Documenting my process of learning digital drawing

[PhantomUnderYourDesk]

Update as of 20th May '23 - Art fight, Eeveelutions and ClipStudioPaint 2.0!~


Uh... Been a bit since I've updated this. Either way, got news!

First of, after quite a while Clip Sudio Paint V.2.0 has been released in the meantine! (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧ Actually I'm on V.2.1.2 by now even!! My bought lisence of V.1 hasn't been supported anymore, which meant I needed to pay a small fee - users who bought a V.1 before got a huge discount - to properly upgrade and acticate to the latest version. The whole progress was...not that optimal and sort of more complicated than necessary (or at least it was so to my brain), but eventually I made it work.

What especially caught my attention of V.2 is some new feature called 'Shading Assist', which allows you to sort of auto-shade a flat-colored drawing. Or moer like gives you a reference where exactly shadings and lightnings can/might go. This sounded highly intriguing and useful to me, given I, uh, still struggle to properly and fully understand where exactly the shading and highlighting go to achieve a realistic and natural look. It's not a replacement for shading, definitely not - duh, it's only a helpful tool. One that I'm eager to give more uses.
Resource A for using Shading Assist
Resource B for using Shading Assist


In fact, I've already very roughly gave that tool a try - when creating drawings for annual Art Fight! I've been away for like the first week of July so I couldn't join right away when the event started, but somehow I was kinda hyped to participate when I haven't in like two or three years. Especially since now I could do both; practicing digital art WHILE ALSO creating cool gift art! I joined Team Vampire, by the time of writing this blog post I dunno yet which team won. But eh, me feels vampires are much more cool than werewolves.

For this year's Art Fight I aimed to only concentrate on creating attacks (aka gift art) of either feline, sparkleanimal and Eeveelution characters, with them being from people I know via discord or who I follow on twitter/X as being highly optimal.

.......In the end, I didn't get to create as many drawings as I potentially wished to or managed to. But that's...alright, I am trying to not be too hard on myself there or beat myself up too much due to this. Like, I have a fulltime job, I'm more often then not mentally exhausted, I'm super-picky about my artworks and tend to get lost in details, executive dysfunction is a thing etc. - I highly admire those people who create like a LOT of attacks and/or attacks featuring MULTIPLE characters. I happen to just not be one of these people. Plus near the end of Art Fight as a huge shady issue came to light, where donations to the site went into the owners pockets and the mods working for free, which resulted in many mods quitting (as far as I know, it's been resolved now though, and the owner quitted and transfered ownership) - which kinda killed my eager to participate in the event more... But that doesn't mean that I created nothing, I'm actually very lowkey proud of the drawings/attacks I did create! They're attached to this post, safer and easier than uploading and linking/embedding them (since art theft is a thing), even at the cost of having to reduce the file size.

Basically, that's what perfectly summs up my art fight experience:

Plus, it was very enjoyable to work on these digital drawings while re-listening to a Harry-Potter-podcast by a german Youtuber (where she analyzes and humorously comments on five minutes of the first movie in each episode) and follow missed streams by my newly-discovered favorite VTubers of Hololive English (timezones prevent me from being present when they actually go live).


Now for what to do or draw next... I'm probably going to figuratively lean back and follow some activities/hobbies besides drawing that kinda have been left hanging as of lately. Like, reading some new manga volumes or an English graphic novel, play some games - I really should check in on my cult in Cult of the Lamb, or do some dungeoncrawling in Explorers of Skies - and if any, do some comfort drawings. Promised to create the new boss icons for Primal Shadows, so that's the next art thing I wish and want to tackle. I've like said it once, twice, multiple times and be still amazed af by it every single time, but it's still baffling to me how much progress in drawing I made: Basically I never ever dabbled into digital art as I found it way too complicated an overwhelming, and now I greatly enjoy it. It's all autodidactically acquired, somewhat and mildly proves that I DO have a talent for autodidactic learning if the topic intrests me and/or I am passionate about something.


That's all for now!~ In the following are my art fight attacks/drawing.
Explicit trigger warning for some blood and healed sh scars on the Umbreon character on the second image, but according to the owner of the character they inevitably belong to the character aka please do not remove them.