CUPdates 3: Experimenting with Brushes and Color

For this week's CUPdates, I decided to get back into drawing more since I've been doing a lot of writing and game design recently for these. I've been fairly busy with traveling and catching up with people the past few weeks, so there's not quite as much to report, but I did do some drawings!

I started off by downloading some of Jinny's brushes that she made, since I wanted to do a digital painting. She kindly provided me with a personalized 2-hour tutorial where I followed along and made a digital painting based on her demonstration, while she showed me how she uses some of her brushes. Here's what I made during that demo:

After that, I decided to get back into making card art for the TCG that I started working on a few years back. I started by using Jinny's brushes and just trying to make a lineless digital painting of Xing: 

It turned out okay, but lineless is something I struggle with a lot, so I was trying to figure out how to make digital paintings in my own style, and something that I like in the end. So with that, I was starting to reflect on the art I've created so far this year. I haven't been creating a whole lot because I've been focused on writing and game design so much, so I was inspired to create something new.

I realized I started sketching out a few story moments from the Glitch Vessels Eventure a few months back, but never finished it. So these are the ones I did back in February:

Looking at those made me realize how those were some of the best drawings I made so far this year. So I wanted to think about what made me like those drawings so much more. It was because while I was creating those, I really got involved in my story and blocked out the rest of the world while creating them. I wasn't worried about how it was gonna look (so much that I even forgot to post them after I made them), I just had fun drawing and expressing the story moments. I did a bunch more as well, but those two I actually ended up coloring and spending more time on.

So I started to read the rest of that Eventure, and then just started sketching story moments as I read and listened to music. And I ended up staying up until like 3am sketching because I was so lost in time and just having a lot of fun drawing. Here are two of the ones I made that night:

In those two drawings above, I had a lot of fun with Jinny's brushes for the colors and added effects. I also experimented more with the colors, where I was trying out different color variations for the light and shadows, and they turned out way better than I normally do. So I really need to jump out of my comfort zone some more and do that more often.

Something I realized from all of this was that I really draw best when I recently read the story moments that I wrote and am listening to the music that I listened to while writing those moments. Because when I remember how it felt in the moment of writing it, it really helps me to get back into the mode for drawing the scene with that same impact. I draw much more loosely and I realize my drawings have more personality when I do this.

So other than drawing, I've also been writing a lot of the Garlint Eventure with my brother. We ended up finishing writing the first half of it, and I really liked how it turned out so far! Not a lot to show on that front since it's a lot of writing, but I'm happy we finally went back and wrote that one, since I've been wanting to write it for a while now.

So overall, while there's not a ton to show for this CUPdate, I do think I'm moving back in the right direction for where I want to take my art, which is a huge improvement and makes me feel better for what's to come. Until next time!