Digital art is stupid hard dude

Hey! Been a hot minute since I was last on here :]

TL;DR this was my first piece of digital art in years, it looks ok-ish ig?

So, some background info on this piece:

   I have always been a traditional artist, but this year I knew I wanted to learn digital art. It’s something I’ve attempted many times and I usually give up 10mins in because I have no clue what I’m doing and all the buttons and functions just overwhelm me.

   This is the first complete digital art piece I’ve done since I was maybe 12 years old. I drew Cyclops, from the X-Men, because it’s my current hyperfixation and all I can think about ever and he is my favourite ever. I used Ibispaint X, my phone, and my finger :]

   First, I wanna address the puke yellow elephant in the room – I worked on and off on this drawing over the course of two weeks, during which I suffered from an intense bout of migraines. I didn’t know what to put as the background so I left it till the very end, and making it this colour must have been the descision of my half-asleep painkiller filled brain. I’ll probably go back and change it to something less garish at soon.

   I actually drew the sketch for this months ago, back in August. I’m trying to improve my anatomy, which is one of my least favourite things to practice, and so I’ve tried to trick my brain into enjoying it by using comic panels from the current X-Men and Uncanny X-Men books as references. This drawing in particular is taken from a panel in X-Men #1.

   I understand the basics of sketching and lining in digital, so my aim was to understand the colouring process better. Watching art tutorials online only helped a lil bit, however. I swear, I would be following someone’s rendering progress perfectly fine, and all of a sudden it was like they’d start speaking a different language! I did my best to apply the little that I learned, but I mainly just experimented. Chucking everything at the wall and hoping something’d stick. I do like the colour palette, and the lighting looks… decent, but overall I probably could’ve done better. At this point I’m just bored of working on it, and somewhat stuck on what I would even do next. I really, really liked the coloured lineart at first but now? idk. Maybe I’ve just been staring at it for too long.

   If anyone has any advice or constructive criticism I would be so appreciative. A lot of the time when working on this I had no clue what I was doing at all. While this was a fun exercise, I think I’m going to go crawl back in to my traditional comfort zone for a while.

   Apologies on the long post haha, didn’t mean to do that on purpose, i just like the sound of my own voice i guess… or, the sound of my own typing? idk. Thanks for reading though if you made it to the end. You win a cookie —>🍪