For short 1-2 page comics? Storyboard.

Anything longer? Script.

Scripting helps keep everything in order, ensure you don't forget things, and also you can read it back to make sure it's any good before you start drawing. I'm currently struggling my way thru a script rn and wish I could just start sketching, but I know the comic will be better for it in the long run.

Excited to line this pic >:)

Workin on this some more!!

Getting direct feedback is always gonna be better than online tutorials. Tutorials are always gonna lean towards more simplified and broad as to cast the widest net possible. This is true for both video + written tutorials imo. Direct feedback actually has people pointing at your art. If I feel the colors are off, I can watch as many color theory tutorials as I want, but having a friend go "the blue is too saturated try a dif color" is infinitely more helpful haha

Usually the best resource I've found (other than direct feedback) is books. I've found that those are hit and miss, but well written ones assume you already know the fundamentals and are coming for more focused advice. Everyone and their dog recommends Morpho, and it's because it's true! They are excellent books for deepening your understanding of anatomy. I also recommend the Book of a Hundred Hands by George B Bridgeman. I read that as a teen and I genuinely think the studies I did from that directly contributed to my ability to draw hands to this day.

I will be honest, it does feel like you're putting the cart before the horse haha

But, even if a fandom is cringey, it's still a group of people who are passionate about something you've made!

Yea, more or less. I don't think it's wrong to consider an audience, but you can't let it control what you draw.

I do agree with Vinity that visuals will affect what audience you get. If you draw in a style that's really appealing to younger people, they're gonna be the ones who look at it. Art is a visual medium so the visuals will supersede basically anything else. But you can't let the imaginary audience prevent you from drawing in a way you enjoy.

If you're worried about kids/teens engaging with what you're making, I'd say just tag/add the correct ratings and ignore them. Kids/teens like feeling older and cool, so even when something is made for adults they will often still engage with it. Think of all the games made for adults that ended up becoming children's properties. It feels like an impossible task to try and prevent it, so add the correct content rating and move on. If they choose to look at it, it's on them, not you.

IMO you can't really control what audience you get- they will naturally go to what appeals to them. If you draw things for big popular fandoms that mostly teenagers are in, your audience is going to be teens.

You can try to appeal to certain audiences by drawing things they're interested in, following trends/fandoms, etc. But you risk pigeonholing yourself into a niche. And if I'm being honest, followers who follow you for one specific thing do not care about your content in particular, they just care about getting more of the specific thing they followed you for.

Found a thumbnail from 2022, went “oh this looks fun” and picked it up again

trynna figure out what I wanna do with his other arm. I’m thinking of having him hold the candle, but I’ll need to look up some references to get the angle I want. That can wait until tomorrow tho 😴😴😴

Woke up after getting murdered and decided to spend her time hanging out with a bunch of mushrooms

I think it depends on how the body is drawn but on it’s own I prefer the right side

I REALLY like the colors on the figure- the greenish-grey skin with the saturated shadows looks really good

my main critique for the bg is that because both the character and the bg is slanted, it does kinda make the final piece look kinda stiff. The figure kinda blends into the bg, and I think the bg colors are a little overwhelming.

my suggestions would be to add a frame or some background element that’s straight/structured to add some contrast to the composition. First one is just a black frame around the bg. I think the darker color kinda cuts into the brightness of the bg and helps the character pop more.

in the second one I used a dark grey instead of black, made the frame uneven to kinda match the tilted look of the bg, and moved the figure to the side so it was less centered. I also added the skin tone as an overlay over the bg to see if it would harmonize the bg colors with the figure more. I like it but I think both palettes look good tbh.

Hope this was helpful!

Hmmm, obviously I can only speak for my own experience, but the indifference towards previous interests combined with apathy towards new interests kinda reads to me as depression. It may be worth looking at what's going on in your life and if there are things that are affecting your overall mood that may be contributing to this. For me, when I'm depressed, one of the biggest signs is I stop caring about my interests and neglect them.

Even if this isn't the case, the inspiration to create naturally ebbs and flows. The best advice I ever got from my mom is that sometimes you're in a "looking" phase rather than a "creating" phase. Absorb what's around you and add it to your visual library. Be kind and patient with yourself.

If you do want to keep drawing, I would recommend doing things like gesture drawings or figure studies. I like to use line of action for figure drawing sessions online. They're quick, usually you can do a complete class in 40-60 mins, and the focus is on training your eye rather than creating a complete product, so imo it's a lot less stressful and can be pretty mindless.

A more jokey answer is to also just pick a character to be insane about. So much of my art has been motivated by wanting to draw a specific OC one bajillion times.

Finished these >:) now I gotta work on some prints before going back to commissions.

Nene sketch >:)

Extremely normie takes but these are the games that I had the best time with and have been able to replay multiple times

1. Hades
2. Darkest Dungeon
3. Stardew Valley
4. Baldur's Gate 3
5. Persona 5

He def has a bait-y design, and it's not my cup of tea, but I think a lot of the hype around him is bc 2020 stan twitter found humor in being insane. Part of it was def sincere, but people were purposefully going over the top with it bc they thought it was funny.

Most of my favorite villagers are my favs bc I had them in one of my games when I was a kid. Judy is my newest favorite villager tho- a bear (my fav animal) AND pink (my fav color). Made in a lab for me...

I'm obsessed with the new rabbits, they're so cute T_T. It's also impressive how much cuter the lil' dot eyes are compared to the old eyes

Very cool! They have the texture of oil pastels, but look a lot easier to use haha

To the shock of no-one, more FNF art. They’re fun for warm-up sketches haha

base colors for the bg are down. I need to pick what brush I’m gonna render it with.

Sorry for posting so much here haha

sketchin pico while watching wrestling. His design is super fun to doodle

This is honestly the bane of my existence as well lol. The amount of times I’ve gotten halfway thru a pic and realized it looks extremely similar to another one…

Muscle memory is good to have tho, so imo the real answer is to just do a bunch of studies and add more and more things to your muscle memory. You can do this consciously thru choosing one thing to study a bunch, or naturally through doing a variety of studies. I like to use line of action for my figure drawings/studies.

Very cool art! Very cool poses/perspective on the pic and I like the vibrant colors, it looks very poppy.

Since you wanted some feedback wrt shading, I thought I’d offer some! You tend to pillow shade (shading the outlines rather than following a light source) and shade very flat without following the contours of the form. I also think that your art could benefit from highlights + multiple layers of shadows.

I did a quick outline of the shadows on the first pic following the light source.

Hope this helps!!

Loved lining this, am gonna hate coloring it lol

I’m almost done with the flats on this. I’ll prolly work on the bg before I shade.

Commenting so I don't forget about this thread lol I'm gonna try and draw something for this >:)

warm-up comic before I focus on commission work

It is super fun! I really enjoy master studies and photo studies in general. Once you get into the groove of it, it can be very relaxing.

Your animations are so cute!!

It depends on what kind of master study you're doing, but the major thing with doing master studies is to look closely and draw with intention. Break the piece down into pieces- look at how the artist chose to do things like anatomy, show depth, texture, etc. Then you attempt to recreate it, often using the same or a similar medium. For a lot of master studies you'll want to try and copy the piece as closely as possible.

A lot of the hard part of drawing is taking a 3D world and putting it onto a 2D plane. The reason master studies help so much is because someone who's mastered that particular skill has done most of the work, making drawing from them and learning a lot easier.

For me, if I'm doing just a sketch with no color, usually I will sketch out the study by eye. Once my initial sketch is done, I'll trace over the piece and compare the two sketches. I'll look between them for differences and to see where I struggled. After that I'll freehand a third sketch, sometimes referring back to my original two. For paintings, usually I just go at it and paint it freehand, every once in a while overlaying the original on top so I can compare the two and make corrections if needed.

I think these methods work out well for me, but it can differ for every artist. I know some artists like to use tools like grids. Like I said, the most important part is looking and drawing with intention.