Mabelma's Thread of Stuff (Art)

[Chutzpar]

Are you doing much structuring for these? The feet and hands look kind of half-assed. Study them! Do a few pages that are just filled with hands in different poses and at different angles, and then another few pages of feet.

It's better to draw from real life, and hey, you have your own hands and feet to draw from: awesome. But you can also check out the Deviantart Stock Gallery. Just search for feet or hands and browse through stock images.
I'll warn you now though, about three quarters of the stuff that comes up for "feet" is foot fetish shit. It's not actual porn but it's still pretty squicky, and you'll probably have to dig a bit before you find anything to draw from. So again, I suggest you just go for real life anyway.

Also again keep an eye on your shading. Your lightsources in these seem more consistent, so that's a step in the right direction, but they're still shaded as though they're flat figures, with the possible exception of the face on the AbuelaDigital guy.

I don't want to give you too many things to think about at once, not to be patronising, but you're still very much a beginner and you shouldn't be trying to run before you can walk. Again I'm going to suggest you do way more stuff with a good old-fashioned pencil and paper and work on your shading. Your best bet is to do some figure drawing and some still life drawings in pencil or charcoal or a similar dry medium and really, really focus on getting believable tone and making your images appear 3D.

I'm whipping out the Paint-O-Vision to show you what I mean:

On the left is pretty much how you are shading. It looks like a button.
On the right is.. something like how you should be shading. It looks more like a ball with a rounded surface.

Do not use the above as reference or try to guess how to shade your forms based on my appalling MS Paint diagram. If you do I will know, and I will kill you. Go do observational drawing right now. RIGHT. NOW. Look at how light and shadow actually behave on 3d objects.

About observational drawings:
Look for solid geometric shapes to draw. Good things to start off with are soccer balls, fruit, coffee cups, empty toilet paper tubes, guitar amps, anything with a shape that is reasonably easy to describe with simple 3d shapes.

My method when doing observational drawings of this kind is to block out the basic shape in a coloured pencil (I personally use light blue), and then build up tone with conventional drawing pencils. Make sure to use a variety of pencils with different hardnesses to get convincing tone. If you don't have different pencils, get some. Most hobby or art stores will have "sketching sets", comprising of a set of pencils with different hardnesses.

Don't outline the form, think 100% tonally. Are there lines around objects in real life? No. So during these studies, do not draw them.
Also, really think about how you shade. If you are shading a curved surface, don't shade with straight lines. Curve your lines around the object.

Sometimes it helps to shade the whole form in one solid midtone so you have something to build on, then build up shadows with darker pencils, and use an eraser to draw in highlights.

[Mabelma]

Thanks again for everything Epixtasis. I really need a lot of help with my shading and my hands and feet but you just told me how to improve both of those things so I'm going right away and doing that. Thanks again for everythjng and thanks for the diagram. Your post is greatly appreaciated. Thank you so much for taking the time to give feedback on my work and to give such amazing advice but could I ask for you to critic the Tattoo design?

[Chutzpar]

I've already basically covered the problems with the tattoo design; inconsistent shading is kind of killing it, and again it's shaded like a carving or something rather than a 3d shape.

I... won't go into my opinion of getting a castle crashers tattoo, but if this guy's going to insist on it, the design needs to actually work as a tattoo.

Look at some tattooist portfolios and some tattoo flash sites; you can't really have little fiddly lines, or small sections of colour. Cel-shading doesn't really work for tattoos because they gradually lose sharpness as the skin ages. That fist would become a vague blue blob.

Usually tattoos are made with fairly even, thick lines. These days they can be in pretty much any colour ever, but certain colours work better than others. Pale colours don't usually work so well in large amounts, in most tats I've seen they're only usually used as highlights or for very small areas.

Really, it's a chronic lack of research this time. Aside from not really knowing how tattoos work as a medium, you are nothing like good enough for someone to get your work permanently emblazoned on their skin. If they want this tat that bad, they should probably go to the Dan Paladin and commission him instead. Or just show the tattooist what they want and see what they can do. IDK.

[Mabelma]

If they want this tat that bad, they should probably go to the Dan Paladin and commission him instead. Or just show the tattooist what they want and see what they can do. IDK.

Actually, that's what he's going to do. I really need to improve my art and thanks again for everything. I know I'm not nearly good for doing this kind of stuff so I apologize for that.

[Chutzpar]

Don't apologise! But it's important to know your current limits. Don't let them define you, but don't get disheartened if you try something and it doesn't work out- it just means you have to learn and practice before you can overcome it.

[Lexou Duck]

MABELMA ! Of all places, what are you doing here ? I'm Lexou ! Remember ? From the behemoth ?

Anyways, nice job, but as epistaxis said, shading needs a little work.

[Mabelma]

I knew your username was familiar, and that avatar.
Oh well I have been here for a few years now I just haven't been on for quite a while but I'm glad to see you here.

[Lexou Duck]

What can I say ? I'm a spriter !

[Mabelma]

Really? That's nice.

[Mabelma]

Back here, looking for comments. So let's get this started once more.
Remember that tattoo design, well it got done.

do not critic the tattoo as it wasn't done by me, I did the design.

Next we have some concept art for a little project that's going back and forth on my mind




I have a turnaround of the main character if you want to see it let me know so I can scan it and upload it. Also I will draw some in-poses for the character seeing as right now he needs a little life breath into him.

Below you'll what looks like an unfinished Little Big Planet Sackboy Dressed as IronMan turnaround


And for some reason, yesterday I woke up wanting to draw FatBatman

not really proud of his hands

Last but not least a little creature I did for a collab back at newgrounds


I have a lot of other stuff laying around so I'll look for that if you want to see it.

[Mabelma]

Eh, no comments. That's ok, I'll go ahead and post this up then.

That is the turnaround sheet with the expressions sheet together, I hope you like it. I'll try to work on some in action poses and see what I can come up with. Also excuse my inconsistency when it comes to sizes of the head, the body and the hands. I'm still battling to learn how to do hands but right now those hands are there to show he has hands, I'll fix it when I learn to properly draw hands.

See, I've learned to bump with content.

[Baegal]

the shading on duquev's shirt is pillowed.

[Mabelma]

His name is Duque but that's my mistake for having place the V1 and V2 so close to the name. Yeah I noticed that but I was just testing out some shading looks, I'll probably go with the non shaded style it's easier and faster when it comes to animating it. Thanks for your feedback, it's greatly appreciated.

[Mabelma]

Not much more regarding the Pillo Locon sheet but I made a few robots for a collab on NG, hope you like it.

C+C is greatly appreciated. Sorry for ink quality, i was trying out some things with my pens and things got messy and that transferred on to PS.

---

Respect the Squirtle, just a sketch. Probably going to ink it.

[Marth]

Those proportions are way off on the squirtle bro.