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Considering New Traditional Method
9 years ago
General
Lately I'm been shown or am finding really nice pieces that make me highly envious of how they are done. Naturally all digital. While I am highly skilled with colored pencils and am normally not intimidated to mimic digital art, many of these pieces I've found I appreciate enough of how impractical they are to implement with colored pencils.
At the $15 rates I charge on commissions, they are not time effective and I know enough about my skill to know the finished quality would be comparatively poor compared to the digital pieces.
A few such pieces I am envious of are as follows:
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/14474597/ (recently attempted mimicking this one but didn't care too much for the results)
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/18817723
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/21460756/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/22622382/
So do I have a way around this? Yes I do. It's a little trick called paper dying.
hibbary has some great tutorials on how to do this on DeviantArt. I even attempted some at one point many years ago but never put my products to use.
Each of those four pictures above I know what sort of final dyed product I need to do any of them. (Scream's picture actually shows what I'd need very well, being a WIP) It's just a question of getting it in the first place. I would also need to use higher quality paper that could handle being in water. Couldn''t get away with dirt cheap computer paper there.
Part of me is bothered by this mixed media path in that I've long prided myself staying almost completely authentic to colored pencils. I even refuse to use white gel pen, a common "get out of jail free" technique for white highlighting.
But what I think I am most proud about all these years is that I am still a traditional artist and paper dying could let me keep up with digital artists while keeping up with exceptional quality I feeling . So many people that I envied their traditional work (particularly macro artists) have left it behind and basically never went back once they picked up the digital media. It saddens me a great deal.
In a way a picture being traditional can be big deal. I have only commissioned two digital pieces in my life. Everything else is traditional with the intend of obtaining the physical copy. Basically, if I can't obtain an only existing physical copy, I don't buy it (prints don't count).
SilverBirch is the only person I've bought pieces from over the last 3-4 years.
Saying that, yes, I could mail the physical copies of my own work to people at an additional cost. No one ever asks for them so I don't mention it but that is something I would do.
~Eclipsis
At the $15 rates I charge on commissions, they are not time effective and I know enough about my skill to know the finished quality would be comparatively poor compared to the digital pieces.
A few such pieces I am envious of are as follows:
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/14474597/ (recently attempted mimicking this one but didn't care too much for the results)
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/18817723
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/21460756/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/22622382/
So do I have a way around this? Yes I do. It's a little trick called paper dying.
hibbary has some great tutorials on how to do this on DeviantArt. I even attempted some at one point many years ago but never put my products to use.Each of those four pictures above I know what sort of final dyed product I need to do any of them. (Scream's picture actually shows what I'd need very well, being a WIP) It's just a question of getting it in the first place. I would also need to use higher quality paper that could handle being in water. Couldn''t get away with dirt cheap computer paper there.
Part of me is bothered by this mixed media path in that I've long prided myself staying almost completely authentic to colored pencils. I even refuse to use white gel pen, a common "get out of jail free" technique for white highlighting.
But what I think I am most proud about all these years is that I am still a traditional artist and paper dying could let me keep up with digital artists while keeping up with exceptional quality I feeling . So many people that I envied their traditional work (particularly macro artists) have left it behind and basically never went back once they picked up the digital media. It saddens me a great deal.
In a way a picture being traditional can be big deal. I have only commissioned two digital pieces in my life. Everything else is traditional with the intend of obtaining the physical copy. Basically, if I can't obtain an only existing physical copy, I don't buy it (prints don't count).
SilverBirch is the only person I've bought pieces from over the last 3-4 years.Saying that, yes, I could mail the physical copies of my own work to people at an additional cost. No one ever asks for them so I don't mention it but that is something I would do.
~Eclipsis
I myself draw traditionally most of the time. I only really work digitally on, say, Gimp if I want to get everything done precisely, put in some finishing touches on a traditional work, or just simply for experimenting.
Dyeing is most certainly a superb traditional alternative though. I can't seem to find it online, but I used to experiment with a certain type of paper that was a quarter the thickness of cardboard. You couldn't shine a light through it, and it displayed the colour of the dye almost exactly. They were very old, so it might have been substituted for an alternative design because I can't seem to find it anywhere.
I will tell you this, if you can master the art of dyeing, you will have unlocked a superb method of colour editing at the very least.
I've tried using GIMP and I don't think it is at all worth doing over traditional. =P Now Photoshop, which I am very fluent with and own a legitimate copy of, would be a strong alternative for doing digital art. But despite that, I still choose to do most everything traditionally.
Paper dying I still haven't done yet because it is so messy. c.c Sort of puts me off. I think the paper I own though is thick enough. I don't believe you can shine light through it as you mentioned to yours.
Gimp is really just there to make things easier.
Well, perhaps not quite. Sometimes it ends up turning a perfectly simple procedure by traditional standards to 2 hours dedicated to figuring out how the trigonometric derivatives interacts with the polymorphing fizzwidget to form bose-einstein condensation around the perpendicular axis of the inverted selection of the third layer or whatever, and then realising that you don't have the correct modification for the task and that you have to spend another two hours stumbling and fumbling around the internet for something that may or may not be there, realising you've skipped dinner, spending another two hours trying to install an obscure piece of software that sounds like it'll get the job done, accidentally installing it in Chinese...
By the end of it, you're just a pile o' bones strewn across the desk.
I never stuck to paper dyeing for the same reason why it's putting you off. I just ended up using Gimp to achieve the colour editing goal, though most of the colouring and basic shades I like to get down traditionally first.
I found out something interesting earlier today that will help with learning new art methods (or anything in general): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MgBikgcWnY
I'm actually reconstructing my schedule on this, I was quite suprised by it. Anyway, perhaps there are methods of paper dyeing that allowes for more controlled colouration. I would definitely be interested in that.
Paper dying will probably just take a few tries. Just a matter of getting to the point of trying.
Most of my art time is booked with commissions at the moment so that likely won't happen any time soon. Paper dying isn't something I want to commit to a commission yet.
Well seeing as though it takes 20 hours of practice to get good at something, you may as well invest your time in what's most enjoyable if you're full on commissions.