Posts made by MissMarck

I've been working on watercolors a lot over the last couple of months. Ever since I tried out gouache way back in March, I've really been enjoying the lovely quality of paint. Then a friend gave a me a really good set of watercolors, and I fell in love all over again!
Something I've been trying to challenge myself with is "clean" mixing. I tend to get muddy colors, so I've been working really hard to pay attention to what colors mix well together. My style of inking is pretty clean and bold, so I want my watercolors to have a similar feel. It's easy for me to go overboard with layering, but I find that I prefer to do mixing ahead of time, and then do fewer layers (so the white of the page can add some luminescence...?) I hope that all makes sense! My goal is to one day color an entire comic with watercolors, so I need to find a way of painting that is efficient and consistent.

It looks great!
The only thing that I'd suggest is maybe moving Sophie to the left and make her face the other way.
For some reason, having her directly lined up with Michael makes it the composition feel stiff.
(Actually, moving her to either side would probably work! Just something to break that "straight line" from Michael.)

To me, slow means a) taking my time with my watercolors and b) walking arm-in-arm through the snow. Also uploading on the last possible day!

Loooong time no see, SVS! I've only participated in one contest before, but after months of working like crazy, I decided to tackle Slowvember! My personal goal was simply to take my time on a single illustration. I wanted both the image and process to be relaxed and deliberate, instead of rushed to make a deadline. So to me, slow means a) taking more than a day to do a painting and b) walking arm-in-arm through the snow.

Below are some notes/revisions I made along the way, if anybody's curious. I was inspired by a few vintage magazine covers, but I still wanted it to have my style. I used W&N Cotman watercolors for the sketches, and then Paul Rubens watercolors for the final illustration




(Glad to be back in these forums!)

@jen-sweeney The idea is to build a "portfolio" of studies, so probably all 20 It's a ton of work, but I can personally say it's life changing!

Ahhhh I've missed these forums!

I'm venturing into new territory: printables! I grew up homeschooled, and I'm around a lot of homeschoolers where I live. It's a largely Christian group, and lots of people have told me how hard it is to find high-quality coloring pages (of religious-specific stuff) to print. I've hesitated getting into it myself because spending a few hours on nice linework, only to sell it for a buck or two sounds like a bad idea.

But I've been doing more research into people who sell printables on Etsy, and it looks like it's "a thing." Not like a "quit your day job" thing (because art), but a decent market. While I could only sell my images for like $3, I would only do the work once. No printing, no shipping, no stocking. If I could sell a $3 drawing of a cute angel 15 times in a month, I'd be pretty pleased, to be honest.

In addition to the printables, I want my store to carry the original ink line art (significantly more expensive) as well as watercolor paintings based on the image. It's a weird new direction for me, but I'm pretty pumped about the support and interest I've received from various Christian/homeschool groups. Fingers crossed!

This is a sample of what I'll be selling. After I draw the lineart, I clean it up in Photoshop, and then livetrace it in Adobe Illustrator, so I have a resizable vector file.
To be honest, this looks like the first page of a 'guardian angel' comic, which I kinda want to do now XD Still some tweaking to do, but overall, this is what I'm going for. Does my study of vintage book illustration show?

Anyways, I just wanted to share in case anybody else might be interested. I'm hoping to launch my store Dec 3, so I'll let you know how I fare!
I also started a separate Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/littlebeadsillustration/

Hello, and welcome to the forums!

I agree with @Jazeps-Tenis and suggest starting with the fundamentals. Jake Parker's class "How to Draw Everything" is particular phenomenal! I review it regularly whenever my art feels like it lacks spark.
Also doing life studies! Drawing people and things from observation really helps train your eye, brain, and hand to work together. Best of luck!

For me, everything is so easy to tweak with digital tools: you can click and drag, undo, adjust colors, etc. But what I discovered is that I was using all of these tools without really understanding the basics of shape, color, or composition. My "bad habit" was that I dove into fine-tuning and adjusting way too quickly.
Traditional art is harder to "tweak." You can either add marks or erase them, that's it. Learning to work with those limitations means being more thoughtful and deliberate with your mark-making.
I took a step back from digital for almost a year, and focused on pencil and ink (with occassional markers.) Now that I'm using digital more regularly again, I feel a lot more confident and in-control.
I think digital tools definitely offer a shortcut. But shortcuts only work if you know where you want to go, so to speak.

@tayson awesome! Glad it helps!

The main thing I noticed was the center of balance seemed off, which tends to flatten a character. Once you have the character firmly balance on their feet, they feel grounded and "real".
The other thing is that the underlying shapes seemed uncertain. I know you said you're in the development stage, but that was the other reason these drawings didn't quite have a 3 dimensional feel.

Once you get the underlying structure nailed down, I think you'll have something to build expressions on Hope this all makes sense!
(Also, I kinda thought a dashed line made a friendly/cute seam.)

These characters look super adorable! Would you mind if I did a draw-over to make my suggestions?

@pamm I definitely love the vintage style! I'm excited to integrate it into my work!

I tried to click on your Pinterest board, but it didn't work. Maybe your board is set to private?

@lmrush thanks for the feedback! I was originally going to have her facing the moon, so you can't see her face, but after taking a break, I think a profile shot would be better

@mallette Yay for Nancy Drew!!! I was just thinking I wanted to swap one of my dream portfolio pieces for one of the interior illustrations from Nancy Drew! I copied those all the time when I was little!

As others have said, the artists you mention definitely understand the underlying structure!

Speaking personally, taking figure drawing classes helped me figure out my own style a bit more. Previously, I just "stole" from the manga I read, which meant I was simplifying someone else's simplification, without knowing the structure. Understanding the human figure helped me figure out my own tricks and shortcuts (aka my style!)

@a-nano-mouse Thank you! I've actually tweaked it a bit more, as I figure out who I really want to study, and which artists I just like (but I don't really want to imitate.) Added a few illustrators this morning, so Rockwell got the boot XD

Just for kicks, I started a separate board for my studies. So far, just a study of Marjorie Miller, but man I learned so much from that one piece! Excited to apply it to my own work!

I'm using my own prompts for Inktober this year, but my main rule is to not overthink each prompt. This isn't supposed to be a chore or a "job," it's supposed to be fun!
But to make it easier (and narrow down ideas), I'm also doing a continuous story for my prompts. Same characters, different settings/scenes. I've seen people choose a subject matter (robots, fairies, dinosaurs, etc) for the prompts, so that may help

@tessw Looking good! Glad you found my post inspiring (Also a good way to tie in the Inktober prompts!)

@ben-migliore It is pretty much concept art for my own project! I have another big project that gets priority right now, but it's on the verge of wrapping up in the next few months, so I'm sort of considering what I'll do next... so this Inktober project is sort of my way of "testing" the story and characters to see if I want to go on with them.

@tessw Thank you! I definitely narrowed it down from all of my other boards on Pinterest. Before I started I actually made a short list of things I'd like to be "known" for. In other words, my Dream Portfolio keywords ha ha! Blocky/bold colors, clean lines, expressive characters, narrative/story, vintage texture/feel, economic marks: if a piece didn't match most of those keywords, it didn't make the list!
I like your collection so far! Lots of beautiful work to study!