Zealot Fanart (Graphite)

This is an unfinished piece that I started a while ago. Unfortunately I don't have the time to finish it at the moment, but I figured I might as well post it here.

No tracing was done on any portion. The proportion is slightly off and I may need to redraw certain pieces of it, if not all of it.

Also, you should recognize this as one of the first pieces of concept art to have originally been released for SC2.



Any criticisms? Opinions?

Oh, here's the original image:

 

I really like how you did the Psi Blade arm piece. Much better then the original, to be honest. What you might want to fix is the head. It's a little to wide, at least if you were trying to replicate the original.

Other then that it looks great so far. Well, maybe you could make the light blue parts just a little less dark, but that's just my personal taste. If you haven't already used a lot of layers there, then some of that clay-ish eraser stuff would most likely be the way to go. Or if you have one of those erasers in a pen: go for it.

 

I'm judgmentally biased against these kinds of pieces because they lack originality, and most of the time they just plain suck.

That being said, this piece doesn't look half bad. You definitely take time with your lines, but the entire piece feels too grey. If you feel like taking the next step, You could snag a kneadable eraser and a few drawing pencils for no more than five bucks.

 

I agree very strongly with you. Especially the originality bit, which is why I generally avoid drawing these types of things. But this image stood out to me for some reason so I drew it. It's quite a cool little piece.

This was done entirely with 0.7 Mechanical Pencil. So the line quality is awful. I have some drawing pencils (Derwents, 6B-6H) which are of fairly nice quality, but I much prefer the feel of drawing each line with standard pencil. Smudging is not an option on any of my pieces; I look at it as cheating, a shortcut around actually drawing lines and putting that much more quality into the piece.

I am considering redoing the piece completely and starting over with color. I can get incredibly fine detail with Prismacolors or Derwents, and all in all the piece would look quite good if I could nail the color properly.

Also, as a small disclaimer, this is a pretty old piece (probably over a year, now that I think about it). I've gotten much better at Graphite drawing since I worked on this.

I just need to start over.

 

Er, what the hell. If you look very closely at the original, you can see the it barely uses any lines at all. It's not about how you've drawn lines, it's about that you used them at all. Still, such a thing is hard to avoid when only using pencils.

And if you have the money to invest in stuff like Derwent pencils, then a little kneadable eraser indeed shouldn't be a problem.

So if you start with colour: try to not use any outlines at all. Work only with shading. And don't be afraid to use smudging as if it's cheating, because it just isn't. Hell, there are even professional smudge sticks out there, mostly made out of tightly rolled up paper, or that stuff you put your beer glass on. Or if you want to go cheap, but effective: ear buds and simple tissues will also do just fine.

Lastly, try a bit of negative drawing for those lighter areas, it really makes a difference, especially if you use thick paper and a knife to scrape some graphite off the paper.

And again: I have no idea why you see this as cheating. The only thing I would consider cheating, is putting it under a scanner and photoshop it. Seriously, as long as it's completely hand made when saying it is, then there's no such thing as cheating.

Oh, and you might want to note that your example is at least part digitally enhanced, so it's almost impossible to get the same results anyway.

/ Text wall

 

I ran into this a couple of days ago. You can basically make something indistinguishable from professional stuff. My guess is that a lot of professionals make their own, anyway.

I am no master of pencil art, but I'd have to agree that smudging and blending are definitely not cheating. Anything that isn't "outline" is probably shading, and should be free game.

 

Sweet. I've been looking for what those things are called and how to make them for quite a while. Thanks for the link. Got any others as good as this one?

 

Trust me, anything you can do to make the piece look better with less time and effort is not cheating. The only real cheating in fine art is plagiarism.

 

This is not fine art. I suppose "Fanart" and "Fine Art" are similar in spelling, but that's about it. XD

Also, using Prismcolors eliminates the need for those paper blenders. I use white and black to blend more than I do using any other real blending tools. Prismas are so soft and rich that there isn't really a point.

 

But even their offial site's tips & tricks area speaks of blending. Or is that only for those water things?

 

Well, technically it's for all of their products. But I don't like the look because it loses its quality and richness when it's spread over the paper.

But it works well with their Watercolor pencils. Those are fun to use, especially if you blend then well.

As for pastels, that's absolutely beautiful when it's blended properly.

But I hate the look of smudged graphite. It may not be "cheating" but it certainly could be labeled "lazy." Haha.

 

Probably, but I like to use it for shading with graphite. Tends to look smoother then other ways. And with really large areas it works well too, with dark tones in particular. Those always seem to get weird dots and stuff in them if I don't smudge them. (usually with a 2b pencil)

 

You like sellin' yourself short, dont'cha?