Art School

[Amer]

Here's my critique:

Overall, it's a nice picture, and the problems are simple ones. :3

1. You should be using more layers. (Trust me, it helps!)
You should have one for lineart, one for colour, one for the sketch, and one for the background, at the very least. (And name them, if you can!)
Most new digital artists think that they only have to use one or two layers, but most art apps let you have up to 100+ layers.
With layers, you can clip other layers to a main layer, which helps so much with shading and lighting; and also with colouring lineart.
And, if you mess up, you can usually just erased or delete the bad layer and try again on a new one.
Layers can be merged, duplicated, and separated colours can be changed if the hue, saturation, or light isn't right.

I separate each individual colour (and sometimes each line) to their own layers, and I cannot tell you how many times that has saved my art. XD

2. Expand the bucket tool.
I can see that you're using the bucket to fill large areas of colour, and that's great, but you've left a broken white edge between your lineart and your colour. That's caused by the lineart having small opaque pieces (which help make the lines look smooth). To fix it, you'd have to expand your bucket fill by one pixel, or colour in the patches manually.

3. Don't be afraid of shade.
You've got little bits of shade here and there, which is good to see (it looks like you've shifted hues too - which is also good), but you should try throwing bigger bits of shade in there; especially since it's a night picture.
Use small amounts of light to highlight the areas that are illuminated by the moon (check out rim lighting), and also any details you want to draw attention to (like eyes).

4. Look into the blur tool and the blur pen.
Blurring the background, even just a little, can give the effect of distance. It also allows the eyes to focus more on the main subjects (eg. the cats).
The blur can also be used to blend colours and make a gradient (like on the wings).

5. Use references. For the wings, the moon, the cats, everything.
The more references you have, the more you can look at them and see where you're going wrong, which colours look the best, what kind of shading looks best, and general anatomy.

6. And the the most important thing: Draw what you want. Don't force yourself to draw things you don't want to draw. If you don't enjoy drawing it, people won't enjoy looking at it.


At first, most of that will seem overwhelming or overkill, but that's the stuff that'll help most, IMO.

And don't worry about black lines; lots of art is done with a dark edge. :3
If you wanted to change anything, try making the lines thinner (and maybe try turning up the correction).

Try everything, see what stuff you like, watch tutorials and professional artists on YouTube (TsaoShin is a good one), try other art apps (MediBang and AutoDesk are both free and work really well), explore all the possibilities. \(^-^)/

And I think that's all I've got. XD

This is really useful, but one question.
I had to manually draw black around the edge of my lineart because a white edge surrounds it. Is there a way to fix this?

 

[Amer]

How does this look? (I like how the moon glows)

 

[Amer]

How do you draw chicken feet, Fanci? I'm great at chickens, but their feet look like blobs.

 

[TamingMaster]

This is really useful, but one question.
I had to manually draw black around the edge of my lineart because a white edge surrounds it. Is there a way to fix this?

Which pen are you using? Just a pen, or the Edge pen? If it's a normal pen, you might need to change the settings in the pen menu - you might've accidentally set an edge on it.

View attachment 1421068
How does this look? (I like how the moon glows)

That moon is looking a whole bunch better. :3 And I'm seriously loving the lighting. XD

 

[Amer]

Which pen are you using? Just a pen, or the Edge pen? If it's a normal pen, you might need to change the settings in the pen menu - you might've accidentally set an edge on it.


That moon is looking a whole bunch better. :3 And I'm seriously loving the lighting. XD

I use a "pencil"
No, I've had the edge pen problem before. I think it is the problem with me using the canvas paint bucket to paint the background after I draw the cats, because I draw my things on paper then trace them off a photo of my drawing.

 

[Amer]

Something I will trace soon. Sorry if this Ameraucana looks "Easter Egger-ish" I tried to draw it after the standard description as well as I could, but it is very vague. I have done a couple good chickens before, so I asked my brother what to draw next, and he said the Ameraucana had to be a rooster, which I'm bad at.

 

[Amer]

Oops, forgot the photo

 

[TamingMaster]

I use a "pencil"
No, I've had the edge pen problem before. I think it is the problem with me using the canvas paint bucket to paint the background after I draw the cats, because I draw my things on paper then trace them off a photo of my drawing.

Try switching to pen. It might be because of the way the pencil brush is styled; or it might just be because you need to expand the bucket.

You could try setting up your layers like this:

Then, if you have any white parts, you could colour them in (if the bucket thing doesn't work)?

I'm not sure what else I can suggest.

Uhhh... Maybe try making sure your canvas size is bigger than 1000px?

 

[Amer]

Try switching to pen. It might be because of the way the pencil brush is styled; or it might just be because you need to expand the bucket.

You could try setting up your layers like this:
View attachment 1421136
Then, if you have any white parts, you could colour them in (if the bucket thing doesn't work)?

I'm not sure what else I can suggest.

Uhhh... Maybe try making sure your canvas size is bigger than 1000px?

What kind of layers do you use for each color, and is there a way to paint without tracing the lineart over for each color? (I'm eating this up, this is extremely helpful.)

 

[TamingMaster]

What kind of layers do you use for each color, and is there a way to paint without tracing the lineart over for each color? (I'm eating this up, this is extremely helpful.)

I use "Normal" colour layers for the base colours, then there's two different ways to add light and shade.

If you create a normal colour layer above the base colour, then you clip it and set it to "Multiple", and use the same colour as you did the base, it'll automatically darken it down, then you can use that for basic shade.
If you do the same thing, but set it to "Add", it should create light.

Sometimes that doesn't work though (okay, quite a bit of the time - especially if you're using fully-saturated colours, but still... ); I've found that certain colours look weird with those kinds of effects (either that or the effects don't work).
So, in that case, you'd have to choose your own shading colours. Which is pretty easy, because all you do is shift hue slightly, add in more saturation, then darken it up a bit, and voila.

There's my usual kind of set up.
I always, always put the light above the shade. Because, usually, if you look at light in real life, it cuts through shadows and shade.

About your lineart problem, keep your lineart in a separate layer at the top of the list. That should keep it above the colours, so you don't have to keep drawing it in. :3
If you meant about colouring and having to trace the colour's edge to get rid of white patches: Expand your paint bucket. I'm not sure if you're using the computer version or the mobile version, but somewhere in both of those you have the opinion to make the bucket fill in an extra pixel - so find that and it'll fill properly.

Honestly, poke around with your tools a bit more. Try different layer types out, different effects, all the different things. You'll get to know what stuff does what and you'll get to know where stuff is. :3

(I'm glad I can be of help. :3 I'm not the best artist, by far, but I know some tips and tricks that might help. XD)