading. Even the most basic cell from an animation with limited tonal palette will have degrees of light and shadow. Shading is what contributes volume to a picture and it's essential if you're going to communicate the kind of materials in your scene (e.g. skin, leather, glass, metal, etc.) The sooner you get a grip on this, the sooner your art will progress.

gah Rowr scooped me

I'm talking cell shading here, though. Not like pencil shading.


That's what interests me.

Yes. That was one of our early assignments in art class too, the shaded boxes. Though we did 9 boxes not 5.

What you do after you draw out the boxes, you make the very last one as blackity black as you can make it with pencil. Then you do the middle one and make it an even value that is what you guess to be half way between that darkity dark and the other end which will be paper-white. Then you pick the boxes halfway between that middle value and the dark, and make that box half the value between. And so forth til you fill in all the boxes.

[ QUOTE ]
I'm talking cell shading here, though. Not like pencil shading.

That's what interests me.

[/ QUOTE ]

So you're looking at mostly just one darker shade area, maybe one lighter shade area, and one shadow area - ala Anime/ or cartoon shading? You can also get one of those posable wooden manniquins and a desk lamp. The mannequin is much simplified from a real human and thus will simplify the shapes of the shadow.

EDIT: Like this?
http://laerry.rpgdarkside.com/Oekaki2/ranmafistA.jpg


Dug these out of myfavorites, hope they're helpful

a deviantArt page that has lots of links to tutorials

http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/...=cuts+tutorial


Polykarbon tutorial pages

http://www.polykarbon.com/tutorials/index.htm


and some free or low cost art programs:

the GIMP. It's free.

http://www.gimp.org/


ArtRage 2 both a free edition and a full version for $19.95

http://www.ambientdesign.com/artrage.html


Pixel image editor for $32

http://www.kanzelsberger.com/pixel/?page_id=12


Project Dogwaffle 1.2 - I believe its free

http://www.thebest3d.com/dogwaffle/f..._dw12free.html

Wow. Lot's of links. I'll look at those.

I just noticed a "Cel Shading Tutorial" over on Deviant Art by lastscoinz here:

http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/31279103/

(over on the left side, under "Add To Favorites" is a "Download" icon where you click to download a PDF)

This guy's pretty goot at coloring, so I thought you might like it.

Cool, thanks.