Rizian Art

Hello! I feel I have been years since I wrote a new entry on the Blog, but since we have spent the holidays back to work and make our own, hehe. How have you spent in the new year? I hope this year 2013 are the best for you and all your wishes and expectations come true. Well, because we made a small wave can get into the issue, the issue today is not a tutorial, nor any classification of characters or drawing lessons, today I come to tell you about a personal experience in the field of drawing.

"Carlos, how ~ # @ # & * you did to improve so fast in 8 months? I've been drawing since two years ago and I do not see any improvement."

This question came from more than one person personally when I uploaded the image you see above to my Deviantart, my response was simply: "I do not know, maybe I was doing what I liked to do." But beyond that simple and easy answer, the question of "why some have such a drastic change in his drawings in such a short time and others not?" And the research I could find a better answer to the question that I have made some close friends. I will tell you:

I've always wanted to do a manga, but I was not drawing very well, in fact one of the things I did is what many who want to learn how to draw manga do, I sat at the computer, open the browser, and type "course to learn how to draw manga on-line", at first I will not deny, I kept drawing Naruto, Ichigo from Bleach or some characters from my favourite series, I enjoyed it very much, and I will not deny that I was feeling like "Damn, I'm a @#~^* god". Gradually I realized that this was not going to lead me anywhere and that if I wanted to draw my own manga I should make my own characters, and in fact I set the task to do, holy @#$~* that were horrible, I look and gives me a bit of nostalgia but also some laughter, I will not deny it, but I had the motivation to someday make my own history and I did not give up, so I thought and thought through my inspiration and things I could create from my mind after taking some spare time.

When it came time to do my first story I self demanded enough, but at the end I did not like what I wrote and it was archived as a reference, however this was not the first "slip" I had, I filed approximately four stories and more than 20 characters next to them, for some it is a very small number, but for me it is something that fills me with pride. But there is something that I always key feature quite the time to talk about "how to improve" or "create a unique style" ... those are the references.




Do you have an account on Deviantart? Well, actually there are many similar sites, I have a Deviantart account because I think it is a very complete Web with a large audience and also has so many artists that have helped me in different ways to become better each day. The importance of joining a social network is that you have the capability of upload your pictures, perhaps receive criticism, get some motivation behind a simple "Like" or "Favourite", also make references to artists you admire, meet new artists and techniques that can surely improve the one you're currently using, find another good tutorial and especially to define your style through everything you've seen.

When I took some references I found on Deviantart artists gradually felt the confidence to come up with something more, so I took a pencil and began to create, when I had realized I had my first "20 Watchers" in Deviantart then 100 and so on, regardless what to draw, I always tried to do better than before I did wrong line in a drawing, now was a perfect line, but can not draw scenarios were drawn today, could not draw women, also I can do, I have even learned a thing or two about colour, but none of these things are the work of one or two nights, it's hard work and perseverance, everything is learned in time, the style of each artist develops knowledge process itself, not knowing the other process.

When I made up my mind that I must enhance my own process, my own methods, that's when everything became easier and stronger, I held a more obsessive drawing, then I could say "This is what I always do" From there it was just self growth that took me some way to where I am now standing. Everyone has a different process, many take longer than others to adjust to his style, others take less time, and not bad either case, we are all different people and have different objectives, it is more than normal for these things to happen, especially on something as subjective as it is art.

"Patience, patience, patience ... know yourself, study your processes, close the book for a second and try to accomplish things through your own understanding, is my advice."

I hope you have enjoyed this post, I also like to know your experiences on this topic, do you have any skill to improve your next picture? Guides you any special technique? Any artists to share? Come on, do not be shy! With that I say goodbye, but not before to tell you I've been very active on my Facebook page, or Twitter, so I recommend you stop by there as I will also be sharing interesting things I usually find on the network, Greetings! Happy new year!

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! :)

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?