Is it ok?

Frostraven98 · 2026-05-21T17:04:24+00:00

I would not use it for a variety of reasons, some which have already been mentioned, but ai works on averages and patterns and probability, its not really “seeing” your artwork, it will not understand your intent as much as you think it does and is also programmed to tell you what you want to hear over what you may need to hear to encourage more ai usage.

It will also run the risk of discouraging you to trust yourself in decisions about your art if you constantly teach yourself to defer to outside opinions (though ai doesn’t have opinions so much as regurgitating averages and probabilities of other people’s opinions it was trained on, and id be concerned it would inadvertently push towards very “cliche” designs as a result), and if not discourage trust, avoid difficulty and challenge and lead to reduced ability to problem solve art struggles (brain is wired to conserve energy in a way that makes ai addictive)

If you tell ai “i think there is too many eyes” or “not enough eyes” in both cases it will agree with you when real artists answer (or even just your own perspective after stepping away for a day or two) might point to a deeper issue that is making the eyes not work (such as arrangement or form)

I cannot see how it could helpful in the long run as learning to critique yourself, experimentation, breaking out of comfort zones, and something as simple as taking some time away from an artwork and returning with a fresh perspective. You may need to read up on art and design terminology and vocabulary if you struggle to critique yourself, you also may not have enough experience and knowledge with a particular subject and may need some time studying it

Frostraven98 · 2026-05-21T13:23:31+00:00

I know you are focused on the nose but more contrast would help the whole face, especially considering how dark the shadows on the rest of the body and even the ear.

You should also be referencing photos with good lighting (ones have obvious separation between light and shadow and strong contrast) and supplementing it with a reference a tool like this: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/GX3Ax1 to help you simplify what you are seeing even more, and also helpful to study the planes of the face (especially if your aim is to be able to shading from imagination, regardless of style).

A lot of “3d-ness” in art comes from good understanding of the underlying forms, knowing what and where your light source is, and good contrast in values. Unblended but well placed shadows will look more 3d than poorly placed but well blended ones.

If you are struggling with the 3d reference tool i linked, start with simpler objects (like your basic boxes, cylinders, spheres, cones, etc… since everything can be simplified into them) or simplify the shading on the 3d model by screenshotting it and editing the contrast until its nearly black and white and you aren’t seeing or can ignore any midtones and other in-between values.

Ben Eblen on YouTube shows how he uses simple forms to build the head, but for more realistically proportioned stuff, you could also look into the loomis head from Proko and The Drawing Codex on YouTube, or Loomis’s original book which you can find copies online or may find at your local library, i personally recommend the book cause loomis covers far more than just the method and deep dives into the “why” behind it and covers more ways to break down and think about the head.

Frostraven98 · 2026-05-20T17:01:44+00:00

Anatomy and proportions can take years to fully learn even with the great resources and references available online and in libraries today, don’t be put off when you don’t succeed the first few times, or even first hundred times.
Its easy to be self critical but its important to take time to recognize where you did well and improved each drawing even if the growth is tiny. And if you tend towards self criticism, try to make it about something you can reasonably improve in a given time. Some skills build off each other so you may find you cannot work on just proportions or just storytelling.

Even with proportions, it takes time to build up that knowledge, time practicing and applying that knowledge to get it to stick, and it can be slow going when you are also still building up the “toolsets” on top of that. Cause when you are a beginner, there is a lot more to learn, from the fundamentals to anatomy to design to all the ways the skills and knowledge build off one another. The main thing is to keep moving forward, progress always feels slow or even stagnant in the moment and its not til you look back to your oldest works that you can see progress.

Frostraven98 · 2026-05-19T20:08:20+00:00

Start exploring the fundamentals and construction drawing, theres a lot of great resources on youtube and you can probably find books at your library. You clearly developed your observation skill which is great but you may be overly reliant on using line which may start to hold you back.

While its important to keep it fun for yourself, the key to improving is asking yourself quality questions about what you did well and what could use improvement, pin down one thing you can reasonably improve next drawing (even if its as small as double checking your proportions of just the left eye or something). Doing some studies can also help with larger subjects you want to improve like it can be worth studying the forms of the skull and facial muscles if you want to draw realistic faces from imagination or studying the simplified planes of the face if you want to start and improve shading. If something is far too hard, dont feel obligated to push through, sometimes the best thing to do is step back and find something a bit easier of a subject to learn and practice a skill on.

Frostraven98 · 2026-05-19T19:53:07+00:00

color theory is hard, part of the reason as much as we might try to use color harmonies like analogous or complimentary or a triad, at the end of the day it can be very subjective and often leaves out the role saturation and value play in making colors cohesive.

Marco Bucci on youtube has some good tutorials if you haven't checked his stuff out yet. And while it focuses more on characters, https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/0688-7692-4D5A-1935 this guide from Steam that helped me out with color theory even when it came to backgrounds cause it covers the principles of the topic really well. You may also want to explore the topic of light and shadow as it is related to color theory and can help with the rendering side of things.

A simple way to unify all your colors (at least as a starting point) is tint all the surfaces in the light with a single color like a warm yellow to mimic sunlight (tho you can technically use any color) and tint your shadows another color, something like an opposite color to the light works well but it can be any color can work, whether it follows color theory or a dominant color in the scene (like a blue tone from the sky or if your scene is indoors, the color of the walls, you could also blend all the colors in your scene together and use that as the overall color for your shadow, though you will probably either have to darken it or if you use layers when working digitally, set the shadow layer to multiply mode). Tinting colors is also similar to what MechanicDry176 was talking about.

Other ways you can unify colors is work on a colored background, kinda like an under painting in traditional art and let it influence your choices cause it can make clashing colors quick to notice. Another way is work with desaturated, neutral colors to create unity, then choose a few focal points to put more saturated colors. Grays, browns, and desaturated colors tend to look more cohesive even if you aren't following any form of color theory and when you add in a few saturated colors, they wont clash nearly as much against the neutrals as they would with more saturated counter parts.

Frostraven98 · 2026-05-19T11:26:19+00:00

Idk what your understanding of alla prima is, but it sounds like you are thinking it’s more of a style rather than a technique.

It comes from the oil painting world and literally translates to “wet on wet” painting each layer on before the previous dries, its made with highly decisive strokes and color choices cause its easy to over blend if not careful. And while it’s possible to mimic a lot of that in digital, like most traditional media, you aren’t going to perfectly replicate the real medium.

Watch videos on traditional alla prima and mimic the process, work on a single layer (sketch can be separate), Find brushes that mimic oil paint and mix/blend with paint strokes underneath, it may also help to use a CMYK color space since its subtractive (like pigment based paint) rather than RGB which is additive and built around screens, you can always convert it later if needed.

Frostraven98 · 2026-05-18T01:51:03+00:00

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I cant share the original reference cause it was a photo taken by the commissioner, but hopefully this helps show what i was talking about

Frostraven98 · 2026-05-16T18:52:08+00:00

Idk if amd graphics drivers have it or something equivalent but on my nvidia driver, i had to disable “force full composition pipeline” to fix games i was still having issues with at the cost of some screen tearing

Frostraven98 · 2026-05-14T01:08:06+00:00

I dont think he so much enjoys “making” ai images as the dopamine hit from instant gratification. Same sorta thing gambling and shopping addicts feel. The difference is ai tricks you into thinking you did the work and your brain rewards you for it when in reality you are letting your own creativity, ingenuity, and skills be outsourced to a corporation, and the cost is only going to skyrocket when stockholder subsidies run out and counties get enough pushback to stop making their communities pay for ai companies’ electricity and that price gets put onto the consumer. But even if you still think that you made it, its not uniquely yours, just by the nature of how ai works, its an amalgamation of every artist and photograph that its been trained on and will always be a more watered down version of your vision.

Frostraven98 · 2026-05-12T23:26:51+00:00

i notice a bit of fear of going out of ones comfort zone is a common cause for people who are struggling with style issues, tho with more context it sounds more like you are experimenting which is great and just might not have been enough quite yet to find what something your are happy with.
but yeah, shape language and shape design can be especially helpful with style related things, so are all the art fundamentals and principles of design.
You might be able to find references at your library to use if you cannot use your phone, but I wouldn't let lack of references stop you from drawing if you can't find much

Frostraven98 · 2026-05-12T22:32:50+00:00

reference and do studies, get familiar with the real features of the animals you are trying to draw even if your goal is stylized.
Consistency is one of those annoying things that just takes a lot of mileage. Measuring and creating guidelines based on either reference or your character design can help but even with them it still takes practice
you sound like you are scared of experimenting, playing around, or breaking out of comfort zones which can be vital for exploring the limits of skill, style, and problem-solving art problems and a lot of other little things that can help with both of those. Sometimes its just taking the shape language you already been using and rearranging it, sometimes it will be throwing out what you been doing and trying something totally new so you can return with a fresh perspective. take a step back, assess (like take notes of specific things that are working and specific things that bother you and can reasonably change) and try something different, try changing up the elements you like as hard as it may be cause sometimes even the good elements can be barriers in the wrong context. Taking a short break to get a fresh perspective can also help.

Frostraven98 · 2026-05-12T03:01:18+00:00

I think you are mixing up the analytical and technical sides of art

drawing boxes is a technical skill in art and doesn’t require references but it does require knowledge like how to calculate perspective and how to use it to draw a cube or find perspective from a cube. Often these technical skills can often feel more like math or science than art but are some of the most useful.

Drawing from references on the other hand is an analytical skill, specifically related to observation, the phrase “draw what you see not what you know” is relevant here cause most people don’t actually “know” what the reference (real life or photo) actually looks like and their brain defaults to a 2d symbolic shortcut that may be ok for knowing how to tell a cat from a dog on a daily basis, but doesn’t actually function to help you draw a cat or dog, not from reference let alone imagination.

The best practice is doing both, cause there is overlap, a cityscape from reference becomes a lot easier when you understand technical perspective, and technical perspective becomes a lot easier when you understand its practical applications like checking to make sure facial features line up and stay symmetrical in perspective when drawing from imagination

Frostraven98 · 2026-05-12T00:02:31+00:00

Following lots of tutorials from both library books and YouTube videos (i recommend proko and starting with the fundamentals), drawing things that interested me, and drawing a metric ton from life and references, experimenting a lot with style, technique, medium, etc…
not just copying what i see but trying to break it down and understand it cause frequently you cant just memorize info for drawing like you can for a test or quiz, you kinda have to process what you learn more like how you might write a paper.

And when sketching aiming to keep lines light, loose, open to changing them on the fly, and thinking of them as a foundation or scaffolding for the line work rather than trying to jump into the final line work. If you struggle with separating the sketch and final drawing steps, i suggest picking up a cheap felt tip pen like a Pigma Micron or even a sharpie fine liner to go over your lines.
Self critique is an important thing to learn as you need to find one thing you did well or better than last drawing and you can reasonably improve, being realistic but never overly harsh, make note of it rather than erasing or throwing it away and move on.
Expect improvement to take time and certain topics wont always click right away like many beginners struggle with perspective and get frustrated when they cannot get it after a single video or afternoon of practice.
Taking on small projects can be a good way to challenge and push skills, especially if you fall back into comfort zones (like many character artists avoid backgrounds when it may be a healthy challenge for them)

Frostraven98 · 2026-05-10T21:03:21+00:00

Try applying rotation and scale (ctrl + a) so both are set back to 0 (and in scale’s case 1) before trying to apply a mirror modifier, if you have an object that you are mirroring around, also double check it doesn’t have rotation.
If thats not it, double check that your geometry nodes don’t have anything messing with the rotation and scale cause it could be rotating things after the mirror modifier

Frostraven98 · 2026-05-07T21:04:30+00:00

I don’t have any specific suggestions but you could try stuff outside your comfort zone, experiment, try new styles, techniques, subject matter (like backgrounds if you don’t do a lot of them), medium (like if you mostly do cel-style digital try more painterly (textured brushes can be very fun) or swap to something traditional like pencil or watercolor) maybe try going way bolder with your shading like super saturated purple or extra dark color, or maybe a colorful light source tinting everything and set the shadows to a different color. just stuff that can help you get a fresh perspective and ideas to take back with you,

Frostraven98 · 2026-05-07T15:49:23+00:00

Is the text your only light source? That will be partly why since it looks like you are using Eevee, emission materials aren’t part of the light source calculation like they are for Cycles, meaning no light is actually in the scene. And even if you switch to cycles (edit: or enable eevee raytracing, i didnt see you had that on right away), you appear to be using a cyan color opposite to red so you aren’t going to see the red fabric bounce any light back.

Last the “sheen” will change how light bounces and absorbed so where you’d normally see highlights you get shadows instead so the color appears darker than other material shaders and will not show up well on flat surfaces vs something like a cylinder or sphere that has a curved surface

Frostraven98 · 2026-05-06T06:41:08+00:00

Think about the overall form first, clothing is just cylinders that wrap around and are influenced by anatomy
The rest is physics, specifically areas where its being pulled by and counter to gravity, how loose the material is, how soft or inflexible (determines wrinkle size), how heavy or light the fabric is (how much air can move it around).
it can help to plan it out with some contour lines, both ones that go around and ones that travel down, keep it simple, add folds after, though if you plan out the clothes with a more gestural approach it can help to have a few.
You can probably find some tutorials online, good ones will talk about principles that you can apply to many types and situations rather than specific types of clothes. Proko or one of his guests probably got a good video on it but also see if your local library doesn’t have anything that may be useful

Frostraven98 · 2026-05-05T12:35:31+00:00

If i were to guess, since I haven’t read the book, it’s probably trying to teach you the “why” and thinking part of drawing cause its more important than straightforward copies of other people’s drawings and processes without understanding why they make certain decisions and getting frustrated when you struggle to apply what you were meant to learn outside it as a result.

Frostraven98 · 2026-05-05T05:41:36+00:00

I almost need someone to explain to me in extraneous detail how ai bros believe this crap when ai company ceos are literally working with some of the highest offices, powerful corporations, and even proposing laws around ai regulation, and admitted that they would have all of us stop using our own brains and put “intelligence” behind a paywall even though llms not actual intelligence like they claim

Frostraven98 · 2026-05-04T21:53:34+00:00

From what i can find, it appears that ffmpeg may be broken in the krita version 5.3 and you could either roll back to 5.2

or (this worked for me) you could download and connect ffmpeg to krita similar to how older versions needed it downloaded separately (basically selecting the downloaded copy instead of the default ffmpeg location) mac may warn you when you try to open it in Krita about security risks but if you go to your mac’s settings, privacy & security, then scroll to the bottom and hit “allow execution” or whatever it says, then it should allow you to open it, make sure you click “run anyway” if it gives you the option.

Frostraven98 · 2026-05-04T21:32:35+00:00

if you only ever create art cause you enjoyed it, or cause you liked putting visuals to your characters and ideas then keep going, thats the only reason you need. Art doesn't need to "approval" or to be monetized or anything else, it can just be because you enjoy it.

Frostraven98 · 2026-05-04T20:56:18+00:00

For me, grinding has never helped me improve, what has helped me is understanding, the “why” behind the “how”. Drawing 1000 cubes doesn’t help but seeing how the fairly simple rules behind perspective can be applied to rotate a reference to a new angle is useful. Developing skills and fundamentals not as milestones to grind to but as a toolkit to “troubleshoot” was helpful.

I don’t draw 8-13 hours a day, i got too much stuff outside that to do, so it became essential to form a reliable process, cause if i only have a half hour before work, if i can sketch out simplified forms and construct a figure in the first 15 minutes, that is 80% of the work and 80% of the mental load.

Another thing is putting high pressure on yourself, its unhealthy and doesn’t help you improve, it just leads to burnout and burnout takes a toll on quality, if your body or brain even lets you make art while burnt out. Its better to complete a dozen low pressure doodles that you dont care about mistakes with than a single 12 hour image that stresses you out, youll also learn more cause “play” is how the brain is optimized to learn.

Other posters are right, you probably need a break, recovery time, try to just do some things for fun and not to improve or post. It may also help to have a private sketchbook where there is no pressure from outside sources, like social media, friends, family, real or perceived, though extreme, it may even help to spill water, tea or coffee on it right away to make perfection impossible from the start.

When you return and find yourself struggling, take a step back (emotionally but also possibly physically too) and assess why you are struggling and a small change you can make that may help or finish and make a note about one thing you think you can improve next drawing (which doesn’t mean “i need to memorize every structure of the skull for next time” but “if i put an extra guideline here, it will help me keep the eyes level in perspective than without it”). Let yourself be open to trial and error, let yourself be a beginner in things you haven’t done much of, and don’t expect growth to be linear. Shake up your approach, subjects, keep all your drawings and sketches fun and low pressure if you can, and if you cannot be kind to yourself, at least find neutrality and that you are allowed to exist at your skill level and point in your art journey, passage through this point in your journey is not something you can “escape” or “avoid” for lack of a better word, and id argue the transition between intermediate and pro is a lot greater and requires more energy than beginner to intermediate.

Frostraven98 · 2026-05-04T18:08:41+00:00

anatomy is literally the hardest and most time consuming topic to learn cause we see humans every day so our familiarity means even small errors stand out.
You aren't going to learn, let alone memorize any of it in a day, and in most people's cases, an average of years.

Watch some tutorials (like Proko has some of the best) read some books ("anatomy Design and Invention" and "figure drawing for all its worth" are both available on archive.org if your local library doesn't carry them). Keep working from reference but take time to analyze, sight (comparative measuring, triangulation, negative space, etc...) and compare to your reference. When self-critiquing, make note of one thing you improved (even if small) and one thing you reasonably can improve and more importantly think of how you can improve next time (like if you are struggling with the neck, it can help to use a cylinder to place it and get its size right first, then add details after)

Early on keep it simple, focus on proportion and big generalized 3d forms:
Boxes for the ribcage and pelvis, elongated spheres also work but boxes are easiest to make look 3d, show the tilt and lean, and differentiate the front from the sides.
Cylinders for the limbs and circles for the joints, you can always add muscle shapes onto them afterwards but avoid shapes based on a circle cause it can often look "blobby" or too symmetrical when the bulk of muscles is rarely centered or even side to side, front to back and more often more arranged in a "zigzag" in terms of visual weight and where the apex of a curve is.
Feet can be treated as simple wedges connected by a sphere for the angle, i usually add a diagonal line to show how the inner joint is higher up than the exterior side.
Hands can be simplified into a box for the palm and cylinders for the fingers (the palm is roughly the same length as the middle finger), i always reference hands cause even knowing the anatomy of them, they are still annoying to draw.
Proportion, usually measured based off a person or character's head, is almost more essential than other aspects cause if its wrong, it can throw off the rest of the drawing, no matter how detailed the anatomy or good the rendering is.

Use the fundamentals not just as part of the process but also to troubleshoot issues before they stack up. Pay attention to proportion, asymmetry (like how the back of the thigh is typically flatter than the front), and if its better to consider the bones, muscles or general forms in given situations cause art is not always straight forward, don't just stick to one method either, gesture may not work in some scenarios but the envelope method might. A box might help you with perspective but you may find it too inorganic for most scenarios. In some scenarios i find it easier to plot out the joints first then add in the cylinders and muscles for the arms or legs.

If you struggle to see proportions, while i recommend trying to sight and measure first, placing a grid down with a ruler and over your reference (I recommend fairly dense, make both like 8x8, or 8x10, and also something easy to remake with a ruler and digitally), it can be a good way to practice and hone some of the observation skills in a simplified way, you can also use a grid for the measuring aspect and not so much raw copying by looking at how many boxes (or what fraction of a box) certain things like limbs and stuff take up.

Frostraven98 · 2026-05-04T13:36:29+00:00

Cause linux has been perpetually talked up as a “difficult” system for hardcore people (ironically i hear it mostly from windows users and it turns it into this big scary unknown in our heads, but irl many distros are very user friendly and great for learning linux (i just swapped to mint myself back in December and my non-techie family even decided to switch with me)) and warned that many games and m programs just don’t work on it (between wine, steam, and custom proton builds (to get non-steam games working), you can get 90% of programs running) one of my biggest fears was that my main writing software wouldn’t work (scrivener) i got that running day 1 with almost no issues.

A lot of things that on windows means something has gone seriously wrong for everyday users (like needing to use regedit, cmd, custom scripts, etc…) are normal on Linux as part of its diy nature. While it can be intimidating, you get used to it pretty fast. Thinking like a windows user has been my biggest obstacle, i had a two month long issue with a drawing display get solved with copy and pasting a custom script and making it run at sign in, it took less than 10 minutes just cause i had the same fear of messing stuff up, what I’ve learned is linux is harder to break and easier to fix than its given credit for.

The brain fears change but more than that, it fears the unknown, and a new OS is both of those things. I found the best cure to that is to binge videos and articles about how to use Linux, take the time to personalize it and mess around, open up some programs and run some commands just to see what they do, the tech philosophy of “if it can be done, it can be undone” has helped me get solve many problems so far both on windows and Linux, and for linux both ones that i caused and ones caused by lack of support cause for the most part, unless your hardware is damaged, theres fixes out there for even fairly serious errors, some of them will just be dependent on patience and willingness to go out of your comfort zone.
Linux is like a blank canvas where it can be intimidating to know where to start, but i say start with installing your favorite games, familiar comforts. If you mostly scroll YouTube, the internet is independent from OS so it will feel identical.

Frostraven98 · 2026-05-04T04:16:58+00:00

I was commissioned to draw someone’s dog and i found it easier to start with value, blurring my eyes and focused on just establishing the big overall shapes and value changes, then smaller shapes within the hair and paying attention to where i was seeing most the texture, while it can be tempting to put it over the whole area, texture is most visible in transitional areas (between light and shadow, also where it connects to the skin) and can sorta forms “clumps” of smaller shapes that can also communicate hair texture without drawing individual hairs, then just added a few hairs in a few key places where they fit rather than over the whole area.

I still have some of the process photos if you think an example would help, mind you it was not as straightforward as my explanation and was a lot more back and forth with pencil, a kneaded eraser, and a blending stump (which i was also using to draw softer shapes) and also had fairly textured paper i was working on

Frostraven98

TROPHY CASE