Rather than necro my own thread, I feel it is time to start fresh.

First of all, our dA group is undergoing some changes and hopefully will grow some. We're still absolutely tiny, but here's the link to it: http://lusternians-on-da.deviantart.com/ I will be going through dA again and adding any other Lusternia-themed art that has been missed previously due to my inactivity. The group really is just to collect up all of our art on dA for people to view in one place.

I'll be posting recent stuff within the next few days, but to give you an idea as to my work:

http://asterkat.deviantart.com/art/Shatter...511132&qo=0

http://asterkat.deviantart.com/art/Gracefu...511132&qo=5

http://asterkat.deviantart.com/art/Portrai...511088&qo=5

http://asterkat.deviantart.com/art/Mike-Sh...511088&qo=0

And as such, I am always looking for one-word inspiration suggestions. The first two are what was developed from one-word suggestions, the last two portrait requests. They're all rather old, but I'm a terribly moody artist. Will be posting a couple of WIPs soon, as I'm working on some new artisanals.

Someone spilled paint on the ink drawing I was lovingly working on.

*wince* I'm sorry to hear that.

So I turned it into something else!

*immolate thread*

They aren't the best things in the world, but I want to point out this and this to all you artists.

Both are super easy to use. The first one even lets talentless hacks like me make things that vaguely resemble things!


(Holy crap what is that thing? O.o)
And the second you can save any pictures you draw in sumo right to an account so that you can access them anywhere.

Though who hijacketh my thread shall be killed by horrible art.

I had to hijack it! The artists neeed to knoowww!

So, what's been keeping me away from Lusternia themed art? This recent project:



I still consider it to be a WIP at the moment, but for the purpose of the class it's done.

Looks like you distorted the face and made it a bit stretched out compared to your reference. The shape of the back of the head and the angle of the nose/eyes are also off. I know if you're in an art class you probably hear this all the time (at least you should!!) but when you're drawing, especially from a reference, you cannot think of what you are drawing as an eye or a nose or whiskers or what have you. You have to see it as shapes, and only shapes, or else you start screwing with it subconsciously to make it fit more with what you think "eye" "nose" and "whiskers" should look like.

Your values have promise and you chose a good shade for the darker part of the body in the back of the picture, but it looks like you were a little lazy with the markings on the top of the head and the whiskers. The shading on the nose is nice, but as I noted before, it's not the right nose!! Did you make that nice highlight and not want to get rid of it? I've been there, but sometimes you have to remember that making it look right is more important than keeping a nice-looking incorrect shape.

Thank you! You saw exactly what I saw and wasn't afraid to say it. I practically felt like scrawling all over it in GIMP and pointing out all the issues with it, in certain places. The face is distorted some, partially due to a lack of a few lines in the southwest part. What I really should have done was drawn it upside down like I normally do.

Yes, I did get lazy when it came to the markings on the head, and overall the shading was sloppily done. It was more... I just transferred into the class and needed SOMETHING for my art teacher to mark me on.

Thanks for the pointers! I've always been terrible at drawing anything with fur, so let's see what happens in the future.

I started my first ever artisanal.

(And I love it so far. Even if it doesn't win, I will still have epic love for it. )

Jealous. My tablet is broken and my scanner sucks, so I don't know when I'll actually have something good for artisanals again. I have a few not so impressive doodles lying around that I guess I could throw together for a submission, but not being able to make something shiny and new is destroying me. I wanted to draw Mysrai!

On a topic besides how sorry I feel for myself, watch out. Artisanals are like crack. I think once you hit your first rank milestone and get the extra chunk of credits is when they really hook you. I got a merit this past month, but that was enough points to bump me up to the next rank, so I got about 500 credits instead of 50. As long as you submit something you spent more than five minutes on, you're almost guaranteed to at least get merit. I love the artisanals.

Heh. I don't like doing digital artwork, so I've been doing something traditional and I'll clean it up in Gimp. I'm not sure it's even worth a merit, but meeeeep. I loves it so much it just makes me squeee, and I'm not even sure why.

Also, TABLET NEEDS TO BE FIXED SO I CAN SEE MORE FANTASTICAL PHEEBS ARTWORK.

I bought my sister a tablet, I guess you're next on the list Phoebus.

Looking at previous winners for artisanals... the majority of them are digital pieces. Do the judges not like traditional, or do most artists who submit do digital artwork? I'm afraid that my lack of talent when it comes to computer generated art means I won't have a shot at winning. >.< Meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep.

Should not have to matter tbh. but know that traditional art is really affected by the quality of your scanner and how good you are with that.

Yeah. I'm pestering my roommate into taking it to his college to scan it on one of the good scanners there.

Personally, I call my scanner the jpeg artifact machine.

If you have a really good camera and a room with good light, you can also do a setup with taking a picture of the work and then cut the borders off. But that may be a little tricky too. There are those that swear by it though but you need a fancy amount of megapixels and put it somewhere that doesn't add shadows, highlights or colors that shouldn't be there.

I've made an attempt at it once or twice. Frustrating!