Practice illustrations

This is a note when I, a very beginnner of an illustration, practiced drawing an illustration. I left them here so I can refer to this in the future.

Today's illustration

These illustrations are those I drew very seriously, but left one is before practice and right one is after practice.

BeforeAfter
Before practiceAfter practice

Here is the links to today's illustration on my SNS accounts.

I tried these steps to improve this original illustration.

  1. Figure out what can be better
  2. Pick up a few things I need to focus on improving
  3. Practice and figure out a few things I have to do
  4. Redraw the illustration and check what was improve

These steps are from some steps as Naoki-sensei introduced in his video to get drawing better as early as possible in 3 months (no English).

1. What can be better

I listed up what I felt these can be improved.

Face and hair

  1. Smiling face should be more natural, less weird, maybe around eyes or mouth is a cause.
  2. The line of eyes makes a weird impression and looks like fox.
  3. The line of the face isn't very natural, perhaps the face may be bigger or the jaw can be rounder.
  4. The amount of her hair may be more
  5. The angle of her side tail hair can be improved and can be more natural.

Body

  1. Her breast from the side view isn't well drawn.
  2. The angle of the necklace (choker?) looks weird and not right.
  3. The shirt collar looks weird shape.
  4. It can be drawn better between her arms and body.

2. What I practiced

Even though there are many things I was able to, I focused on these 2 things

  1. Facial expressions, including a smiling face
  2. Heads, especially faces,, from multiple angles
    • I also noticed I didn't draw ATARI and it was helpful to draw a head from a diagonal angle. ATARI is simple circles, rectangles, or lines to show the rough position or the size. I don't know how to say correctly in English, so I'll say it a wire in this page.

During practice, I read or checked these as learning materials:

  1. Book: Introduction to master faces, hair styles, and expressions in Manga from any angle (360°どんな角度もカンペキマスター!マンガキャラ顔・髪型・表情入門)
    • Checked the pages to draw the head from each angle
  2. YouTube: Naoki Saito Illust Channel: Lecture to draw each expression easily (【簡単】表情の描き分け講座)
    • No English subtitle
    • You can see how eyebrows, eyes, or a mouth affect each expression

And following illustrations are examples of what I drew.

  1. Facial expressions
    • Change an angle of each face part Facial expression with an angle
    • Change a position of each face part Facial expression with a positional
  2. Heads from multiple angles
    • Drew without a wire Facial expression with a positional
    • Drew with a wire Facial expression with an angle

3. What I found

Facial expressions

I changed each part of a face and checked how it affects, but because there are so many patterns and not very particular common things, I couldn't find a lot.

The things I found was followings, though I saw these in the above video:

  1. Distance between eyes and jaw: Shorter it is, more childish

And from the above video, eyebrows show what expression is mostly, and mouth shows how strong the expression is. Anyway, I felt that the weirdness of my original illustration was from the face of the angle and not from the smile face.

Heads from many angles

I found these things:

  • Angles affect each distance and shape
    • If the angle is from the above, the distance between a nose and a mouth is short. It's opposite if the angle is from the bottom.
    • The eye is not on the straight line, but it's on the curved line.
    • If the camera position is closer, then the head gets big and wide. It's opposite if the part of the head is far away.
    • If the angle is from the bottom, then the bottom part of a jaw can also be seen and we have to be conscious
    • For the side profile, the size of eyes gets smaller than other angles
    • For the side profile, the size of head is not complete circle. It's bigger than circle
    • Eyeline is important.

But overall, how to see a head and face is case by case on each angle, so it's better to see a model and check how it looks during drawing an illustration always.

Other learning

Draw frame lines with equal margins

It's a side topic, but it was helpful when I drew many illustrations and changed each a little bit from others. On Clip Studio Paint, it's easily be prepared by:

  1. Select Frame borders > Recntagle frame and draw it
  2. Right click the Frame layer and select Ruler/Frame > Divide frame border equally
  3. You can choose options for the number of vertical and horizontal divisions and also divide folders

What I redraw and what was improved

So, again, this is the same image on the top of this page.

After review

What I changed was

  1. Eye angles: Before updating, eyes were drawn as if it's on the straight line, but after practice, eyes were like on the curved line.
  2. Eye and mouth positions: They were low compared to positions of ears and jaw, so I lifted them up.

I think it reduced the weirdness of smiles from the original illustration.

Wrap it up

This is the first time to write a post for an illustration and actually, I didn't think I was going to do while I was practicing, so maybe some illustrations or some explanations are not explained enough to be understood. Anyway, I felt it didn't improve a lot as I wanted, but at least changed the impression a little bit and reduce the weirdness. I guess face is one of the most important part in our body and made a big impact by changing it.

Anyway, I'll keep doing this and hope it's gonna change my drawing skills.