AL's Art Thread

[Venn]

Ah, these are all amazing! I definitely would stop by the shop and ask for a Lilligant and Gothitelle picture. Ive always imagined them as unlikely best friends since they seem like complete opposites but instead they just get along great. These are all fun to look at.

 

[FrostyAlmonds]

Ah, these are all amazing! I definitely would stop by the shop and ask for a Lilligant and Gothitelle picture. Ive always imagined them as unlikely best friends since they seem like complete opposites but instead they just get along great. These are all fun to look at.

Ahh, thank you so much, you're too kind. ^^ I have never considered Lilligant and Gothitelle together but they would indeed be such a nice pairing despite their aesthetic differences yes! You are more than welcome to stop my shop thread anytime I would be happy to draw for you.. <3<3<3

 

[rapt0r]

WOOOOOOOOOOW! These are awesome! I-If you don't mind I'd really REALLY love a Lucario.

 

[FrostyAlmonds]

WOOOOOOOOOOW! These are awesome! I-If you don't mind I'd really REALLY love a Lucario.

Thank you so much! You're too kind. <3 I'm not taking Pokemon/art requests unfortunately, but my shop thread is in my sig if you would like to possible commission me for a Lucario painting.


(I do need to update my shop a bit now that OCT is over as well, will get to that tonight).

 

[FrostyAlmonds]

An icon and a couple sketches, the bunny bakery will be a colouring page. ^^

 

[FrostyAlmonds]

Small paints. <3

 

[FrostyAlmonds]

Have hardly had time to draw the past few days, but finished this and trying to draw new emotes for my twitch and decided to go Pokemon.

 

[Aquilla]

Hey just wanted to stop by and say: Your art is an absolute inspiration to me! It’s an absolute joy to look at your pieces I’m hoping to improve my coloring and would love to move away from the kinda flat cell shaded look but am having a hard time with a more painterly approach. I always set out wanting to paint and end up bucket-tooling and cell shading anyways I especially love how you use pops of color that are not part of the main color scheme (like small amounts of pink and green in the blue hair). It’s something I’ll try to experiment with in my own pieces ~

Super excited for the bunny bakery page that I’ll take along to boring classes to practice my painting ^^

 

[FrostyAlmonds]

Hey just wanted to stop by and say: Your art is an absolute inspiration to me! It’s an absolute joy to look at your pieces I’m hoping to improve my coloring and would love to move away from the kinda flat cell shaded look but am having a hard time with a more painterly approach. I always set out wanting to paint and end up bucket-tooling and cell shading anyways I especially love how you use pops of color that are not part of the main color scheme (like small amounts of pink and green in the blue hair). It’s something I’ll try to experiment with in my own pieces ~

Super excited for the bunny bakery page that I’ll take along to boring classes to practice my painting ^^

Aaaah, you are so sweet thank you so much for such kind words. ;u; It means so much that you think my art is an inspiration. I totally know how you feel about wanting to branch out (I like to experiment a looooot all the time too haha). I don't want to be presumptuous and give unasked for tips/advice on my painting process, but if you do have any questions about my process I would be happy to share. <3 I also stream art sometimes and have been trying to be less lazy about speeding them up and throwing them on YT to archive. But regardless, your art is super preciousand soft so I dunno where you're coming from!! <3<3

Waah, I hope you will enjoy it, I'm so happy to hear you are interested in it. I have been too busy to work on it but I'm hoping to work on it sometime before the end of the month.

Speaking of busy, besides ongoing comms, my only art this week was handful more of the emotes, have two left to do. Also, throwing in my Smoliv animation/emote from back when they were announced (since it's why I decided to go with pokeemotes haha).

 

[Aquilla]

Aaaah, you are so sweet thank you so much for such kind words. ;u; It means so much that you think my art is an inspiration. I totally know how you feel about wanting to branch out (I like to experiment a looooot all the time too haha). I don't want to be presumptuous and give unasked for tips/advice on my painting process, but if you do have any questions about my process I would be happy to share. <3 I also stream art sometimes and have been trying to be less lazy about speeding them up and throwing them on YT to archive. But regardless, your art is super preciousand soft so I dunno where you're coming from!! <3<3

Waah, I hope you will enjoy it, I'm so happy to hear you are interested in it. I have been too busy to work on it but I'm hoping to work on it sometime before the end of the month.

Speaking of busy, besides ongoing comms, my only art this week was handful more of the emotes, have two left to do. Also, throwing in my Smoliv animation/emote from back when they were announced (since it's why I decided to go with pokeemotes haha).

Awww thank you <3 I was unsure if I could ask you for advice so I'm glad you offered! I'd love to hear about your process or watch a video of yours. I don't know how to go about colouring. I typically sketch, clean up the lineart and then color in the drawing. This is the only way I can do it. I've tried skeching, painting and then adding lines later for a more painterly look but it looks horrid! So yes, I'd love to hear about your process and what kind of brushes you like to use for textured painting. Recently I've been using a soft round brush that gives a softer, more painterly look but somehow I still end up with the flat "clean" look @_@ I am in fact completely stuck on a Pokémon team drawing I'm making for someone here on the forums so your advice would come in handy!

And no worries about the colouring page! Good things take time! The emotes are super cute ^^

 

[Xara]

i swear, every time you post i am more and more tempted to get into pokémon. your art makes my heart so happy, it’s so cute!

tempted to give your colouring page a try as well! my colouring definitely won’t do your art justice, but it’s so cute and so nice of you to offer to us for free!

 

[FrostyAlmonds]

Awww thank you <3 I was unsure if I could ask you for advice so I'm glad you offered! I'd love to hear about your process or watch a video of yours. I don't know how to go about colouring. I typically sketch, clean up the lineart and then color in the drawing. This is the only way I can do it. I've tried skeching, painting and then adding lines later for a more painterly look but it looks horrid! So yes, I'd love to hear about your process and what kind of brushes you like to use for textured painting. Recently I've been using a soft round brush that gives a softer, more painterly look but somehow I still end up with the flat "clean" look @_@ I am in fact completely stuck on a Pokémon team drawing I'm making for someone here on the forums so your advice would come in handy!

And no worries about the colouring page! Good things take time! The emotes are super cute ^^

Ahh, sorry for disappearing all week. I was hoping I would be less lazy about uploading the speedpaint of that blue girl since I do have it recorded. >< I'll let you know when I upload it incase it will help. But yes! It's totally okay to ask, I feel like we artists need to stick together and help each other out so don't be shy to ever reach out. I'll put this in spoiler because it's pretty rambly haha.

Spoiler: Rambling that hopefully makes sense

My main things, I don't fixate on clean lineart (and therefore I can't rely on paint bucket because I literally can't use it xD) I do a thumbnail sketch, then a cleaner sketch, and if the second sketch is still like super rough, I'll do a third one, and then just manually start painting under the sketch. I personally feel that perfecting the lines just slows me down when I can hide most of the bad lines through painting.

Also, the one that is a little more out of the norm, I paint like 90% of things in one layer (usually bg would be separate, and then after that it's like little details or stuff I'm not sure I want to add to the painting, but skin/hair/clothes?? All that, one layer). And then debating if I want to keep the lines or stick with more painterly, I will actually merge the lines into the painting layer and paint over them with a hard but still blendy brush (the Poketober stuff I merged, the recent icons are keeping the sketch/lines). But anyway, because I use brushes that blend/have opacity, I find that using one layer to paint with a blendy brush really helps unify things for that painterly look. I'll on the occasion use filter layers but for the main paintings I try not to rely one them. In your case, if you are using multiple layers, maybe erasing the edges with a soft eraser can help with the painterly stuff a bit?

In terms of colours, like I mentioned, since I don't rely on filters (so no multiply or overlay), there is a little more freedom in picking different hues and going a little more wild.. If I'm shading something, I change up the colours of the colour wheel vs just picking a darker/lighter colour (so say I was painting something red, instead of picking a red and moving downright in the colour square for a darker red, and upper left for a lighter red, I will move the wheel to a purple for the shadow, and to an orange for the lighting). And then once you have a sense for it it's a lot easier to just shade in completely random colours.

What program do you use? I am team basic so I use Sai 2 and my main brushes these days. These are the main ones I use, incase you use SAI 2 I can give you the settings. ^^ The top three are my main brushes, and the airbrush is only ever used when I need a soft blend (like adding a gradient), but otherwise avoid it like the plague. If I wasn't too stupid for sai I would love to insert custom brush tips, but I literally couldn't do it even with a guide so I'm stuck with the defaults, and kinds settled into using a circle brush mainly. ^^'

I hope this makes some amount of sense, if something is confusing let me know and I'll try to clarify it better. ><

i swear, every time you post i am more and more tempted to get into pokémon. your art makes my heart so happy, it’s so cute!

tempted to give your colouring page a try as well! my colouring definitely won’t do your art justice, but it’s so cute and so nice of you to offer to us for free!

Ahhh Xara, you are way too sweet, THANK YOU for such a kind comment!! If I can convince you or anyone to get into Pokemon, I have truly succeeded, I love Pokemon so much so it makes me happy when other people show an interest too. Even if you don't care about the games, they are just such fun creature designs and so varied that there should be at least one or two pokemon you can enjoy.

But ahh, of course you would do it plenty of justice! I think the fun part of colouring pages is that they can turn out so different, and there is never a right or wrong way to fill them out. I would be super honoured if you decided to colour it. <3


Aaaand, in terms of updating art. It barely happened this week, just some sketches here and there, work and brain being mud has made me feel less inspired. But I'm hoping that will change next month because I have a little December advent calendar I like to do called Wottmas (oh no more Pokemon ). I still haven't decided what I'm doing for it this year if I want to go a storybook route again or just do little daily paintings. But here was a warm up sketch of the Wottmas duo, and the first page from last year (which was a choose your own/majority vote story), the full story can be read on DA. ^^: Wottmas 2021

 

[Aquilla]

Ahh, sorry for disappearing all week. I was hoping I would be less lazy about uploading the speedpaint of that blue girl since I do have it recorded. >< I'll let you know when I upload it incase it will help. But yes! It's totally okay to ask, I feel like we artists need to stick together and help each other out so don't be shy to ever reach out. I'll put this in spoiler because it's pretty rambly haha.

Spoiler: Rambling that hopefully makes sense

My main things, I don't fixate on clean lineart (and therefore I can't rely on paint bucket because I literally can't use it xD) I do a thumbnail sketch, then a cleaner sketch, and if the second sketch is still like super rough, I'll do a third one, and then just manually start painting under the sketch. I personally feel that perfecting the lines just slows me down when I can hide most of the bad lines through painting.

Also, the one that is a little more out of the norm, I paint like 90% of things in one layer (usually bg would be separate, and then after that it's like little details or stuff I'm not sure I want to add to the painting, but skin/hair/clothes?? All that, one layer). And then debating if I want to keep the lines or stick with more painterly, I will actually merge the lines into the painting layer and paint over them with a hard but still blendy brush (the Poketober stuff I merged, the recent icons are keeping the sketch/lines). But anyway, because I use brushes that blend/have opacity, I find that using one layer to paint with a blendy brush really helps unify things for that painterly look. I'll on the occasion use filter layers but for the main paintings I try not to rely one them. In your case, if you are using multiple layers, maybe erasing the edges with a soft eraser can help with the painterly stuff a bit?

In terms of colours, like I mentioned, since I don't rely on filters (so no multiply or overlay), there is a little more freedom in picking different hues and going a little more wild.. If I'm shading something, I change up the colours of the colour wheel vs just picking a darker/lighter colour (so say I was painting something red, instead of picking a red and moving downright in the colour square for a darker red, and upper left for a lighter red, I will move the wheel to a purple for the shadow, and to an orange for the lighting). And then once you have a sense for it it's a lot easier to just shade in completely random colours.

What program do you use? I am team basic so I use Sai 2 and my main brushes these days. These are the main ones I use, incase you use SAI 2 I can give you the settings. ^^ The top three are my main brushes, and the airbrush is only ever used when I need a soft blend (like adding a gradient), but otherwise avoid it like the plague. If I wasn't too stupid for sai I would love to insert custom brush tips, but I literally couldn't do it even with a guide so I'm stuck with the defaults, and kinds settled into using a circle brush mainly. ^^'

I hope this makes some amount of sense, if something is confusing let me know and I'll try to clarify it better. ><

Ahhh Xara, you are way too sweet, THANK YOU for such a kind comment!! If I can convince you or anyone to get into Pokemon, I have truly succeeded, I love Pokemon so much so it makes me happy when other people show an interest too. Even if you don't care about the games, they are just such fun creature designs and so varied that there should be at least one or two pokemon you can enjoy.

But ahh, of course you would do it plenty of justice! I think the fun part of colouring pages is that they can turn out so different, and there is never a right or wrong way to fill them out. I would be super honoured if you decided to colour it. <3


Aaaand, in terms of updating art. It barely happened this week, just some sketches here and there, work and brain being mud has made me feel less inspired. But I'm hoping that will change next month because I have a little December advent calendar I like to do called Wottmas (oh no more Pokemon ). I still haven't decided what I'm doing for it this year if I want to go a storybook route again or just do little daily paintings. But here was a warm up sketch of the Wottmas duo, and the first page from last year (which was a choose your own/majority vote story), the full story can be read on DA. ^^: Wottmas 2021

Thank you sooo much! This is really insightful for me and I’ll try to apply some of your techniques to my future drawings :3 I must admit it is completely, utterly different from my normal drawing process so a bit challenging to wrap my head around and one layer is super scary to me xD I usually have dozens, with any new detail on a new layer and have an extra copy of every layer just in case lmao…

So you paint u n d e r the sketch layer and not on top of it? :O whenever I tried that and removed the lineart it looked absolutely horrendous but merging them together and cleaning up on too of it sounds logical. I’ll give it a shot! :3 thank you for the brushes overview! I use procreate and have similar tools. I watched the two speed paints on hour youtube as well which was really helpful! Would love to see some speed paints of your Pokétober :3

Thank you again!! I’m looking forward to your future projects and creations!

 

[FrostyAlmonds]

Okay, I finally got myself to speedup and trim the video. It can be viewed over here, would really appreciate it if you check it out.

Going to try and start uploading more of the backlog soon too.

Thank you sooo much! This is really insightful for me and I’ll try to apply some of your techniques to my future drawings :3 I must admit it is completely, utterly different from my normal drawing process so a bit challenging to wrap my head around and one layer is super scary to me xD I usually have dozens, with any new detail on a new layer and have an extra copy of every layer just in case lmao…

So you paint u n d e r the sketch layer and not on top of it? :O whenever I tried that and removed the lineart it looked absolutely horrendous but merging them together and cleaning up on too of it sounds logical. I’ll give it a shot! :3 thank you for the brushes overview! I use procreate and have similar tools. I watched the two speed paints on hour youtube as well which was really helpful! Would love to see some speed paints of your Pokétober :3

Thank you again!! I’m looking forward to your future projects and creations!

Haha! I think that's the joy of art, everyone has such vastly different methods, and it's not like any are right or wrong. Me not using layers completely stems from starting off with MSPaint, and by the time I started using photoshop....I was so used to not using them that I kept working in all the wrong layers and evidently gave up. Haha! I would totally recommend giving it a try at least once or twice, it requires a little more cleanup but I think once you get started it's a lot less scary. <3

Yes! But that's basically because I use the clean sketch as the lineart. My paintings look horrendous underneath too!!! I respect people who have the really clean paint lines underneath. xD If you do try it, would love to see! But again, don't force yourself to learn this way, we all have what's comfortable and works for us, and forcing yourself to do something you aren't vibing with won't produce art you're happy with.

Oooh! You have an IPad then? Nice! I've been so tempted to get one/a tablet in general for portable painting but expensive ;u; and I don't know how much use it would get beyond painting in a more comfy spot in my room. Do you find you use yours a lot? I'm glad you have similar brushes already though, I know procreate is super loaded so finding stuff should be easy. And ahhh, I did stream the earlier Poketober stuff but I didn't save any of the vods. >< I'm not 100% if Wottmas will be the same rainbow style, but if so I'll make a more conscious effort to save and upload them to YT.

You are most welcome, I'm so looking forward to seeing more of your art too. You already have such a beautiful style.

 

[FrostyAlmonds]

Happy December 1st! Here is the start of Wottmas. First snowfall of the year and ready to start getting festive. <3

I have the painting uploaded to youtube as well.

 

[Xara]

wottmas your oshawott art always makes me so happy ohmygod... it’s always so unbelievably precious.

 

[FrostyAlmonds]

wottmas your oshawott art always makes me so happy ohmygod... it’s always so unbelievably precious.

WOTTMAS!! I'm so glad, Oshawott is my favourite fictional creature period, they are so cute and I love drawing them, so I'm glad you are liking them too even when you aren't a Pokemon fan. There will be much more spam of them to come this month. Haha

I'll try to keep from posting daily from here on out (unless you lovely folks would like the daily countdown since it is my advent calendar art haha), maybe once or twice a week. But here is day 2

 

[FrostyAlmonds]

Here are days 3-5!! I think I'll post in batches of 5 after this (seems like a good number since there are 20 days left. ^^ I was wanting to keep these kinda simple and quick, but have been really challenging myself by doing compositions I'm not comfy with (read, any compositions lol!), so I already broke my lead. Time to try and race through work and get a good chunk of day 6 done and hopefully be able to sleep sometime tonight. (All the speed paints are up on Youtube as well, have managed to keep a good streak for streaming/recording the entire paintings somehow).

 

[Aquilla]

Haha! I think that's the joy of art, everyone has such vastly different methods, and it's not like any are right or wrong. Me not using layers completely stems from starting off with MSPaint, and by the time I started using photoshop....I was so used to not using them that I kept working in all the wrong layers and evidently gave up. Haha! I would totally recommend giving it a try at least once or twice, it requires a little more cleanup but I think once you get started it's a lot less scary. <3

Yes! But that's basically because I use the clean sketch as the lineart. My paintings look horrendous underneath too!!! I respect people who have the really clean paint lines underneath. xD If you do try it, would love to see! But again, don't force yourself to learn this way, we all have what's comfortable and works for us, and forcing yourself to do something you aren't vibing with won't produce art you're happy with.

Oooh! You have an IPad then? Nice! I've been so tempted to get one/a tablet in general for portable painting but expensive ;u; and I don't know how much use it would get beyond painting in a more comfy spot in my room. Do you find you use yours a lot? I'm glad you have similar brushes already though, I know procreate is super loaded so finding stuff should be easy. And ahhh, I did stream the earlier Poketober stuff but I didn't save any of the vods. >< I'm not 100% if Wottmas will be the same rainbow style, but if so I'll make a more conscious effort to save and upload them to YT.

You are most welcome, I'm so looking forward to seeing more of your art too. You already have such a beautiful style.

Omfg I comletely forgot to reply O-O I'm so sorry! Your reply made me so happy!

I have already started dipping my toes into one-layer coloring and am enjoying it thus far! Once I have a finished piece I'm happy to share it ^^ I think I became afraid of making mistakes somewhere along the way and it developed into this weird habit, so now every little bit and boop is on a new layer. I think I'm a bit indecisive so I want to make sure I can backtrack and adjust every element later on if I wish to do so. This is difficult on one layer and in the past I've been annoyed that I can't really adjust something that is sandwiched between other strokes. While layers can be confusing (I regularly juggle about 200), I'm starting to realize that I can simply draw over a mistake with absolutely no negative consequence xD truly mindblowing. Using many layers really takes away from the more painterly, organic look I wish to achieve because it gives me the opportunity to fuss over every single line to an unhealthy extend. On the other hand I feel like layers are much more efficient and save time. I don't have to erase an entire fully rendered area if I want to correct something. Both has its perks I guess!

The ipad I bought it the best investment I've made in a very long time - dare I say ever? I use it every single day, mostly for art but also for other stuff. I bought a refurbished ipad pro (10.5 inch, 2017 version), so it didn't cost me a kidney. I think buying a used one first, to get used to a new device, is perfectly appropriate. I would like to upgrade to a newer one once this one dies, but so far I have nothing but praise. On days where I leave it at home I feel like I'm missing one of my hands. I used a cheap huion tablet + my monitor before and it was great to get started with digital art and there definitely was a very steep learning curve going from that to an ipad (I basically had to start learning to draw from scratch again with all the new brushes etc) but now I never want to go back! I draw absolutely everywhere I go and in every thinkable position and I'm so glad I have this flexibility now and am not limited to one stationary setup which I need to put up and take down all the time. I can't recommend it enough. I also really really like procreate. I find its animation feature is lacking, it can definitely not handle much more than a few frames before it gets messy. Everything else is completely perfect though, at least for me.

Your Wottmas paintings give me life btw, they are so gorgeous and soft and warm!

 

[FrostyAlmonds]

Omfg I comletely forgot to reply O-O I'm so sorry! Your reply made me so happy!

I have already started dipping my toes into one-layer coloring and am enjoying it thus far! Once I have a finished piece I'm happy to share it ^^ I think I became afraid of making mistakes somewhere along the way and it developed into this weird habit, so now every little bit and boop is on a new layer. I think I'm a bit indecisive so I want to make sure I can backtrack and adjust every element later on if I wish to do so. This is difficult on one layer and in the past I've been annoyed that I can't really adjust something that is sandwiched between other strokes. While layers can be confusing (I regularly juggle about 200), I'm starting to realize that I can simply draw over a mistake with absolutely no negative consequence xD truly mindblowing. Using many layers really takes away from the more painterly, organic look I wish to achieve because it gives me the opportunity to fuss over every single line to an unhealthy extend. On the other hand I feel like layers are much more efficient and save time. I don't have to erase an entire fully rendered area if I want to correct something. Both has its perks I guess!

The ipad I bought it the best investment I've made in a very long time - dare I say ever? I use it every single day, mostly for art but also for other stuff. I bought a refurbished ipad pro (10.5 inch, 2017 version), so it didn't cost me a kidney. I think buying a used one first, to get used to a new device, is perfectly appropriate. I would like to upgrade to a newer one once this one dies, but so far I have nothing but praise. On days where I leave it at home I feel like I'm missing one of my hands. I used a cheap huion tablet + my monitor before and it was great to get started with digital art and there definitely was a very steep learning curve going from that to an ipad (I basically had to start learning to draw from scratch again with all the new brushes etc) but now I never want to go back! I draw absolutely everywhere I go and in every thinkable position and I'm so glad I have this flexibility now and am not limited to one stationary setup which I need to put up and take down all the time. I can't recommend it enough. I also really really like procreate. I find its animation feature is lacking, it can definitely not handle much more than a few frames before it gets messy. Everything else is completely perfect though, at least for me.

Your Wottmas paintings give me life btw, they are so gorgeous and soft and warm!

Wah no worries. It also took me a long time to reply, I've been so busy my correspondence has been really delayed. ><

I'm so glad to hear you are giving it a shot and actually enjoying minimal layers! The fact you used to have 200 layers, the respect, I get lost in like 5 layers I could never balance 100s. I totally get you on the indecisive thing though, especially when you don't have a solid idea on the colours you want (having to lasso tool over a section you want to hue change is not a fun time haha). But yes!! You can easily paint over mistakes and sometimes that can actually add a nice little painterly effect to boot, mistakes are good imo! I can't wait to see a piece when you finish, I'm so excited that you are enjoying it.

Oooh, that is actually a very reassuring thing to hear and will have me considering a tablet again. Buying used to boot is also a much better idea! The learning curve, I can imagine your struggle so much! I don't take advantage of keyboard hotkeys a whole lot, but for stuff like control z or my wheel to zoom in and out, I would be a mess trying to adjust. It really sounds like it was the best investment you made you are totally selling me on one. I think my biggest hesitation is still that I don't travel on a regular bases (I am WFH and whenever I am commuting our buses/subway are usually overly packed and bumpy so drawing isn't the easiest), but for vacation traveling it would be super handy because I can't exactly bring a desktop with me if I'm going to be away for over a week, hmm. Haha, at least procreate has an animation feature at all! xD It's the one thing I desperately wish SAI2 would introduce, (okay, second after making adding custom brushes convenient and stupid proof...and would be cool if SAI had a liquify tool too.). Thank you so much for your gush, it was really helpful. I take it you would never even consider going back to computer art?



Re art. I kinda failed to stay updated with Wottmas here and don't want to spam 12 pictures at once , but I have been keeping up with it! 7 days left and I am looking forward to finishing. Otherwise it's all been commissions and a handful of little sketches to destress and I dug up an old wip and somehow wasted a night painting it over more important things oops.

Said wip (still very much a wip). I miss drawing my OCs.

And then a couple Wottmas days.