Shademp's Amateurish Creativity Blog

[Shademp]

If this thread turns out the way I expect it to, then it will be filled with 99% of my typed down thoughts, with the 1% being whatever attempt at a creative outlet that I post. The creativity need not be limited to drawing art, but that's what I intend to start with anyway.

Essentially, I hope that this blog-style will help me overcome the hubris I feel from making drawing attempts despite having no artistic talent. The forum's Thanks system is also the most efficient way I know of to receive motivation, hence why I make the thread here.

Hopefully I don't abandon this idea after this first post. Stay tuned whenever you click on that 'New Posts' button!

 

[Shademp]

Spoiler: How the journey began

I made a lot of drawings from when I was 4-14 years old. The sad fact about this era is that my drawing style remained largely the same during this period. Too frequently I think of this as confirmation that my brain lacks the circuitry to understand art, which is sometimes followed by the tiny flicker of hope that perhaps my various cortexes have evolved since then to give me the faculties that I once so clearly lacked.

I can only think of two lessons that I learned while drawing back then:
1) There is no need to press the pen down on the paper as hard as you can. Varying the amount of pressure will cause different-looking strokes. I must have realized this when I was about 8 or 9 and I felt a surge of amazement. "WOW, LOOK AT THIS! It looks so much more professional when I make casual strokes!"
2) Making sleeves look three-dimensional. This, and the drawing of spirals, were my only real attempts at drawing depth. Aside from this, faces, legs, arms etc always had a flat appearance to them.


In retrospect I realize a fault of my approach. I made drawings as a means to express emotion, but the process was completely void of technique and intelligence. When I recently tried at drawing again, I found that it requires planning and ingenuity. I realized for example that I could use an eraser to make a set of graphite stroaks look like a graphite mist. This discovery makes my mind explode in psychadelic rainbow clouds; an extreme response that is to be expected from an artistically retarded amateur such as me.

As a child I assumed that those who were good at drawing always did so via an innate talent that could not be taught by describing any set of methods. For all that time when I made drawings, I assumed that "some magic" would make my style look better over the years. It's fascinating to note that a lack of innate talent was not the only problem; it was a lack of method and intelligent inquiry.

Drawing for the sake of expressing emotions is not a bad thing though. I'm going to honor this period by drawing a character that stuck with me for most of my prepubescent years...

Spoiler: Drawing: 'Doctor Bull'

Drawn using one of these. Called "stiftpenna" in Swedish, but the translation "pencil" only yields that other type of pen which is not what I was using. It appears that the English language do not make the same clear distinctions that Swedish does. *annoyed* Wait, turns out that it is called "mechanical pencil". Phew. Ok, drawn using a mechanical pencil.

I only possess writing blocks at the moment, ergo why it is not drawn on a blank piece of paper. I also have no scanner, and every photo becomes mega-huge so here is an external link.
- Doctor Bull, first versus second attempt

The upper one was obviously the first attempt. I had the writing block sort of placed on my lap and only afterwards realized that it would be easier to keep it situated on the table. With less mental energy required on balancing the writing block, I could focus and remember the style of Dr. Bull better when I made the second attempt.

Spoiler: Anatomy & Psychology of Doctor Bull

A derivative of typical villain tropes or general "if-you-are-a-kid-this-looks-really-cool" impressions. He sometimes had a robotic arm, sometimes he did not. Sometimes a cape, sometimes not. But the spiky shoulder pads were always there, along with the claws (which may or may not be simply sharp nails). I suppose you can think of him as a visual mix of Claw from Professor Gadget and Mumm-Ra from Thundercats.

Yes, that is his brain popping out of his skull. It was my means of expressing how supersmart this villain was. So big a brain that his cranium could not contain it. Add spikes and woila, we have a supersmart bad guy. If it's not clear, he is meant to have obsidian-black skin.

Psychologically, Doctor Bull was a power fantasy (as were most of my drawings back then). In the stories I crafted involving him, he was the villain who never lost. Being a powerless kid I often wished that I could dispose of anything or anyone that caused me pain. I would tell myself that I wanted to kill everyone on the planet and destroy the planet itself, because there was so much overwhelming suffering. Don't take the notion of "killing" too seriously though when it comes from a kid; firstly it was just a power fantasy and secondly the true meaning/consequence of death was beyond my mental faculties at the time. So yes, "Doctor Bull" ended up killing humanity a few times over. This character was my revenge at the world.

Spoiler: Relevancy to drawing?

Does Doctor Bull have ears? I did ask myself that as a kid but I figured that he would look ugly with those, so I never bothered including any. It strikes me now that I never made drawings of how Doctor Bull might appear from the side. I never asked myself if his mouth ever shut close... I always drew it the way you see it, with the gaping jaw of a beast. ...I never tried to deduce how his face moves when he speaks. Should he not have something to protect his brain, like Mojo Jojo from Powerpuff Girls? I honestly don't know. Truly, much experimentation that could have been done with this character was never considered.

If I were to try anything new with the Doctor Bull it would be to draw him in a different pose other than this simple frontal view. I probably won't do that with him though. Doctor Bull (how many times have the readers snickered at that silly name by this point?) belongs in the dark depths of my childhood memories, not in the mature mindset of my attempts at creativity. I will draw humans at some point and try different poses and perspectives. Doing this will be treading ground that I rarely ever did as a kid and I guess that's enough to make me feel accomplished.

 

[Shademp]

No original pic in this entry.

Spoiler: The Abstract versus the Visual

Translated paraphrasing of a conversation between me and my friend Dipsiel...

Dipsiel: I've only encountered one other person who has your type of writing and drawing style. All the lines look so accidental and unplanned. I can copy most any writing style, but yours I can't mimic.

Shademp: Well that's because nothing is planned. When I put the pen on the paper, I have no idea what's going to come out.

Dipsiel: When I draw or write, I plan each and every stroke carefully before making it, to make sure it matches my visualization.

Shademp: Would be nice to do that, except that I can't visualize. I mostly think in abstract ways.

Famous people, like Nikola Tesla and Richard Feynman, had incredible visualization skills. Tesla used this ability to picture complex mechanical systems and to test out the models before making physical ones. Richard Feynman saw physics like it was a set of objects right in front of him.

Across the web I've also spoken with and heard of people who can see what their mind creates, having it intermingle with the real world or lead them to roam an entirely different realm altogether. It is utterly perplexing for me (and for most of us, I reckon) that somebody could simultaneously live in the real world and in an imaginary setting. But there are people like this and Nikola Tesla was one of them.

I have never had experiences like this. I can't "see" things that I imagine. Say that I try to picture the original artwork for Cloud Strife. I have no idea how many spikes his hair has, how many bolts his shoulder pad has, the texture of his clothes, sword, etc. I could draw a general outline of his pose, certainly, but the "image" in my head is only that of an abstract impression of his pose and demeanor, colored with the emotions surrounding the long history with this fictional character.

A dream of mine might actually be a better example. I dreamt of a ship in space. I observed its exterior and interior, all its weapons, doors and so on. Whilst in the dream, I thought I saw immense engineering and architectural detail. But if my mind's eye tries to zoom in on what the ship actually looked like, I get nothing. The imagined detail is in itself an imagined lie; an abstract notion rather than a clearly existing map of the ship's appearance. That is the power of dreams; it can make you believe that you perceived something in great detail, only to discover upon further inspection that in fact you only perceived the idea of complexity, but not actual complexity.

It is my theory that visual artists have a much easier time to maintain a set of imaginary objects in their mind's eye. They also remember what many objects look like, their color, texture etc. It is a great ability that helps them in all areas of creative expression and which also makes them more attune to the external world. This fascinates me and I feel like in comparison I've been granted malfunctioning eyes.

Those who frequent the Turks thread know that some time ago I gawked at the sudden realization that Reno has a pony-tail. Advent Children Complete was playing in the background, when in my newfound "got-to-find-the-artist's-perspective-more" mindset, I *looked* at Reno.

Had you asked me to draw Reno of the Turks before this realization, and without looking at any artwork beforehand, I would have no idea about the ponytail. This despite seeing Reno many times in his multiple Compilation appearances.

It was actually around the time of this realization that the big shocker of just how little I *see* in the world around me, and how so much of it is made by artists, struck me. The kaleidoscope of designs and animations seen on the web, the patterns on the wall (and the forks OH MY GOD I HAD NO IDEA THERE WERE FLOWER PATTERNS ON THE FORKS AND I'VE BEEN USING THEM FOR YEARS), the long history of artistry and skill behind all this... It was all just too much and I felt like I was in a new universe where everything was alien to me. All this happened without any consumption of psychadelic substances, I assure you all.

After having written the entry about Doctor Bull, my mind was again on the visuals around me. I entered a state of despair however and was close to crying because I could not remember what the kitchen sink looks like...despite seeing it every day. When I should be drawing and practicing my mental abilities, I instead just gawk in amazement at how little I can remember about my surroundings and how weak my visualization skills are.

Certainly I enter the realm of exaggeration here. Not all artists are savants who will remember every object they ever saw or imagined. But the fact that this mental power exists, and possibly as an untapped well in my own mind, is truly fascinating.

 

[Ghost X]

Not sure if you want input in your blogging, but in response to this latest post, your way of thinking is actually more common than you think =p. You're a "big picture thinker", by the sounds of it, as am I. You don't concern yourself with the details. It does have its advantages. Don't let it get you down.

 

[Obsidian Fire]

I'm a big picture person too, but from the opposite direction. I take all the little details I notice and put them together to make a picture. However, this doesn't work in reverse. When I get ideas, I can't think of all the details in them, because in my head, I had to have noticed them already to make the picture in the first place. I guess I mentally discard them...

For my visual art (especially photo-manipulation), I know what the picture will look like when it's done, but I don't know exactly how I'm going to get there. The same goes for my writing.

 

[Shademp]

Note: If anyone wishes to discuss philosophies of life, death & consciousness, keep the discussion away from this thread and send me Visitor Messages or Private Messages instead.

Spoiler: Drawing: 'Myself'

Over a month ago I was recommended a "30 Day Drawing Challenge" where I unfortunately did not make it past the first day. Being told that there were no special rules to the challenge, I half-pretentiously decided not to do a literal drawing of myself.

- Day 1: Myself

Because the strokes were so weak, I had to change the contrast in the computer ergo why it turned orange.

Spoiler: Explanation of 'Myself'

I guess it goes against some sort of "art code" to make drawings that require a guide in order to be understood, but that's what I went with. Let's set the appropriate mood for this and the 'Wanderings' segment...

I think about my own death and the impermanence of my existence almost every day. Death is a constant companion, ergo why I drew what was intended as the 'world of life' on the right versus the 'world of eternity/death/macro' on the left. Although galaxies too are impermanent, they are not without good reason the standard representation of mankind's hopelessly tiny and brief voice in the Universe. The thing to the lower left is meant to be a street lamp, shining down on a stick-figure. You might see that the imagery I intended to copy was the End of Time from Chrono Trigger. The lamp shines down on this person to emphasize the uniqueness of each conscious entity that once was and never shall be again.

I felt I drew more of a blank when it came to the right side. Did not know how to represent a passion for life, beauty, my values etc. I apologize for the lazy heart and sword in there. The sunset (or is it a sunrise) is a typical enough representation of beauty. The tree and grassfield in a bubble was actually not meant to mimic the "tree in a bubble" from Darren Aronofky's The Fountain but I guess that is what it ultimately becomes. The "random" shapes to the lower right were actually meant to represent an increasing growth in complexity from left to right, until the complexity finally dissolves into nothingness. The "growing complexity" reflects how I so far view my own life; a humble beginning that fortunately has grown ever more ordered, complex, smart and beautiful. But the construct is meant to one day dissolve, so I guess I should have had it dissolve in a right-to-left direction instead, thus leading to the World of Death.

Spoiler: Wanderings: My stance on death and notions of immortality

I believe that my consciousness is fleeting and that it ultimately ends with the death of my brain. The notion of an after-life unsettles me. Assuming it does exist, the other side is unable (or not allowed?) to make clear communication with the world of the living. Were I to become a ghost, I would haunt scientific research facilities around the world in endless attempts to make my presence known, and for this body-less preservation of consciousness to be loudly announced to the world as a scientist receives the Nobel Prize for proving the existence of an after-life. Yet this has not happened. If a life after this one exists, it is unjustifiably limited, whether it be because of cruel physical laws or the despotic ruling of divine entities who decide what you can and can't do.

Striving or wishing for immortality is ultimately a flawed concept. The only way to know that you can live forever is to actually COMPLETE a round of eternal life. But this will never be achieved because forever never comes. Hope all you will that science increases our longevity, or adopt any worldview in which life continues after the decay of your body, but I simply can not buy the idea that consciousness will ever be eternal. Live for a century, live for a hundred billion years, either way YOU WILL EVENTUALLY DIE. When you do die, all that you've created and experienced will fall off from you, like the finest sand running between and down your fingers.

Spoiler

If you're even there to experience a gradual descent into death at all, since the death might end up being instantaneous. No time for death angst or final monologues in the latter case.

About half a year ago I had this brief exchange with my mother...

Mom: "What's the point of living if you're going to die anyway?"

Me: "What would be the point of living if you were immortal?"

Mom: "...I never thought about it like that."

Me: "Try to answer the question. Maybe that will help you find peace."

Even if you accept the flawed concept of "eternal life" it does not grant more meaning. The enjoyment of life is up to you, regardless of whether you die tomorrow or "never". It is up to you how you appreciate the impermanence of all things. Which gives you more relief? The idea of existing forever or to one day perish?

If it's the former, you are likely to adopt spiritual beliefs, become overly optimistic about the advances of science (i.e. extreme transhumanists) or stay in a state of despair because you can't find escape in religion or science. If it's the latter, then you are likely to find inner peace without add-ons like religion or miracle medicine.

I belong to the latter category. It took me many twists and turns to get here, but I finally appreciate the awe in knowing that my life has an ending. There is an end to the suffering of both me and my comrades. To end this segment, I'll mention my oldest brother. He has been in constant physical pain for the last 17 years. He is now 32 years old. He's been through hell many times, both mentally and physically, but still manages to maintain a Buddha-like smile and enjoys life with his family. If I am still around when he dies, I will, indeed, cry because he is no longer around. But I will also cry because of the relief that all his suffering and all the memories linked to it are finally gone. He deserves that finality; that ultimate rest. If there is such a thing as the Christian "Heaven", then the implications of this are far too horrendous and unjust. I would pick the Void of non-existence over Heaven, any day.

Spoiler: Technique: Faces

The face I drew is primitive, but it represents the best I can do for now. To spare your eyes from burning into nothingness as though the Ghost Rider had just stared into you, I'll admit that the only feminine feature I can draw are eyelashes and female breast curves.

Fortunately, imgur delivered an AWESOME face tutorial: How to Draw Faces

Looking at this, I realize that I've never drawn eye brows, wrinkles, shadowed appropriate spots, experimented with nose shapes, chins, foreheads, and so on. As you can see, the drawing "Myself" completely lacks eye brows. The tutorial brings me confidence that I'll one day be able to draw proper faces.

When I drew the same type of face over and over for ten years (yes, ranting about my childhood years as an "artist" again) I believed that I would naturally develop a style that the common eye would deem acceptable. But this is almost the equivalent of somebody inventing math from scratch. Even if you are very good at math, you are unlikely to be the type who would deduce basic rules of geometry on your own without any previous exposure to mathematics. Similarly, you will not draw good faces unless you carefully study what they look like. It is also very important to decide a style; do you want to draw realistic faces or do you want to aim for something toony?

After some thinking I conclude that I want to draw in a manga style, as this could give me the chance to make Final Fantasy FFVII fanart that reflects the style of the official artwork. Achieving that is far off into the future, but it's where I want to go.

My friend Dipsiel is being of great help in providing material for beginners. I've been copying this body shape doll about ten times now and I will continue copying and studying it in an effort to learn. By the way, get used to me mentioning Dipsiel. He is the Pumbaa to my Timon. You can check out some of his work at deviantart.

I promise that next time I post, it will be a new drawing. Maybe it will be based on the tutorials I mentioned here. We'll see.

 

[Shademp]

*Three links to drawings in this post*

Just bought an expensive scanner-printer (it's a laser-printer even!) so soon enough I should have the option to scan what I draw instead of always photographing it.

The next big thing to buy will be a capture card, one or two months from now (when I can afford it). I plan to have some fun with + Vegas Pro to edit videos.

Mood video for how I felt today (sort of)

Inspired by my post about my earliest memories, I tried to draw a goomba from memory. I then compared that with official goomba art...only to realize that I had forgot the round body section which the feet are linked to. I had also forgotten the eyebrows which are a huge part of their personality.

I then drew about three "correct" goombas (but I won't link to that ). I was amazed by the strong personality that those eyebrows give the goombas, which of course reminded me of the "how to draw faces" tutorial I found via imgur. Because the tutorial recommended that I draw a lot of realistic eyes before I go for the cartoony sort, that's what I did today after some random scribblings.

One goomba was drawn today, along with some other stuff.
1) Goomba, two bodies, two pair of eyes and some text

The text is about an "original pony" I want to draw someday.


2) The Sad Guy
I have no idea how to replicate his expression. All I know is that it's an expression of desperation and/or sadness. Again, when I draw I often have no idea what's going to come out and I don't know how to remake it. I drew two pair of angry eyes next to this guy, but attempts to photograph these never resulted in clear pictures. =/


ALRIGHT! Here is
3) Shademp's big page of eye practice

I looked both in the "how to draw faces" tutorial and on real faces via google search when drawing these. It was rewarding how my mind started out as blank and slow when drawing, but slowly I found more things to experiment with.

Realizations whilst practicing:
- There is a "line" formed right above the eyes, from two segments of skin pressing against one another. This causes some shadowing. I realized that while on rare occassion I have drawn eye brows, I have never drawn the line between eye brows and the eyes. I *think* I managed to make it look right, rather than making it appear like an extra set of eyebrows.

- I have a tendency to draw eyes too close together, so I tried to remedy that when I moved from the masculine eyes back to the feminine ones. Oh yeah, the differentation between masculine and feminine eyes was also something new. The basic rule is followed here as always; masculinity equals edges and squares, femininity equals roundness, smooth lines and circles.

- Making natural-looking eye brows is HARD. I tried many different methods but none struck me as perfect. However, from the photos I found via google, it looks like many women fashion their facial hair so that the eye brows appear far away from the eyes, whilst the males have the eye brows very close.

 

[Shademp]

Finally installed my needlessly heavy (25 kg or 55 lbs) scanner. Thusly...

DENDERS 01

1/3 of this pic was done by me, the other 2/3 by my friend Dipsiel. You can tell that my artistic friend did the top and bottom section, while I drew the middle section.

What he did was draw the top section, then fold the paper so I had to continue the drawing but without knowing at all what he had drawn before me. He then continued with the third segment without knowing the middle portion that I made. The result is, as you can see, mildly insane.

 

[Unlucky]

^Looks fun to do. I particularly love the bottom section. Reminds me of the parents in 'Cow and Chicken'

 

[Dipsiel]

Thanks for scanning and posting our hideously amazing creation! It's even more silly than I remembered.

 

[Octo]

Don't take this the wrong way....but that thing is going to haunt my dreams tonight THE EYES!

 

[Shademp]

Spoiler: Legend of Korra observation

Even though I almost never draw anything, I am still affected by the process of learning more about art. When rewatching Avatar: The Last Airbender and Legend of Korra, I take more notice of each frame, the quality of the animation and at the very least I observe the fact that there *are* shades, which is a step up from not remembering shading at all.

In the recent sneak peek of season 2 of LoK, I was put off by a surprisingly strong contrast when Korra lit up in her Avatar state. When her eyes glowed, her blue garments became very dark. Then when the glow disappeared, her clothes became light blue again. What's the term for that now again...lighter hue?

I understand the intention to make Korra's Avatar state stand out more, but it still seemed to me like the contrast was a bit overdone...said the lazy amateur.

Spoiler: Justifying escapism...as though it was needed in the first place

Franchises aren't just stories about the fictional character. They also hold stories about the artists who made them. Sometimes one can feel guilty about indulging in so much escapism (the way that the word 'escapism' itself is filled with guilt doesn't help), but I find some redemption from this by becoming more engrossed in the making of the franchises. Watching this documentary about the making of Avatar: The Last Airbender was quite the treat.

When it comes to behind-the-scenes material, even the most boring feature can become interesting. Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within is a movie that I find to be immensely tedious, yet I love the developer commentary and additional character info that can be consumed via the DVD I own of it.

Spoiler: Self-loathing paragraphs beware. Shademp: The Non-Creative Entity

The red thread that annoys me with all of the above though is that none of it acts as creative expression for me. Constantly consuming media without creating anything yourself seems like a decadent existence, even if only for the social pressure from the idea that creativity is the ultimate form of human expression. Yet it is also unfair for me to shout decadence at myself for not creating anything, when I have no desire whatsoever to judge others who spend their days consuming media without creating any themselves.

Putting thoughts into words and typing them via a keyboard can be considered creative, I suppose. But that's not a stretch I find worthwhile to make because I take my thoughts for granted and I spend too little time actually becoming more versatile in my linguistic expressions. The last sentence only became formal as an instinct to fight my self-aware observation of my lazy reuse of sentence structures. META!


I curse my own existence by letting myself be reminded of the immense skill and creativity that is put into all the movies, games and shows that I enjoy so much. The people behind these works of art are people who love to explore their craft, who love to learn more and work hard. But the more I adore the animators, musicians, writers etc, the more I touch on my own insecurities and self-hatred.

I'm not a person who loves to learn. I don't enjoy doing work that doesn't instantly pay off. There is a drawing I wanted to make to visualize how the process of learning and experimenting can often by akin to physical pain, but I am too impatient to improve on the drawing well enough for scanning and posting. The drawing is of me having my arm torn off, screaming in agony. But too much has to be learned before I could be satisfied with such a drawing...and I just can't be f*cking bothered.

It may seem that I'm killing my own creativity thread, but I'm not. Coming to terms with who I am and who I am not is a way of finding a way past self-loathing. If I can reach the stage where putting a pen on paper does not feel futile because I don't intend to make it my profession, then it should get easier. Expressing frustration may also be therapeutic and get me closer to a creative mindset. At least I know that I've made progress since a year back, when the mere thought itself of putting a pen on paper filled me with great angst. Baby steps are steps nonetheless.

EDIT: Ok here are two draw-ish things.

- Lazy attempt to draw arm being ripped off
There was just too much that I could not visualize and which required reference sources. When I got frustrated with the lack of references, I got this mindless idea....

- Drawing my hand holding the pen I use to draw META!
This way I got an instant reference source, even though it was a moving one. Could have improved on it but MEH.

 

[Unlucky]

Spoiler: @cba-ness to learn

You're not alone, bb. I take comfort in the thought that this feeling may be common among amateurs (as for me, I find it overwhelming at times, and getting in the mood to sketch and getting in the mood to learn are two different things, but when I'm in the mood to work on something and I wanna get it right I tend to cram on tutorials and that sometimes kills the mood for drawing). There's no other way but to learn, though. Basically there had to be a 'push' to get into the learning process, but that's personal and different for everyone.

Spoiler: @ satisfaction/ frustration

Because I often set a ridiculously high standard for myself, most of the time I work on something knowing that I can't make it as good as I want it to. But I do the work anyway because 1) it's like an itch that I have to scratch-- I just have to try 2) I rarely get in the mood so I exploit it when it strikes 3) I might come up with something more accustomed to my skill level along the way 4) I might just be happy with the end result.

If you feel any of the above, don't hesitate to pick up pencil and paper. It's worth the try. I RARELY feel satisfied with my artworks, but it's better than having an empty portfolio.

I'm really sorry for the unsolicited advice, Shad. Just wanna let you know that I'm your fellow self-loather.

Spoiler: @drawing your hand

Good job. It's always a common tip shared by artists to draw from real life, as you can learn a lot of things you can't get from drawing a photograph or simply reading an art book. It's the best practice, they say.

 

[Shademp]

Last weekend I discovered something about Cid Highwind's character design...

Spoiler

...He has a cigarette pack strapped to his head. I have never, ever, taken notice of this before. Looking at the profile as a whole, it never occurred to me that this is part of his design. My mind is blown.

Spoiler: More tutorial training

I found and favorited this drawing tutorial for future reference and decided to use it today. I only ended up copying the faces and a male torso.

- Face Copies
Went surprisingly well to copy the faces...until the sixth face, which was meant to show "excitement". I outright revolted against that one. I could never get the angle of the face right, plus I really disliked the smile in the tutorial image. If I look at the tutorial "excited" face as a whole, I see two grinning rows of teeth. But when looking at the face as a set of parts, I notice that there is in fact meant to be a visible tongue in there. I HATE that contradiction. One part of my mind says that there is no visible tongue, then from another perspective a tongue suddenly appears. That's why I decided to completely get rid of the tongue and draw my own thing. Not saying it looks perfect, but that aforementioned contradiction doesn't have to bother me anymore. In the original tutorial image it's like...where does the teeth end and where does the tongue start? AAAH

- Freestyle: Sad face
Started by copying the "Nappy" face, then by accident it turned into a sad face. As an amateur, I take ridiculous pride in that extra line I added below the mouth, to give a slight sense of "pouting". Look at that almost-pout. LOOK AT IT.

- Torso
Because I would like to try out character design, this was a neat thing to start with. Looking forward to doing more of this. As you can tell, I took a certain liberty when compared to the tutorial image...

 

[Shademp]

Beauty of the whole versus fact of the detail

I will usually fight the notion that beauty is removed from the natural world when analyzed in a scientific way. A flower is still a flower, no matter how you it apart to its molecules or its place in nature.


I'm finding some existential trouble with the perceived "beauty" of human creations though. Whenever you learn more about a medium you start appreciating it in a different way. Whether it be painted art, music, movies, books or games you get this sense of acquiring a more refined taste the more you know about the medium.

Sometimes I want to think that ignorance is bliss though. I will take as a reference a bit of FFVII fanart linked on this site by ever-the-fanart-messenger Unlucky (to whom we are all very grateful).

Spoiler: FFVII Fanart by...Malorie of tumblr? Not sure who made it

Instant "whole-ness" recognition renders this picture "perfect" in my eyes. I like what I see, get some feel-good emotions out of it and I feel like there is nothing wrong with it at all.

Then I start looking deeper. The chair to the right looks unnatural, like the strokes were made in hesitation. I think Denzel's clothes should be a shade darker, both to prevent him from absorbing into the background and to add more contrast between clothes and skin. I wonder if the Yuffie's right hand (left to the viewer) looks a bit odd. I notice that the background wall (on the left half) is blank and it becomes a pretend-space I don't know the dimensions of, which sort of bugs me.

The picture becomes technical and the initial "wholeness" impression is lost. It looked so perfect the first few seconds! But then I had to stop and THINK about it. Still a great piece of fanart, no doubt, with a feel-good style. But it is a sin against myself as a thinking being to have to endure the fact that when bits of art are analyzed, I sometimes enjoy them less! I am an advocate of critical thinking! Why is it hurting me to do what I usually treasure so dearly?

The bandwidth of enjoyment becomes thinner and thinner the more you learn. Perhaps the most recognizable example here is the difference between critics and the "general audience". Most movie-goers might enjoy a movie, but the critic picks the feature apart and may find no enjoyment in it. On the other hand, a smart, "artsy" movie may be adored by critics but disliked by the average individual.

Like most of my rants, this one is emotionally fueled. I am angered that I do not have more intimate knowledge of THE ARTS, but even more angry at the fact that learning will make me unable to appreciate some things.

I have a very hard time hearing if somebody is singing off-key. Unless the person is extreme, I don't know if I'm hearing a specific "socially accepted singing style" or if the singer is in fact bad. If I learn more about song, the price to pay is that I conform to what the more knowledgeable people like and dislike, because now my interpretation of audio input is the same as theirs. Fear and anger grips me again. Ignorance is bliss. But willful ignorance is also pathetic.


When I saw pictures as their whole, pictures were either bad, good or perfect. But now the "perfect" images rarely stay perfect, because I analyse their components out of an obligation to learn more about art (albeit at a slow pace). It's not fair. I don't want to undo my current perspective, yet I also hate it.

Proportions. Frame rates. Harmonics. Constituents. Tones. Compositions. Saturation. Hue. Contrasts. Strokes. Brushes. Gradients.

...I love it but I also hate it.

EDIT: Sorry for whining. The problem was partially that I wanted to put pen on paper and draw something, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. Too often I fear that the Gods of Art will smite me down for daring to draw anything. Next time, I'll post some actual amateur stuff.

 

[Unlucky]

Sometimes I want to think that ignorance is bliss though. I will take as a reference a bit of FFVII fanart linked on this site by ever-the-fanart-messenger Unlucky (to whom we are all very grateful).

I'm glad you appreciate it. If you're interested in fan arts in general, tumblr is a really cool site. All you have to do is follow the right blogs. I mainly use my account for fan art harvesting actually. They're all so easy to find there.

Spoiler: FFVII Fanart by...Malorie of tumblr? Not sure who made it

Instant "whole-ness" recognition renders this picture "perfect" in my eyes. I like what I see, get some feel-good emotions out of it and I feel like there is nothing wrong with it at all.

Then I start looking deeper. The chair to the right looks unnatural, like the strokes were made in hesitation. I think Denzel's clothes should be a shade darker, both to prevent him from absorbing into the background and to add more contrast between clothes and skin. I wonder if the Yuffie's right hand (left to the viewer) looks a bit odd. I notice that the background wall (on the left half) is blank and it becomes a pretend-space I don't know the dimensions of, which sort of bugs me.

Yuffie's arms look too long. And IMO the color needs to be improved, it looks bland to me. But heck what the hell do I know

Anyway, I'm fairly forgiving of fanarts in general because most of the time you won't find out if the artist is an amateur/ hobbyist or a professional. I just enjoy the art for what it is and most of the time I look at the technique more than the "correctness" of the whole picture.

With professional artworks I tend to be more critical, but I admit that I don't know well enough to spot the mistakes unless they're too obvious. Which brings me again to scrutinize the technique-- it's a big let-down for me when I find the style boring, considering that the artist is well-educated in the artz.

I agree that learning takes away some of the enjoyment, whether it be drawing or just looking at artworks. It's overwhelming and stuff gets too 'technical'.. when you're following rules it gets harder and harder to let yourself go and have fun with your drawing IMO.. but still I think it's important to have standards. Furthermore if the source of your frustration is your artwork not looking 'right' (e.g. crappy anatomy, incorrect values) then learning is the only solution and nothing else. A good artist IMO is someone who's knowledgeable in the basic essentials without compromising his artworks to look too safe and removed from personal style.


Anyway I'm kinda curious, are you interested in going to art school?

 

[Shademp]

Anyway I'm kinda curious, are you interested in going to art school?

I will admit, when I first read this question I immediately yelled out "NO!" comically quick. I don't function well in schools, plus there is no school I want to attend. I am also still paying off the loan from my one year at the university, where I studied physics and had to accept that I'm not a scientist at heart. I am embarrassingly bad at physics and only decent with math.


My concern is that I have no skills and I don't create anything. My other concern is that I run into emotional walls when confronted with the learning process.

Whenever I go to the gym, I try to use the rush and focus to meditate on things like determination and will. Is it really so impossible to learn new things? I could learn Japanese, learn to draw, program etc. The willingness to learn and improve in crafts is a central defining attribute of humanity.

Spoiler

What am I then? In my FFVII articles, the "creativity" is limited to optimizing the structure and presentation. It's just reporting, however interesting it may be both to me and the readers. The only example of having gone through a solid trial-and-error process is when I learned to use Makou Reactor. It was hard and frustrating at first but I prevailed and have been able to unlock much content.

The hard truth is that this is still based on the work of others. I have not learned anything essential about programming by using Makou Reactor. What I do with this awesome piece of software created by Myst6re, is limited to Makou Reactor alone and can't be applied elsewhere. I am merely a reporter, not a creator (currently).


Surely I am not alone in feeling fatigued once in a while from living in this world where we are constantly bombarded (and attracted to) the creations of others. Movies, games and tv-shows. Countless fictional stories and characters we become engrossed in and charmed by. Sometimes it feels like I'm in a fast-food restaurant that's encouraging me to sit back and lazily feast on all this visual and auditory candy. Surely I would feel less lazy if I created something myself and was less concerned with the works of others?


Yet all this good will is clogged by the fact that I have no original stories or characters I want to create. I know I'd like to draw FFVII characters if I could. I have a few ideas I'd like to explore, but that's it. Gone are the days from my childhood when I created worlds and characters with glee and complete ignorance of how nothing I wrote or drew held any merit. Everyone here would cringe if they knew my old trope-filled, cliché, stupid stories about dark lords, time travel, dragons, dragoons, magicians, warriors etc.

Spoiler: EDIT

...Ok I admit it. Talking about this makes me want to draw a female dragon-human breed that stuck with me for about two years. Maybe I should do that, for old times sake...

Still, I want some assurance that I can
a) become better at learning new things, overcoming frustration and self-loathing
b) find modes of creative expression, instead of just reporting the works of others with the tools of others




Tomorrow I'll be meeting up with my friend Dipsiel. Our plan is to pick up pen and paper to create something. Looking forward to it, all my whining about creativity aside. If nothing else, exploring more crafts can bring me closer to people, both in real life and online.

 

[Obsidian Fire]

I do this too with music. I've played both piano and violin for more then 10 years each and played in many orchestras, studied music theory, and music history. So I can get really critical of music when I want to.

Usually what I find myself doing after I've nitpicked though something is ask myself why I liked it in the first place and see how that matches up to what details I don't like. Sometimes I liked it in it's wholeness enough for the negative details not to bother me, sometimes I didn't. But often, it's the stuff I wouldn't have known about if I hadn't studied music a lot that causes me to like it better. I guess what I'm trying to say is that before, I could say I liked something, but not why I liked it. Now, I can say that I like something, and say exactly why I liked it.

It sounds really weird, but the best thing I've found to get better at being creative is copying people who do creativity well. Because it lets you experiment with things like techniques without having to start from scratch. It also lets you see what doesn't work, so when you do start making things from scratch, you know what not to do.

This is honestly how I got into doing fractal art. A lot of my earlier fractals were made by copying other people's techniques, and then altering parts of them; it helped me learn how that art form works. Now I can do things from scratch... but starting out? Nope.

 

[Unlucky]

I just noticed that it sounds like I'm lecturing on how to appreciate fanart in my last post.. I apologize if I came off that way. I want to give my personal take on it, is all.

Surely I am not alone in feeling fatigued once in a while from living in this world where we are constantly bombarded (and attracted to) the creations of others. Movies, games and tv-shows. Countless fictional stories and characters we become engrossed in and charmed by. Sometimes it feels like I'm in a fast-food restaurant that's encouraging me to sit back and lazily feast on all this visual and auditory candy. Surely I would feel less lazy if I created something myself and was less concerned with the works of others?

No you're not alone. I think this 'bombardment' is a good motivation, for me at least. How many times have I encountered some work and thought to myself-- "Well I could do better". And then there's also the good ones that just inspires me. There's just this motivation to not just be a spectator but a creator as well, to be part of the creative process.

But I think we both know that getting past the dreaming stage is one of the hardest parts

Everyone here would cringe if they knew my old trope-filled, cliché, stupid stories about dark lords, time travel, dragons, dragoons, magicians, warriors etc.

Again you're not alone. Recalling some of the characters I made up in my head back then I find it funny that they can be classified as one of my most despised tropes evarr: Mary Sues.

Spoiler: EDIT

...Ok I admit it. Talking about this makes me want to draw a female dragon-human breed that stuck with me for about two years. Maybe I should do that, for old times sake...

Yes

Whenever I feel the urge to create something, I just do it, keeping in mind that I don't have to share it with anyone else (yet). It takes away the pressure and most of the time it's so much easier to do stuff when you know you don't have to show it. And then I ignore it for some time. When I get back to it, that's when it's easier to decide. Do I share this? What can I change/ improve? Do I burn it?

Anyway it's good to hear your thoughts. I do share a lot of your frustrations. But then again I'm no art/ motivation guru so this isn't really halping

 

[Shademp]

With that FFVII article finally out of the way... =)

Last weekend, me and Dipsiel created something...interesting. The game was that one person would draw a shape, then the other person continued with another shape and so it switched back and forth. When we were finished, this was the result:
- Warning: Acid Trippy

You can probably tell easily which parts are mine and which belong to Dipsiel (who is the true artist of us two). Though I admit to being very proud about the chair I drew. To others it may be a small thing but I am quite happy with the result.

Spoiler: Dragonia/Lucy: Dissection of Pubescent Self-Indulgent Stories. Also...homosexuality!

I may show a drawing of this character if I take the time to figure out more about her actual appearance (clothing, primarily) and draw something that will not make the viewer bleed.

This character stuck with me for about 2 years or so, when I was 13-15 years old. Her initial name was "Dragonia", due to being a half-human half-dragon. Even my dull mind quickly realized how lazy that name sounded, so I changed it to Lucy simply because I think it sounds beautiful. Though in retrospect I guess it could have been used as a reference to Australopithecus Lucy...somehow.

Here is a summary of her story, as it generally tended to look:

- Setting: Generic, magical medieval fantasy

- A pregnant woman is forced by some cult into a ritual where the spirit of a dragon fuses with her and "dooms" the baby to be born as a half-breed.

- You see where this is going. With her newborn (seemingly normal) baby the woman escaped from the cult, but dies on the way and the baby is picked up by someone from a nearby village.

- The villagers do not treat "unknown" children lightly and Lucy grows up essentially as a slave in a household ruled by a wicked woman. When around 12-13 years old, Lucy manages to escape the wicked woman and the village. She only achieved this due to the unexpected "miracle" of being able to leap extremely high up in the air, thus getting outside the village walls. The miracle will soon seem pointless, since Lucy's nightmare has only just begun. In the forest, aimlessly running away from the village, Lucy's back and shoulders start hurting greatly. With her back bleeding, she collapses from the pain. After waking up, she finds that she has sprouted small dragon wings.

- Her time as 13-20 years old were reserved for their own type of stories, "Young Lucy" so to say, where she encounters important characters and learns more about herself as a half-dragon/dragoon. I pretty much only remember three other characters.
Aurora - Lucy's closest friend who has some magical healing powers.
Unnamed Prince - Yes, there was a prince. (Mary) Sue me.
Unnamed Military Trainer - Lucy finds a mentor who trains her in the art of the sword. The closest thing she ever has to a father-figure.

- The stories reserved for her adult years, 20+, always kept changing and I could never decide on her final fate or the origins and ultimate goals of the cult which were responsible for her fate as a dragoon. They clearly wanted her to be a tool to subjugate humanity, which is something she'd honestly be tempted to do because of always being hated, feared and shunned. Due to her large wings she can't blend in with people.


Alienation, magic, super-powers, best friends etc yada yada. In retrospect I realize that the creation and development of this character was a form of self-therapy or at least an expression of how I felt that girls/women were so alien to me. I could not match my world views with the seeming views of any woman I met. For example, I expected women to shun their biological fate of bleeding once a month and pretty much scream at the top of their lungs "NO!!!" and declare that all was hell and damnation because of what existence has forced them into. I was already cursing my biological fates as a male and, as I saw it, a very inferior male at that. Why did so many women seem proud of their periods? Why do they look at me funny when I ask if they would wish away the bleeding? (Remember this is Young-Me, not Me-Now)


Lucy was thusly a manifestation of the torment I pictured that all growing women *should* be feeling. Among other traits I gave Lucy is that her blood was acidic, which always made human contact a great risk for her. The slightest wound and she could end up hurting a person close to her. The sprouting of the dragon wings was, obviously, a representation of a girl's first period, where the world forcably puts her through this unimaginable pain and seals in her very being her tormenting fate.

There is of course a form of futility in a man (or in this case, a teenage boy) trying to write about how a woman feels about her period/dragon-wings. Even so I think I can be excused for expressing my frustrations this way, at the time. To write about womanly things, as a man, requires careful studies and, preferably, intimate social experience with many women. It should not be impossible for a man to write about a girl reaching adulthood, but the ground must be treaded carefully if her gender is an important part of the journey. Gender-neutral arcs is a different matter.


An area where I embraced literary decadence was to make Lucy into a bisexual woman. Half the reason for this was because, well, as a heterosexual man I find woman-on-woman action to be hot, but the other half was to give this medieval world another reason to hate her. It's usually a given in these stories that homosexuality is shunned. Writing a persecution-storyline, where her bisexuality is revealed, might have been cliché but at least it would have made something more of her sexuality rather than have it be a titilating detail. I am very much disappointed that I went this route in the way I did, not going all the way and giving her sexuality some deeper meaning. At the time I was even partially aware that the lesbian tones were too much drawn from my own guilty pleasures.


This poses a similar question to before. Can a man write about lesbian love without being accused of doing so out of a fetish? I will admit that whenever I see a woman write about a gay couple, I instinctively assume that they do so out of a fetish and to perform mental masturbation by writing down such stories. Even if some may write such stories with great finesse and dignity, I can't help but feel that in a way it just becomes a form of "apologetic fetish/masturbation". Similar to how the word 'escapism' is apologetic.

"Why yes we escape the world via stories, but at least we have a fancy word for it: Escapism. Now we feel much better about ourselves!"

What is affecting me here is clearly my default assumption that writing about sexuality is something to feel guilty for and that justifying it requires 250% professionalism, if you happen to be writing about a sexuality to which you do not belong but which might still be part of a fetish.

Wiser people than I will not have this inclination towards sexual guilt and will not subscribe to the notion that a person has to justify anything, as long as the content is well-written. Still, these wanderings about "what gender with a certain sexual orientation has the 'right' to write about another type of sexual orientation" are not questions I alone pose. An excellent video by Oancitizen comes to mind. I recommend it greatly: He reviews a movie about a lesbian couple in Rome.

- Brows Held High - Room in Rome


Back to Lucy. How would I write her today? Would I have her be in love with Aurora, as initially planned, and would I keep throwing shit at Lucy to give her more and more reason to hate humanity? Maybe.

As you might have guessed, Lucy is only partially accepted in society because with her superhuman strength she is able to protect everyone from monsters. Just as long as she doesn't show herself in public, they are pleased with her work.

Let's say Lucy is able to overcome this cult and crush their plans for world domination or what-have-you. She returns home only to find that the villagers have executed her lover, Aurora, for being homosexual. After having denied the temptations of the dark mages of the cult all this time, what makes her fall to the dark side is the unjust killing of her lover not by the hands of wizards, but by normal people. After slaughtering the people responsible for Aurora's death, the blood-soaked Lucy is then approached by the prince. She calms down for a moment and allows herself to be killed by the prince, but not before he promises to set things right in this wicked world.


Multiple matters speak against this done-to-death idea of homosexual martyrship and all the over-the-top pain Lucy is put through, but I don't think it's impossible to make a plot like this work.


While the drama is tempting I think it'd be much more valuable to write stories where various sexual orientations are treated as common facts of life, not as anything that is either subject to fetish or disdain. It would reflect the better world we need to strive for where there really is nothing special about being gay/transgender/omnisexual. In other words, the stories about Lucy the Dragoon do not currently have reason enough to be revived and reshaped into something that might resemble decent literature.

 

[Shademp]

Today's achievement: Copying a Marlene CG render (still using only a mechanical pencil).
Here is the official render. Here is what I created:

Spoiler

I decided not to try drawing the hands and shoes. The hands because they were partially obscured and the shoes because I got lazy. I also avoided filling in detail for the ear because I knew it would have looked too messy at the end. Lots of hickups, naturally, since the neck became too long and the face ended up looking straight ahead rather than tilted upwards.

Of course I didn't *learn* much from this venture. I did notice two new things however:
- On sensitive paper, drawing a shape properly will become almost impossible after eroding it with repeated erasing. I realized that when correcting Marlene's nose for the 10th time, I had to consider that the messy topography no longer allowed for exact strokes. It was almost impossible to draw as intended, so I left the nose as it was before damaging the paper further.
- The haired looked much more natural by doing an up-down-up-repeat stroke, rather than doing only up-down strokes then returning to the top. A simple thing like this, keeping the motion continuous, made it look more like strands of hair being laid upon each other and created a full hairstyle. In Marlene's case, I think I found a decent method here with the mechanical pencil.



While it is my wish to draw FFVII characters, it is not my ultimate goal to dram them in CG style. This was just some practice because Marlene has been a small inspiration.

The other day, at work, I spent a few seconds making sketches of human heads, wanting to draw Marlene. The result was obviously primitive and I tried to figure out what was lacking. Then I remember the aforementioned CG render and it hit me.
"THAT'S RIGHT! The curve of the head!"

I then drew a few head shapes and they immediately looked great, because I remembered the curve of the head and where it ends when meeting the neck. It was very satisfying to realize this from memory alone, rather than using a reference right in front of me.


Ultimately, I would like to draw a manga/anime-version of Marlene with a stubborn expression. To me that's a defining trait of Marlene; a stubborn girl who can use her strong will to get what she wants, although usually that thing is something which will help her family stay strong.

That's where I want to get, if possible.

Other inspirations from today:
- Tutorial with focus on drawing SHAPES, not symbols. I learned on my own that irises are normally partially obscured the eye lids and it was satisfying to see this detail mentioned in the tutorial. "Hah, I know that bit!"
- Listening to repeating Chrono Trigger tracks. Somehow the tune made me spout my thoughts out loud as though they were lyrics to some song or weird lines of poetry. Good therapy for when I handle and partially dismiss negative thoughts associated with the craft of drawing.

 

[Shademp]

Just opened up Paint Tool SAI, because I rarely do so and should become more accustomed to this software.

What is this feeling when I see the hue wheel and the saturation/value selector?

I'm scared. Scared. I'M SCARED! I'M SCARED!!!

Scared of the new, the definition-breaking, worldview-changing, paradigm-shifting MASS OF UNKNOWN SYSTEMS! Is it even a system or is it a form of CHAOS that only artistic people can employ and enjoy? I see this tool and I am scared that I don't even know what the word "color" stands for anymore. Color is supposed to be everything I see. Be it blue, red, black, white, silver... Calm down Shad. Remember physics.

Visible spectrum of light. Wavelengths from 390 nanometers to 700. Red has higher wavelength; less energy. Blue has lower wavelength; higher energy.

Yet this only confuses me further. In this linear representation these are all the visible colors. What ARE the "colors" not on this representation? Where is the grey? Where is the silver? Might it be so that this so-called "saturation" is the amplitude at which the photons move?

...

Spoiler

Well f*ck now I'm more confused. I'm scared of using these tools which I don't understand. I randomly did stuff in SAI (selecting purple, then switching between Canvas and Paper setting). This is what I created out of the randomness:

I find it beautiful but also scary because I don't know how it arose. I could not predict it.

My goal is to make a pixel-version of the Buster Sword. Ya know, to use FFVII as a motivational channel. But my confusion born out of having no frame by which to process or react from (similar to my feeble attempts at understanding physics, all those years ago, or math...OR ANYTHING) makes me scared of using the tools.

Another fright is that I learn to use these tools...but that in the end I will not understand them. Artists *know* something about color which I do not. Words do not stop them nor do philosophical ponderings. They *feel* the color and understand it by some form of intuition, perhaps due to having less strict mindsets. I'm just speculating. What's the point of trying to make a pixel-Buster-Sword if I mindlessly use a tool?

Thanks to living a good life lately I am not bothered by self-hurting emotions now when I open up SAI. The block is instead from the confusion and frustration from not knowing how to HANDLE new things in life, especially when I can't apply previous knowledge to the system.

Goddammit I'm scared. I don't even know what color *is*. I don't know anything. Ever.


EDIT: With a great deal of help from Dipsiel, I gathered the strength to make my first pixel-version of the Buster Sword. Reference image is the final shot from Advent Children Complete.

Spoiler

 

[Dipsiel]

Shadempus XVI the Articurious Articuno. Always happy to see you try your hands at the visual crafts, and always happy to help!

You may find it good practice to just look at a random object in your home and try to replicate it in a very low res pixellated form. It makes you more aware of the most important visual features that makes things look like... things. Keeping a complicated object easily recogniseable as a small sprite is a really tricky thing!

 

[Obsidian Fire]

Ahh... color... there are few things more fun to play around with in digital art then color...

The first thing to know about color from an artist's point of view is that it is a lot more complicated then the spectrum from physics is. It's not just about what wavelength the light is, but also the "strength" of the light source as well as how much "influence" the wavelength has on the light. And yeah... to some extent is just, "this color feels right", but it's the same feeling as "this camera angle feels right" or for me, "this fractal variation/value feels right"; a lot of art comes down to gut feelings/emotional responses I have. On the other hand, most of the colors I end up using all have "doubled" hex values, as in 00BBFF and 8800DD, which are my favorite shades of blue and purple or in my fractals, most of the values I use are all all whole numbers, or when they're fractions, they're all divisible by five, so I've got some "reason-based" standards as well.

As for how artists portray numbers, there are three main ways, CMYK, RGB, and HSV. And all of them have some degree of physics behind them. Here's how I keep track of what they mean.

CMYK stands for Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black. It's only used in print media and most digital artists will only "covert" to it at the end of a project. The main difference between CMYK and RGB and HSV is that CMYK is based on the primary colors for pigments, paints, inks, etc. and makes use of "transparency" and "density" as a result. What the values for CMYK mean is what the density percentage of the corresponding ink will be, with 0 as no ink at all, and 100 as 100% density. The printing "order" is really important too, as it's "harder" to see through the dark inks to the light inks, so Cyan is printed first, then Magenta, with Yellow at the end. Black (sometimes it something else), always goes last. The limitations of the CMYK system, really of the printed medium, is that it can never represent the brightest colors of the spectrum because it doesn't have it's own light source, but instead reflects light.

RGB stands for Red, Green, and Blue. It is used for any medium that has it's own light-source, so, anything with a screen really. RGB is based off of the primary colors for light, so it requires a light source to work. This means that it can produce much brighter colors then CMYK ever can. It's also the color format almost all digital artists use. The values for RGB represent the "strength" of light that is portrayed, with 0 as no light, and 255 as full intensity. As a byproduct, this also determines how light or how dark the color is. A color with R=69, G=67 and B=65 will be a very "faint" color (low intensity light really), while a color with R=226, G=67 and B=65 will be a very "bright" color (high intensity light really). This is also the system commuters use create color, where 00 represents 0 and FF represents 255 and the order is always RGB. So 00000 is black, FFFFFF is white and 00FF00 is green.

HSV stands for Hue, Saturation, and Value. This way of portraying colors is not used any media, but is instead based around how the human eye perceives colors. So this way is more based around what artists use then what technology uses. Hue is the speculum of color so it directly corresponds to wavelength. It's values range from 0 to 360 with low values being the red end of the spectrum and high values being the blue end of the spectrum. (I want that spectrum you posted by the way, it's awesome.) Saturation is how much influence Hue has over the light. It's values range from 0 to 100. 0 means Hue has no influence and all you'll get is a range of black, grey and white, and 100 means total influence and you'll have a range of dark to full color. Value is the intensity of the light Hue and Saturation have to work with. It's values (lol) range from 0 to 100. 0 means there is no light (black in other words) and 100 means full light (full intensity). The way this system corresponds to the way people see light is that when light hits the retina, our cones see Hue, while the rods see Value, and this is then combined in the brain. The HSV system makes finding colors a lot easier as it lets arists use terms like "lighter" and "darker" while assigning number values to them. IE, it's a lot easier (and more natural) to describe how to make brown and silver in HSV then it is in RGB. (Brown is Orange with a low light intensity (Value), Silver is no color (Saturation) with a mid light intensity (Value)).

As for how to read this:

Hue is the circle around the square.
Saturation is on the X-axis of the square, with the origin at the lower-left-hand corner.
Value is on the Y-axis of the square, with the origin at the lower-left-hand corner.


You also might want to try experimenting with what color-picker method you're using. This is what GIMPs native color-picker looks like.
Hue has been made into a linear spectrum and Saturation is now on the Y-axis and Value is now on the X-axis.
And the mini-spectrums on the sliders are really helpful for learning about what value does what.

Sorry for the really long technical post. This is when I'm really happy that I took advanced Chemestry courses at one point. Color/light was discussed a lot and it's more then helpful for art.

 

[Unlucky]

Ahh, colors. I had my own share of horror in the study of color (hey that rhymes!) when I got a tablet and attempted to bring some life into my graphite sketches. I started with the skin, to be exact. Needless to say I wasn't successful. I made the mistake (again) of biting off more than I can chew. It wasn't simply about picking a base and mixing and whatever my newbie artist mindset could think of (blur tool, lol. VERY WRONG. And a very common mistake! )

I have no tips to offer as expected. Just my opinion on colors in general: It's a make or break feature in an artwork. A lot of times it takes away what I would describe as the 'solemnity' of a piece of art had it been without colors. Not because the coloring is necessarily awful too. Even if done right, there still could be pitfalls, like looking dull and boring, too 'neat' or simply not jibing and just ruins the mood of the whole picture. That's my take on it and I really admire artists who can pull it off.

I agree, it's scary, it's complicated, but even in my fail attempts at it I found out it's really fun to do. There's a really handy tutorial from DA that I bookmarked in my laptop which doesn't have overwhelming lectures and terminologies that could intimidate newbies (it's for digital art though, but I could post the link if you like). I did learn from it and made colored balls for practice, as well as 'skin balls'. They look really creepy if done correctly!