Thread "The biggest mistakes you make all the time in your artwork?" in forum "Comic Talk and General Discussion *"

Posted at 9:06PM, Jun. 10, 2015

For me, it's forgetting all those lessons I've learned from the last pic I drew- easy ways to colour, how to draw certain things in certain ways (hands, mecha, faces, lips).
I have a very, very poor memory for technique and specifics, all I can remember are general rules, and luckily I have the coordination and muscle memory to be able to achive effects I want even if I don't really know how to do them.

I'm constantly looking at old comic pages of mine and tryiing to work out how to repeat those results.

Posted at 6:06AM, Jun. 11, 2015

I seem to have the same problem you do, Ozone, but a bigger recurring problem is my inability to make drawings and art 'tight' without spending decades on it. My ink line art tends to have that 'chicken scratch look', my paint tends to wander from the areas it's supposed to stay in. If I try to stay 'tight' it takes me 3 to 4 times longer to do a page…
.
So… I sometimes tell people I'm doing the art in an impressionist style (don't see the need to mention that uber-realism is just beyond my capabilities haha)

Posted at 5:06PM, Jun. 11, 2015

1. Finishes first inking run over pencils.
2. Realizes that inking has been done on actual pencil layer; no smooth way to seperate the linework.
3. Swear.
4. Redo first inking layer.

Posted at 7:06PM, Jun. 11, 2015

Sway wrote:
1. Finishes first inking run over pencils.
2. Realizes that inking has been done on actual pencil layer; no smooth way to seperate the linework.
3. Swear.
4. Redo first inking layer.

I used to do this all the time until I started lowering the opacity of my sketches before inking over them. It was easy to tell I was on the wrong layer then.
My usual mistakes are with character proportions and anatomy. I try to use references but I have a hard time drawing what I see. I forget even a lot of the general rules =(

Posted at 6:06AM, Jun. 12, 2015

Kim, that reminds me-
The worst fault is perfectionsisim. T_T

People mistakenly think that's a good trait but that's like saying naracisim is just about making yourself look good and procrastenation is just about knowing when to take it easy. :)
I fuss over every line and shade like a deranged OCD moron, till one page take litterally 6 months to finish.
No wonder I forget techniques… hahaha

Posted at 4:06PM, Jun. 12, 2015

Rushing

Posted at 3:06PM, Jun. 13, 2015

At the beginning of a page I tend to overthink things, instead of relying on my instincts which by now are usually better. I'll make too many adjustments and this can take some of the power away from the page. At the end of a page, I tend to overwork things, which can rob some more of the immediacy and directness from the work. It's all down to a lack of confidence I think, but I'm getting better at trusting myself.

Actually that sounds a lot like what ozone just said.

Posted at 4:06PM, Jun. 21, 2015

DON'T INK ON THE PENCIL LAYER. ALWAYS.

Posted at 9:06AM, Jun. 26, 2015

I catch myself shading on the pre flats layer. To clarify I shade before I make my flats. My flats start as 1 color. Characters typically are on their own layer. This color is blue. And I shade in tones of red. So I'll be shading along and things will be looking great. Then I realize I forgot to either make the shade layer or I had moved back to the blue layer to correct something and didn't move back to the shade layer. I then have to reshade because there is no way to salvage the transparent values where the reds and blues blend :(

Posted at 6:06AM, Jun. 28, 2015

Thinking that anyone could ever take a comic illustrated with action figure as anything but pictures of toys and anywhere near as seriously as illustration or 3D digital modeling.

Posted at 1:06AM, Jun. 29, 2015

You should animate it Bravo. It'd have Team America cred. Even though it'd be stop motion as oposed to puppets.

Posted at 1:06PM, Jun. 29, 2015

@Bravo: Or… you could start using Real People (volunteers for Da-Tu) :D

Posted at 2:06PM, Jun. 29, 2015

Real people? Only if I can break into film. Stop-motion? never. But some limited Flash animation is not out of the question.

Posted at 8:06PM, Jun. 29, 2015

Rushing or getting bored. I don't like backgrounds, but I obviously want to have them in a comic and not have white spaces or flat colors, but I get so bored when making them and end up rushing and half assing.
Well, probably just working on backgrounds in general.
(and you know, using a ruler so my buildings don't look lopsided).
I also pre ink everything and scan, and without fail, everytime, I don't seem to get ALL THE DAMN ERASER RESIDUE off my paper. I probably could clean and re-scan in the amount of time I spend erasing individual dots in photoshop hahaha

Posted at 8:06AM, Jun. 30, 2015

Seriously, my biggest mistake is the same as Ozone's. Forgetting how I did something. The worst is fonts and letter sizes. Then there is rushing speech balloons. I am so sloppy with them.

Posted at 9:06PM, Jun. 30, 2015

Ashtree brings up something I've forgotten: Rushing and getting bored.
Now my last page took almost 6 months to do, but there are still bits I rushed and I do get bored doing it.
One of the worst things I rush is skipping over using reference!
I should be using good references for figures and faces, but I just can't be bothered and it shows. My work would be faster and look way better if I did.

- it takes longer to get the refence, but it's faster in the long run because you don't have to mess with the image as much to make it look right.

One of the biggest time saving tips I've learned in Graphic design is to do stuff right the first time: If you have the time to do something properly then DON'T take shortcuts, finish the thing the long way.
Then when you have to go back to work on it later there are WAY less headaches and everything is so much quicker and easier.
Basically, if you've got extra time to work on something you should use it because down the track you'll probably be rushed for time and have to do something quickly… and if you've only got crap to work it'll cause problems.

Posted at 6:07AM, Jul. 4, 2015

Probably my biggest recurring issue is getting sucked into focussing on detail before getting the big picture nailed down properly. -_-

The number of times I've done the detail on a character only to realise they were facing the wrong way, or something… xO

Posted at 6:07AM, Jul. 9, 2015

Rushing into inking, only to realize that I got the damned hand sizes wrong or I forgot some detail on someone's costume.

Posted at 11:10PM, Oct. 11, 2015

Proportions for the most part, especially when drawing on a larger canvas from 8 1/2 by 11
paper.

Posted at 10:10AM, Oct. 12, 2015

I think my main issue is that I'm bad at doing things one step at a time, even though I know I'm more likely to complete a project that way. I get too excited for the parts that I enjoy most, and too anxious to see completed bits of it. Case in point: for the current comic I'm working on, I promised myself I would write the entire thing (at least loosely) before I started drawing. I don't like writing all that much, so I've gotten myself into the position before where I run out of scripts to illustrate and never finish the damn thing (there's still a half-written, half-illustrated Izzy story on my computer). Instead I wrote about half of it and then started storyboarding. So I said alright, I'm allowed to roughly lay out the Prologue and then back to writing. Currently I'm working on colouring the second page of the Prologue, and no more writing has been done. -_-

ozoneocean wrote:
For me, it's forgetting all those lessons I've learned from the last pic I drew- easy ways to colour, how to draw certain things in certain ways (hands, mecha, faces, lips).
I have a very, very poor memory for technique and specifics, all I can remember are general rules, and luckily I have the coordination and muscle memory to be able to achive effects I want even if I don't really know how to do them.

I'm constantly looking at old comic pages of mine and tryiing to work out how to repeat those results.

I do this too. I did one digital drawing years ago that I still love the colouring on (it was Fanart for The Hub, actually), and I can't for the life of me remember exactly how I did it. I wish I had written it down or something.

Sway wrote:
1. Finishes first inking run over pencils.
2. Realizes that inking has been done on actual pencil layer; no smooth way to seperate the linework.
3. Swear.
4. Redo first inking layer.

Argh, yes. I seriously wish there was a photoshop plugin that just pops up with a little thing that says "Hey idiot, you're inking on your sketch layer." I've become very anal now about locking layers that I'm not using, but it still happens from time to time.

Ashtree house wrote: I don't like backgrounds, but I obviously want to have them in a comic and not have white spaces or flat colors, but I get so bored when making them and end up rushing and half assing.
Well, probably just working on backgrounds in general.

I'm also terrible at backgrounds. Often mind end up looking not as good as I know they could, because I'm just not willing to spend as much time on them as I am the characters/foreground.

Posted at 12:10AM, Oct. 17, 2015

It's funny, in the current page of Pinky TA I'm doing I was wondering WHY I'd drawn the background so plain- just with the characters standing around and no detail behind them. Even the most detailed panel is super bare…
And I just couldn't work out WHY
In the past I'd have filled it with drawn detail… Every skerric would be drawn in.

So now that I'm painting in the colours and blobbing in texture suddenly all that blank space looks FILLED with detail and any linework is a huge detracting distraction… and I realised that all of that was part of my plan to begin with, but I'd completely forgotten it.
That happens every time.

Posted at 4:10PM, Oct. 26, 2015

Me is faces. Don't know what it is but that's my biggest issue. From time to time backgrounds.