Alex Is Arting: art reference and inspiration blog

Alex Is Arting: art reference and inspiration blog

Untitled

bssmf:

THROWBACK THURSDAY FRIDAY

Augh, I forgot to post one yesterday! Whoops!

Did you know that this was Sailor Uncia’s original design? Her team hadn’t quite coalesced in my brain yet, though I knew they’d be based on my friends and her on me. Except, I wasn’t really embracing self-insertion at the time, and was trying to hide our connection. ^__^

Later, when designing Sailor Canis with her IRL counterpart, I forfeited blue for purple, and decided to give Uncia my hair color and glasses. For quite a while she kept the patterned skirt and collar, All the girls had uniquely patterned skirts, and only recently did I streamline them because REASONS.

This was a gift from Crystalfyre (of the now defunct Crystalstars), requested through her old Senshi Request Form. I liked the setup so much I eventually put one of my own on my site, and drew a LOT of otaku senshi from it! (I was not this good, however.) This is from 2000 or so.

CRYSTALFYREEEEEEEEE.  She was one of my artist idols back in the day, but I’ve lost track of her over the years.  The fanfic she created with her friends had some of the most detailed profile information for each of the senshi characters, which was a big inspiration when I made my little website for The Hues with their profiles and such. :)  She was one of the first people I followed who would borrow poses from official artwork in order to practice, and that it was okay to do so as long as you clarified you were still learning.

Long ago, when I was a wee little Alex, I followed Crystalfyre’s art tutorials, which I think really informed my style back in my teens. 
The old photo I posted the other day of my art supplies back then were pretty much because I read her tutorials.  When I started using the computer to color my work, I similarly followed a how-to on cel-shading that she wrote.  I still abide by her jewel-shading technique to this day.

This woman had a big influence on the development of my artwork.  Last I heard, she was studying traditional animation, but like I said, I’ve lost track of her over the years, and she’s probably been through a couple different screen names in the meantime, but I hope she’s doing well and still making art!

And this was yet another Wall ‘O Text brought to you by my nostalgia. :P

Untitled

meglish:

typette:

criminallyincompetent:

My hands have always been a bit shaky, but lately I’ve noticed that even with the stylus held completely still, I get cursor jitters. So, since I pride myself on my nice lines, I decided to find something to fix that.

LazyNezumi is a noise/interference reduction and smoothing tool that works with most Wacom tablets, and can be bound to nearly all drawing software. It doesn’t stop the jitters, but it predicts the amount of noise behind them and smooths your lines to match. I’ve tested it here in Photoshop CS6, and it works frigging wonders.

If you have this problem, I suggest you go download it. It’s simple and elegant as heck, and it makes your lines as smooth as buttered silk.

so, like, the stabilizer in SAI only ALL THE TIME.

Awesome for those of us with tinier/lower DPI tablets. GET ON IT!

OH HELLO THERE, SAVIOR OF MY UNIVERSE. *hands shake into oblivion*

Whoa, this is quite handy.  I’m running Photoshop CS4 on Windows 7 64-bit, and it works for me.

I reduced the Radius setting to 10, and Smoothing 5, which is just about perfect for my typical zoom level.  I zoomed out a bit to ink a long line and I turned the smoothing up to about 12 for that part.

But, as Meglish above later pointed out, this is Windows-only.

Untitled

I rebuilt my online store today and I got it to the point where I don’t think it looks like total barf so I think it’s safe to link around now!

Still getting products in as I learn my new shopping cart software, but it’s already waaaaay better than Zen Cart.

More importantly: GARANOS eBOOKS!!

Okay, time for bed.

Untitled

Let’s Draw The Hues! Page 11 Backgrounds [3 of 4]

New video up!

I’ve currently got 5 pages in the buffer.  I’m getting ready to draw page 19, which means I get to draw Andy in the comic for the first time!  I’m very excited that I get to draw another character now. XD