Dravs terrible 2d thread

Drav

Hello, so, Im pretty bad at 2d art, and I want to get better, and hopefuully Polycount can help! Id like to add a drawing every day and see if I can improve over time.





So heres something i did recently. I think the perspective is a bit off, but mainly I struggle a lot with rendering forms, and doing the values of light and dark in a convincing way. If anyone could point out where Im going wrong, or how to approach it, that would help a lot. How do people learn this stuff, do they do practice studies, and are there any good examples of these......


Also, if theres any other stuff im doing really badly, please let me know! Ill try and do another tomorrow

skylebones

Hey Drav, welcome to the "3d artist trying to get better at 2d" club. Trust me, stick with it and you'll improve, and probably faster than you think.

I agree about the perspective. I struggle with this as well, so can't help much with how to fix it. I'd also suggest painting up a temporary lighting diagram in the top corner of your image and use that as a guide on where to paint your light and shadows. I do that for my images when I'm struggling with lighting, it really helps remind me where the light is coming from, what angle it's hitting the object, where the darkest area's are and where the colors are reflecting into another. Give it a try!

Two Listen

Something simple I'll recommend when getting your lighting down, and trying to communicate shapes with your light/shadows, is flipping your canvas regularly. Not just horizontally, flip that shit 180 degrees on occasion and just look at it.

It's pretty common for me to work on something and get to rendering it and think it reads really well, only to flip it horizontally and see quite a bit shapewise that isn't reading right or needs adjustment.

Something else to consider trying, if you're in photoshop, grayscale your image and then open up your brightness/contrast and crank up contrast to 100% with the "Legacy" box checked, basically showing you a pure black/pure white read of your work (just to look at, no need to apply that change). This can help determine whether or not your volume and lighting is communicating what you want it to on a very basic level.

I've said these same things in a couple other threads (hopefully I don't seem like a broken record to some folks), but they're things that have helped me in pretty drastic ways.

Drav

Hey thx guys, will try all that stuff. Yep Skyle, im in that club!

Two, ye flip canvas is something i dont do enough......will try binding a key for it.

Cheers, will try doing something else at lunch tomorrow

Drav

ok my offering for the day, nothing exciting, just trying to draw some shapes in perspective......

Drav

Aaand another, trying to practice light direction and improving my eye for perspective.....I think i need to do some studies of real things to improve my values and painterly stuff. I know stuff aint right, but I dont know where is wrong atm....Still having fun learning tho!


Will do some real life shizz next week.