Strength and Weakness

Phact0rri · Post by **Phact0rri** » Thu May 11, 2006 10:47 am

I been thinking about this a lot, lately as I figure what to study in my attempts to continually increase my skills as an artist. And I'm sure with lots of the "what can I do to improve, how well I am doing" posts both here and on CG. This post might force people to look at what they need to work on. The idea is what are your strength(s), Weakness(s) and what are you studying on (if applies)

I'll go first.

Strength: I'd be one to say I don't have any strength that just kicks the ass of everyone, but the one thing I'm better than anything else on, is character design. I have an ability to give features to characters, that are diffrent than any other character on any given panel. One can always diffrenciate between my characters. even if certain body features remain the same. Clothing, hair, and porportions are understood enough for me to make this, something I suppose I have a natural eye for. I get a lot of positive comments about this. Someone at work told me my drawings made me look like the lost child of will eisner.

Weaknesses: I have a lot of these, most specifically, the technical side of drawing is my weakest link. I tend to use photo refrences, to try and work on this a lot, but I still have issues putting the right shapes, and designs in my lines when I draw from photo. This probably also comes from my horrid hand to eye cordination. I also feel that my shaping of geometric pieces is sort of weak. as shapes and sizes which go hand in hand with perspective is pretty much in an blank slate. I try to apply what I know of skeletal/manikin drawings to backgrounds and organic forms, but it still doesn't work out as well as I'd like. My understanding of shapes, in movement, as well as forshortening, interior perspective, as well as sizes here in is a bit off as well.

What I'm studying: I had been studying anatomy for about nine months straight, and have taken a break from that and have been doing contour drawings to work on my, hand to eye cordination in the hopes it'll help my technical drawing skills a little.

RemusShepherd · Post by **RemusShepherd** » Thu May 11, 2006 12:01 pm

Strength: Textures. I'm a texture maniac. I can make clouds look like clouds, leather look like leather, and hair look like hair. I generally don't have time to do fancy textures in my webcomic, but I am creeping them in slowly now that I've gone to full color. You can start to see, now, that I'm much more of a painter than a sketch artist. I've fooled around in oils and acrylics a lot more than I've doodled with a pen.

Weakness: Anatomy and colors. Anatomy is a weakness because I have no formal art training, only what I've read from books, and I've spent years drawing furry porn which is not good practice for drawing human beings.

My colorblindness is a different kind of weakness, one I won't be able to overcome, but working in Photoshop mitigates it quite a bit.

Working On: I just bought a book on how to draw Facial Expressions -- I will get facial anatomy right if it kills me.

After that I want to figure out armpits, which still confuse the hell out of me. I should also practice on action scenes...I think I have the basics for them, but I'll need to improve some.

Garneta · Post by **Garneta** » Thu May 11, 2006 4:37 pm

Strength: I don't think I really have a certain one. I do have an ability to draw cute things, animals, and flowers...but there aren't many of those in my comic.

Weakness: Hands and feet, mainly. Hopefully I'll get better at them, though!

Working On: Shading and color. I think that the better I get at that, the more my comic will look like I want it to!

TheSuburbanLetdown · Post by **TheSuburbanLetdown** » Thu May 11, 2006 4:52 pm

strength: proper use of perspective, uses backgrounds, never avoids drawing hands a feet, subtle facial expressions.

weakness: updates only once a week, inconsistency (some pages look amazing, some really suck), forshortening of the limbs, hands (sometimes; a consistency problem again).

working on: drawing the body from unusual and dynamic angles for dramtic effect, proper folds in clothing.

Phact0rri · Post by **Phact0rri** » Thu May 11, 2006 11:49 pm

proper folds in clothing is something else I really need to focus on learning at some point. course I got a gigantic list of stuff already

Dutch! · Post by **Dutch!** » Fri May 12, 2006 1:07 am

Strenth: No one draws quite like me.

Weakness: No one draws quite like me.

Working on: Getting better at drawing like me.

Faub · Post by **Faub** » Fri May 12, 2006 10:37 am

Strengths: I try to spend at least 12-16 hours a week drawing, no matter how busy my schedule.

Weaknesses: I've been going to bed at 4am after a 16 hour day. It's starting to wear on me, but I have the pink elephants marching in a row correctly. It's just that a few of them are marching backward. Darn elephants.

I'm currently working on cleaning up my inking and using white ink. Attention to detail and photo references are important, but I don't always get to use them.

Phact0rri · Post by **Phact0rri** » Fri May 12, 2006 11:50 am

faub wrote:Strengths: I try to spend at least 12-16 hours a week drawing, no matter how busy my schedule.

THat was another question I was going to ask. *chuckles* as I can usually only manage about eight hours a week at home, to work on my comic, and I am always running behind on my comic, and at home I only get to CG least I have days off.

how do you manage that much time Faub? Do you have a set amount of hours a day that you put aside or do you just squeeze in when you can?

Kris X · Post by **Kris X** » Fri May 12, 2006 12:32 pm

Strengths: I always try to improve myself and update my styles. I'm always out to please the eye and have tried/experimented with as much material I can get my hands on. I also have started sketching again to practice.

Weaknesses: I suck horribly at drawing females. I just do, it's getting ugly. I can also develop a shaky hand after too much drawing which makes for bad line art.

Working on: Females and consistancy.

Johndar · Post by **Johndar** » Sat May 13, 2006 1:48 am

Strengths: I can create dynamic poses out of my head without ever using reffrence art, and am good at drawing clothing folds and flowing cloaks. I'm also pretty good at shading with lines

Weaknesses: I need some work on drawing bare feet, and while I am fairly strong with females, they lack something when compared to my males. I am easily distracted from my work, and need to improve updates for my comic.
My lines are a little sketchy, and I would like to improve my Cg colouring. I can't draw animals that well, or vehicles. also need work on backgrounds and scaling. Uhh... there may be a few other things, but thats it for now.

Studying: using traditional means to colour. I.E. pencil crayons, perhaps paint and markers. I've seen some amazing stuff with markers and pencil crayon, and would like to use them in some of my work.

Hale · Post by **Hale** » Sat May 13, 2006 4:38 am

strengths: Variety, I like to mix it up w/ several mediums, pens, pencils, flash, 3dsmax, photoshop etc, etc...

weaknesses: Can't stick to one style. Also -- boobies.

working on: A permanent drawing style, starting from pen.

Keffria · Post by **Keffria** » Sat May 13, 2006 5:29 pm

Strengths:
-I can ink cleanly (digital or by hand).
-I have a decent grasp of perspective.
-I work hard to incorporate interesting "camera angles" when I can.
-I spend at least 12 hours a week drawing.
-I've gotten better at panel layouts, I think, to the point where people can generally figure out what's going on in what order.

Weaknesses:
-I'm not very good at colour work, especially in traditional media. In particular, my shading tends to be very flat, and I'd like to develop a better grasp of how different types of lighting (lamp-light vs. sunlight, time of day, etc.) can affect how an object looks in colour.
-Shading in high contrast (i.e. black and white only) is also not a strength for me -- I'm a greyscale girl, I guess.
-I'm not great with character designs -- few of my designs would pass the "silhouette test", and they tend to be on the bland side.
-If we want to talk comics, specifically, I'm not very good at holding to one plot or idea; I get bored easily, and end up weaving together too many story threads to manage properly, given my typical update schedule. I also have a tendency to slip into purple prose in my scripts.

What I'm Doing...
-Taking photo references of interesting buildings/articles of clothing/scenes/etc. and acquiring architecture and fashion-related books to use as inspiration.
-Trying to plot out arcs and stick to what I've planned out (rather than adding things spontaneously, saving them for future stories).
-Generally working away on various comic projects; I've come this far mostly through practice.
-Attempting to show-rather-than-tell in comics, thereby (theoretically) eliminating a lot of that purple prose.
-I've recently resolved to start carrying a sketchbook around again -- I've relied solely on my tablet for too long.

KittyKatBlack · Post by **KittyKatBlack** » Sat May 13, 2006 8:18 pm

Strengths: The female body. From what people are telling me, I do this quite well.

Weaknesses: Everything else. I'm not kidding. Other than the female form, I can't draw crap.

Working on: Uh... trying to draw more than once a week? *cough* I'm too lazy. -_-

Terotrous · Post by **Terotrous** » Sat May 13, 2006 8:22 pm

KittyKatBlack wrote:Working on...

Hopefully more of the female body.

Anyway:

Strengths: Writing.

Weaknesses: Drawing. And updating.

Working on: Nothing right now, as I'm sure people who visit my sites are aware.

Faub · Post by **Faub** » Sun May 14, 2006 1:15 pm

phactorri wrote:how do you manage that much time Faub? Do you have a set amount of hours a day that you put aside or do you just squeeze in when you can?

It's not easy. You have to do more than one thing at once. I got out to each so I don't have to cook then I draw and eat at the same time. I usually spend like 3 hours in Subway a night. I have also been getting like 5-6 hours of sleep a night recently. But classes are over now so WHEE!!!

Smorris · Post by **Smorris** » Mon May 15, 2006 1:08 pm

Strengths:
-Decent handle on perspective
-Good (I think) character designs that are easy to tell apart and descriptive.
-Clean inking and good contrast

Weaknesses:
-Backgrounds: I tend not to draw them and when I do they're often sparse.
-Shading: I have to learn to stick with a light direction.
-Artist's block: Sometimes its really hard to get drawing, but when I do get going I can go for hours and hours.

What I'm Doing:
-Building a buffer for a relaunch of my webcomic that starts May 29
-Trying to stick to a regimented schedule of production
-Reading all I can on art techniques and looking things and hashing them out when I have problems. I would really like to take an art class - figure drawing probably - but I don't think I have the time or money.

Boogiebop · Post by **Boogiebop** » Fri May 19, 2006 2:29 pm

Strengths

Working on a canvas size so fucking huge I'm essentially drawing life sized portraits of my characters which I then shrink so much none of the detail can be made out.

I'm getting better.

Weaknesses

Composition, editing, perspective, I'm colour blind (no really, ever notice how the couch changes colour in my comic? That's not on purpose) and I shade like a Nato bombing campaign. Everywhere and anywhere.

Working on: Pretty much everything. Although in particular I'm concentrating on stepping away from my faux animeish work and towards more distinctive pastures.

Corgan_dane · Post by **Corgan_dane** » Fri May 19, 2006 6:05 pm

Dutch! wrote:Strenth: No one draws quite like me.

Weakness: No one draws quite like me.

Working on: Getting better at drawing like me.

Ditto that.

Christwriter · Post by **Christwriter** » Sat May 20, 2006 9:36 am

Streingths: -The pretty colors. Between the shading tricks I've figured out and the sheer fun of coloring in Photoshop, I'd wager that coloring is defenately one of my stronger points
-It doesn't take me very long to finish a page. I've gotten it down to a full page a day (two to three hours to color, and maybe another hour to draw a new page for the next day). I'd like to shave it down a little more, but don't expect too much out of it.
-Between the speed I can make pages and my biweekly update schedual, my buffer is massive and growing nicely
-I love my story. When I hit a section I've wanted to write for a while, the inertia from the enthusiasm can defenately peak out my abilities. I've got no interest whatsoever in stopping because I want this story to be written in full, in glorious color, for the rest of the world to see.

Weaknesses:
-A fan/friend discribed me as a "hyperperfectionist". Abso-freaking-lutely true. I've also got VERY sensative emotions. Combine the two and it doesn't take much to make me feel depressed and fed up with the whole thing. I see artistic mistakes, confusing spots in the story and pacing problems, as well as less people reading than I'd like, and I get depressed and feel like I don't know what I'm doing, that I suck horribly as an artist and I should do the world a favor and stop working. And because I'm depressed, I get tired quickly. Because I get tired, my art starts to suck because I can't find the energy to do it as close to perfect as I can. Which means I get more depressed because look! Here's the proof! This spiral usually lasts about a month
-Anatomy. I've still got issues here. I'm better than I used to be. I'm nowhere near where I want to be.
-Story. I'm not sure whether or not I'm doing this right, and I don't have an editor to thump me on the head when I screw up. So I call it a weakness.
-Perspective. I fake it more than I draw it. When I do draw it, it's not up to my standards.

Working on:
-Anatomy. Have a book next to my computer, which I use almost every time I draw.
-Perspective. Ditto "Weaknesses" I use Inkscape to help with it.
-Perfectionism. Because it really doesn't matter HOW well I get at doing this, if I get discouraged because I don't measure up to my own standard and stop drawing because it sucks so bad...to me.

CW

Jeffy · Post by **Jeffy** » Mon May 22, 2006 6:49 am

strengths
- Ability to draw my own style, and do it well
- Most of the time, my photoshopping of a comic makes it look a lot better than what I anticipate it will from what I draw
- My desire to see the finished product keeps me going
- If I can ever get the comic going well, I see the story as quite good, depending on my ability to tell it
- I have the ability to not draw for a while, and then come back and try something new immediately, and it usually greatly improves the appearance of my comic

weaknesses
- Ability to draw something consistently, forcing me to modify in Photoshop much of the time
- Actual shading, which made me come up with my own, half-assed shading that works well enough with my drawing style that it's okay
- Being able to make a comic in a reasonable amount of time
- I seriously dislike drawing, to the point where I will sit and be bored like crazy rather than draw, most of the time. I assume, from past experiences, if I really liked drawing and I'd have been steady at it from when I started my comic, I'd be truly bad-ass at drawing

working on
- Finalizing a sketchy type action drawing, with the possibility of a different shading style that I may have to learn
- Ignoring my dislike of drawing so I can see more of my own finished product