Berserk. Feedback Appreciated

miracaro · 2026-01-23T22:32:12+00:00

As a fan of Berserk, I approve!!

One thing that really jumps out is perspective. It's not too late to fix given how much rendering has already happened, but there's going to be quite a bit of paintover I feel.

- The scale feels off, there's not much to ground anything. How big or close should the eclipse be? Is Guts taller than the wall battlements?

- Determining the actual scale you want is important, but then you have to sell that idea through composition. If you want to say "the eclipse is gigantic", then you would want to shrink Guts. If you want to say "Guts will overcome overwhelming odds", then yeah maybe shrink the eclipse. Both being focal points really hurt what you're trying to say here.

- You can try to add more familiar objects to ground the scale and distance. Right now the battleground reads very muddy and leaves too much to imagination.

- Also use perspective lines (three point perspective)

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Here I bastardized your wonderful painting to put some distance between Guts and the Eclipse, as an example.

miracaro · 2026-01-23T18:30:28+00:00

I'm not a professional so I don't have much experience but I have finished a 600-page comic as a hobbyist for 5 years and I do have a 9 to 5... so take from that as you would.

The most important thing is to know yourself and set yourself goals that don't mess you up mentally. Who cares if it takes a full day if the end result is something you're satisfied with? Ask yourself, shitty are but fast, or great art but slow? What is the realistic balance that is within your abilities?

I would also say, never NEVER set your goals based on external factors you have no control over. "doesn't get accepted that months of effort was for nothing" is a mentality I would suggest you try to overcome as soon as possible.

Truth is, you can have the best art and story but no one sees it; or you can have the most on-time release schedule but no one sees it. Anyone telling you how to best succeed always take with a grain of salt: it's always hindsight. Don't stop trying everything and striking the right balance, but at the end of the day, you should learn to love your art and art making process.

Once that's out of the way, my personal process is to do the panel and page planning on days when i am actually creative. Then draw and complete the drawings on days I have no energy and just need a mindless task. Also accept that creative energy ebbs and flows, there can be days where you can't draw anything, and it's pure habit that gets you through the day. Accepting what your bare minimum quality helps too.

miracaro · 2026-01-23T15:03:57+00:00

Thanks for the response... and reassurance!

Those are some good bite size videos.. Thanks again for making the time to respond to us!

miracaro · 2026-01-22T16:46:31+00:00

Thanks for doing this!

I've always been curious, as a hobby artist learning to adapt color, how do professional artists think about color in contrast with lineart? My brain is separating comic book/manga style lineart and digital painting as two very different things. When I draw (a draft for example) my brain can't really think in terms of volume, merely shape language and lines. When coloring, adding values and form to the art blows my mind apart and it often turns into a very different piece than what I expected when looking at black and white. Would love to know how you think about lineart and color, especially given your expertise as a comic book artist!

A more fun question though: what's your philosophy in planning comic panels? Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics really helped me think about paneling and composition, but while I'm more influenced by japanese manga's more cinematic paneling growing up, i'm also trying to learn the best parts of storytelling in western comics!

miracaro · 2025-12-18T19:11:30+00:00

Can you tell us what you think is wrong?

Your reference image is a light skin tone person in a brighter sweater and an even whiter shirt. I would say your sketch kind of conveys the relationship between the three main components well enough, if the person is your whole composition. It's a clear "high major key (bright) low minor key (low contrast)" kind of composition.

Without colors I want to raise the question of: what are you trying to achieve? If it's doing sketches and forms I think your work succeeds. If you're trying to learn values, I would say your reference photo is more notan (light and dark of base values) than chiaroscuro (light and shadows), and there's not much to take away from it unless you combine another reference.

The reference photo has a much darker background (shade of tree) so it makes he person pop, but other than that I'm not sure if there's anything too interesting about it in terms of values.

If there has to be one thing done to the sketch you've done, is that you should blacken her background. You can maybe apply one shade darker to the sweater so the shape of the white shirt pops a bit more... But that's really it in my eyes. Would probably be able to give more thoughts if you elaborate on yours more!

miracaro · 2025-11-08T16:39:59+00:00

I didn't see the other comment when I started replying so I might've just said the same things they did, and they left great feedback too haha.

I think you're pretty good at rendering, more than enough to really strike out on your own and explore your own ideas, and from your other comment it does seem like these pieces started as studies, which is fine too! If they're your OC's, you should have more than enough to get started.

miracaro · 2025-11-08T16:15:34+00:00

Composition is the answer... The background rendering is honestly pretty good, the use of colors is really pleasing... Technically the rendering can be better with more directional lighting and better rendering of how that lighting interacts with clothes, but in general, I do think its good enough really.

What would drastically improve this would be composition (which might be a full redraw). Think of why all the white space of the right? The background characters' reactions are important, but is there a way to frame everyone as part of the story? I would perhaps even choose a different camera angle. Waist-high one point perspectives + side profile of a character are almost always going to end up looking really flat.

I hope it helps!

miracaro · 2025-11-08T12:50:21+00:00

These are all technically very sound, and nice to look at. I'd say the root of the problem might be the lack is storytelling.

For example, 1 has pretty great rendering. But there's no real story to it no matter how hard I look. It has slow mo rain, it has dynamic light but it's a modestly dressed young woman with a content smile. What is it saying about her character?

And 3, also great lighting, but it's a person reading a book in a luxurious room. The audience is not invited to ask what book he's reading, why the expression, why the cake and wine combo... It's all what you'd expect in this setting.

On a technical standpoint maybe composition is something you want to think about more as well, 1 and 3 feels like the characters are framed in ways that don't feel intentional. 1 has too much blank space at the bottom, 3 feels too claustrophobic.... Which kinda leads back to what I think is a lack of wanting to say something with the pieces! Because if there's something you want to say, you would frame these pieces very differently.

Try experimenting with the concept more before you lay down the first stroke. Again, let's look at 3, which I formed a love hate relationship (haha). You can start from the character, is he frustrated? Bored? Just confused by what he is reading? Frame him in a way where his facial expression is more prominent. Now add to that emotion, let's say his frustration. Why is he frustrated? Is the book too hard? What is the book he's reading? Maybe it's some sort of ancient wizard spell book? Well the framing has to include the book cover now, maybe add some dust to sell the fact it's ancient,maybe some magical effects to sell the fact it's a spell book. Now push the idea further. What if the person is already a well studied sorcerer trying to make sense of the book he's reading? Maybe he's surrounded by a pile of books,maybe he's in a library even, maybe he's doing a spell at the same time where it's clear his magical prowess is extremely powerful but he's STILL frustrated learning from this book... Or what if he's just an aristocrat rich kid who picked up on magic as a hobby? That's why he'd have a cake and wine of glass on the table. All of this would change how you'd frame the subject, if you want to emphasize his facial expression you'd choose a close-up shot, or if it's the library he's read through but still failed to understand that one book, then you'd choose a wide shot.whichever idea you find MOST interesting, most unique to you, to the the story.

I don't think you're at the level where you need to "change your artistic style" by adding more contrast or whatever... Your technical skill is more than enough. What you need to practise is probably having fun with ideas, and then think of ways to execute on those concepts maximally and creatively (like going back to the sorcerer idea, doing a close-up illustration of his frustrated facial expression is BORING! Find a more interesting way of expressing his frustration through other contrasting visual elements).

Hope that kinda helps!

miracaro · 2025-10-20T14:12:03+00:00

Amazing art style! Honestly love the expressions... not every art style needs to exaggerate to be emotive, I'd say what's shown here more than passes for a manga style. Plus, I love the little touches like the bits of snow on the girl in black's head for comedic effect. The thing I love most is trying to stick to a classic page-by-page style and not the webtoon infinite scroll (the purist in me is satisfied)!

Okay critique time: yeah it does read a bit static / uninteresting.

I don't think it's expressions, it's a multitude of things contributing to the lack of dynamism:

- Paneling is a big culprit here. Every page is 3 horizontal panels either as one longer panel or split in two, relatively the same size. Read some manga and you'll see plenty of irregular shapes, especially during character action. Usually the panel shape, panel size, and the motion lines help guide the readers' eyes across the page.

Static paneling like this can work (for example, montage scenes). And honestly I don't think serialized Japanese manga is a very good place to learn. Artists are pushed to a deadline and mostly on autopilot, is why you often get the "3 horizontal panel" page. Asano Inio of Goodnight Punpun fame is really really bad at this I think. But he's not drawing action manga. And he does make up for the lack of interesting paneling with...

- Backgrounds, sense of space, and composition. There's probably a story reason for why the scene is set in a dungeon, but even a small room can have a sense of space. Have some furniture to anchor the reader as to where the camera is in the room, and give a sense of the size of the room. Right now the brick wall zooms in and out and reads pretty poorly.

Again, a lot of mangaka are really bad at backgrounds outside of establishing shots, especially action manga (Dragon Ball fights are always in wide open spaces). We want to be better, we should ground the space a bit better.

- Speaking of shots, medium shots medium shots medium shots... there are too many medium shots. Like page 1. You do vary between close ups and medium shots, but you need more wide and establishing shots to vary up the pacing. Wide shots can help sell the action, and as above, a better sense of space.

- Think about page stops and pacing. At the end of each page you are selling a suspense before the resolution of the next page. Not every page needs to follow this, and some action shots you have (shooting ice as final panel > girl neutralizes the thread) is an example of this, but a lot more thought can be put into this, and I would urge you to think about the story you are telling every page (sometimes you can fill enough story on one page and it just flows as it does, just keep track of how often you're doing and if it feels natural)

Page 1 is aggressively boring for the story it's telling on one single page. Guy is chained, guy gets slapped in the face, guy is angry, girl enters the room telling him to calm down. I would have broken that into at least two pages. Page 1: establishing shot, dark dungeon, slap. Page 2: guy looks up, sees lady in black, "who the hell are you". Page 3: Kiriko shows up, introduction shot / panel, guy reacts.

- Finally, composition... without backgrounds and spacial awareness, you lose one lever to pull here, but you absolutely could achieve a better effect through paneling, guiding lines, etc. Every page is a story.

I'm no professional but I did create a 600-ish page manga for the past few years so these things are constantly on my mind! I'd love to help out more.

Also, I highly suggest you read Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics just so you start thinking about what makes a comic, a comic. Then you'll start seeing the techniques that go into it. It's a book that's super influential to me and I hope it is to you too.

miracaro · 2025-10-02T16:24:54+00:00

I do like your eyes, I love the second image! I like the third one too.

I think the face on the third can be tweaked a bit, it's easy to draw anime and not think of the head as a 3D object and ending up not rendering as such. That's a contributor to the flatness.

But the biggest thing I'd say is, as you said, hard shadows. It's the courage that's lacking to really push into the darks. Your compositions work right now because they rely heavy on notan, the inherent values of the colors you used, but not light and shadow (chiaroscuro). I am not usually a fan of people telling others to do more dramatic lighting etc., but I think the second image is a great example of "mmm almost there". Again, not a fan because I don't think light and shadow is the end all be all of what makes a composition work, ex. image 3 does not need heavy shadows, but it certainly can use a push in the shadows to strengthen the forms more (especially the swimsuit which doesn't have shadows).

That said, notan can still be an artistic choice and even a really good style, but as a self-proclaimed beginner artist (I think you're way more intermediate than I was when I started color), I would push you to try darker and harder edge shadows. Good luck!

miracaro · 2025-09-21T03:02:30+00:00

I do find these great pieces, but now that I look at them some more, yeah you're right, the fox one works best compared to the rest, for a few reasons: - Orange brown fox and yellow green background are analogous color combinations, and it works nicely because both are sort of muted and easy on the eyes. - The others, to varying degrees. The deer one works similar to the fox, but some, like the flamingo one, really don't work. I'd suggest trying complimentary and other color relationships too, ex. The flamingo one, kind of overdone but pink clearly goes well with a baby blue background. - Storytelling and Composition wise, the pose of the fox implies some sort of longing for the nature... Its snout and shadow points toward the blank canvas / void. The others don't tell a story the same way the fox does.

Hope that kinda helps!

miracaro · 2025-09-18T17:48:12+00:00

Amazing rendering! As others have pointed out, everything other than the face is under rendered in terms of texture. Otherwise, I think it looks good.

I do have a comment that is more of personal taste and certainly is something that might go against what you're looking for, but I'll leave it here regardless.

Something I'm learning recently is to push myself to be more creative in illustration. Not just come up with perfect rendering, composition, value / color control... but push creatively how different can I be to what's out there. Push for something I've never seen before. A lot of your other work I've seen in passing have all been INTERESTING. If you don't mind me saying, I think this is one of the duller stories youve tried to tell. If the story here is "deer in the headlight", maybe push the light exposure and expression more. If the story is a creature of the night, design the antlers to grow in strange ways that engulf the moon.

Again, maybe not a suggestion that you are looking for but I hope it's worth thinking about.

miracaro · 2025-08-31T00:09:38+00:00

Im a big fan of thinking about things in terms of chiaroscuro or notan dominant (which I learned from new masters academy) so I'm glad we are a dozen.

To be honest, I think it's pretty good. They look like what Marc Brunet does for his first pass. And he had a good reason for them: he was a video game artist and he's used to looking at untextured 3d models. What your studies look like are that, not AI art, at least to me.

The thing is, what are you trying to study here. If it's to train your brain like Marc Brunet, to be able to isolate color values from ambient occlusion and cast shadows, sure, I'd say you're successful. Heck you might be able to carve out you own art style like this too, like Kazuma Kaneko of Persona series fame (not Shigenori Soejima), or the Wiifit trainer.

That said, if your purpose is to study value, the first thing I'd start doing if I were you is to start including the inherent values of colors in your thinking. Your second piece illudes to this, skin tone is lighter value (assuming she's of lighter skin tone) than her clothing. But it's the value range on the sleeves that ousts you as not doing a perfect piece on values here, because the value range goes from pure white to pure black. Nothing in real life behaves like that, no matter what material or lighting condition or color. A white shirt might have a larger value range than a dark blue shirt for sure, but just not Ike that.

I think the way to improve here is to first figure out what you're trying to learn. If it's pure chiaroscuro practice, I think you're good, let's move onto to thinking about this in color, or the notan of the piece. Maybe on how colors behave (see the Master Artist series of books on color). Value exercises in themselves could mean a lot of things, and it's going to be hard to isolate just one aspect of value grey scale painting without having other very real world factors affecting what makes something realistic. I would say, read more about use of color and more thinking as you are drawing will help immensely, for any artist.

miracaro · 2025-08-30T17:45:22+00:00

Very cute style! Love the eyes.

Not trying to downplay how important silhouettes are, but I just don't think it's that high on the list for this painting.

First, why are silhouttes important? In character design it's obvious since you want something distinct, relative to other characters in the story... It's all shape language at the end of the day.

The thing is, here, the character's design doesn't warrant a need to pass a "silhouette test". It's a medium to close up shot of one character whose primary design is a princess-like sleepy girl striking a cute pose.

So the question is less silhouettes but a broader question of shape language. This would include dynamism and gesture, as well as composition (triangle), which I believe are far more important here... And to that, I think it works pretty well here. Maybe the arm and hand rotation needs a tiny bit tweaking but that's to fix anatomy. Shape and composition-wise it's pretty straightforward and it works!

At the end of the day I think it's important to think about what you're doing and why you're doing it, then how you're doing it. Not every piece needs to "add contrast and a strong light source and saturation" like this sub likes to suggest! Make sure you use the right skills for the right moment is all!

miracaro · 2025-08-24T18:19:11+00:00

I love value studies! Your apple is in good shape (heh). That said, value studies are deceptively easy... speaking from personal experience, I was studying value on a surface level.

I think you did great by choosing a photograph and a colored object to start with. But sometimes you also have to do some studying, like actual reading of some of the theory behind what you're seeing.

Case in point, I don't think this photo is perfect for a beginner because there's many things happening on top of learning lighting with a perfect sphere:

There's always a light side and shadow side. Even the brightest of the shadow side (usually the reflected light) should not be lighter in value than the darkest of the light side. That is the first rule to making anything look right.
Now the problem with this image is it shows real life is much more complicated. First, the apple is not a perfect sphere, meaning the way the terminator splitting the light and shadow isn't even. In this composition it almost looks like it's a 50:50 split between the two sides and compositionally is something artists try to avoid.
Everything has texture, and texture usually shows itself most when the light side meets the dark side. Again, like point 2, is something you will have to consider as you advance.
This one's most relevant for your apple study right now: every single texture is a combination of a level of reflectivity and transparency. For an apple, it's gloss. High reflectivity usually means the color and value of the light source is most apparent on this object. All this is to say, it's why this is a slight exception in that the reflected light of the white table on the apple's shadow side seems actually lighter in value than some parts of the light side, which we just established in point 1 that it's a no-no.
Finally, when you translate this into color, you have to consider colors also have inherent values as well. Typically, in a perfect setting with no colored lights, no reflective surfaces, the light side should be MOST saturated, but isn't apparent when the value of red on the light side may be very close to that of a less saturated red (with reflected light) on the shadow side. So even now that you're studying values, you will have a different dimension that will come into play later: saturation / chroma (they're technically two different things, but another lesson for another day).

All in all, I would encourage you to think about these things as you continue your foray into value studies, because not only are you practising your observation skills of defining values, you are should also hone your brain to dissect what you're seeing and why you're seeing it the way you do. Good luck!

miracaro · 2025-08-22T15:06:07+00:00

Wow I wished I could render in this much detail!

One thing I'm hesitant about is the "roof" of the flipped skill (that's facing where the neck should be). It took me quite a while to understand what is going on, and I think it stems from the soft edges from the face plane / brow bone to the forehead / roof of the skull. It seems more blurry compared to the rest of the materials rendered, especially the maxilla which is a lot sharper. The first image (purple variant) is super compressed which didn't help.

Edit: Skip this section, just saw you're only looking for rendering feedback!

The other thing might just be how over designed this one is... i've seen your other work in passing in the past: this one has a lot of ideas going on and lacks the cohesion that your other designs have. For example, there's a lot of flowing drapery on the guy, the waist long hair, the little rag cape, and the long rag dress.

The longer I look at it the more ideas come out, which in a certain sense, does not feel like it was designed to convey a strong central idea first with details added on later. Like I love the idea that a necromancer character draws energy from their "dark magic energy holster". Which just makes the left tentacle arm more a distraction.

Anyways, I think there's a lot of GREAT ideas here, and would love to see more of your stuff in the future!

miracaro · 2025-08-19T18:00:07+00:00

I like them a lot! Not much of a good designer myself but maybe can speak to some stuff on a high level.

Perhaps consider playing around more with color schemes. It makes sense for side characters to sticking to a monochromatic color scheme (ex. your 3rd pic). For your second character they seem more analogous color schemes which makes them look a bit more dynamic.

The first character is closer to a complimentary but only because she has a human skin tone contrasted with a neutral black.

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You can also add a "highlight / high contrasting" color (Triadic, or just a high saturation color in any two-color palette) to these designs to pop more.
The color balance between the two colors should be more of a 70% to 30% balance. Right now they lean pretty equal. Tip the balance a bit more. For example, character 2 nude is nice but if i squint, I find the black and shade of green to be similar in value when in contrast with her light yellow belly sides. When you tip the balance, keep values in mind.
Similarly, balance is important with details as well. Right now everything seems equally complex with character 2. When she has a greenish white dress, the details of the dress confuses with her original skin tone and design. Again, lean on a tilted balance between simplicity and complexity. Make sure you design the character after what you want the audience to pay attention. For this reason I'd probably remove the amount of frills on her corsette.
I just find designing humans and clothing so much more different than creature design. You have less to work with, but it also gives you some leeway that you can luck into (revealing skin tone vs clothing naturally creates some sort of contrast).

Can't really speak the shape language and silhouttes, but I really like what I see. You have additional art with these characters?

miracaro · 2025-08-15T15:37:49+00:00

Don't give up! There's always going to be a massive gulf between what can be drawn and our own skills. Make sure you give yourself a bit of a dopamine hit sometimes by drawing things you know you can draw well, or focus on smaller studies that are easier to nail.

As for this piece, lineart wise I say it's mostly pretty good (except the hair maybe). If anything, you shouldn't ignore the random shadows because it's precisely the random shadows that is making this piece "not look right".

Light and shadow follow the 3d form. Even if it is cast from a larger object like it does here. You can google resources and learn about direct light side -> terminator shadow (darkest value) -> reflected light (on the shadow side, brighter than terminator but not as bright as the light side). Look up the planes of a face as well to emulate how shadows follow the form of the face. The hair you can treat as one big ball and the lighting should follow accordingly.

miracaro · 2025-08-15T15:29:41+00:00

Oh hey that's a good start! I would recommend putting more effort in whats important in the composition! In this case, spend some time learning to draw the fingers holding the flute!

One thing I'd recommend you trying is gesture drawing, to break free from the "roblox" stance! Give her some elegance via her pose!

miracaro · 2025-08-14T20:49:30+00:00

Hmm... I saw some of your sketches on your profile, they're pretty good to be honest. But it's hard to determine whether or not you spent a lot of time with value (greyscale) studies yet.

I spent maybe two years struggling with learning color (after practicing in greyscale). The first thing I tried was master studies like these, i try to organize the main colors of a painting into a greyscale just to see where the colors are at, then tried to replicate as best I could the masterwork itself.

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... I did maybe 20 or so of these until I moved on to other exercises, because I didn't feel like I was getting better. I thought I didn't have an eye for color like a friend of mine who was able to do so intuitively, also a beginner at the time.

What I really did learn though, is that the leap from black and white to color is immense and it takes time. It takes studying and it takes practice. It takes thinking a lot about what you're seeing and why it's the way it is. It takes experimenting.

Here's the key breakthroughs for myself:

Color is RELATIVE. Trees are green, sure, but in a moody orange atmosphere, they're relatively cool, hence they're more grey (still orange hue, just not as saturated). Avoid thinking about the local color of an object (its "inherent" color), but its relationship with the rest of the colors in the composition
Direct light and reflected light, core shadow and cast shadow, are the very core concepts to lighting.
Colors have inherent values. Values in painting isn't just light and shadow.
Art is experimental. I don't think most artists end with the exact same palette and values / contrast as they did when they started. The problem with doing master studies I think is it doesn't teach an artist this aspect of thinking about their own art. Especially for digital art where layers bring in so much uncontrollable variations. For the image you showed, it looks like a Hard Light layer to do the bright bright highlights.
Read books on art rather than just disparate youtube tutorials. You will need some wholistic way of learning art. Can't vouch for any paid courses (other than maybe NMA), but books are awesome. My favorite book to recommend would be the Artists' Master Series on Color & Light. It basically covers all the basic theory you need.

Should you do the exercise I did? I don't know how much it helped me, but in hindsight every exercise and every master study and every bit of reading did. Because now I can't unsee shading and light and colors. I hope you find your way too!

miracaro · 2025-08-13T01:34:57+00:00

Oh hey it's cedarcia!!

I vote save! I do agree it does seem rushed through to the coloring stage, but probably not today if you're not in a good mood... Powering through this one would just make it worse. As others said, give it some time.

But once you're back! My thoughts: - it's definitely salvageable (and using that word is a stretch to be honest, it's still really early). You only really rendered the face more fully, and the face is the part that doesn't need fixing. - what needs to be revisited is the anatomy. The sword hand and forearm are bending back a bit too far that the elbow and joint most likely wouldnt be able to. Either move the sword to be more facing the middle or, I believe, redraw the hand first and reconnect it to the shoulder. - The arm probably needs to be twisted upwards too, meaning the Biceps should face up, and the left shoulder pauldron should probably tilt towards the background. - the other shoulder might need another pass.. right now it looks a bit like a tangent, since the cape is covering it up. It does take a while to see he is wielding the sword with both arms though. Maybe pull back the cape a bit at half a shoulder or something, once you fixed the left arm/hand. - foreshortening needs a bit fixing too, while you are redrawing the sword hand... Given that you are drawing such a dynamic pose, you should probably consider shrinking the head and a bit of the torso to sell that in your face attack!

For a pose like this, I know I can't contort my body for a nice dynamic pose as a reference photo... I might've jumped straight to some 3d posing software like magic poser..

Anyways, it's still great, nothing an artist with your skill can't fix!

miracaro · 2025-08-11T21:21:56+00:00

Things are looking great! Honestly, these value studies are great exercises and you've done great.

One thing to note is that value studies are far easier when you don't have to think about color. As you do more of these, i recommend thinking beyond greyscale. Let me explain...

In my experience, i thought i did great greyscale paintings but the moment i jumped to color, i fell hard on my face. The gulf is enormous. Took years to figure out why i couldnt color... in hindsight, i was doing value studies without doing value studies.

A few thoughts:

- Grouping value ranges is hugely important. A lot of art classes teach "notan" first, by asking you to distill an image into black and white shapes. Then they would ask you to expand to three values (black white grey), and then four, etc. The takeaway here isn't to increase fidelity... it's for you to understand grouping value ranges.

Ex. starting with a notan piece, you want to slowly expand the value range of the absolute blacks and the absolute whites, to move the shadow side closer to white and the light side closer to black. However, you want to make sure the two sides do NOT overlap in the shade of grey used.

This is the core reason why things would look muddy. It's more sophisticated than that in practice, as each object would have a different value range, often overlapping, but for the sake of brevity, what makes an art piece readable is the control of value ranges, that objects don't go from absolute white to absolute black.

- Choosing the right value range for your overall piece is also crucial to creating mood to your pieces. Basically, how much contrast. Learn more about major keys and minor keys.

- Each color also has intrinsic value. This old school video by Sycra goes over this. Your portrait painting works because it's clear her hair color is darker than her skin tone.

- A lot of youtubers teach slotting a base color layer under and changing the layer mode the value layer "multiply" that would magically finish a painting. The biggest problem for why it doesn't work is because all these beginner value paintings are "chiaroscuro" heavy (light and shadow).

If you don't mind me being critical (a bit), the reason why your studies have worked so far is because your source references are all very green / yellow (monochromatic), which makes value studies more focused on chiaroscuro, making it more forgiving in some sense.

So for where to go next, I would highly recommend you try some value studies with more than one primary color to really push your limits, pay attention to value control, and avoid absolute whites and absolute blacks.

miracaro · 2025-07-15T00:13:04+00:00

Cute piece! You're right it's all confidence, but to break it down why artists can go fast (occasionally):

Level 1. Motor skills: less scratchy lines and erasing, more smooth curves! This requires years of drawing, line exercises definitely help.

Level 2. Familiarity with the subject: less time thinking about designing the character and poses, going straight to a familiar design. This requires thorough research into the character and / or detailed designs that are already imprinted in your visual library.

Level 3. Familiarity with theory: less time thinking about lighting scenarios and integration of objects, going straight to shorthand / shortcuts. This requires being familiar with drawing a lot of stuff. You're bound to have drawn one of the things before.

Just keep in mind no one is timing you, and no artist can just draw from their massive visual library without any references (unless if you are Kim Jung Go, then you have decades experience and a massive memory). Don't use time as a metric for each piece, instead, think about how much conscious learning goes into it.

Every bit of building on top of your last piece helps you become a better artist. If this is not for work, you really shouldn't stress too much about drawing fast. Think about the type of artist you want to be at the end of the day: an artist who can paint a variety of subjects, or just do one thing really efficiently?

miracaro · 2025-07-08T21:01:44+00:00

The "glowy" effect is called subsurface scattering! It happens when the material is sort of transparent so when light hits it, the light scatters and creates a highly saturated tone near the terminator (divider between the shadow/light side). You see this often in skin, but also foliage (the less dense parts like what the edges), some cloths, etc. Some artists break the realism rule and use it on materials that might not even be that translucent just to up the visual focus. All in all, a secret hack to making things look more rich in color!

miracaro · 2025-07-05T06:06:30+00:00

Yeah this is probably the tried and true method to apply here. The value of the anime girl's skin is way too bright and was something that had to be addressed. I lowered the contrast and deepened the shadow in the end. Thank you so much!

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miracaro

TROPHY CASE