Ah HA, some productivity!!!

Like I complained in my last update.. It's been a while since I produced something I was happy with. WELL, to people who actually bother to read my blog, I present: Ain and Kara, my unofficial couple characters.

Aaaaah, it's been way too long since I actually enjoyed painting something <3

I finally ordered a new tablet, the latest Wacom, Intuos4, and gave away my old Graphire4. My new tablet arrived from Mississauga on Thursday, and expecting its arrival, I wanted to draw something to celebrate.

At first, I was going to draw Suka. Then I didn't want to, and instead tried to draw Ainmire, because I love him to bits and miss him. So I started to draw Ain, and I decided the pose was boring, so I erased it and reworked it, and decided I liked it and then got a funny idea... but there wasn't enough room on my paper to fit the idea! So I had to flip the page over and draw it again. I came up with this, and I'm very happy with it, though, as Leah pointed out.. I did take Kara's right leg too far.

I had so much fun paaaaainting it!!! This tablet is so smooth and easy to work with, there are no glitchy spots, or dead areas, and everything works beautifully. I unpacked it like it was something religious, and carefully packed everything back in it's box so I'll still have everything in one place. I set it up, installed it, and instantly started to play.

You can almost over look my horrible line work! Don't worry, a new scanner is my next investment, though I still have no idea what I'm looking at.

Anyhow, Ain and Kara. I wanted to try some different methods of colouring, as I coloured and deleted my work twice on Thursday. Yesterday I went in with a brand new 600dpi scan, and decided to experiment. I had been browsing tutorials the entire day at work (yes, I'm massively productive in my job), and I'd collected lots of different ideas I wanted to test.

First thing I read was to draw and paint the background first.. The artist who's tutorial I was reading said that it helped him stay motivated about the artwork, as the character was the most fun part of a piece. So, I tried to focus on the background first, and it really did help! Granted I still have a mudpuddle carpet there, but the washing basin turned out better than I would have expected! Had I coloured Kara and Ain first, I would have rushed through the background as an afterthought, and this prevented me from doing so. The tutorial I was talking about is right here, if you wanted to take a gander.

More than once I've read, or watched, or been told, about starting with a completely neutral colour and colouring on top. Alright, I'm up to try that! So I coloured in my lineart with a warm gray, and kept all of my flats on one layer; something I'd never tried before. With my line art completely and precisely filled in with a warm neutral, I locked the transparency and coloured directly on top of that, then built layers on top to paint on my shading. Previously I'd colour everything on separate layers, and I'd get long lists of layers with everything broken up, like "Shirt", "pants", "hair", etc etc, but this way I wound up with maybe four or five layers of shading-- which I found a lot simpler and will probably keep to in the future.

I even coloured my lines, something I'm still getting used to. With my horrid scans, leaving them stark black is just too painful to look at, but I wasn't sure if I liked colouring every line in a slightly darker colour than the paint around it. I didn't get a feel for it, and maybe I just need some more practice. Instead I went back and used colour balance to pick a colour for my lines, which wound up being a reddish brown colour. I discovered after I flattened the image it slightly takes away from Ain's costume, but I will eventually get around to repairing that... This time I still have a PSD file to work from. Yes, I thought ahead for once in my life.

New finished product to upload to my DA! Took me two days and a day of farting around with my shiny new E-Tab the second. WEEEEE!!! I love Ain and Kara!!

It was nice, sitting there working away, reworking areas I wasn't happy with, or that looked wrong, going back, touching up, darkening a shade here, lightening a shade here-- I think I got a taste of what my art idols feel like when they're in the midst of painting something. I am a very happy artist right now.