Drawing Manga :: Part 3: Deviant Artists Dish

As every DeviantArtist knows, there are some fab tutorials on DA and some gems in the journal sections; you just have to go hunt for them. Here are two about making manga that I really enjoyed.

:: Inking Tutorial by Messa ::

The video below shows how this artist inks her sketches with her trusty Wacom tablet. I do it pretty much the same way, but not as refined a technique. Again, there is no wrong way to Wacom, no defined process or technique or brush, but it does takes practice. I really want to practice making my technique for inking to stop looking Wacom-y and look like real pen, but that is tough, and to be honest there is beauty in digital inking, if done with a painterly touch. She has a whole series of these vids, including digital painting and so on. I have decided that I am an art voyeur; I LOVE watching people as they work, so I love these. There is something fascinating about the whole art process, no?




:: Kmye-Chan ::

An artist whose work I like a lot, giving solid advice in her journal about making art. Advice is also posted below, and good tutorials at her DA page.

::

First and foremost: I'm probably not the best person to give advice to beginners, since I'm mostly self-taught and I don't have a refined technique. So, yeah... this is not really a 'tutorial', but I receive more and more notes and mail to ask me what tips I would give to beginners... so I thought it would be more convenient to type all the useful advice I could give once for good and just have to point it out to people who ask, instead of re-typing it every time in a rather shallower way.

[And as, who knows, some of you might find this useful too, even though many of you are not beginners... I might as well post it here.
I'll keep a link to this journal in the 'Misc' section at the bottom of my journal for future reference.]

:Tips for beginners

Most of this is general advice. Everyone is different, and improves in different ways, so every of these tips might to apply to everyone. It's just... well, general advice.


+ Art supplies +

Good supplies are a key if you're trying to make nice artworks. It's very very hard to get acceptable results with bad quality supplies - actually, you have to be very skilled to get good results with cheap stuff. Good supplies can be a bit expensive, but it's a real investment that you won't regret.

On the other hand, art supplies will never, ever make the work for you. So basically, it's useless to buy some excruciatingly expensive, professional-quality supplies, if you don't know how to use them. Having a Wacom tablet, or Pantone markers, will not make your work become suddenly awesome if you don't master more basic medias and basic concepts of drawing. They're no magic wands. Don't fool yourself.

To make it short : use good-quality, easy-to-use, not too advanced art supplies first, and when you'll have mastered them, you'll proceed to something more advanced. That's how you'll improve best.


+ Be observant +

It's not as easy or obvious as it sounds. When you are looking at something, you generally consider it as a whole - but to draw it, you have to take it little bits at a time. You have to try and figure out how things really are, and that means trying to get a fresh look on things, which is far from being easy.

For example : colours and shadows. When you want to choose a shade for a shadow, anyone who's a beginner will just pick a darker shade of the base colour, making the whole thing look flat. Now look at something real. Is its shadow colour the same as the base one, but only darker? Usually not - it might have a twinge of green, blue, purple, grey... because it's 3D and reflects backlights from the walls, etc.

You need to observe and be as impartial as possible to be able to reproduce something.


+ Work on your basics +

I know, basics are no fun. But they're really something you will need to work on at one point or another, and the sooner the faster you'll improve. Without the basics, you'll soon be stuck anyway.

Work on your anatomy, your proportions, colour theory if you intend to work with colours, yada yada.
I can't stress this enough.
The old, worn-off tips might sound boring, but if they're still in use, it's because they're helpful. Always work from the most general shapes of your picture (general body forms and background elements) to details, never the other way (don't start a character with an eye and work around it, for example). It'll avoid you some painful proportion/placement mistakes. Use the old balls-and-sticks figures to draw proportionate and realistic poses for your characters. Reverse your picture to see its symetric and spot anatomy/proportion mistakes before you proceed to inking or painting.

And as someone said... "You have to know the rules before you break them". That's only too true. Stylizing requires skill, it cannot hide lack of skills.


+ Be patient and work hard +

The last and probably most important piece of advice.
It takes very long to improve, irksome as it is. We all start somewhere, though we might not all start fro the same point - and we don't all improve at the same speed. But with patience and hard work, you'll eventually improve.
So don't loose patience and don't get discouraged!


If you have any more questions, feel free to ask!