How can I improve my art?

Here a few of the most recent examples of my character coloring;

Silver Buckskin
Sorrel Pangare

Here's an example of my first signature I've made;
Lean On Me

How can I improve? I'd love for my art to look more realistic, especially my tags/signatures.

Last edited on 2016-02-25 at 23:30:33 by komorebi.

A little more shading..grayscaling.. something like this with the color on top. ??

Study horses. Everyone hates to practice, but it's the only way you'll get better.

Pick out some images on google, trace them. (Don't sell or anything obviously...but tracing helps to learn shapes and put them into your memory so you can draw them freehand!) trace 20, then test drawing a horse without looking. Look okay? If not, keep tracing! Sketch shapes, lines, legs, everything.

Then find images of white/grey horses, try out shading. Either use a base or your doodles. Use the adjustment sliders in your art program to make the image's shadows very dark in contrast, then you can see them better and learn where they go. Look at diagrams of horse muscles, too.

As for your signature, the thing that will help most is clean pixel lines.



Like this. See how your lines are fairly thick, overlapping? You want one clean line with no corners. That's typically how artists do it, anyway!

The painting on the first two is really good, I'd think just greyscaling, yeah. On the signature I'm not really sure... I don't make pixelated things.

This is gonna sound really lame, but the key to improving is to just practice. A lot. Experiment, go outside your comfort zone, study references (and use references when you can!), and roll with the punches. See what others are doing and ask questions! Most people are happy to help :)

For the coloring...it looks very nice! The biggest tip I can give here is to not straight up use black or white. Sometimes you can, but as a general rule of thumb, try not to.

I'm not much help w/ the sig,,, i might have used a different line color for each foal to keep them easily distinguished from one another. But again, try not to shade with black. Sometimes it helps to pick colors off of a photograph and use that as a palette.

But overall, looking good so far! keep it up !!! :) :)

I completely agree with zell. Tracing is actually VERY good practise, regardless if people say its wrong.. just dont sell/post online the pieces you trace ^^ I did a lot of tracing to get where I am today.
even tracing shading helps you to understand horses muscles and body shapes.

If you want to get into realism, I think lineless gives it more of a realistic look, but that could just be me.

If you have anymore questions, feel free to message me ^^

Edit; one more thing I'd like to add about greyscaling.. dont be afraid to use unique colours when shading. I LOATHE using just plain black and white. For dark shading, use very dark blues/teal with the opacity turned down. Or for highlights use a light yellow/almost white again with opacity turned down. It gives more aliveness to the piece, especially if you are incorporating a horse into a background. Background elements always affect the way the subject looks.

Last edited on 2016-02-26 at 14:13:36 by Siren

O_o when greyscaleing, you're not supposed to use just "black and white". If you're making a greyscale, you start out with a very neutral grey and use a low opacity brush to build up the dark/light greys.

Kuk> are you directing that at me? If so, I know. Ive been doing digital art for over 10 years. I meant, I see a lot of people use black to shade by turning the opacity down or white to highlight, also just turning the opacity down. To me, that method makes an image look pretty flat and bland, even if it is just a greyscale.

^ I use the black and white with opacity method. But I also use colour overlays later on and such if the horse is on a background so it doesn't look too odd and stick out. .-.

I've been doing digital art for close to fifteen years. I've also dabbled in traditional prior to that (mostly acrylic paintings, but also messed with some oils and water colors), if we're going to be waving around how long we've been doing art.

The "flatness" really depends on the method used to color the greyscale. Changing the hue of the grey itself can result in a flat look. Using a combination of color layers can help to make things pop. This is also assuming that the person isn't just using one or two colors for the color layers.

Kuk> If you'd like to discuss this further, then message me about it ;P
Sorry for going off topic here, Komorebi!

You are amazing!

But my advice is like the others - Practise Practise Practise! XD

And also, For greyscaling I normally greyscale all of it, so it doesn't look flat if you know what I mean? XD :)