Sta.sh
My first ever post to DeviantArt was a picture that I drew of my original characters: Tiari, Kara, Kijo and Mica. Back then, those characters were what I drew on a constant basis. I had a cartoon binder full of their adventures that my friends always seemed to enjoy reading. Sadly, even though I was in my later teen years when I joined, I had no idea how to draw people very well. Heads were the worst. Yes, I'd taken art classes where they teach you how to draw realistic objects, but while I can do it, realism was never my strongpoint. I always drew cartoons, it's just who I was (and still am). So, to counteract my lack of people drawing skills, I would draw anthropomorphic cats - cats that, aside from the heads and tails, looked like people. That's partially how Tiari and company came to be.
Once I was in college, something changed. I forget exactly what happened, but I suddenly had this idea of how I could draw people the right way, without the feline characteristics. I practiced with my idea, experimenting on different anime characters like the characters of Bleach and Fullmetal Alchemist. I even got inspiration by replicating different images of anime characters onto a pair of blue jeans. It took me a long time, a good year or two, for me to completely figure it out, but I did it. I could finally draw faces, and I celebrated by drawing a good many of my friends at college. I didn't do it on pencil and paper though.
About 3 years ago I got my graphics tablet. My wonderful tablet: a Wacom Intuos3. It took me a lot longer to learn how to use it than I originally thought. I remember finishing a drawing with the tablet and posting it to the site, thinking, This turned out great! Looking back on those pieces now, I can see how much more practice I needed.
When I got my tablet, I also got Corel Painter and Photoshop Elements 4. I started using Corel with my tablet for drawing because at the time, I didn't know enough about Photoshop to know that it could be used for drawing as well. When I used Corel, I kept to the basics: create lines, fill in with color. Following what little I knew of anime style, I kept the whites of the eyes open, but with the create-and-fill technique I had to draw lines around the eyes or else the color would fill it completely. It was simplistic but it worked, and I created a good many caricatures of my friends this way.
It wasn't until I learned about Photoshop a little more that I started using it. Once I figured out the basics of it, I switched over gradually. I would draw lines in Corel and then color in Photoshop. However, the lines generally had white specks that I could never seem to get rid of... until I did a little research and found transparency. This is what spurred me to use Photoshop exclusively. After that, I looked into a better way to color and discovered the magic of layers and selection tools. At this point, I learned as much as I could find about Photoshop so I could draw the best I could. I found so many different techniques, it was just wonderfully baffling. Christmas 2010, I got a newer version of Photoshop: PSE 9. Once again, I searched for tutorials galore on how to use the new instrument of creation placed before me.
The piece de resistance was finding a Youtube channel of a manga artist named Mark Crilley. I watched so many of his videos and learned so much that, in the short amount of time I've been watching, I've seen my art transform into something so much better. I used to have a lot of difficulty drawing hands, chibi characters, wings, etc. but watching his videos helped me tremendously. For that, I'd like to thank Mark Crilley, if he ever ends up seeing this for any reason. For those of you looking to improve your artistic capabilities, I highly recommend looking at his channel, markcrilley on Youtube.
Because of all this growth artistically, I now have a distinct style all my own. I can draw anime characters in my own style and still make them look like how they should. Most of all, I have more confidence and pride in my art than I ever did before. If all of this can happen in 5 years, I can't wait to reflect on my art in another 5 years.
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