Rizian Art

Hello! Happy holidays! How have you been? I hope you had a great Christmas, quite cold but a hot meal to comfort always work any tired body or a frozen hands not wanting to draw, draw and DRAW!!

Today I come to give some advice to those who bought their first "Tablet" or digital tablet, but before I will discuss my experience with digital media, not everything is always a garden of roses, you'll see what I mean.

To start I'll tell you, before I start drawing comics my tablet was powdered in a corner of my room, I did not use it since I bought it and came to release it six months after it was acquired, well, not had much respect to digital at first, but when I started drawing comics and this, I began to see an occasional video of "speedpainting" on YouTube and said, "Damn, I want to do that thing too!" I just took out the tablet of the box, connect the cable, I opened Photoshop as a freaking genius, I looked for the tablet pen and I decided to make an image, do not expect ... was not a simple image, but it would be... The best-super-mega-ultra-hyper-image Fourfold-INCREDIBLE! IMAGE EVER! The result was as follows:




Well, OK, I exaggerated, it was not that bad, but it was pretty bad, in fact it was enough to make me want to vomit, and tell myself "I should not buy this filth, after I have taken a look of the face, now I want to get the one with the horrible things that this thing does" Well, today is the day that the tablet I wanted: give, sell, break, throw, throw, massacre, destroy and burn, is being right next to me while I do the "cartoons" to bring the article.

I tell you, I was in search of a tutorial to teach me how to "properly handle the tablet" The result was a straw ball rolling on the desert "Fiuuuuuu ...", and I think two rocks and a cactus were there too, but do not worry I will tell you some exercises that will be useful to your process. Let's do this!

First:
You fall into account in this first, you've bought a digital tablet and if you're here is because you realize that is not the same drawing with a pencil in your sketchbook to do it using your tablet in drawing software like SAI, Autodesk Sketchbook Pro, Photoshop, Gimp, or whatever you're using to draw... Many people says that drawing with the tablet is like "learning to draw again" I put it in another way, as "learning to draw digitally".

Second:
If you wanted to buy a tablet is usually because you wanted to do artworks like some other artists you admire, seek for those art pieces, if they have videos of the process that makes it real better, so you can look out how your favourite artist or how the kind of illustrations you want to do are done. One of the easiest ways to learn to use this wonder is to know the techniques and other experts use in their videos.

Third:
Do you have an very nice and solid line in your pencil work but on the tablet you want to draw a line and suddenly you have become a gauge of seismic waves? I recommend you to draw over some drawings and not yours as practice mode and make you noticed in the lines correctly, than trying to "create" and "make good lines" simultaneously. Alleviate the burden and you concentrate more on just improving your line on the tablet.

Fourth:
This is one of the tips is the one that helped me most, not only with the tablet, also improved significantly my pencil lines. Open a new blank document in your favourite drawing program, now take the tablet pen on one end and not support any part of the hand on the tablet surface, try to draw straight lines, vertical, horizontal and diagonal in the sheet, as close as possible without sticking to the one before. The aim of this is to improve your hand pulse significantly, it is also a good warm-up before a drawing session. I recommend seeing the example:



Fifth:

As in the previous exercise instead of making straight lines we now turn to make curves, but I have here a simple trick to dominate the line and probably will make this part more complicated than the previous one, but with patience and perseverance you can achieve this one too.



Previous Posts:

Manga Studio 5 Review
Tutorial: Draw Women Hair
12 Tips for Webcomic Beginners
Tutorial: Create Scenery/Background
How to get used to your Tablet
Improve your sketch abilities in 10 steps

Hello, everyone have a very good day!, it's 21 December, God sure willing this time is probably the last time I write for you :( ... Just joking, hehe, the world won't end so easily, So, let's go into the topic for today. I'll show you one other trick to improve your drawings and especially your sketches, these are little clues I've discovered through my growth as an artist and I want to share with you today! Let's begin:

1. Always when you go to try to start making sketches take about 5 to 10 minutes to perform hand exercises (warm up), later I will make a tutorial on how to do exercises to warm the hand (Step 4) before drawing, I recommend to watch for my Blog for To learn how effective this method.

2. Use some background music when working, an important part of the creative process is always have something to get some inspiration, I turn on the radio almost always when I need to relax and concentrate on my work, sometimes I seek for some classical music collection, however at night which is when my Creativity goes a genius "aggressive" I turn to my favourite music: indie, rock, alternative music, electronic music and some other genres. Always draw with the music that makes you feel comfortable, stay in the mood.

3. Be your own critic, look at your drawings, whenever you feel something strange is that in fact there is something wrong, it's not your imagination, refusing to correct the errors that you see at this stage of a design may end up being a big mistake for when the time of making the final art comes, always remember that a sketch should be clear and easy to understand for the person who will do the final artwork.

4. Always try to be basic (in a good way), try to do simple and light forms you already know, a basic structure with a rectangle one another triangle and four circles can easily form a large car the details are up to you, the basic shape can give you some keys to go to the next step, is an evolutionary process, every step you go the most close you are to the finished artwork, always remind this: The next time you want to draw something your mind has acquired the ability to draw that again better and better than before, and you will need less time to achieve it.

5. Having references is always good and bad at the same time, and that's because often we want to draw like an artist we admire, it's not bad, in fact it is very good way to inspirate you to learn, you can look out on their techniques, projects and processes to devise your own. Personally I always admired the work of Tite Kubo, Jan Van Eyck, Michelangelo and other several artists like Artgerm or Yuumei, not necessarily only cartoonists. The trouble about referencing from other artists is when you start focusing too much on their work and you don't stop to look at your own work and developing your own style, this is a serious part, because we can fall into comparisons and worse on, the imitation. The good part is that our referents can serve us as support material for developing our style, and always move on as individual artists and authentic, instead of trying to move towards being an artist who is not us.

6. Drawing always the same kind of person, the same object, or always use the same theme, it can be part to help you create your own style but if  it is carried to the extreme it can kill you when you need to draw something different, I recommend you explore other styles, other objects, e.g. have you drawn light lamps? Have you drawn a giant robot like a super-robot-chicken? Have you thought of drawing old people? Do you have any own characters? Why not draw them on their childhood, in their middle age and old age as well? When one varies the subjects in which one works one can emphasize one element that makes it easy, normal, common, difficult, strange, horrible and even charming, the artist is working to identify and point out that he likes to have a mental reference to your style and give that strength when drawing that object or that person.

7. If you like to draw a human, or animal, I can recommend to my useful links section in the sidebar of this Blog, you will find several links where you can perform exercises in anatomy, let me say that those wonderful exercises helped me so much in this time, you can spend from about 20-30 minutes a day you will start learning pretty quickly how the human or animal body works.

8. Try sketching only with a pen, is one of the things I'm always recommending to people who want to draw better, in fact it is a way to control the line, when you become unable to erase the lines you'll have to think twice the line you want for your sketch, first you go to into a conditional mode too, to think that you can grab a slight trauma without the pencil/eraser, but this exercise will help you gradually improve your ability to draw, the more you do it will be better, and you'll get used to make a stroke with more identity and ease.

9. Take your time, speed comes after you've mastered the technique, usually many people want to imitate the speed of professional artists in Youtube or Deviantart, well it's normal to want to get to this point someday, hell yeah! we all want to do that, but remember that you should know how to walk first and then you can learn how to run.

10. For each draw you have you will approach an inch closer to the goal you want to reach, whether small or horrifying, is cute, is a work of art that you cherish for the rest of life, and so on. My advice in this part is to fill at least one sketchbook a month, fill it with whatever you want to draw, perhaps at the beginning you must be thinking this: "A whole book? This guy is crazy!" I'm neither crazy nor sane, I rather an intermediate position, hehe. Many artists I admire had lots of notebooks filled, they usually fill 2 or 3 sketchbooks in a month with very epic drawings, most of them in pen or ink, that's so insane,so when you start to fill and fill sketchbooks you can feel like "I'm on the right way every time I do more drawings more easily and fluently".

Now I'm giving you a little gift, something really from my inside, try to keep this in your pocket, you could not miss the "Bonus track" of this publication, I think this is one of the most intimate advice I can give you, I learned this from a teacher of arts at the university, at first his exercise seemed pretty weird, but I said: "Well, why not?". The exercise was to always bring with me a small sketchbook, really tiny (could go into my coat pocket with no problem), then with the "little notebook" you could draw what you wanted anywhere, so the teacher told us the following: "I want you to fill this book with things you like to do, what do you like watch, things you admire, things that catches your attention in good or bad way and if it is possible I want the drawings or cuts that you will add to the sketchbook in colour".

The idea at first seemed odd, but when I filled the booklet I realized that in one way or another I began to realize the things I liked and I didn't know I liked them so much!, so I could easily make a mental map of my identity as a person and also as an artist (likes/dislikes). When you feel you can not go, your goal is farther than you can walk, run or crawl to it, have a look at your life, who you are, and that makes you to feel like you can always give one more step for it. Never give up!.

Identify ourselves first helps to identify the world around us.

Thank you for reading this Blog post, I'll be watching forward to any questions, suggestions or comments from you. I invite you to know my Deviantart and my Facebook page, so you can see new entries, news and the announcement of my upcoming Webcomic series. Do not miss it! Regards, until next time.

Hello again! You are welcome to a new entry to my Blog Rizian Larc, this time I will show you my method to create and compose scenarios through small keys, instructions and an example I made specifically for this exercise, let's start!

Materials:

Traditional: 

- Sheet of paper or paper of your choice, preferably a disposable paper or already used.
- Colour chalk or colours (any of these will do).
- Eraser
- Hard pencil or mechanical pencil, also a soft pencil to add shadows.
- Pen or Ink pen.


Digital:

- Tablet (It can be Wacom, Genius, the one you have can be good).
- Photoshop, Paint Tool SAI, Autodesk Sketchbook Pro, any paint program of your choice will be perfect.

The background design has always been a problem for most people who want to enter the world of comics or illustration in general, we have all had problems with the scenarios and it's very normal because our eye is more accustomed to fixed at one point in time instead of appreciate all at once, for this will show you my tactic to cheat a little our eyes.

First, I call this technique the "stain", and I use it when I need to compose quite a scene in my comic or just to make an illustration with background included. The stain (colour) will help us to shape the basic forms that exist in our mind without having to go directly to add details and details, and there's the first mistake we can commit when drawing backgrounds, detailing and detailing at first. Let's proceed to see the image to keep explaining this step:



This technique helps to capture the basic shape of what we imagined in our minds so that it does not slip from the mind and stay longer the structure of what we are thinking, with basic shapes and a thick brush (colour) now draw the landscape stain that was on your mind in a short period of time before the idea escapes out of your mind.

It is important and I recommend doing this step with the colour of your choice and we will superimpose layers either traditional or digital mode to distinguish the colour of the final lines. Now we go to the next step:

Remember: If you're working in digital I recommend lowering the layer opacity to 15 or 25% where the stain is and create a new layer to keep working and if you're working in traditional I recommend a clean eraser to soften a little the stain and to start to work more freely about it.

Second, now that you have cleaned and softened the spot, now you can proceed to add details to the landscape that crossed our mind just now. Try to always shorten adding details and forget about perfection by this point, we need only identify basic shapes in this part of the process, which is the most important because that will define which elements will have our illustration. I recommend following this step with a coloured pencil slim pencil instead of a conventional gray traditional pencil for the reasons I mentioned above in the previous step.




With the added details and you have a base of what you wanted to achieve at the beginning, but in the process will occur to you "Hey, I just think adding new things possibly are going to see much better", no problem!, adding new things is not a sin, rather make it more harmoniously composition, in this way we can say that "we have deceived our eye".

I recommend you always try to superimpose objects in your compositions, or places focus in a "clear" in them to make the illustration shows what we want to show and not just be "a cute background" which is not what we want to accomplish in this exercise about compositing scenarios. I'm explaining this a little more in a newer entry about background, is called Composition and placement in backgrounds.

Always try to add as much detail as you can in this step so it can help you move to the next one, because the more lines you have drawn in this sketch the easier it will be to define the details and the stage itself.

Third, having our sketch now we can begin to define what is what, for example, the roof is a triangle, the rectangle is a fireplace, the two cubes are two wooden boxes, and things like that. For this step now I recommend using a thin brush of black in digital or a 0.5 or 0.3 mechanical pencil if you're working in traditional.




Regardless if you have a detailed or simple style as I mentioned in my post on "The Power of the Sketch" you can choose whether to add more or less details to each of the parts that you defined as objects in the image. Here we should already have completely the details that appear in our final image regardless of whether you added lines of force to it or not, that's choice of each artist.

Fourth, this is the last step in the process that I devised to compose a scene, is one of the most important to "prepare" our sketch before final production, whether coloured or just inking. This step is called the "shadow" here with a soft pencil or a brush medium in our drawing program we will add our drawing some shadows where needed.




It is always good to plan where they will go the shadows of our sketch as a guide to the finished illustration, and when we go to colouring or inking know where the light comes and not get to experience or invent shadows never have planned for the finished illustration.

Well, I hope you have served my tutorial on how to compose scenarios, I will deepen this and more issues related to drawing on the Blog, I'd love to know if this tutorial has helped you as I am new to the "education" and would love to know your questions or suggestions. Remember to always be attentive to answer questions and other concerns, to follow the Blog I recommend my page on Facebook, Twitter and also the subscription button on the sidebar.Thank you for reading my tutorial and see you next time! Greetings!

Many times when we're writing our stories and we engage too with our main character, develop their personality, habits, ways of seeing the world in which he or she lives, but in many cases we do not give sufficient importance to our support characters beyond to give more weight to the story that we are developing, they also have their own life.

These supporting characters in our story always play key roles in this, to these beings divided by five levels of relevance in the story, here's a brief stopover I've managed to somehow arrange the characters of the stories I've worked with:

First Level: Those characters without them the story just does not make any sense, usually the protagonist, often rivals, depending if the story revolves around the history between these two, or usually the villain or antagonist of the story (not in every story there is a well defined antagonist, but worth mentioning), provided the overall story revolves around their lives and how they relate to each other, a clash between these gives rise to our plot. As mentioned the name, placed first as its priority level in history is always the highest.

Second Level: Those characters who despite having a high relevance in history, with a related life of one form or another to any of the characters of first level, they are not as important as the main characters. A clear example of a character in Second Level is the travelling companion of the protagonist, a childhood friend or a close friend who has enough appearances followed in our history, and surely at some point there will be a piece of their personal history. These characters include them in second-level and supporting characters from the first level and gives a break to the story of just focusing on a single angle.

Third Level: Those characters that appear from time to time, the reader will always remember something specific they did the last time they appeared in our history. For example, a king who always mentioned for doing something and rarely appears to give orders, also a relative that died and always advised the First Level a character or in some cases Second Level, or we can say that an assistant or servant of an important character that appears from time to time to make a dialogue with a character of first or second level would serve as an example. The difficulty of the third level is that many of these people can easily fall into the category of second level or fourth level, depending on how the author manages the character.

Fourth Level: Those characters that appear fleetingly in our stories, but yet many fail to remember at least that was what made or gestures, if you have a funny name that's probably one of the few things that the reader remember him. Not for this fourth-level characters are less important, their work in history is to harmonize and to put bad form "fill" an empty space in a character that does not stand out much, but if you can use for more than a dialogue. A good example of this is a strange encounters with the protagonist, a conflict will gun for anything that comes to mind and so he came, so it goes. Usually these characters appear in a single chapter or fragment of our history, yet many times these characters have gained enough popularity to scale to a third level.

Fifth Level: Those characters we just provide the backdrop, yes, background, his role is simply to make space, when we speak of a crowd can say a thousand, two thousand, three thousand, five thousand people are these characters Fifth Level are present in our history when we mention a "crowd", or illustrate to people walking on the street or shopping at a market, does not necessarily have to name them by Michael, Craig, Allan and Ashley, their work is simply to exist.

Well, those are the five levels that I propose to differentiate the characters in your story, you can serve pretty when creating characters for a new project or simply enhance an existing one, but let me give you some advice:

It is not all mathematics and physics, many characters can fall as well level up whatever the author wants.

I hope you have served my article, thank you for reading this Blog entry, I really am very happy that my words pass through your eyes. I invite you to follow me on Twitter or follow me through my page on Facebook for more updates and new entries! Have a nice day! :)

Many of us have drawn pages and pages of our comics and still ask "Where I'm going with this?" And there's usually no response, so and many people have stopped and we are still inking our dreams.

For many if us the situation of comics/manga is quite complicated, because in the places we live is quite difficult to find someone to finance our comics or just someone to buy it because our culture is quite hangout in the 9th art. Many see the comics as childish, which is for children and should be in most cases a humorous theme and nothing else.

There's a moment in life when you want to organize your life, find a job or study a career, for someone like us it would be something like: ​​"I want to draw comics for the rest of my life". We tend to stray from reality, but that we tend to neglect the cruel reality when we have a great result when you draw something cool, and blame everyone and everything when something goes disastrous. The reality is this: you can create your own destiny regardless of the external situation to which you're linked.

I saw through the little time I've spent on this, people doing incredible things or they manage somehow to get known or just sell one or two copies of their work. Many have relied on his comic put advertising to finance their project, others have tried to achieve foreign publishers and publishing a short story to begin, others have saved money to publish a small number of issues and today is the day that reached to sell over 2500 copies at the local fair.

Are you good at what you do? If the answer is yes, now ask yourself this: It makes you happy? If the answer is also yes, I will say this to you my friend, never let your dreams die because if you keep chasing your goals you will be rewarded in some way. When I started this I was not expecting too much, I had the world against me, had few skills and did not know people who wanted to do comics or manga, however over time I have been rewarded with simple things, but each one of those means a lot to me.

Now look at the other side of the coin, you're good at what you do but it is nevertheless something that makes you happy, I recommend you to try harder, I am of those who do not believe in this "natural talent" I rather to believe that there are people who have grown up and been influenced differently to achieve their own style in less time than other people. The effort and the joy of striving for what you do always brings rewards, your duty is to know and value them echo on them for your next victory.

People will always be lucky, and those who were not born with the gift of luck we have almost an obligation to make our way through life to find that opportunity or just struggle to create it and get to where we are going tomorrow. World is difficult but not impossible, we like to draw or write, love it as a challenge, this is one more challenge that you have to beat!

I hope you have been useful for my article, I would like to know your experiences in this field, I am always open to talking and meeting you. For more updates, articles and images can subscribe to my page on Facebook to stay tuned. Greetings! Arr!

The sketch is a really important process in drawing, painting or creating something, in my experience as an artist I can say that the sketch is part of the process in any artwork that matters most. Why?

The sketch is the part that gives the composition, character, even your own identity to the artwork you're doing as well as give you the ability to view and correct any errors in your piece. Beyond the reasons for its importance is also there's something I call "The power of the sketch" or "Sketch power". Among an artist is more developed in their ability to get out of his mind a basic sketch will have more ease of making parts with its own identity.

Finding sketch development is mostly a capability that is developing and identifying in each work that you made through your artistic career. For example, there are people that make a persons with models, drawing dolls and others tools, it's not bad, there are people who always starts to draw people with little circles and geometric shapes, the two are different ways to raise an illustration, but, does that really affects the future of illustration? My answer is yes, since basic guiding these lines in our brain in a way we can identify what we wanted to do at first can be a really useful base for achieving what we wanted in our minds.

It is difficult to take a sketch from another person and perform this work under their own concepts, our brain will feel quite uncomfortable and simply will create a barrier between you and the paper. If you are learning to draw I recommend you to force yourself and try to capture objects and bodies in your own way to draw, try to make simple lines, do not complicate, the drawing must be progressive, stylish and not something exact, is not mathematics.

For best results with "the power of the sketch" I'll give these simple tips:

1. Try to draw anything you have to look at and thus adapts to your own thought, have you tried creating a great sword from a RPG just seeing a knife in your kitchen? Have you tried to create a powerful gun just seeing a toilet paper tube?

2. Like fantasy? Have you tried watching people differently? Have not you tried to turn your best friend into a dwarf or a troll or an elf? You can guide you and illustrations of various creatures that have made others to create your own.

3. Once you take notice that something you liked or made you work simpler to make something you already have in mind should have it in mind for next time. For example: I do better when I draw the heads first as a circle and identify the position of the eyes from two cross-shaped lines.

4. Are you a retailer or just like the simplicity of the drawings? You can go for either of these two ways, but can give you the opportunity to explore the other side of your style, it will give you more clues to identify what you like and what's the hardest part to work on.

5. Draw, draw and draw, never stop drawing when you have time to do it.

I hope I have served my advice and my Blog post, soon I will be writing a new one, so be aware of my page on Facebook for an upcoming entry!

And tell me, do you like to be quite retailer or like to be a little easier when drawing?