I got a couple questions. How long have you been drawing?
That's a tricky question to answer.
Technically, I've been drawing since I was three years old and drew pictures of Popeye on construction paper (I LOVED Popeye as a kid).
I did a lot of doodling in middle school and high school (and beyond) when I was bored - which was a lot. Mostly, just countless drawings of Kirby.
These drawings in my blog are my first drawings done with the express purpose of displaying them, however.
I picked it up as a hobby by watching my friends draw. As a result, i got into drawing in 6th grade. I love your enthusiasm for your art - not many people appreciate the time and details that goes into drawings
I really appreciate the compliments! I certainly do the best I can, though a certain degree of realism still eludes me at this point. But, hey, that's what practice is for.
Also, what do you use to color your artwork? My scans never pick up a pure white background; it's a plethora of grays.
This is an extremely good question, actually. I use an art program called "Gimp" for my picture editing. It's a very, VERY nice freeware art program, and has a crapload of options. One of the really good things about Gimp is that it has an option to "pour" a color into another color, similar to MS Paint. The difference with Gimp, however, is that with it, you can adjust the threshold of the color pour so that it also changes similar colors nearby. This is EXTREMELY helpful for scans and JPEG images in general.
My coloring process is as follows: first, I eliminate eraser lines (I use the smudge tool, turned to 100% similarity rate). Then, using the pour tool, I set the threshold to anywhere from 15% to 65% or more for the outlines of the drawings (all depending on how thick/dark the outlines I'm drawing out are), and then I color the individual segments. Next, I draw out any lettings that I wish to keep in the color version and get rid of any letting I wish to erase, and finally, I color the remainder of the background (usually white, though I've been doing more color backgrounds lately.
The entire coloring process can take anywhere from about 7 minutes to a half hour.
As for my request - a cycloptic egg. Yes... an egg with an eye and a mouth. It was one of my first concepts when I started drawing and I would love to see your rendition
I'll get right on it. Thanks again for the compliments and questions! I hope that my advice was helpful to you.