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Wyvernadas — You're Beautiful...
Published: 2011-05-06 21:32:40 +0000 UTC; Views: 451; Favourites: 16; Downloads: 7
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Edit - After taking in some of *Amadoodles tips, I decided to give this a quick edit. It has a few more feather strands and highlights, and a very thin black border - sorry for spamming your inbox!AHAAH. Wyvern has drawn something that isn't a dragon? I know, What are the odds?
Ever since I was little, I've had this thing for Swans. I love watching them, they have such Grace and beauty, and yet under all of that sparkling white fluffy-ness, they can be one of the most dangerous birds around if provoked.
It's not normally something I would draw, but today I was VERY stressed out. My Anxiety was on the moon. So I thought I'd throw myself headlong at something pretty complicated (for me anyway, lots of feathers), and if it didn't work out, it would serve as Lineless practice.
You will probably see more of these soon, my friend wants me to draw a wood pigeon for her XD
I'm a little unsure of the background. I don't know whether I prefer it with or without the water sparkles (it was just a solid blue colour)
Art (c) =Death-Black-Wyvern
(Title comes from any three of the masterpiece theatre songs by Marianas trench. Just popped into my head)
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Comments: 26
That's a nice photo 
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Wowee! That looks amazing, Wyvern!
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Thankies Rusty!
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It does, but the result was definitely worth it.
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Indeed! and yes, Tis' is flying Shalou!!
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'Tis pwetty! :3 Nightrunner did a good job.
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MUUUUCCHHH BETTER! you could even do it a leeelte bit more just on the throat by the head and the bottom of the head. But yes, that's what I'm talking about girl! Keep it up like that!
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*sticks seal of approval onto deviation*
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.... that was unexpected indeed. I thought it was a submission from a group of something XD
But very very nice! I like it with the water sparkels myself. I also like how you showd some of the blue reflecting off the white. Good choice!
I love the black bit around the beak too!
Now, I know that you're critique status is
Okay, so basically, I saw in that picture you drew me of my two jaws (which I love, that picture is epic) that someone had critiqued your drawing and described it as "muddy". It was then that I realised that that was actually a bit true (still love the pic though). Thing is, is that I know exactly how you can fix it. It's pretty simple.
If you look at this pic, or that "on the horizon" one seems I'm gonna critique them both a bit . The reason that they seem 'muddy' is that you finish them, where I would have thought that I'd just put down the main body of it, and still needed to put in details. These details beings mainly edges along things. I drew over your swan image here, [link] because I though that if you could see the difference and what I'm talking about, it would be much easier to explain. So it would probably be best if you copied it and pasted it over your picture in another layer in PS, and then just switched the visibility of the layer on and off so that you can easily see the changes I hope that made sense
All that I did, was define the edges a little bit more. Because you're not using outlines, you really need to worry about the edges of things. Yours are a tad blurry if you look closely at them. The best way to fix this, is just to take a hard brush of another colour, and just define them a little. Here, as you can see, I just too a very white blue (I should probably have used white or light grey though, but the effect remains the same) and just drew in a couple of strokes with the brush around the outside of the swan. Same with the beak, I just drew in a very light line near the top of the beak (I've found that this also works much better if you don't have your layer locked so that you can't draw outside of any pixels. Unlock the layer and draw outside them when doing these details). Near the bottom of the beak, it was fading too much into the background. I don't like too much how I did the bottom, but as you can see, if becomes much more defined, and less 'muddy'.
I did a similar things with the legs and some tail on "on the horizon" [link] because I just thought that it would help you if you saw what I meant there as well. As you can see, the main highlights that I used were from the light already there. I just made them less blurry in some areas, and in other areas just gave things a wee little bit more definition. That just separates the parts a little more, and prevents the 'muddy' effect. Remember, often shadows have a lighter edge around them, just look at your hand when you're next to a window in a darkish room. You'll see that the edge of your hand where the shadow should be is actually lighter than the shadow towards the center of your hand.
You're on the right track. Like I said, these drawings are just how mine look sort of just before I add in the finishing details. If you just start defining your edges a little bit more, you'll be drawing like a pro in no time!
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Wow Ama, Thanks so much for the nice words and the Tips! I am seriously struggling with Lineless right now, I do need all the help I can get. And AHHHH When you edited the picture... wow, it made it look so much better!
And I can see what you mean about the light on the edge of my hand. Lots of Light. I think that's what I need to work on the most.
Just one quick question... I have a tendency to do this solid colour under painting at the start (much like what I would do If I was filling lineart), and after I've shaded it It can produce very sharp edges (hence why I go mad with the blur tool). I was wondering if there was a way of making a smooth under painting/colour without it looking too blurry? Hmm. That Didn't really make sense.
Anyway, Thanks again!
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Sure thing. But you see what I mean? All I did was add a couple of little lines, hardly any editing at all, and it just looked so much better oh gosh, I sound so arrogant, sorry ._. Oh use the edited version for whatever you want! I mean, it's like 99.3% your work anyways. I edited it specifically to help you anyways, not because I wanted to draw lots of little lines XD
yes. that's something that I'm still learning about. I get bored reading tutorials and stuff as well, so I'm learning quite slowly XD
As for that, I know the problem you're having. I used to have it too. I used to also do that solid colour underpainting, I still do actually to a degree. I'm assuming that with that underpainting that you're then locking it. I dunno what it's called, but you know where you then set it to some mode where you can't draw outside of the pixels that you've already drawn? I hope you know what on earth I'm talking about. Where was I? Oh yes. So, I'm going to assume that you're making one giant solid base colour and then locking the layer so that you can't colour outside of it. That can be useful. But it does have it's limitations. On of them is that your edges look pretty crappy in linelesss drawings. What I've actually started to do, is not do that anymore. If the base helps you, then by all means use it. I still do with some drawings. Others I don't. It all depends on my mood and the drawing in question XD
But I very very seldom lock my layers anymore. Sometimes I lock it for certain sections, but most of the time I leave it off. Then I work with brushes and the eraser. I find that locking the layer just makes your edges look bad. Because your lines around it won't be nice and even. They'll be getting thicker and thinner wherever they try to cross over your base. And, yeah, it just looks ugly. Here, you can check out my shamefull old artworks [link] [link] at the time I was actually really proud of them in terms of my technical skill. But you can see how relying on the edges of the picture just made it look really really flat. If you compare the 'flatness' of the figures compared to something like this [link] you'll really see what I mean. In the second one I didn't have a locked base. At all. Admittedly this one here was about a year later, but again, no locked base [link] . Admittedly it was meant to have lineart, but I accidentally started coloring over it, so it have lineart in places but not in others. But here I didn't use a locked base. I started shading, and if I went seriously out in one place, I used an eraser with a slight opacity pressure sensitivity to erase and just 'mould' it back into shape.
I think that it works much better like that. It eliminates the harsh edges that you get otherwise, and your picture tends to just look much better. So if you really want to, make a flat base then do so. Leave a sketch visible on a layer above it so you can see approximately where everything is. Then DON"T lock the layer, just start shading as is. I'm using SAI so obviously brush settings will be different, but in PS and SAI I used a hard round brush. Then in PS I think that I changed the flow settings. And occasionally messed around with opacity as well.
I dunno if that helped at all. I know that it is long and rambly. hopefully it's not too disjointed either. I wrote it over a couple of hours. Mosty because I did things like go have dinner, talk to people on msn, visit my sister, look at artworks blablabla XD if anythign doesn't make sense, then please tell me!
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BEAUTIFUL. I looks so real because of the shades. WOW
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Thank you! It's my first time doing something like this
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and it worked out beautiful
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Reminds me of the story of the Ugly Duckling. Ah, good times.
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Ah yes, I used to love that story as a kid. Probably why I love swans now
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WWAAAAAHHHH It's so realistic! 
... Yaaaay birds!
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Aw Thank you so much! It is difficult to shade white, especially without it looking muddy... but I think the hardest bit was probably the beak, seeing as I had to keep it as dark as possible but still make it look rounded and less 2D.
Woot for Birdies!
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