Andrei

Posemainiacs practice. First time. I realized that I need to make sketches simpler, but is easier said than done for more dynamic poses.

I don't know why I decided to do backlit lighting. This was just support to be a hair coloring practice. I still find myself unable to decide if I should do cel shading as a start or do painting tech (blur, etc). cel shading appears to be simpler though, as long as I stick to two lighting colors.

backlit coloring practice of a male anime face, 20251205

linework of a male anime face, eyeless, 20251205

sketch of a male anime face, 20251205

Linework and coloring practice for today.

Certified John Wolfe enjoyer 😆

I also realized that as much as I want to learn CLAMP line art and stylization is that I hate anime stylization adjacent to CLAMP. I don't want to force my references into idealized models that are always photogenic and hair so beautiful even in their roughest.

But the line art though. I just..

a rough sketch of thehotcross, stylized attempt on krita, 12012025

Here's today's gary/thehotcross, done first time in Krita using my Huion Inspiroy Pen Tablet. Was doing Andrew Loomis' face angles. I found it tough to get the extreme angles normal looking. Out of frustration, another gary.

Plus: Krita has most of the toolkit found in CPS, albeit on different names and settings. Plus, it also works on Android and Linux.

More so, as fun as it was to do Infinite Painter sketches, its pen organization and toolkit is still cumbersome. I might still continue to use it, but we'll see.

After much tinkering, I've decided to transition to Krita for much of my digital illustration studies. Eventually to Clip Paint Studio, but I would like to exhaust Krita as much as possible. I just happen to find a pen tablet more comforting than a stylus directly on the screen.

The huion pen tablet does feel fragile, light, and plasticky, but I sort of prefer using it than the Focus Pen and drawing directly in the tablet. I am still getting the hang of using it to navigate the screen thought. Writing with it however is a no no; it hangs so bad.

My understanding of blending modes and color theory is still a bit off. I wanted to texture his hair but I couldn't find the right golden sheen for the illuminated side. I also could not find how to blur colors on this app at the moment. I also need a better palette than the default...

I was really lazy today, but I have to do something. So for this day's digital illustration practice is a colored render attempt of Gary #thehotcross #ezsmall. This is also a trial run for my Huion Inspiroy 2 M pen tablet on my Xiaomi Pad Pro w/ Infinite Painter App.

It took much my effort to double check my lines to make sure she looks right and less derpy, but even then, I am still unsure.

I found her face much more challenging than her hair. Her hair has a distinct structure; despite the complexity, it can be rough sketched. However her face, as young Sakura, relies on the right shape and the right stroke and the right placement.

Today's sketch is a study of young Sakura from Syaoran's memory, from p. 140, ch. 182, vol. 23.

Forced me to freeform the details & use more layers, which is nice, practice wise.

A practice artwork of an anime character named Fai D. Flourite

Line Art Practice-11/ 24-25/2025-Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle's Fai D. Flourite from Vol. 23, p. 10. Among TRC characters, Fai's hair is perhaps the most challenging because of the way the hairs flow and interweave into foreground & background without shadow hints.

#TIL CLAMP hair has a rhythm to the strokes: three lines per hair clump, most of the time. Shadow may be carried by either a thickened corner in the shaded portion of the clump or in back pair of the three-line pack, depending if the art is lineart or rendered/painted.

#TIL Also I learned how to create custom pens in Infinite Painter. It is the Stroke > Profile > Size chart in Custom settings that I needed. Now the Manga Inker feels more penlike.

#TIL I learned that the manga linework I'm studying used a single thickness pen; they only stylize the stroke by thickening it in certain places.

Yet even then, there is a considerable amount to trial and error to discover in making sure that the implied form of your sketch carries over to render. Lot of assumptions to break apart and remake.

Sure enough, you can make the personality of your line-art carry over into your render by taking advantage of using it as texture, or even skipping line art and just work around cleaning and re-adjusting your sketch, as some illustrators do.

Which is why for beginning illustrators such as myself, changing mindsets from single-layer editing to a multi-layer workflow is a jarring experience. It is not enough to simply edit, erase, and clean; I must know my tools and plan ahead, at least in mind. Only practice can make this easy.

Yet in the struggle, here's a realization of mine: when moving from sketch to render, the character of your drawing becomes carried not by your line art but by its form and shading.

It's been a rough couple of days trying to understand cel-shading and coloring in digital illustration. And I keep on screwing up my color layers. #beginnerartist #digitalillustration #reflection