sure! i followed a tutorial in the beginning, but the person who posted it deleted their blog, so i sadly can’t link you to the tutorial. i can try to explain it though.
there’s three ways you can go about this: photoshop or photoscape or use both. i use both, and i’m starting with photoscape.
load the image into the editor:
at the bottom, click onto the button that says “bright, color” (don’t click on the arrow on the right) to change the contrast of the image. it’s not mandatory to use the same values i used as it varies from image to image. you can also try to change other options, just make sure it looks kind of high in contrast at the end (make dark parts really dark and light parts really light).
then sharpen the picture. it’s probably best if you use something along these values:
now go back to the button that says “bright, color”, but this time click on the arrow. from the list that pops up, choose “threshold” and change the value until you get a nice result.
save the image and load it into photoshop. make a second layer. draw on the new layer with white over the parts that you do not want in the image
(please don’t draw on the layer of your image.)
depending on how plain the background is, maybe you can even leave it. i erased it completely, and now it looks like this:
add a speech bubble (i drew this one freehand, but you might as well use a tool to draw it):
and finally, add text and textures:
i used the same texture twice with different gradient maps. here’s what my layers look like:
and that’s basically it! like i said in the beginning, you can technically do all the steps in either photoshop or photoscape, but i find it easier and quicker to do the first steps in photoscape when you have many images, while it is easier to clean and add text and textures in photoshop afterwards.
also, it depends a lot on your caps and how much you change the contrast etc beforehand, but it can happen that you’ll have to redraw a lot. for my makoharu edit i mostly had to redraw the hair, for the rinharu edit i had to redraw a lot of little things. so… be prepared… for the redrawz
Money. Money is always the problem. :/ I would go into a huge sob story rn about my troubles, but I don’t know how much that would help. We’re just broke and we have been broke and sometimes (like today), I can’t see any way out of this and I just get home from work and cry.
But cons I want to go to… FurCon, RainFurrest, AnthroCon, BLFC, any number of anime cons (Texas?!), comic cons… not to mention writing cons… haha.
I miss going to cons. And selling at cons. And drawing with people. And just.. bleh, cons are so much fun. T_T;
Money why…
I really need a new scanner. *sideways glance at it* Yeah, I’m talking about you.
Also, the taco that I put in the fridge yesterday froze overnight… so there were literal ice crystals in the shredded iceberg lettuce. And before you tell me to let it go, I should tell you that I ATE IT ANYWAY. BUWAHAHAAAa
ALRIGHT alright alright I’m going to make this some sort of ”beginner artist” masterpost and include as many resources as I possibly can. I am going to assume you want to focus on the ”drawing” aspects of art since it can take many forms. Here are some pointers and resources I consider vital when learning how to draw, things I’ve learned from multiple art oriented courses. This is going to be a very quick and general thing and I’ll make some serious and properly drawn tutorials in the future (the drawings in this one are going to be embarrassing, try to only take the general idea from them) but to start off:
Before you jump into drawing in any particular style, learn your realism.
This is probably mistake #1 in many young art enthusiasts: they go straight into wanting to draw either anime, or a particular cartoon’s style because a stylized form of art is much more appealing to them than realistic things. Which is valid, but I’ll have you know in order to get any of those styles right, you have to learn the basics AND ONLY THEN proceed to use that knowledge to ”deform” said realism into any style you want. Be it learning from life drawing and observing, pictures online of real people or animals. When you look at a big household name in the artist world’s work, as flashy as their stuff might be, a trained eye is able to tell immediately if the person has proper anatomical knowledge or not, no matter how much they try to mask it with ”this is just my style.” Let me show you an example:
(excuse the 5 minute sketches pls, note these are actually highly inaccurate (the knees should be placed lower on the second drawing and calves shouldn’t be as big as the thighs) but I wanted to demonstrate ”realistic proportions” in contrast to more of a stylized drawing in a really quick way, a google search for ”human anatomy” will bring up much more accurate visual representations of all this so I highly recommend doing that)
But basically in order to play around with anatomy you first need to learn realistic proportions (you don’t need to absolutely master them or anything, but you need to know things like the distance between the forehead, eyes + nose and chin correlate, places where fat stores in comparison to where muscle stores, the size of the forearm until in reaches the wrist/arm are practically the same, arms + hands reach below the hipbone and halfway to the the upper thigh) and only then proceed to bend those rules to create your own stylized version of things, which means you get to play around with a lot of shapes like so:
USE GUIDELINES
For the love of all that is holy make use of guidelines, whether with a light colored blue or red pencil if you’re drawing by hand or a sketch layer in Photoshop/SAI etc. They will help out so much when it comes to knowing where you should place each feature. Many people attempt to draw directly without them and while after a lot of practice it might work, to start off you really need to understand basic figure building.
(I’m literally drawing all these one drawing a minute excuse the shittiness I’m just trying to get the point across ahah gOD THESE ARE PISSPOOR)
Carry a little sketchbook with you if you can and draw strangers while riding the train, bus, etc. Just draw whatever you see.
It’s not only entertaining when you might be bored out of your mind but extremely productive to draw people, animals, scenery, anything you can see that you might want to sketch out for practice, you can. No better way to learn than real life.
Take time to draw. And draw. And draw.
You will not learn or improve overnight, bettering yourself when it comes to art is an endless and ongoing lifelong process. But it won’t be due to osmosis, you gotta sit your ass down and draw as frequently as you can afford to (although excesses can be bad for you, learn to also take breaks and find comfortable positions because drawing CAN REALLY MESS UP YOUR BACK like badly and you don’t wanna end up hunched over because of it or with tendonitis) But believe me: practice makes perfect and if you learn to observe and understand why you’re drawing what you’re drawing, why are you placing that line where you’re placing it and start thinking in 3D, you will surely improve.
Adobe Photoshop (you can either get a student version of it legitimately, although many people torrent it because of the ridiculous pricetag) OR ALTERNATIVELY PenTool Sai (Free!)
I miss having friends I see every day like in college but I have mostly now-and-then friends too. Things are very different as an adult. Doing monthly get-togethers with one RL friend though :3
I kind of figure you’re busy and I am usually a downer :3
You don’t have to sound so happy about that. 😐
I am geared toward finding productive solutions, and there is no way that I am going to encourage that self-loathing behavior. >:( You stop that. You are awesome. I think you’re great. BELIEVE IN THE ME THAT BELIEVES IN YOU!!!
More on this topic:
People don’t need to be in constant communication to be very good friends. I have plenty of friends that I only talk to once every few months, but I think of them fondly and we just pick up where we left off when we do come across something that we want to talk to each other about. What would this be called? More of a fluid conversation…?
There’s a handful of people that talk to me exclusively through text and we never stop our conversation. It’s ongoing forever, whether the responses are 30 seconds apart or a week. There’s a mutual understanding that we care about each other and will respond when we can. Chill relationships like that are so important to me.
I guess it’s easier to be in more frequent contact if we’re working on something together. But even that is difficult for me to really quantify. I keep running into problems where a friend will require x amount of contact per day/week/etc, or the friendship is off. Which I just do not understand.
Pro tip: if you give me an ultimatum like that, I will almost always walk away.
The only things that are allowed to demand my time are my husband (who doesn’t, anyway), and work (which does out of necessity, but never asks me to take work home). Everything else is second. So if that bothers you, sorry. I won’t be happy, you won’t be happy. I guess that’s my ultimatum. If you can’t handle the fact that I am already hopelessly devoted to someone already, and that I have lots of friends, then don’t waste your time on me because that is not going to change. Bestestbestbestbest friend slot has already been taken by Aaron. Sorry.
But if you get that I am an adult with a spouse, a full-time job, a million hobbies, and lots of friends that I am close to… then we’ll be just fine and able to have lots of fun together as time and mood permits. 🙂
I’m just worried I’ll be bothering or interrupting, I’ve got a fear for being a nuisance so i don’t want to annoy anyone ;; its for me to initiate, especially a lot because my brain tells me its like “you just bug them if you always start it”
Ahaha that is definitely one of the many problems that comes with this… both parties afraid of annoying the other. To be honest, I don’t know the solution.
However! I’m always happy when you send me messages. You send me neat dino stuff! And we chat once in a while, which is great fun. <3 Don’t fret.
I reblogged that because I have run into a lot of problems where people get mad at me for not texting first I’m sORRY I really DO CARE, but I’m so used to just staying busy until someone needs something that I don’t even think about it most of the time. I can add “text person” to my task list, but we both know I’m doing it as a to-do and I’m notoriously bad at finishing my entire task list…
i really am a “text me if you need something” person. like unless i have something specific to talk about, i don’t usually initiate a conversation. if you wanna talk just to talk then im all here but dont take me not hittin you up as me not caring.
Reblogging here because it is incredibly important. I was brought up in a family that did not initiate contact unless there was a reason for it. I have been conditioned not to “bother” people unless I have to, and even then I will probably try everything on my own first. This means two things:
If I ask you for help, I have exhausted every other option that I’m aware of and am hoping that you will be willing to help me without patronizing me (but if you do that it’s my own fault and I should have been able to figure it out on my own)
if you ask for help, I will assume that you’ve done everything in your power to solve whatever problem, and if there is any way that I can help you, I’m going to try to, and I’m most likely not gonna give you any attitude about it. Unless, you know, I find out that you’re just being a whiney boobit… in which case I’ll roll my eyes and still probably help you.
But if you just want to talk, please approach me. I’m happy to talk! I love people and friends and everything! I’m just very well-practiced at keeping myself entertained until someone needs me for something. Hence why I am always busy. Because I am. That’s what I’m supposed to do. There are always tons of things to do.
