KyKy's Opencanvas Artwork

[Kyo Wolf]

Alright, in here I will be posting my art I have done in Opencavas.
These are based on the poses in the anime, obviously since I'm keeping the reference right next to the drawing. I show each step of the drawing; Outline, Basic Coloring, Shading on parts, then Final version.
The current project I'm doing is the Sohma family from Fruits Basket.

Kyo Sohma:
http://img209.imageshack.us/img209/2402/...hmaart.png
Shigure Sohma:
http://img402.imageshack.us/img402/6321/...esohma.png
Yuki Sohma:
http://img228.imageshack.us/img228/8285/yukisohma.png
Momiji Sohma:
http://img510.imageshack.us/img510/6381/momijisohma.png
Hatsuharu Sohma:
http://img197.imageshack.us/img197/5074/...usohma.png

I might be doing full art of them eventually, but as for now, only headshots for most. I'm open to critisism, but might not be able to fix them up without completely redoing, considering these are all finalized and its not done in simple pixels like paint, and the fact I saved as a PNG places everything in one layer.
Anyway, enjoy!

[slut]

umm

they're good but you really shouldn't be doing exact copies of pictures because its not gonna help you at all
your shading is also really wonky, you're not following a direct light source as i can count like 5 seperate ones in the first picture

[Maxpphire]

That and the way you shade the skin makes them look sick. When shading skin you should keep in mind that most people have kinda a pink hue to them and if you do a good pink and do overlay in ps then it generally works well.

[Kyo Wolf]

Alright. These are like my first few attempts at drawing humans on the computer with a mouse, so thats why I was copying photos of them, so I could get used to it, and that's also why I got the colors off. I showed them to my friends on msn and they said nothing so I had no clue I was doing the shading wrong or anything, and I'm not good at judging my own work or anything so I just took their word for nothing being wrong.
Thank you both for the constructive critisism, I'll try my best to keep it in mind when I redo these. I really appreciate it! Thanks!

[Maxpphire]

Alright. These are like my first few attempts at drawing humans on the computer with a mouse, so thats why I was copying photos of them, so I could get used to it, and that's also why I got the colors off. I showed them to my friends on msn and they said nothing so I had no clue I was doing the shading wrong or anything, and I'm not good at judging my own work or anything so I just took their word for nothing being wrong.
Thank you both for the constructive critisism, I'll try my best to keep it in mind when I redo these. I really appreciate it! Thanks!

Ummmm, I'm going to say right now that not having anything more then a mouse to work with is not an excuse for choosing colors. In fact I can choose good shading colors all day long and I don't even have a tablet with a pen yet. (I got my penless tablet durring this recent christmas and even before then I could choose all the colors I want.)

Also Most of us mainly use MSPaint with a mouse to make custom sprites so it isn't impossible to do computer art without a mouse either.

[Kyo Wolf]

Ummmm, I'm going to say right now that not having anything more then a mouse to work with is not an excuse for choosing colors. In fact I can choose good shading colors all day long and I don't even have a tablet with a pen yet. (I got my penless tablet durring this recent christmas and even before then I could choose all the colors I want.)

Also Most of us mainly use MSPaint with a mouse to make custom sprites so it isn't impossible to do computer art without a mouse either.

Ugh, I'm gonna freaking kill my keyboard. The one post I don't check it does this on. I MEANT to say,
"And that's also why I copied the picture. I got the colors off because I just think dull colors look better and didn't notice It looked weird."
But, it didn't come out as that. My keyboard messes up on me frequently (It keeps out tons of letters and sometimes even words and sentances.) so I usually have to double check, but I was in a rush at the time so I just posted and ended up not looking at it until now.
I have done another piece, which this is just coloring a manga page so I'm not posting this as official art in this topic, but just to ask if I did any better this time. Does it look any better now, or is it still the same with the skin or is it still not pink enough?
http://img707.imageshack.us/img707/3294/...olored.png

[Maxpphire]

The skin shading is a little off but it does look better. You need to work on coloring the face better on the brown haired one and you need to be more firm with the outlines that you traced over.

[Chutzpar]

If you only have a mouse to draw with digitally then my only advice to you is: stop trying to draw digitally. Draw by hand.

I'm rather of the opinion that most art should start with a real, tactile "you can hold it" drawing. There are actually very few people who can work 100% digitally particularly effectively; and I can guarantee that they all started out with real media when they were learning.

So go get yourself an HB pencil and a sketchpad and draw.
Also, it's totally okay to reference other artists work, but there are two caveats:
1- it's not a good idea to post it online and claim it as your own work. Because it isn't. It's study.
2- You still need to study real life. A lot.

Also, get the idea of style completely out of your head. That should happen organically. Especially get anime out of your head, and don't even think of using the "How to draw manga" books. They're awful and don't do much except teach you very bad habits. There's nothing to say that you can't adopt some manga elements into your style, but using it as a starting point is a very bad idea.

Here is what manga inspired artwork looks like if you study form properly.
Here is what manga inspired artwork looks like if you don't.

:>

[Maxpphire]

^^^^^^
Zeemort for the save. Listen to her advice, it's always amazingly good.