On my world, it means hope.

Mischief

I don't know about you, but as an artist, I get plenty of headaches when I work on a picture that needs to be big & high resolution. Mischief seems to be a gift from heaven in that regard. It's a painting software, but it has the infinite scalability of vector software—in other words, you can draw at any scale and import at any size & resolution. Oh, and it has an infinite canvas and infinite zoom (or so it feels). Can I say, hallelujah??!

Mischief is pretty new, though, and its newness shows. It's lacking in a number of tools (most notably, lasso selection, free transforming, & color correction), and its brushes aren't that robust. For these reasons, it's not really at the stage at which it can be used to replace Photoshop or Painter.

Still, damn, I'm really looking forward to seeing future versions of Mischief. It looks to be a game-changing art program.

(Edit: Why did I originally think this program was called Made with Mischief rather than Mischief?! D:)

I think I've reached a peaceful place in terms of my artistic abilities, where I can push myself without feeling pressure. Since I have no plans to pursue art in any sort of professional capacity, what's left is only love of the craft. I can admire other artists' work without feeling jealous. I realize that there are certain things I won't be able to draw, certain artistic heights that I won't be able to reach, but that's fine, because I like what I do now.

I used to exhibit classic Artist's Jealousy Syndrome. I would constantly look at artists who were better than me, try to measure up to them, fail, and feel depressed. I don't feel the need to do that anymore. I realize that while there are things I can't do, I'm also capable of accomplishing more than I thought possible when I push myself.

The evolution of my style has been a pretty strange journey. I started out mostly influenced by anime/manga, then started moving away from it and trying (without too much success) to develop a semi-realistic, semi-cartoon style. I burned out hard and stopped drawing for a while, except private doodles in my notebook. Then I started turning to realism with photo references, and while that was exciting for a while, I burned out with that as well. And now? Now I'm happily drawing turtles all the time. I'm okay with not really drawing people anymore; I don't think I have the skill to accurately represent the full diversity of human body types, skin tones, and facial structures, and that's fine with me. I still do people occasionally (mostly just for the sake of filling out the turtleverse), but I feel so much freer to pursue interesting styles and experiment with different digital media.

Again, that's not to say I'm not artistically ambitious. I plan on drawing what looks like it's going to be a 600-700 page webcomic (gah, am I crazy??) and possibly other turtle comics in the future, and as any artist will tell you, webcomics are a heck of a lot of work. But it's all about that sweet spot of ambition without jealousy, an inner peace nurtured by love of the craft that transcends insecurity.


Now, if only I could feel the same way about my writing...

- TMNT watercolor portrait series: 4/4 FINISHED!!
- Elementary portrait series: 1/4 complete, 3/4 left
- TMNT apocalypse character designs: character design sheets (x4 turtles) & mockup "promo" picture; possibly character designs for Splinter, Shredder, Casey, April, & Karai as well, depending on how motivated I am XD
- T-shirt design collab with my sister
- Miscellaneous other: AU Foot TMNT character sketches; Donatello vs. storm painting

Screenshot from messing around with Artrage. I'm incredibly psyched that I can actually achieve a watercolor splatter effect with Artrage, which is something (along with pooling and salt effects) that I've been wanting to do for a while. It's somewhat less controlled than in real life, I think, but still pretty sweet.

Recently I've been experimenting a lot with digital art styles, so I thought I'd compile some sort of memo to help myself keep track of them. (Full versions of most of these pieces can be found on my dA.)

Default style



My "default" digital painting style usually incorporates both Corel Painter and Adobe Photoshop. I'm a big fan of using Painter's blending brushes and tinting brushes to get a smooth, yet painterly effect.

For backgrounds (when I bother to do them), I actually prefer to use Photoshop mostly. I don't know, I guess having originally been a Photoshop user makes me still feel more comfortable when using Photoshop for certain painting effects, even if theoretically I could achieve the same things in Painter. Especially for skies (not that I'm particularly good at them yet), I use various Photoshop brushes to lay down splotches of color and then the Smudge tool (usually Heavy Smear Wax Crayon or Chalk brushes) with scattering effects to blend.

My lineless art is usually terrible if I'm not using a reference, so I first make a sketch (with the default Hard Round brush in Photoshop or Real 2B Pencil in Painter), then ink it with Painter's Pen brushes.


Marker style



Recently I've been working on replicating a marker-like look using Corel Painter. I think I've finally gotten something that I'm relatively satisfied with. It relies mostly on Painter's Variable Chisel Tip marker brush (with opacity expression set to pressure for softer blending) and Scratchy Dry Tip marker brush for detail work.


Digital watercolor style



I'm not exactly comfortable using Painter's Digital Watercolor brushes to simulate actual watercolor paintings yet, but I've been experimenting with using them for a coloring style similar to my "marker style." It seems to work particularly well for monochrome coloring.


Portrait style



For this, I actually rely mostly on Photoshop, using the default hard round brush at low opacity and flow to layer colors on top of each other. Sometimes I use other Photoshop default brushes for texture, and sometimes I jump to Painter to use the blenders.


Watercolor style - Take 1



Lastly, I've been very interested in replicating watercolor effects using Painter 12's Real Watercolor brushes. My experience with real watercolors is pretty limited, so a lot of what I've been doing is trial and error so far. One thing I definitely struggle with is the fact that it's not easy to fix mistakes in watercolor, unlike with my regular painting style where I can just lay a different color on top.

Also, I realized that Painter's Liquid Ink Coarse Bristle brush is really good for simulating dry inking effects.


Watercolor style - Take 2



Recently I've been playing around with Artrage. I'm liking Artrage's watercolors over Painter's quite a bit, especially since they allow me to achieve a paint-splatter effect that I've been trying to replicate digitally for a while now. (Basically, it involves using rough paper textures with the watercolor tool, and thinners for blending/more "watery" strokes.)


Pastel style



I don't use Painter's pastels very often, but I love using them when I do. Mostly so far I've been using the regular Oil Pastel for laying down color and the Variable Oil Pastel for blending.


I'm not sure if there's any other style I'd like to emulate/develop in the future...

Jeez, after like months and years of not doing art at all (beyond pencil doodles), I suddenly have a backlog for art to do??

Finish:
- Night sky/"I want to hold the stars"
- "Count it off!"

Start:
- "This Girl Is On Fire" (realism, portrait)

Goshdarnit, I'm in the mood to draw for the first time in two months, and what do I have to do this week? Study like mad for my Chem exam. D<

 I'm planning (hoping) I can CG at least one face per week, as a way of practicing and hopefully improving my CG skills. Ideally, I would do one realistic (ish) face and one anime (ish) face. I just finished a realistic face today...it's pretty terrible (I don't know how to do hair anymore T_T), but it was good practice.

On my list of things I need to improve on:
- Hair
- Clothing folds
- Backgrounds