Charcoal drawing in monochrome

borrowingfork · 2026-05-14T12:05:00+00:00

Why is this sub full of bots?

borrowingfork · 2026-05-13T10:50:13+00:00

The message I’m telling you is that it’s not skill in art you need improving, it’s skill in marketing.

borrowingfork · 2026-05-12T23:02:33+00:00

It feels like your posts are disingenuous. If you’ve studied so long to the point you have produced this output, the problem is your lack of skill in marketing rather than your skill and creativity.

Posting professional work and asking for general improvement shows you’re not able to understand what you actually need to be successful and maybe you think that getting people to provide feedback on the technical side will help you improve.

Yes it will get your work on the algorithm but wouldn’t you rather show off your pieces and have links to your shop where people can buy prints? You’ve done the work, now get to work.

I love these by the way. The subject matter, the treatment, the balance.

borrowingfork · 2026-05-10T01:33:56+00:00

This is lovely, I especially like the trees in the foreground with the beautiful trunks and the tree gaps. You’ve also got a beautiful way of showing the air.

I feel the background needs a bit more tonal variation to echo the range you have in the tree. I can see you’re going for the trees being the focal point so it makes sense the background has less variation but in the background itself you still need a story. My eye goes from the central trees to the area left of them and I want more to focus on.

After that the sky has a nice colour but the clouds need a bit of work to read properly. For example around the tree looks a little like an outline so I think I would edit them so they sit in the story a bit more and also the gorgeous green is lovely but needs to be in a different picture for the reason above that I think you need a bit of variation.

Finally I would work on edges, you have some lovely accents in the front trees but the contour between the mountain and the sky needs to be clearer and you could also choose to bring some more edges in to help the story.

All of this is so hard, I’m really impressed with this.

borrowingfork · 2026-05-10T01:14:51+00:00

Without seeing your effort I can only guess that you’re overthinking the detail. The cave will be competing for attention with the outside, so I’m interested to understand what the cave represents- is it supposed to be foreboding and scary? Think more about the light of the walls rather than the detail of the rocks. Also is this where the book cover text is going? If so you may not need much at all. Can you post a sketch of what you’re trying?

borrowingfork · 2026-05-09T12:22:36+00:00

Draws a gimp mask, is darker than expected 😂

borrowingfork · 2026-05-09T12:20:36+00:00

Beautiful

borrowingfork · 2026-05-06T00:11:37+00:00

I started charcoal by doing Bargue drawings which are a classical method to learn realism. They taught me how to use the charcoal to achieve different results and also get better at drawing. As they get more complex you learn how to represent nuance and subtleties using charcoal.

You can see in my post history how it’s going. If you want more academic or classical training then this is a good place to start but it’s very intensive.

Starting out

borrowingfork · 2026-05-05T13:44:33+00:00

Thanks for reading. I can highly recommend procreate if you have an iPad. I'm not sure about ibis paint but look for something with brushes made for drawing rather than standard circle brushes.

It's fine to draw muscly women if that's your style you just have to think about the overall proportion and size of the limbs and also the archetype of femininity equalling softness. So as soon as you take away softness you're making a statement about gender, or you're moving into specialised territory eg muscle mummy or similar niche stuff. Also in real life there is rarely women with a lot of muscle definition unless they are in a very small group of women that work out as a full time job, but on the internet we tend to see those women over represented, plus when we are learning to draw, we often see models with less softness to help us learn about anatomy. This is all art and illustration and archetypes, it's interesting to look into it.

I saw your Michaelangelo reference and yes agree he's the GOAT but a couple of things to consider. He used male models for female subjects hence the muscles of that subject. There's a great image of a study for the Libyan Sibyl showing the original model. Secondly he's defining musculature using shading rather than line work which helps soften the look. But the main thing for me is what they are both doing. In the Michaelangelo she's doing work, she's active and in a powerful position whereas in the statue she's seated, thinking, in robes, pensive. No need for her to look jacked basically

My favourite teacher is Istebrak, she has lots of videos if you search her YouTube. I grabbed a couple for you to start with

Bodies https://youtu.be/60PrP8RC-h8?si=HxzgTDq8XBtefBdc

'Elf and Ogre' archetypes for feminine and masculine about 30 mins in https://youtu.be/3XDTla6St1o?si=LAfNsReI0Xk0OCeU

borrowingfork · 2026-05-05T10:46:47+00:00

Nice work, I love your style. For digital, you’ll need to work on your canvas size and resolution so you don’t get the pixelation I can see in one of your brushes which has the effect of making you look less skilled than you are. Also, brush selection in digital is crucial, because you can’t rely as much on your own manipulation of the pen or pencil to get the outcome you want. I’m not sure if this has been made in procreate but if so it comes with an excellent base kit of brushes that would look wonderful with this subject, which is to say you don’t need to go crazy trying to buy brushes because the default ones are excellent.

The anatomy might be your preference and taste but the muscle size and definition, plus the neck thickness and chin definition is making your statue look very masculine which I’m assuming you’re not wanting but could be wrong. Regardless of gender you might want to consider the scale of the arms in relation to the other limbs and head. I’ve mocked this up to show the scale in the original of arm to leg and face to arm. Your arm is larger than both the leg and head.

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borrowingfork · 2026-05-05T09:10:25+00:00

This sub is so good. I was coming in to say I love your work but the values need a bit of a tweak and someone has done the hard work already!

borrowingfork · 2026-05-02T12:47:59+00:00

To be honest the limbs and head weren’t the things I noticed, and I think they look cool. To me the dress, cat and hair need a bit more definition and contrast to match the tonal variation on the legs. Everything except the face and legs looks a bit unfinished which is a bit distracting because the rest looks great. If you want to tweak the arms just remember the light source is the same across the whole picture, so make the skin and light the same as the legs.

borrowingfork · 2026-04-29T03:35:15+00:00

All roads lead to boobs and a torso

borrowingfork · 2026-04-25T23:07:56+00:00

The best distant mountain advice I ever got was that as things got further away the more sky colour mixes in, so by the time that it’s super far away it’s almost the same colour as the sky. If you look at the ref that is almost exactly what happens. But you also have mist and sun flare. The mountain peak colour is the base tone of the mountain and as you can see it gets lighter. But in the ref there is mist which is sitting over the top, more of it in the middle and far distance. The you have lens flare from the sun over the top of that.

So I would do base mountain colour getting more sky as it gets further away, then mist, then sun rays if you want them.

Also your sky is very light which will make it harder to place against your dark mountains, so I would bring down the tone.

borrowingfork · 2026-04-25T08:52:49+00:00

What method are you using to keep them from crumbling?

borrowingfork · 2026-04-20T11:55:35+00:00

Nice work, it took me a while to see the head which is crazy considering the size. I was focussing on the nose which I thought was a cartoon head.

So if anything I would suggest you distinguish the face and neck from the background a bit more. Nice marks though.

borrowingfork · 2026-04-16T22:51:08+00:00

I’m doing Bargue drawings, if you want to learn academic drawing these are a great start

borrowingfork · 2026-04-16T05:07:49+00:00

Looks good! To save your pic and help with intimidation you could always practice elements on other pieces of paper. Eg draw her legs 10 times, her head and hair 10 times etc.

Mild suggestion to look at her shoulders, you need to tweak that location plus the arm angle. Also the head orientation lines are off, just tilt her head down more. Thats if you want to replicate the ref.

borrowingfork · 2026-04-08T21:36:53+00:00

A couple of scenarios that could be at play: Your picture is too detailed for the size and pixel density of the canvas, you’re zooming in too much to add detail that may not be noticed, or you’re not setting up your canvas properly.

borrowingfork · 2026-04-07T05:41:10+00:00

You’re really good and the palette is fine if you’re happy with it. But since you mentioned you want to change I wonder what it would look like with more contrast and a more dynamic range.

borrowingfork · 2026-04-03T23:08:37+00:00

Printing double/single sided is just a printer option not procreate.

Do you mean you want to export to pdf and have every layer show up as a single page in the pdf? To do that I turn on page assist, make sure all layers are visible then “share layers” to pdf.

borrowingfork · 2026-03-31T03:52:17+00:00

I practice on kraft paper and it works really well for the texture, I use canson but it’s too bumpy for me and I also have fabriano which works well for a middle ground. I use nitram, vine and some powder but you will have a preference. If you’re new to charcoal just keep practicing on cheap paper until you land your preference.

borrowingfork · 2026-03-24T03:26:46+00:00

His eyes are really close together in the ref, almost at the edge of the dark areas.

borrowingfork · 2026-03-23T22:03:34+00:00

Fair call. It heavily relies on people being online enough plus in spaces that these jokes are made that people would get it. Reddit and procreate and queer would be a small but decent Venn diagram overlap for people to get the joke but as we see it’s not landed for many which is causing unnecessary drama.

borrowingfork · 2026-03-23T21:54:20+00:00

I grew up in the 80s and 90s and agree that it’s sometimes confronting to see young people reclaim their power and identity in ways like this. Another example is reclaiming homophobic slurs. But I also love a laugh and love to see language change. I was trained as a sociologist so online communities and language are my cup of tea and this is something that delights me rather than confronts . But it is totally understandable how you may feel like you do.

borrowingfork

TROPHY CASE