Hi all,
I have been using Inscape for a while (might be few years) now for my work (brosures, posters, ads), which is rather technical work, but recently I have been trying to do something more creative in spare time. Here are my first drawing creations:





As you can see, I am not very good, but maybe someday.....

Edit: Imgur gallery here: http://talsi.imgur.com

Today's work. Inspired by movie Frozen.

Another one.

Nice collection. Keep `em coming.
Full sails!

You seem to have a nice taste of games and movies
I like the last two ones, they have a neat quality. I suppose you work with a graphic tablet?! I never really managed to use pen pressure with Inkscape. Is there a way, or how did you do the lines in the hand picture?

Johannski wrote:You seem to have a nice taste of games and movies

Thanks. Right now, I am thinking about drawing Ponyo we'll see....

Johannski wrote:I like the last two ones, they have a neat quality. I suppose you work with a graphic tablet?! I never really managed to use pen pressure with Inkscape. Is there a way, or how did you do the lines in the hand picture?

I do use graphic tablet, but not in Inkspace. I tried it few times, but for me it did not felt right - my brain is more "technical" (lines, angles, numbers....); stupid brain . Preasure did not work for me either.
As for the lines, I make them like this (from bottom to top):



1. Bezier curves - make sure you have two connected lines, one above another
2. Edit paths - bend the lines whatever you like - the more you bend the thicker the line will be (scaling also works)
3. Fill it and copy the object
4. Draw freehand lines - set according to img above ( when drawing freehand, my hand is shaky, co I like to use high value smoothing)
5. Draw!

There might be easier/other way to do it, but I like to use this method because you can use all crazy objects to draw some cool stuff:

Pen is a nice tool, but perhaps you could give a try to the Calligraphy tool as well?
Try it with these settings:


...and check this topic as a possible solution for the tablet pressure settings.

Ponyo:

Maestral wrote:Pen is a nice tool, but perhaps you could give a try to the Calligraphy tool as well?

Yeah, calligraphy is cool tool, but as I wrote above, my hand gets shaky, so I prefer pen with that smoothing option (unless there is something similar in calligraphy tool which I totally missed).
PS: check link to you image, its not showing

Hi all,
I have been playing Wildstar beta over the weekend and I must say Engineer rules! I especially like this little guy:

Hey Talsi,
Thanks for your reply, I knew the technique/setting, but I thought it looked too good and dynamic.
Also thanks for your comment Maestral, I actually have everything activated and still have problems to use the tablet pressure. Hm, whatever, if I need it, I will open up a different thread to discuss the problem

The robot looks really cool, you've got a great sense for 3d shapes!

The last picture is nice too, but the minion has a rather different graphic style than the banana.

Johannski wrote:The last picture is nice too, but the minion has a rather different graphic style than the banana.

Yeah I know.
I originally wanted to draw minion only but when I was in the middle of it, it occurred to me that it would be funnier to add banana. The thing is, I have literary no experience (not counting elementary school's classes ) with drawing/painting so I am now trying to figure out how to do stuff. Right now I am happy that I can somehow draw at least something.

Since I need to practice (and figure how to do it in the first place), I have been playing with some simple cartoon eyes...

Hi.

Very impressive!!
Only little flaw is the reflection highlight - in "real life" the higlight
will stay on the same side in both eyes - not "mirrored" as in your drawings.

Example 'lifted' from http://www.indiatimes.com



RGDS
Ragnar

ragstian wrote:Only little flaw is the reflection highlight - in "real life" the higlight will stay on the same side in both eyes - not "mirrored" as in your drawings.

Makes sense, thanks for the tip.

Hey. You said that you aren't that good at drawing. Yet some of the pics above look pretty good. Sooo, did you trace reference pics or how did you make them appear much better than you yourself seem to think your drawing skills are? (uh, sorry for the weird and probably incorrect sentence :D ) The ones I like the most are the two robots. Are they original designs or from games/movies as well?

Btw. your method for making the line width dynamic (use shape from clipboard) works with the pen-tool as well, not just the freehand drawing thing. And the pen-tool can be used perfectly fine by ANYBODY, no matter how shaky one's hands are. Trust me, it's pretty much my main tool and I don't even use a tablet. Admittedly, creating shapes node by clicking node after node and bending path segments isn't much like drawing.. but hey, if it gets the job done.. ;) Anyway, good luck and tons of fun with your further experiments!

Dillerkind wrote:Hey. You said that you aren't that good at drawing. Yet some of the pics above look pretty good. Sooo, did you trace reference pics or how did you make them appear much better than you yourself seem to think your drawing skills are? (uh, sorry for the weird and probably incorrect sentence ) The ones I like the most are the two robots. Are they original designs or from games/movies as well?

Btw. your method for making the line width dynamic (use shape from clipboard) works with the pen-tool as well, not just the freehand drawing thing. And the pen-tool can be used perfectly fine by ANYBODY, no matter how shaky one's hands are. Trust me, it's pretty much my main tool and I don't even use a tablet. Admittedly, creating shapes node by clicking node after node and bending path segments isn't much like drawing.. but hey, if it gets the job done.. Anyway, good luck and tons of fun with your further experiments!

Hey, thanks for the encouragement! I'll be definitely doing more drawings/experiments (right now I am messing around with cartoon/manga hairstyles and faces - not going very well so far) but I am ridiculously busy at my job at the moment, so I have very little to none time to spare.
Your sentence, to me at least, made perfect sense. The "illusion" of pictures looking good is just luck I guess. I tend to mess around a lot, a lot, and sometimes I get carried away (minion and banana is good example of me doing one thing and suddenly another = not very good drawing), I seriously lack focus and steady hand - that is why I like vectors.
To answer your question: Yes, in my drawing I usually (both robots for example) start with some reference picture, approximately tracing basic shape and main features with Bezier tool (kinda like line art in bitmap painting), then I start to mess around as I see fit. Thou sometimes (Eyes, Ponyo) I do drawing just from looking at pictures, not tracing them.
The robots are: the white is Sentry turret from Portal games and the blue one is Artillery bot from Wildstar (MMORPG).

A quick drawing: