Questions Thread - Technical Help for Art & Music

[tynic]

I've never had ANY of those problems with GIMP, so I suspect the answer to your question is simply that people who like it haven't encountered the issues you have with it. I don't have PS, and I have a mac, so I use GIMP and it works pretty well, given it's freeware. I would say that PS is obviously a better option if you have it, though.

What OS do you have, Muse, and how old is your computer? All that stuff really sounds like corruption somewhere, either in the gimp drivers themselves or in the computer software permissions. It shouldn't be doing that stuff at all!

[Isoraķatheð]

Actually, GIMP is a big clunky mess that is highly fragile. Unless you're careful as well as having a stable computer than it starts to topple and do weird stuff.

Rectangle select doesn't work at any zoom level except 100% for me. This wasn't so when I just installed it.

[tynic]

Well, gimp has always worked fine for me, but like I said, if you've got an alternative you should definitely use it.

Isorathingy, you could try reinstalling.

[myluckyseven]

Hey, so I got the impression that tutorials are cool in here? I keep a Delicious account purely for the purpose of sharing tutorials/resources. It's not all art, a lot of it is CSS stuff I've amassed, and the tags are kinda messy still... but there's a ton of stuff in there, including the details on the BPelt plugin since a lot of people have asked about it on my livestream.

At the least, maybe some people in this thread will find it handy!

[tynic]

Looks good! I'll add it to the tutorial list in the rules thread, if that's ok with you?

[myluckyseven]

Looks good! I'll add it to the tutorial list in the rules thread, if that's ok with you?

Sure thing! Gotta spread all that sweet knowledge around, man

[Kayle]

Not sure if this is appropriate but I need a picture of Jack holding his sword level (a screencap of the image from Descend, basically). Fast, otherwise I would do it myself. ^^"

edit: ok got it.

[cmonster]

ok so i'm basically an idiot peasant and i really don't know much anything about tablets beyond the research i have collected in the last two hours.

i'm a pretty poor dude. for me it has come down to:

bamboo pen: for the price

bamboo fun: for the eraser pen and comfortable size and cool buttons and stuff

intuous4 small: for all the fancy intuous shit

i need guidance, bros. what road do i go down.

[tynic]

I'm not sure that the Fun has enough increased functionality to warrant the price difference over the other members of the Bamboo range.

The Intuos (any Intuos) is definitely better, so if you can afford that I would go for it. However if your budget is tight, a bamboo pen will get the job done, and you can update later.

[cmonster]

in that case: does the intuous small have enough active space to work with comfortably?

[Lexxy]

in that case: does the intuous small have enough active space to work with comfortably?

I have always, always used the smallest tablet sizes available (both for price and portability) and they've always treated me well. If you're used to working on a big one, it might be a bit of an adjustment, but if you're relatively new to tablets it shouldn't be a problem.

[cmonster]

alright thanks gals

[Bropocalypse]

Anyone know of a site that hosts flash animations? Photobucket can, but you need a premium account.

[slooth]

Alright, so I got gimp thanks to some suggestions, and I love it. Much better than the paint i used to use. So, i make a hella ton ammount of brushes for stuff like rocks and trees and grass so i can easily put them in a pic without copy paste. So, i did this for some charecter sprites that i have been making. All the sprites are there earlier today, but i made some new brushes today, and now my sprites are gone . Anyone know how to fix? Is their a brush limit?

[Wistaria]

Anyone know of a site that hosts flash animations? Photobucket can, but you need a premium account.

I see a lot of folks use Spam The Web for flash, that'd be your best bet.

[Bropocalypse]

I see a lot of folks use Spam The Web for flash, that'd be your best bet.

Oh this is just fantastic. Thank you so much.

[tynic]

Alright, so I got gimp thanks to some suggestions, and I love it. Much better than the paint i used to use. So, i make a hella ton ammount of brushes for stuff like rocks and trees and grass so i can easily put them in a pic without copy paste. So, i did this for some charecter sprites that i have been making. All the sprites are there earlier today, but i made some new brushes today, and now my sprites are gone . Anyone know how to fix? Is their a brush limit?

I don't think so. I use a lot of brushes, and I also switch them in and out of the folder all the time (cause I don't like having to scroll through heaps), and haven't encountered that before. Of course, the problem with open-source software is yeah, sometimes you get weirdass bugs. If it happens again, you could document and report it, or just check through their forums/bug-fix lists to see if it's been observed before.

[slooth]

OK, thanks for the info, I guess i will save my important stuff on seperate documents! Hehe, that should be a thing one does anyway. So, one last question, Im currently experimenting with gimp, and i am wondering if anyone knows any easy and quick ways to make ice/fire/lightning in gimp? Do they have brushes that you can just download for that? Im fairly new with this so I dont quite know the way around it yet. Thanks in advance.

[Dorp]

Cross-posting my HOW TO DRAW HUMANZZZZZ sheet from the fanart thread. Mostly cause this is where it actually belongs!

Warning: HUGE.

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(Click image for the full-sized version!)

My method for drawing teh peoples. Not necessarily right and proper, as I have never taken an art class in my life, but it works for me!

[tynic]

yeah, uh, your female anatomy's a bit wonky.

To anybody looking for figure drawing - the Loomis download in the second post of the rules thread is an invaluable resource.

[Dorp]

yeah, uh, your female anatomy's a bit wonky.

To anybody looking for figure drawing - the Loomis download in the second post of the rules thread is an invaluable resource.

Well I drew miss femm-anatalass over the male sketchy circles cause I was too lazy to do another one. And anyway aside from her tits being a bit too high up I don't see what's wrong with it..?? She ain't got hartmann hips or nothin, just a regular ol lady. >:\

[codeGnave]

Mah hommies, I gots a question for you. With REAL WORDS. I am starting to get off my stupid ass and start drawing. But as I 'practiced' drawing figures i realized that I don't know if that is the best place to start. What do you all recomend? What should I draw first? Human figures, things, shapes? What is a good order for this shit?

Thanks a bunch!

[tynic]

Well, the main thing is to draw from life as much as possible. Shapes and things are probably easier to get a handle on than humans or animals right off the bat, but there's no 'bad' place to start as long as you practise heaps, and draw from observation rather than relying on intuition or memory - to draw something accurately out of your head takes a long time.

One thing to to might be to go through the links in the second post of the rules thread:

http://www.mspaforums.com/showthread...ule-NO-WHINING!

and find something that looks interesting or fun or useful - another important thing with art is to have fun! or otherwise you'll burn out. But I'm going to finish by reproducing a post made a long time ago by Angel of Bacon, in response to a similar question, which was incredibly informative and eloquent.

Well, this is a pretty huge question, so I hope you'll forgive a pretty huge answer. Don't let my enthusiasm here scare you off.

First off, where are you looking to go with art? Comics? Animation? Concept Art? Illustration? Fine art painting? Modern gallery art? Are you looking to do art as a career or a hobby?

While the advice I'd end up giving would be similar for most of them, I don't want to turn you off by recommending anything that would be irrelevant to your interests. For sake of reference, the following advice is geared towards a sort of general comics/animation/concept goal, with an interest of doing them as a career. I'm listing things in a basic chronological order of how I'd go about it, so don't feel like 'AUGGHHH I'm not going to go out and do all this shit RIGHT NOW, I can't afford it/this is way overwhelming!'- this is advice that's meant to be spread out over months/years.

I'm going to be laying down a lot of books here, so brace yourself. Again, these are books that I've acquired over the course of like 10 years so don't freak out.




Anywho, first things first (going to be taking a lot of links from The AC's Questions/Tutorials Thread here):

Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards

This is probably where you want to start off. Its focus is at getting you to draw what is actually occurring, rather than what you think you see when you draw. That may be a rather vague statement to begin with, but trust me, it'll make sense after you read it. Though to be honest, while I do reccomend this book wholeheartedly, I'd check it out from a library instead of buying it if you can; it's a fast read, and you can probably get through the exercises in pretty quickly.

The Natural Way to Draw by Kimon Nicolaides

This one is going to take longer to get through, probably worth buying. Basically it's most first-year college/high-school level drawing classes condensed into a book. Even if you do take a class like that it's worth reading, as (I've found) this book generally offers a more insightful rationale and explanation of the exercises than I've gotten from most art teachers (not all, but most).



If you are looking for art classes, you are actually probably better off taking classes ala carte at a community college, local workshop, or (if you are close to one) an atelier, at least to begin with. I say this as someone who got a university art degree, and most of my time was wasted by classes that didn't teach traditional skills and/or didn't know how to. You're better off being able to pick the classes you need from whereever, rather than getting tied down to an expensive and possibly useless program. (Exceptions are to be had, of course. CalArts, Art Center College of Design, RISD, Ringling, and some others are known for having good programs, but they are also very very expensive).

Whenever you can, take life drawing classes. Drawing from the model successfully is the exercises that tests an artist's abilities the most, as it involves everything you know about drawing all at once. The more you learn from the figure, the more you'll be able to apply to everything else you draw, and the more you know about art in general, you'll be able to apply back into drawing the figure. Don't worry, drawing naked people isn't as awkward as you'd think. :P

Also, try to carry a small sketchbook on you at all times if you can, and use it to sketch people/things while sitting in restaurants or cafes, or while at a park or in a shop. If you can get in the habit of drawing the things you see, and get in the habit of making observations of "now how would I draw that? How would I draw this?" in your day to day life, you'll start building a memory and thought process that will help immensely when you sit down to draw "for real".

From there, more books:
If you are looking to do anything that's going to involve figure drawing (comics/anime/animation/concept art/figurative fine art/sketching people at a cafe), you're going to want to have a decent grasp on anatomy and construction (breaking down complex objects into simple shapes).

I'd recommend: How to Draw the Marvel Way Yeah it looks a little cheesy, but it does have a really good breakdown of construction and perspective.

Glen Vilppu's tutorials, they also go over basic construction. Essential stuff, examples given related mostly to from life sketching and animation drawing.

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1. Never Underestimate the Power of Life Drawing
2. Gesture
3. Spherical Forms
4. The Box
5. Introducing Material and Proportion
6. Drawing Ellipses
7. From the General to the Specific
8. The Landmarks of Anatomy
9. Seeing Anatomical Masses
10. Seeing The Figure As A 2D Object
11. Using Tone To Draw
12. Getting a Handle on Direct Lighting
13. Using The Idea Of Atmosphere

Andrew Loomis' Figure Drawing For All Its Worth.(pdf) Anatomy/construction from a traditional illustration perspective.

Bridgman and Hogarth are also good resources, but you have to be aware of the exaggerations they are applying to get their point across in their illustrations, and then figure out how that it going to apply to the actual figure.

Another animation/comics centric book is Force. The focus on this book is less anatomy knowledge, and more about creating dynamic posing and use of line. The illustrations are very animation focused, but the principles are applicable to any figurative art, and is worth looking at.

This Anthony Ryder book is geared towards strict long-pose realist figure drawing; honestly I found it sort of dull personally, but the measuring/blocking in principles given in it are totally solid and worth a look. Maybe look through it at the bookstore and see what it has to say, see if it looks like something you'd get some use out of.




As for getting into painting, well, 90% of painting problems are drawing problems first, so I wouldn't worry about rushing into it right away. Besides that it can be pretty expensive- digital or traditional- so if you're not sure if you're going to get your money's worth out of it, I'd hold off for the time being (though I am sort of a cheapskate, personally :P).

What I would suggest is making sure you have a decent grasp on total drawing before getting into painting, since it will make picking up painting much easier in the long run. What I mean by tonal drawing is drawings that are fully-shaded, with a a full range of tone from deep black to middle greys to the white, where the form is determined primarily by those tones (see: Prud'hon) as opposed to drawings that are defined primarily by line (See: most comics/animation art). Being able to define forms in tone rather than line is essential in painting, where the linework is either covered up, or will be overwhelmed by the color and tone.

While you can achieve tonal drawing with pencil using a range of hardnesses, you might consider trying a medium that can provide darker shading and broader strokes more readily. The school I go to favors a specific charcoal pencil (Conte 1710B), sharpened to a long point so you can get broad strokes with the side, and sharp lines with the tip. I'll be honest in that it's sort of a pain in the ass to sharpen these things and it's really hard to get used to working with them, but the idea of using them as a way to get acclimated to drawing in a painterly way is a solid one.

When you do decide you're ready for painting, I would ease into it slowly- start off with just doing greyscale paintings, then incorporate other colors one at a time into your work, getting a feel for their behavior and the properties of the paint and how they mix, rather than throwing a lot of colors down at once, which can end up just overwhelming you. Also, Alla Prima is an excellent book on the subject. The focus is one one=sitting, from-life painting which may or may not be what you're into, but it's full of useful information nonetheless.

If you go the digital painting route, you'll need a Wacom tablet of some kind and a program such as Photoshop, GIMP, Painter, or OpenCanvas to use it with. Be warned that these programs may have a lot of tricks and flashy shit you can do with them, and a lot of people get trapped by them and start relying on gimmicks; don't make that mistake. The better digital painters can do their job just fine with just simple brushes, since the quality of their art depends on their drawing and traditional painting knowledge.



Another thing that's worth mentioning is absorbing knowledge from art you admire. Most people start off copying art that they like, and that's great, but a lot of the time they don't really benefit from it all that much in their own work. The reason being (similar to what ND said), that it's easy to copy and sort of shut your brain off; copy this line, copy that line, shade in here, etc. If you want to get the most out of it, you have to force yourself to engage and question what you are seeing, what the artist's choices were: ie: "Why is this line here? I don't understand what this form indicates, I need to go look it up in an anatomy book to figure out if that's a stylistic conceit or an accurate description." The idea of copying from another artist needs to come from trying to reverse engineer their thought process, to figure out what they were thinking when they made the decisions that led to the final result, not simply mindlessly copying what that result was. This goes for directly copying pieces as well as incorporating aspects of their art into your own work.


Also: Don't buy books by Christopher Hart or any other similar books of "How to Draw Manga/Superheros/etc." There might be some useful information in them somewhere, but generally they boil down to over eneralizations and a bag of tricks, and are slapped together with little thought and poor illustrations. If you want to draw those subjects, you're better off with a solid foundational drawing skill and using that knowledge to study from the best artists in those fields.

And above all: You know, have fun! This may look like I've just dumped a bunch of tedious shit on you, but I've found that the more you know, the more satisfying drawing becomes, rather than the opposite.

[codeGnave]

Thanks a bunch tynic, that is really helpful!

[Muse Among Men]

Buh-bye Gimp, turns out we happen to have a computer with Photoshop CS2. I wonder why it wasn't hooked up previously? My first stabs at it will be some practice with the pen-tool (which I'd tried before and found challenging but lovely) and some very basic colors. There are a couple of sketches I have little ambition for beyond basic flat colors. They are heavily stylized so laborious coloring wouldn't suit them anyway but I was thinking I would attempt some very basic shading. That said, simple colors require very fine-tuned color harmony. I know the basics of color theory (hue,value, chroma, compliments etc) but was wondering about saturation. When your color pallet will be limited to 6 or less colors would keeping them all at near uniform saturation levels be ideal for the color composition?