[gardog]

I went to the doctor's yesterday and I am now on new meds.

I am tired, weak, nauseous, and anxious... let's do a Q + A !! :D
(Don't worry, I'll be fine, lol)

Why did I draw this scene for this? I don't know; it's what I felt like drawing at the moment

So, ask me stuff! I shall answer in the comments, unless it's like a tutorial or something

Disclaimer: I am not good at answering questions and I am a self-taught artist, so any art-related questions may not be "correct", so to speak. I'll try my best!

Ask whatever you would like (as long as it's CS-appropriate) ^^

[BlueEyedKite]

What would be your tip if someone wants to give their art a little extra touch? What thing do you do that you may not do for all your art pieces. Something that says to you, you went the extra mile on that piece ._.

[gardog]

What would be your tip if someone wants to give their art a little extra touch? What thing do you do that you may not do for all your art pieces. Something that says to you, you went the extra mile on that piece ._.

Well, let's take my follower check artwork for example ^^
There's a reason why it took 6+ hours (the timer is accurate, by the way). There's a sketch layer, a lining layer, a couple of different color layers, and a lot of shading and lighting layers.

Any piece where I give myself a light source that I then follow through with in the piece's entirety, especially when adding extra shading to the fur that gives it shape, automatically brings the piece to a whole new level for me.

Then, of course, there's the thing where I don't have pen sensitivity in Oekaki. All of those lines that come to a point? I have to go through and make those myself with the eraser tool. Just little things like that can really boost the quality of an artwork.

Finally, I will add plenty of color overlays and light additions on top of everything so that the subject doesn't just look like it's against a background. Adding green and orange and white can really make your (or mine, in this case) subject feel like it's not just standing in front of a backdrop; it is actually there in the setting of your background. You can do this whether the subject is shaded or not, just pop an overlay of the most used color on top and adjust the opacity until it doesn't like saturated, just improved.

Hope this helps ^^

[.taxidermy.]

your favorite part of… the artistic process? lol, but anyway, my favorite part of art is coloring! i’m a bit curious about you. :3c

[BlueEyedKite]

@gardog Thank you for the detailed response Q.Q this was just what I was hoping for <3 and I was thinking of your followe check art (it slays) when I asked, so I'm glad you touched on it. These were great tips and I thank you <3

[gardog]

your favorite part of… the artistic process? lol, but anyway, my favorite part of art is coloring! i’m a bit curious about you. :3c

My favorite part is lining and my least favorite part is coloring, lol. Perhaps we could collab one day ;)

@gardog Thank you for the detailed response Q.Q this was just what I was hoping for <3 and I was thinking of your followe check art (it slays) when I asked, so I'm glad you touched on it. These were great tips and I thank you <3

No problem ^^
(And thank you <3)

[Wildflower75]

What's your favorite color to shade with? I like a deep color which matches the character and I gradient it with either gold or red depending on the lighting (usually gold) ^^

Also the scene you drew is very pretty; i love the wires and posts fading out into the background and the entire atmosphere with the color is very pretty

[gardog]

What's your favorite color to shade with? I like a deep color which matches the character and I gradient it with either gold or red depending on the lighting (usually gold) ^^

Also the scene you drew is very pretty; i love the wires and posts fading out into the background and the entire atmosphere with the color is very pretty

I don't really have a favorite shading color. There are a lot of artists on here that use a reddish-purple as a shading color and I used to shade with that, but nowadays I shade with either light grey or one of the character's mid-toned colors (set to multiply). Sometimes I'll add more shading layers, but I do most of my shading using lighting/highlighting. If I'm feeling extra fancy, I'll airbrush white/a light color over parts of the body where light would hit, set it to add, and then adjust the opacity until it looks like it was meant to be there... but sometimes it doesn't work with the character ^^' (I tried to do that in my follower check artwork, but it didn't work with Tiraphir's stripes and horns, so I deleted it).

And thank you <3