fanart, Junkie!Roy

[ratcreature]

Fandom: DCU (Green Arrow)
Characters/Pairings: Roy Harper (back when he was Speedy)
Media used: Wacom tablet in GIMP
Rating/warnings: PG, I guess, for drug use
Notes/comments: This took me a really long time, and I don't just mean that I first had the idea for this in 2006. I have no idea what I am doing wrong that digital coloring takes me so long, isn't it supposed to be efficient? I suppose it's one of the pitfalls of being self-taught. Anyway, it's Roy during the famous heroin addict story line. As always, feedback is very welcome.
Preview:



And two details showing parts of the image in the original size/resolution. (I drew it at 3100x2540px.)

Comments

[ratcreature]

Thanks! I'm glad you like it.

I love the undo button that comes with doing things digitally, but the intricacies of digital painting totally elude me. I mean, I see the people who can make digital coloring look like a photo, and those you can make it look like amazing paintings, and I looked at tutorials, and even at tutorial videos that people made while painting digitally, but I still can't make either work at all. I'm more or less stuck with filling in a base color, and then add a darker area for shadows in a layer above that, and another layer with a few simple highlights, and that works okay with my generally somewhat comic-like style, but in reality it is not so much a style "choice" on my part, but my technical limitations. I sometimes feel like I'm doing the coloring book version of digital coloring.

[porntestpilot.livejournal.com]

I recc'd it in my journal because it occurred to me I never do that for fanart, and I like your stuff.

I spend a lot of time watching speed art like Nico Di Mattia does on youtube, but mostly it's just an awe thing. I was practicing on uncolored fanart that is basically meant as coloring books and sucking at that. I think part of my problem is I can't draw.

What program are you using?

[ratcreature]

Thanks for reccing me.

I use GIMP, which is open source, and thus free. In general I can't afford to pay for software, so I've been pretty much an exclusive Linux user for the last decade or so. From what I understand GIMP is similar to Photoshop (which I have never used), at least I can follow a large number of Photoshop tutorials for graphics stuff, though some of the more arcane functions (some filters and such) are missing or in slightly different places.