Me and My Photoshop: the neverending picture: updated!

[hopeless shade]

well, i finally registered! after lurking around for a while, im pretty anxious to see what you guys think of my stuff.

i have been working on this picture since the end of november. usually i take a while to color things, but this is ridiculous--its still very obviously not finished.

as of now i havent colored the whole entire chest area, and i need to figure out what to do with the edges of her arm and leg armor- right now i only have black and grey lines. and of course plenty of jagged edges and no background.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v42/chocolatecatgirl/DOA-critique.jpg

huge disclaimer: THIS IS NOT MY LINEART! see the nice little copyright in the corner? in other words, if you tell me that the hand is too small, or the eyes are wacko, i will agree with you whole-heartedly....but thats all i can do. i didnt draw it, and im seriously reconsidering using other people's line art in the future. being in control of the whole piece really would be nice...

[Tully]

im seriously reconsidering using other people's line art in the future. being in control of the whole piece really would be nice...

You can stop considering. Go do it! Right now! Colouring is a wonderful thing, as are collaborative pieces, but you're seriously limiting yourself if that's all you do. Good drawing is far more fun, and you'll get more respect for sure. Check out www.saveloomis.org for some fantastic free drawing books. Do your anatomy work and STAY AWAY FROM ANIME. I can't stress that enough. Stylization of any sort is crippling for novices. You probably want to keep photoshop on the shelf until you learn the ropes with real paint as well. It has that same effect.

And if you don't believe me, every person but the greenest noob on these boards will tell you exactly the same thing.

With regards to the colouring in this one, the thing I notice first is quite a common problem. You're just shading with a darkened version of the local colour, which just makes things look flat and boring. Check out some colour theory tutorials in the tips and tricks forum. Great info to be found over there.

Good luck!

[hopeless shade]

i dont know why everybody keeps thinking all i do is shade with the base color! i highlight too, more then i shade sometimes...so depressing. painting class is next year though...hopefully ill realize what im doing wrong before then.

and yeah, im gonna start making my own lineart. my drawing class has been really helpful in raising my self esteem about my artwork, so i figure it wont be too hard to start drawing my own stuff. thanks so much for that link- ive heard about loomis but never can remember where it is.

and i know to stay away form anime, but man! do you know how hard it is for the umotivated to find non-anime lineart? hehe, they're just enablers, you know. if there wasnt any line art in the world id be forced to draw my own and then i wouldnt have any problems!

[Tully]

Perhaps my wording about the shading bit was sort of ambiguous... so allow me to clarify.

What your problem is, is that to model the values of the form (i.e. shade and highlight) you're simply darkening or lightening the base colour. Adding just black or just white will not work. It will never work in a coloured piece. Ever.

What you need to do is determine what light exists in the space you're trying to create and how that light will behave to reveal the space to the human eye. If the main lightsource is a yellow light (like an incandescent bulb) the highlights will be more yellow. If there is a green lightbulb, the highlights will be green.

Very rarely is there only one light source in a room, so the shadows will not be all black. There is reflected light from other objects in the room that shows up where the main lightsource isn't getting to... in your case your space is brown, so your shadows will be more brown.

See what I mean?

And good, draw your own stuff :)

[hopeless shade]

thank you for clarifying! i went and looked up color theory and got the same basic idea, but you made it a lot clearer. im gonna see if i can experiment with that next time i work on this. hopefully thats soon, i hate it when i have the inspiration and not the time!

[gallon]

to go into this more deeply ...check out prom's tutorial...

http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=37474

knock yourself out ... much information

[hopeless shade]

okay, more motivaion/inspiration needed....i cannot get this thing to look right. i have too many WIP's on my computer, i need some finished products!

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v42/chocolatecatgirl/DOA-another-critique.jpg

look at the brilliant fake almost-background! ill paint it myself, dont worry. sooner or later....ugh. its all skewed and everything, i HAVE to paint over it!