Here is an experimental article; as I might do more artist focus in the future. I don’t expect their content to be always the same. Il will certainly depends of the material I have at hand and my knowledge. I have acquired Let’s Make Character CG 2 month ago, but as you could expect from the title, this is no artbook. So how will I review this book which certainly doesn’t fall in the artbook category? In term of illustration, there is only 3 new one in this book, certainly for the explanation. So instead of reviewing the book itself, I will dig inside Shimeko‘s artstyle as I flip through the pages of this book as she has a truly unique artstyle which I appreciate very much. I have limited skills when it comes to drawing and coloring, but I hope this will also help people who are learning, as I’m filling this article under the “Learning to draw” tag. The new illustrations are processed and saved in PNG, the rest is raw resized JPG. [PNG: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4]

Shimeko start first with a sketch, drawn on paper, then she ( because it’s always better when the artist is female even though I don’t know! ), ink in Photoshop. I won’t comment much this part, but the sketch doesn’t have a lot of details, so most of them are drawn during inking.

The coloring is really what makes Shimeko’s style unique. She first start by giving a general look of the skin color. Also it seems like she already gives some substance to the eyes by using a gradient. As a noob in coloring, I know also that a lot of people make this mistake: they start to color in detail one part of the body, leaving the rest blank. This is also true for sketch and lineart; but having seen some step by step explanation from some artist. I think they all give a general feeling of the illustration color scheme. This is certainly an important step as it determines the contrast type, the color coherency and of course, the general feeling of the image.

The book also have some technique, apart from the step by step explanation. Here we have Shimeko’s coloring stroke. The first one is an hard brush with varying size, like ink; the second is like an airbrush, and the last one is more like watercolor, with varying opacity. While I have an idea how to do ink and watercolor with the pen pressure setting, I’m not sure for the airbrush as it looks more diffusing than the default soft brush in Photoshop with dynamic size.

Of course, the lineart doesn’t remain plain black with most artists, as the surrounding color has an effect on the visual perception and in fact, the black will no longer look black. Shimeko used brown here for eyes lashes, and all other the stroke.

Then, Shimeko do a basic shading of her illustration. At this stage it looks already quite like a digital drawing, without much details left to add; but she doesn’t have this digital style and in fact, her coloring as people know s rather soft and painting like. The first step in this magic is certainly her light casting. Objects reflect light and give certain shade to other element. It’s the case here for leaves and strawberries.

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To finish her artwork, Shimeko makes a copy of her artwork, then apply a gausian blur and modify the fusion mode and opacity. The difference isn’t so visible in the book as the images are a bit small. Then she adds the frills to the dress. As it’s simple frills, she draw them by hand and lastly, she modify the curves. Once again, I can’t tell the visual difference, but here is the finish artwork.

The book has 2 more illustrations with their step by step coloring. The process is bit different for these 2 but I won’t get in details. At the end of the book, there is also 2 other illustrations, but they are already on the Internet, either in digital form or as a scan. Ultimately, this book is really nice if you want to learn Shimeko’s style, and if you do understand Japanese as it’s not easy to get anything from the images. I also hope that I will be able to do more of these focus in the future.

Finally something a little bit more interesting in the learning curve. Creating original art is the only way to know how much you have improved. It’s also the moment you can be happy because you are not copying anyone. Here is a first batch of original illustration I did.

Usually, I keep all my bad drawing for inking… When I ink a sketch, it looks worse than the pencil sketch, so here is one inking. At day 2, I just got the head kinda right.I also tried some chibi drawing, but it’s a failure as well. I’m disappointed in some of these original, but after a few days, there are also some for which I’m satisfied. One thing I started to use to get the ratio right is my left thumb, which acts like a ruler.

The top drawing is really the first one I liked. I decided to try to color it in Photoshop to start. Inking was done using the pen tool, to help me making curve, otherwise there is no line smoothing unlike SAI. I also made some adjustment to some line, like the fingers which are now longer, to make her hand less puffy. I also used the drawing from my hand training to help me.

I didn’t follow any tutorial for most things, I just tried to copy what I saw in other colored artwork. However, there is 2 colorings methods used there for the skin. All the upper part of the body were colored, my own interpretation of shading. Doesn’t look so good contrary to the part below her t-shirt which simply looks more like traditional coloring. The difference is that there is a lot less shading than what I first thought. The arms have a lot of gradient, but the waist only use 2 colors!
The hair, are very hard. I think I will just mix vector in the future to make them.

Also, after time, you realize that there are plenty of defects. For self criticizing, I think it’s important to give ourselves some time, just to put aside all the excitement. And also, the image is cropped, because there are see through skirts and pantsu

Drawing hand is hard. In fact, during the first few day, I hided them so that I don’t have to draw them. But it’s needed, so I had some specific training for it. As reference, I used some art here and there, and my hand.

I think that the most important things to remember when drawing hands, is the fact that finger are so close that they hide a part of each other. In short don’t do like in my first drawing above. There is only one which I copied from Dengeki Hime, the cut finger one.

This second set is a little bit better. Fingers are a bit chubby and not long enough to make beautiful girl’s hand. They are all original. I also drew one of my favorite pose when I think, on the left. Under this angle, you can see that the palm also have some stroke. For these two pages, I mostly took model of my hand. While it’s not good for proportion, it’s really a great way to know where goes each stroke.

6 days later, another training sequence for the hand. This time it’s for the cute pose and female hand. It’s quite important also for the nails. Previously I drew them completely, but it shouldn’t.Aside of copying, there is also some pose without reference, the closed hand, for girls when they are angry. There is little to be changed for holding an object.

Time to start the series of article on my project to learn drawing. I’m currently stuck at the 15th days sadly. It’s time consuming, and I don’t have much time thanks to college. But I will write the articles on my progression. The article might not follow the chronological order or my drawing. I decided to split them into subject which are relevant to my training. I will also provide the experience I learned. It’s the point of view of someone who is slowly progressing. My advice aren’t one of a pro, and in fact, might not be the best solution, but at my level, it’s the best I can do.

I think that everyone started from that point. Every artist copied someone else before. In art college, people copy as well. Copying is the first step in learning drawing I think. The aim is not to perfectly draw, but understand the line and construction of the drawing. Moreover, it’s an easy way to improve since as an exercise, there is already the correction available. For this exercise, I started first by using a lightbox, but then, I just drew side by side.

So the first 3 days were copies of several drawing I had in stocks, mostly from my collection of Dengeki Hime. I encountered several problem while doing so. The first one is the fact that they were in color, and I’m begining with lineart, so it has been quite hard. Second things is proportion, which is not easy to retain.

On the other hand, I learned hair design, and I also learned the basic proportion for the face. Hair are usually drawn as bangs, and on the face, it covers at least half of the front, and can overlay the eyes. For long hair, there is 2 layers for the hair, one around the head, and another one for the long hair.

After the copy of the magazine, I decided to try to copy another lineart, and I tried one of Tinkle, Shuna from Magical Tail, a new drawing which was in the a small booklet bundled with Byakuya Chakai. By copying this one, I learned some new things by auto criticizing myself.

I failed the face, sadly. The shape is too long, and so is the eyes. Tinkle’s eyes are much rounder. On the other hand, I did adopt partly the ways they draw the eyes in black and white. It just needs to be rounder, and that’s what I did on the day 4. Also, I got some basics at shading. When you don’t have screentone, you can colorize like you would do with color pencil, but here I learned the hashing technique, which use interval between line to set the tone. I quite like this, and it’s possible to cross hashes, but it’s harder.

Day 0

This is a personal project which I started one week ago and in which I will try to learn drawing, and I fixed the goal in 3 weeks! Sometimes people wish they could draw like one artist or another, or just manage to draw something better than a stick figurine. So I will try to improve my poor drawing skill that you can see in those 3 weeks.

To accompany me on this quest for improvement, I will use these:

• Faber-Castell eraser, a very good eraser that doesn’t leave much dust nor pencil stroke
• Faber-Castell mechanical pencil, loaded with an HD 0,5mm. Particularity is the automatic mechanism for the nib; one push on the button is enough, the nib will move automatically.
• Sakura Pigma Micron set, for inking. It’s a set of marker, going from 0,05mm to 0,8mm.
• Wacom Intuos4 M. I decided to get this one. Aside of drawing, it does help me for a lot of task.
• Paint Tool SAI, drawing software used by most artists, for good reason ^^

And this is not enough to learn. Some people doesn’t want to get monochrome doujinshi, but I have finally found some use for them.Here is all the reference book. Mostly black and white doujin, or some color one featuring them. 2 of them are hentai for anatomy studying and there is a stack of Dengeki Hime, for more anatomy reference, and plenty of artstyle, pose. Also, some online tutorial were used during the first week.

Being already on the 9th day… I can say that I have quite improved so we will see this in later posts.