Drawing Realistic Clothes

One of the things I’ve always found hard to do was painting clothes. Drawing clothes in general really and ever since I started digital painting and drawing realistically, I found myself avoiding clothes. For example I would draw portraits and focus more on the face rather then the body and clothes. Well my good people that has changed!

I found a free ebook online that shows you how to draw like the pros in photoshop. I have read over a few times and I think I’m getting better.  I read it a while back and I didn’t really understand it and when I read it this time around, I understood it a little better but I accidentally ventured away from it kind of haha

Here are my attempts!

Attempt #1:

This is the first time I ever tried drawing realistic clothing by following the directions. I just thought where the shadows and the highlights of the woman’s body would be and I just used that as a guide. I just drew in where her body was and her hair just to give her form, I really wanted to just concentrate on the dress.

Attempt #2:

I’ve realized that a problem I have with drawing realistically, I tend to zoom in on a certain spot and work on it so much to make it realistic that when I zoom out, it looks out of place. That’s what I think happened with the folds on the red dress around where her leg is pushing the fabric, in the middle of the train.  I know that all I have to do to fix it is just bring the rest of the drawing up to speed with that area but I find that challenging. I prefer to keep all my work on the same page but sometimes I get ahead of myself. That’s ok though; I’ll get better at this some day haha.

By the way, if you want to check out the ebook on how to draw clothes yourself, follow this link and download it for free. =)

Art is for you

…and no one else.

Hey everyone, lately I’ve been feeling kind of blah…I think stressed may be a better word actually. I’ve been planning a video tutorial on the basics of how to draw but when I went back to it the day after I started I saw so many things wrong with it and thought “how can I teach someone to draw when I don’t really know?”

I’ve also been stressed that I can’t come up with anything to draw, nothing good or anything that I would actually stick with. These thought brought my spirit down a great deal. I’ve been lagging in an rpg with my friend (which I feel really bad about) and haven’t been drawing much…trying to but nothing concrete really….

Today I talked to a friend of mine about it and he suggested I was just being too hard on myself. Story of my life or any artist or anyone for the matter. It’s common knowledge that many artists don’t like their own work and always find something wrong with it. I’ve always thought that it was because, as the artist, we see the mistakes it took to achieve the art and everyone else just sees the final image. Kind of like with you draw you can still see the erase marks.

Another thing that damped my spirits in the past about art is that I wouldn’t get a lot of views on deviantart and youtube or comments or faves.

When I talked to my friend today he said that I do art for other people and that really art is just for me. This is so beyond true and I hate that he’s right and I that I didn’t realize that before. Art is a form of expression and you can’t limit or adjust your feelings just so that someone else will like it or approve of it. It’s like tip I’ve read an author gave on writing; don’t worry that your mother or neighbor will see what you wrote, don’t change the facts because you’re afraid of what other people will think. Just write. This applies to art or whatever you want to do in life really.

I still feel like I can’t express my emotions though. I know that if I said this to my friend he’d just say I’m being too hard on myself but really, I think I just can’t get down what I’m feeling; it’s just something I need to work on. Practice does indeed make perfect…or improvement anyway.

Another thing I keep doing is comparing my art to others. I look at popular art I see on DA or somewhere else on the internet then I look at mine and think “holy crap…that sucks”.  If you’re like me and you do this…don’t! We can’t live that way, always comparing ourselves to others…we’ll always find something wrong no matter what. Now comparing youre current art to your old art is ok…you could learn about your progression. Looking at other art is good too; you can learn other methods or just get inspired…or get happy looking at it ’cause people feel better when they see something they like haha.

My art teacher last semester use to say that a lot of artists have problems getting over kinesthetic energy which basically being afriad of making a mark on your paper and messing up. Ya know the solution he had to that? Well when I had trouble drawing a tree as an in class assignment (trees are pretty hard to draw haha) he took my hand, with the charcol between my fingers, and draw a crap load of lines all over my paper. He drew them in simular lines to that of the tree and said “there’s your start.” I thought he went totally bonkers when he did that, I got a little mad too ’cause my paper looked a mess….but he had a point. Just start drawing and let the thoughts/expressions flow from your brain/heart through your arm down to the paper.

My teacher sure did know what he was talking about….another thing he use to say was “draw the dance the tree is doing” which I’ve always thought was kinda funny haha. What he meant was just draw the shape of what you want to draw and ge the motion and feeling down. Then you go back and develop it.

So what did we learn today?

~Art is for you and only you.

~Don’t compare yourself to others becuase you’ll always find something wrong

~ Make marks! Get over that kinesthetic energy!

And lets just add this even though we didn’t go over it:

~ Have fun!

That last one is a given

Nico de Mattia

Hello all! Today I thought I’d talk about one of my favorites artis. He’s a digital painter and he makes peed painting vdioes on Youtube. If you haven’t figured it out yet, today I’m going to talk about: Nico de Matia!

Nico de Mattia is an amazing artist, he does a lot of caricatures but they also have a realistic style to them.  What I mean is that his charactures don’t look cartoony, instead they look like he took a photo of a person and just ditorted it haha. Here’s an example of his caricatures.

In case you didn’t recognize these two characters, the first one was Hugh Jackman as Wolverine and Will Smith as…well…Will Smith haha. These photos are amazing! Even if you’re not into carictures (like me) you have to admit they’re very good pieces of art.

Well, if you’re mind isn’t blown yet….ha!It will be….

What I think Nico does best is his photo realism paintings….admire these photos!

You’re mind just blew up didn’t? That’s ok, mine was too the frist time I saw this guy’s work. He seriously paints these, such talent he has! He uses photoshop, camtasia (to record), Priemere CS (for video editing) and a pen tablet…I think he uses a Wacom Intuos but I’m not sure, don’t quote me on that! haha

If you for whatever reason don’t believe he painted these or just want to see the painting process (which is probably the most likely reason haha), you definately should check out his Youtbue channle which you can go to  here!

Also, make sure you check out his blog, he has a load more art work there that isn’t on his youtube channel.

Nico de Mattia’s blog

I hope you enjoy Nico’s work as much as I do. When I frist got into digital painting, and I was waiting for my tablet to arrive in the mail, I was sooo excited and I watched a bunch of Nico’s speed painting videos over and over again and thought I’d be just as good when I started! xD Which, of course, is not true haha. One day I hope to be just as good but I’m pretty proud of myself to getting to this skill level of only doing this for about a year. =) I’m sure if I keep working at it, I’ll be great too.

Oh, one more thing before I go. I have about 4 art projects going on right now…two of which are big projects as in they’ll take time and two smaller ones which shouldn’t take very long. I always start a bunch of projects that makes me take longer to finish xD

I”m sorry but ya know art takes time. Once in my art teacher back in high school told us that one student didn’t have their art project done in time and the escuse he/she gave was that you can’t rush art! Brilliant! It’s soo true….no matter how hard I try…. haha

Ok, I’ll let y’all go now. In between posting art pieces/videos/tutorials/other things about art, I’ll try to post about other things so that we have something to do/talk about while we wait for my slow butt! lol I’ll talk to you soon! byee!

Off Day

So far today isn’t such a great day for art. I tried a few different things that all sort of just sucked.

I have quite a few art projects in progress; I just don’t know how to finish one before starting another hah. So as I started on one I think would be pretty cool but I only made him look dead with the color of his skin tone. I some how used grayish browns…he looked so gross! haha

Well I gave up that and started to work on a eye painting tutorial. I started pretty ok but then I realized my proportions were off and I didn’t have the right colors. I had to go in to fix them but I was just like “ah screw it.”

Now I’m attempting vectoring but right now I’m not sure that’s such a wise idea haha.

Oh the other day I tried to make a vlog video but it was horrible. xD Mostly because of lighting in my basement but also because of my bad acting haha. So I’ll try to make one again whenever I figure out a better way to go about it. Any ideas, suggestions, tips or whatever about videos and how to make them are more then welcome! =D