🔥💥☄️⚡️ULTRA GIFTS⚡️☄️💥🔥

[Delphinoid_]

Long post incoming, sorry!!

So where are your drawing skills, today? Would you say you've improved vastly over the years, a little bit, or have your skills remained stagnant?

For instance, maybe draw something like this:

*pic*

The picture from this post was really obvious AI art, the fact that it has a watermark is really funny in a depressing kind of way.

The bottom picture from that other post was something I did years ago, while the picture from the top left was something from around last October (so pretty recent). Comparing the newer one to older stuff, I think there is clear improvement, but a lot of it is maybe kind of subtle. I think the subject matter of what I like to draw is cringey / not very appealing to most so I can understand not wanting to look at it much (especially since it's kind of amateur), so maybe I can save you the trouble and elaborate on what I mean with words.

• The head in the old pic is too big (and is comprised of simple geometric shapes - triangle for chin, circle for head, etc.) and the limbs are way too thin. The new pic has much better proportions: the head is a slightly better size (still a bit big though) and, while the limbs are still kind of "tubey" (in particular I never finished the arms / hands lol), there's a bit more definition (visible kneecap on the left leg rather than just a spherical bend for example). There's still a lot of room for improvement here, and I think at this stage studying the underlying muscles more closely would be beneficial. The back for instance is especially bad and I had a lot of trouble with it, but I'm happy that I tried to do something harder - I think the visible spine is cool, even if it didn't turn out very well.
  
  
• The face is more detailed and WAY more expressive in the newer pic. There are visible lips and a nose, a subtle cheek rather than a flat line for the right side of the face, slightly more detailed eyes (nicer lashes and "bags" below the eyes, I wanted to draw one eye gouged out but never did) and a more passable ear rather than triangles. I didn't get around to drawing eyebrows, but even so the face has this sort of oxymoronic expression - it's crazed yet placid, and has this sort of distant longingness to it. It's really weird and unsettling. This is exactly the expression I was trying to execute, I was honestly really happy to feel like I got it.
  
  
• The hair is more detailed and natural looking. I want to practice drawing hair more honestly. I want to start doing thinner strands but more of them, rather than clumping it into one shape. There's still a lot of work to be done here.
  
  
• The pose and angle is more dynamic. Rather than a really basic front view picture, the character's body is at a weird angle facing away from the viewer. They're hunched over, on their knees and looking over their shoulder. It's just a lot more interesting (and harder to draw).
  
  
• I think what I'm least happy about with the new picture though is the gore. I want to practice drawing nicer looking gore more as well.
  

I also never use any references, ever, and I think it probably hurts my ability. It's not necessarily out of stubbornness, I've just never really been able to find helpful references for things I've wanted to draw. I think the only time I've used a reference was when I did that 3D model I showed. But my reference for that was a 2D character design sheet that I did... without a reference.

One thing that I guess should say though that like... for various reasons I don't get much of an opportunity to spend time on my hobbies these days (in the context of drawing this means only sitting down once or twice a year to draw for example, really bad I know). When I do draw I end up spending only a short amount of time on line art and then never finish it, as is evident from the pictures I showed (since by the time I return to it I'm bored of the idea and want to do something new). Between those pictures I probably only did a handful of drawings, which were also incomplete sketches.

I think a lot of my improvement comes from thinking rather than doing. When I look at other people's art, I like to analyze it as much as possible. For example, some things in the AI picture that immediately grabbed my attention:

• The visible palmaris longus muscle below the wrists, as well as the cubital fossa on the right arm. The left wrist looks quite weird though, pretty typical AI stuff.
  
  
• The prominent jugular notch in the neck. Whenever I draw characters from the front I like to add the jugular notch and clavicle bones, they're a really efficient way of breaking up the neck / chest areas and making them look less flat. You can at least see the latter in the 3D model, although they look a bit deformed and the default Blender lighting doesn't emphasize them as much.
  
  
• The lower ends of the fibula and tibia bones around the ankle, as well as the (vague implication of) arteries in the foot.
  
  
• The creases on the jeans are a little random in places but still look really nice. I really love drawing cloth but haven't done anything crazy with it in a long time.
  

There are also some significantly less graceful elements that jumped out at me:

• Hands (obviously).
  
  
• Both feet are abnormally twisted, this is especially visible on the left foot (which looks like it's on sideways).
  
  
• Where the pelvis should be based on the midriff doesn't line up with where it actually is based on the jeans (i.e. she has two hips).
  
  
• The creases in the shirt make no sense.
  
  
• Inconsistent lighting.
  
  
• The hair is imbalanced in a really weird way, and the eyebrows look like they were painted on and then smudged.
  

Obviously despite its flaws and the fact that it's AI it's still better than what I can do, but what I wanted to say is that when I look at art like this, these are the sorts of things my attention is drawn to. Then when I do get around to drawing, I try to pay more attention to these sorts of elements that I think are cool in my own pictures. Actually I think my journey as an artist has pretty much been identical to my journey in being able to appreciate other people's art; being able to identify and appreciate the subtler components of other people's artwork seems to be the main thing driving my improvement in the absence of constant practice.

I guess to finish this long rambling, there are also some aspects of my stuff that I think are bad but that I'm not too concerned about. For starters my art style is pretty exaggerated - you'll notice in all of the pictures that I draw elements that I want to draw attention to really big, like eyes, eyebrows, mouths, ears, extremities and so on. This is just how I draw, my art style has sort of trended towards less cartoony proportions over time but I still have no interest in going all the way. I think this roughness and lack of subtlety separates it a bit from more traditional anime aesthetics, it gives it almost a kind of "Western" look which I'm not totally opposed to. The other thing is colour - I pretty much exclusively draw in monochrome, since I never get past the line art stage. I have experimented with lighting a long time ago, and it's really fun, but it's an inefficient use of the little time I spend on drawing (at least in terms of outcome). The last time I did anything with colour was probably this:

https://github.com/Delphinoid/SDLOpenGLB...Lenticular

I basically drew sprites of a character standing and running from 5 different angles. You can see it in action by downloading the binary. Alternatively here's a GIF of the running animation when viewed from the front. The framerate is low since I had to animate this character from 5 different angles (front, 3/4, side, 1/4, back).



Doing all of these animations took a while even at this framerate, but I did it iteratively over the course of a year. I was motivated due to wanting to use them for a game idea in the future.