Aquilla's artistic adventures 🎨 [2024 art review]

[Aquilla]

Here to comment on some similarities! I was admiring all of the details in your intro drawing and I’m INFJ too! Also, I just got a Fjällräven Haulpack and I’m obsessed. Best decision. Plus, their mascot is a fox, so

oh yay, super sensitive and emotional introvert high five! xD what colour is your backpack? :3 I actually carry way more stuff but got too lazy to add it all to the drawing I personally don’t like my kanken as much anymore. I miss having more compartments instead of one huge one where I chuck everything and the straps really hurt I only take it along for the aesthetic these days lol. Sounds like yours works really well for you tho, which is great ^^

 

[Foreverfox]

oh yay, super sensitive and emotional introvert high five! xD what colour is your backpack? :3 I actually carry way more stuff but got too lazy to add it all to the drawing I personally don’t like my kanken as much anymore. I miss having more compartments instead of one huge one where I chuck everything and the straps really hurt I only take it along for the aesthetic these days lol. Sounds like yours works really well for you tho, which is great ^^

Yes, high five indeed! It’s like a dark tan, I got it to be my new diaper bag! I didn’t need the insulated pockets and other specialty pockets anymore. I had to use lots of small pouches for some things with this new one though. I can see why they do one big pocket, because it keeps the integrity of the liner more, but yeah one big pocket was an adjustment.

 

[Aquilla]

Starting off the year with something new. Drew a dragon for someone over on flight rising, since they gave me a lot of free stuff. I didn’t invest a lot of time since I have so many other things going on, but just had to draw for an hour or two tonight to try and wind down some of the stress.

The dragon in question:

My (quick) take:

would love to flesh it out more next time, but overall this is alright for my first ever dragon I think.

 

[mocha.]

IM OBSESSED !!!

 

[Aquilla]

I just realized I never uploaded any of my traditional art here! I only paint traditionally very rarely these days and I'm a little sad, because while I'm making strides in my digital art, it feels like I'm loosing more and more of my painting skills. A few days go I held a brush for the first time in like a year and I felt really insecure and confused painting with acrylics, the medium that used to be my comfort medium! I definitely feel how reliant I have become of using an undo button and hundreds of layers when drawing. Drawing on one singular canvas with no do-overs feels very limiting now.

That being said, I definitely noticed some positive changes in my traditional sketching, which I'm sure comes from my constant digital practice. Whenever I sketch with a pencil now, I feel I am much more confident and bold when putting down lines, putting them down in stable and strong strokes. I guess drawing on my tablet on the bus every day has stabilized my hands a lot xD

Anyway, I wanted to dump some of my paintings here. Most of them are a few years old, but I still like them. Seeing my "boring" studies might shake this thread up a little hehe ^^

Acrylics:

My first tries using watercolours:

Watercolour pencils:

Watercolours:

I painted this while sitting outside on a picnic blanket in the middle of nature. I felt like a real artist that day lol!

A study of some of my sea glass I had lying on the table (on the right is a foto of the glass for reference)

Trying out gouache for the first time

These painting make me wince a bit because I don't think they are very good. I am however really proud at the same time, because I mixed all of the colours myself. I only own cyan, magenta, yellow, white and black gouache, so mixing everything from scratch was a challenge.

A study of using black vs white paper under gouache

I loved how vibrant and opaque the paints looked on black paper. In general I find working with black paper automatically makes something look more interesting somehow. That beign said, I could really see how working on white paper influences the colours because I was able to let the white of the paper shine through the colours, which meant I didn't have to use white paint to create highlights. The black paper muddled everything up a bit.


Acrylics are still my favourites to use because I can put them on thick and wild, with more impulsivity compared to gouache and watercolour (those two just screw you over if you do that). I think painting with acrylics reflects my artistic process better (slap things on top of one another in wilder strokes). Watercolour requires a level of patience and accuracy I don't tend to have when painting traditionally. It's ironic, because in my digital art I do work very meticulously and accurately. Something about holding a paint brush just makes me wanna whack the canvas aggressively I guess xD I do appreciate the more subtle and elegant look of watercolours though.

 

[Freya_Druid]

I just realized I never uploaded any of my traditional art here!

This is so beautiful, if you ever want to geek out about different mediums feel free to hit me up! I’m not as practiced or accomplished in art as you but I am a Jack of all trades with artistic mediums

In general I find working with black people automatically makes something look more interesting somehow.

Have you tried beige or red papers? Those tend to be a lot of fun to work with but don’t require such base layer work to make them clear.

Watercolour requires a level of patience and accuracy I don't tend to have when painting traditionally. It's ironic, because in my digital art I do work very patiently and accurately.

THIS! This is so relatable! I love water color so much but waiting for the layers to dry absolutely kills me and you really can’t work on touching components precisely without them bleeding, yet when it comes to fiddly digital work I can spend all day adjusting individual anchor points one by one

Beautiful work, as always, can’t wait to see what you come up with next!

 

[Aquilla]

This is so beautiful, if you ever want to geek out about different mediums feel free to hit me up! I’m not as practiced or accomplished in art as you but I am a Jack of all trades with artistic mediums

Thank you! I definitely will hit you up lol! I wish I was "practiced" haha - I usually pick up painting once a year, get annoyed that I haven't improved at it and drop it again Even though I know damn well there won't be any improvement unless I stick to it.

Have you tried beige or red papers? Those tend to be a lot of fun to work with but don’t require such base layer work to make them clear.

I have tried beige but only once! Somehow it's really intimidating to me :'D red I haven't tried at all!

THIS! This is so relatable! I love water color so much but waiting for the layers to dry absolutely kills me and you really can’t work on touching components precisely without them bleeding, yet when it comes to fiddly digital work I can spend all day adjusting individual anchor points one by one

yeees!! and the paper gets super wavy no matter how high quality and then puddles form and the watercolours leave weird "edges" and when you go over it the colour lifts again UGH xD It always gets way too messy! I know some artists soak their paper in water and stretch it afterwards. But are you telling me I have to prepare the paper for several hours before I can even START painting? By the time my paper is ready my art motivation would be long gone. Gimme a canvas and some thick acrylics to glob on and it might not be elegant, but at least it's not a bleeding wavy brown mess! xD People who effectively use watercolours have my utmost respect.

 

[Aquilla]

It February, you know what that means: time to finally upload my Christmas art :')
I was too stressed to do this in December but I like those pieces too much to not have them here aaaaa

Secret Santa art for jadetine and white elephant creation for the prompt "neon elf"

​

Great now that that's done, I also want to post a sketch dump of some current wip's. I wanna try and post sketches more often so I actually have something to look back on rather than uploading one massive art dump every half year ^^'

sketches for -Mars- :
(details and expression might change still, something looks off but I can't see what right now)

_____

comm progress for Kitsuragi:

sketch ____________________________ lineart ___________________________flat flat colours​

 

[Aquilla]

It’s going slowly, but here are more updates!

Flats and render for -Mars- :

Kitsuragi rendering progress:

 

[.: Meri :.]

It’s going slowly, but here are more updates!

Flats and render for -Mars- :

Kitsuragi rendering progress:

Omg I'm in love with your clothing textures/patterns ;u; Do you have any tips for those? trying to keep patterns/stripes evenly spaced but also following the flow of clothes is a total nightmare for me

 

[Aquilla]

Omg I'm in love with your clothing textures/patterns ;u; Do you have any tips for those? trying to keep patterns/stripes evenly spaced but also following the flow of clothes is a total nightmare for me

Aw thank you Meri this is gonna be really underwhelming, but I forced my husband to put on the clothes I needed to draw, get in the pose, I took a pic of him and traced over it (specifically for the striped shirt Mars‘ character is wearing). I tried to freehand draw this pattern but with the way the fabric stretched and wrinkled AND the 3/4 angle that was just impossible at my current skill level. Luckily my partner had a shirt with plaids lying around I love how the shirt came out but the reference pic I took 100% carried here. I wish I could tell you something cooler haha :‘) I find it impossible to always find the exact pose+right garment+right angle reference online, so I’ve started taking my own reference pictures when I can’t find anything online.

For Kitsuragi‘s jumper I am struggling a LOT because I don’t have a good reference. Clothes are my greatest weakness right now, without references I can’t get them to look natural and folds are hell. For the texture on the jumper I googled „knit texture png“ and took a stock image of some straight knit texture, slapped it on top of the colour layer with a clipping mask, set it to multiply and manipulated the knit to kinda have a grain and follow the limbs. It’s all very experimental and I don’t have a good workflow for clothes yet. If you have any more questions I’m happy to answer, hopefully my answers won’t be as lame tho

I watched this video here yesterday and found it inspiring, maybe you’ll like it too!

It also helps to put some grainy texture over clothes, I like to do that to give it the effect of pilling or fluff that sits on fabric. In general I tend to slap on a bunch of grainy textures, some gradients, draw random folds and hope for the best

 

[.: Meri :.]

Aw thank you Meri this is gonna be really underwhelming, but I forced my husband to put on the clothes I needed to draw, get in the pose, I took a pic of him and traced over it (specifically for the striped shirt Mars‘ character is wearing). I tried to freehand draw this pattern but with the way the fabric stretched and wrinkled AND the 3/4 angle that was just impossible at my current skill level. Luckily my partner had a shirt with plaids lying around I love how the shirt came out but the reference pic I took 100% carried here. I wish I could tell you something cooler haha :‘) I find it impossible to always find the exact pose+right garment+right angle reference online, so I’ve started taking my own reference pictures when I can’t find anything online.

For Kitsuragi‘s jumper I am struggling a LOT because I don’t have a good reference. Clothes are my greatest weakness right now, without references I can’t get them to look natural and folds are hell. For the texture on the jumper I googled „knit texture png“ and took a stock image of some straight knit texture, slapped it on top of the colour layer with a clipping mask, set it to multiply and manipulated the knit to kinda have a grain and follow the limbs. It’s all very experimental and I don’t have a good workflow for clothes yet. If you have any more questions I’m happy to answer, hopefully my answers won’t be as lame tho

I watched this video here yesterday and found it inspiring, maybe you’ll like it too!

It also helps to put some grainy texture over clothes, I like to do that to give it the effect of pilling or fluff that sits on fabric. In general I tend to slap on a bunch of grainy textures, some gradients, draw random folds and hope for the best

Ahh that's really clever though!! I might just have to get creative with the flannels in my closet then. I definitely feel you on clothing fold hell, so thank you so much for the tips and video rec! I'll be sure to check it out later!! ;v;

 

[Aquilla]

I finished it after MONTHS OMFG

My favourite part was adding tiiiny dust specs and the rainbow flares from disco ball planter

 

[Aquilla]

I need some serious anatomy and clothing draw practice. I keep getting sooo frustrated because this is where I hit my limit every time. As soon as I need to draw an anatomically correct human and then put it into clothes as well it’s game over without a ridiculous amount of references. Time to do some figure drawing. I made a pinboard on Pinterest with random people doing random poses and intend to pick out one or two every now and then to practice with.

Because I’m so rusty I gave myself permission to trace over the foto first to figure out the pose and get a feeling for the clothing shapes. Then I have to redraw it again, but without any help.

Here are the first two. They suck. But you gotta start somewhere. I also tried to keep the face and hair suuuper simple because the pose and clothes are what I wanna focus on. The traced side is still way better but with enough practice it’ll get easier.

 

[Aquilla]

More practice ._. Once my clothes and anatomy are better I REALLY have to take a look at shoes. Asdxdsff

 

[Emzy]

The way your draw the clothing + I love how dynamic your poses are!! You captured them so nicely!!!

 

[Aquilla]

The way your draw the clothing + I love how dynamic your poses are!! You captured them so nicely!!!

Ohh thank you! :’> I’m still learning, without closely looking at the references I wouldn’t manage! I hope I will be able to draw more freely in the future.

 

[Snowifer]

I really like the way you've done the folds in the clothing!

 

[Aquilla]

I really like the way you've done the folds in the clothing!

Thank you! Folds are my cryptonite so that’s really encouraging to hear

 

[Aquilla]

Long time no update! I’m not drawing as much as I’d like to lately because life became very busy (I feel like I’ve been saying this for half a year straight???). My only real drawing windows are on the bus to uni when it isn’t too bumpy and during lectures when I should be listening hah ;u; so progress is going sloooow. Anyhow, here’s some stuff I’ve made recently:


Been playing some splatoon with @Dunquixote and @skarmoury last week which was so fun and inspiring, I had to make some splat art of our characters together. The first one is skar and I on a sniper hunt because we have discovered a mutual hatred for them, and the second one is Dunq and I ruling splat zones lol (the sniper in pic one is not you Dunq, that was just an unfortunate hairstyle choice I made)

Wow, I see a lot of major improvements in your skills!
Now, I kind of want to see your challenge yourself by taking one of earliest pieces and redoing it to see how much you have improved

I have not forgotten, still working on this and here’s an update:

Something looks uncanny, the eyes, the mouth… will revisit but it’s just a wip so not too worried. Seeing the new drawing side by side with the old one on the right makes me really proud ^u^

Here’s also another drawing comm I finished for @-Mars- a bit ago:

And some silly goofy event art: