Arty Antics and Similar Stuff

[Mantis]

I guess it'll depend on what the anxiety is surrounding. Prior to me doing this last year, I had huge feelings of inadequacy about my art ability, to the point where I wouldn't draw anything at all because I just assumed it wouldn't be good enough. Inktober helped me push through that, gave me just a little bit of focus and direction to get me started. It made me produce *something* every day, but because of the obvious time constraints it took some of the pressure off as even with all the positivity in the world, I knew that I wouldn't be making a masterpiece every day for a month.

Similar really. I burned out drilling lots of different fundamentals topics and got frustrated at how slow my progress was at being able to apply anything to any actual drawing. It wasn't fun to spend 95% of my drawing time just doing exercises but I couldn't produce a finished piece without being very conscious of how bad it was, even little sketchbook doodles made me feel like none of my fundamental learning sessions were actually sticking.

It's been nearly two years since I picked up a pencil or my stylus now. Well, actually it's been ten minutes now, seeing as I just made a start on today's prompt. Annoyingly I'm off out shortly though so won't have time to finish it today most likely.

[Raid]

Grand. I hope you get something out of it as I did. I have to admit I very nearly didn't start yesterday. I used to dedicate the mornings of weekends to drawing, but it got to about 10:30am yesterday and I hadn't managed to as much as turn on my Cintiq, the old blank page anxiety having crept back in. I'm glad I persevered though.

Anyway, I'm sticking today's in a spoiler tag as I think we have at least one arachnophobe on the forum, although I suspect it's probably not necessary because it's very silly. When you see today's prompt of "Spiders", does your mind immediately leap to "Terrible artwork from an 80s microcomputer magazine letters page"? I'm not really sure why mine did.

Day 2: Spiders.

Spoiler

[Mantis]

Quite sloppy and was rushing towards the end because I want to go to bed so the shading is all over the place. But it'll do. If I'd had time to finish it I was going to have him doing different things with every arm.

Spoiler

[Snowy]

Spoilers unnecessary, for me at least. They are useful little things, and often fascinating, am just not a fan of their movement. I wouldn't go as far as phobic though, I just let them be and they do likewise

[Raid]

3. Path

I didn't expect to have more than half an hour today to draw something, and given how slow I tend to be doing anything remotely complex, I went with something simple and literal if vaguely abstract. It's not very interesting.

Quite sloppy and was rushing towards the end because I want to go to bed so the shading is all over the place. But it'll do. If I'd had time to finish it I was going to have him doing different things with every arm.

I really like that. Shading's not something I'm expecting to do a lot of this year due to the time constraints, but I'm also trying to limit myself to just a standard ink pen. I want to focus more on line weight and maybe basic line shading rather than endlessly dig through all of my textured brushes and whatnot.

[Mantis]

Brush packs are a deceptive rabbit hole to go down, I think you're wise to keep it simple and focus on core fundamentals like line weight and composition. When I started out I spent quite a while downloading various brushes trying to find one that I really gelled with, but all the best artists who do Youtube tutorials (those that aren't trying to sell you their own brushes that is) say that you don't need much more than a hard edge and an air brush. Get good with the basics and you can recreate the effects of most other brushes easily enough.

I've refined my collection down to five or six basic brushes now that are mostly all just slight variations on each other with things like opacity tweaks (some for painting, others for line art), a soft air brush and a blending brush. All the crazy textured ones are in a different folder on Clip Studio which I only delve into if I want to add finishing touches to something.

[Raid]

Honestly the only pen I've liked for linework is CSP's default G-Pen and the textured version. Nothing else draws as smoothly and cleanly. I only tend to use downloaded brushes for painting with.

[Mantis]

Yeah the G-Pen is my favourite too. Both of my main line art pens are slight variations of it, plus a couple of others with a little more ink bleed on for when I want to give it more of a brush pen feel.

[Mantis]

Didn't get a chance to finish yesterday's prompt until now. I don't think I'll be able to do every day as I'm pretty run off my feet with work and have a few plans in the evenings over the next couple of weeks. So rather than agonize over keeping up I'll just pick it up as and when I can. Today's prompt didn't really inspire many ideas in me anyway so no harm there.

Day 3; Path

[Raid]

That's a much better idea than what I came up with.

I'm wondering whether I should try to keep up trying to do these every single day when two days a week I'm only getting maybe half an hour to draw something. I'm trying not to give myself excuses though, as the goal is to get myself back into doing this frequently.

Day 4: Dodge



The sound of the shells was deafening. The artillery unit had already proven impossible to outflank, commanding a position that gave it easy control over the entire valley. We were stuck, cowering in our trenches as day turned slowly to night. Our only plan was a charge across no-man's land, hoping that even a few of us would be left to fight. No, it couldn't work, we'd lose too many, no man could clear that field without being cut to pieces. No man....

From the back of the dugout there was a quiet scraping noise. My gods we'd almost forgotten him! He didn't speak much, he would always blend into the background. But he was there. As the gas lamp's flicker sent shadows darting across the room, he stepped into the light. Warren Officer 2nd Class Benjamin Bunson...

(I thought I'd posted this last night. I certainly wrote the text on here, thankfully I'd copied it to a discord channel so I didn't lose it. )

[Raid]

Day 5: Map


Another somewhat rushed one, only had about 40 minutes to do it. Still reasonably happy with it, I think I'd had put a little more detail in, particularly in the surrounding area.

[Raid]

Day 6: Golden.



Well a hoard has to start somewhere.

[Mantis]

That's great, really like that one.

Been a super busy few days for me but hopefully I'll be able to do something with today's prompt.

[Raid]

Day 7: Drip

I was thoroughly un-enthused by today's prompt, until I realised I could use it as the name of a character, so here's Drip, the Slime Knight. I initially did a god-awful cutesy-style character with big eyes, as I figured the name sounded like it would suit someone young, but I absolutely hated it. Giving him a visible skull worked so much better.

[Sly Boots]

Is that a... corvid skull at the bottom?