Not a complaint thread, don't worry.

I'm basically developing my art skills on paper and uploading the ones I think are best to e621 to test the waters, and I so far have an odd track record of things that were accepted/declined. I expect this, except that it seems to be inconsistent (with bias against non-porn) and the last things to be declined I definitely thought would be popular. I don't expect it to all stick since it's amateurish but like... my latest project is an ongoing comic I want to tease for attention/interest, and I don't want chunks of it to be declined and others accepted, you know? It's a comic; the whole thing should be included or none of it should be here :P

Is there more tolerance/leeway for comics or do pools get deleted if part of them don't meet quality standards?

You have no proper source for the images, just links to your patreon and your twitter? I can't even find art on your twitter.

Juding from the one that is still here, your art is fuzzy. I don't know if this is the method through which it was scanned or the tools you used, but you should give a bit of digital touchup to them.

I wasn't necessarily looking for critique, just site guidelines :P http://tavitraining.tumblr.com/ You can go here for a general look, but it hasn't been updated since August. I've been lax on public postings due to life and trying to figure out how I want to watermark things, but that's neither here nor there.

In general, I know absolutely nothing about either digital touchups or about good scanning habits. "Put paper on glass, press go, receive bacon" is about the extent I know. Should I be scanning things at 999 dpi and scaling down after?

A super easy way to do touchups on a piece of scanned artwork is to open up an image editor and fiddle with levels or curves. If done properly, you can remove stray lines from the drawing, as well as eraser marks and other imperfections.

Considering the particular kind of blurring you've got, it looks like you might have debris on the glass of the scanner and/or the backing plate (white surface that presses down on the paper when the scanner is closed).

If so, consider a) giving paper a gentle flick before scanning to dislodge dust, and b) regularly cleaning both the glass and the backing plate using a microfiber cloth (be careful to avoid pushing debris into the scanner - you need to 'mop it up' before it reaches the edge and falls in).

The glass and backing plate also tend to accumulate hand grease, for which I have less advice (just be really careful what kind of solvent you use, as the glass has a special coating that you really don't want to mess up.)

DPI-wise, you should plan for -some- scaling down, cause spare resolution gives you more flexibility to cut out, realign stuff, fix any distortion, etc, without visible degradation. 450 dpi is what I use, really just chosen through experimenting to find a tradeoff amount_of_detail vs file_size I was happy with.

Basic skills with levels are, yeah, pretty much required to fix some visible problems here (eg. your lines are not black, your paper is not white, so basically -all- your images suffer from a lack of contrast).

It also seems that you only use one drawing medium (my guess is HB pencil); Drawing-skills-wise, I would definitely recommend changing that (eg. shading with HB is a joke compared to shading with 6B; and doing really sharp lines needs a hard lead like 2H, or a 0.1mm technical pen. You learn different skills with different media.)

Since NotMeNotYou approved/deleted all your art, they'd be the best one to give you the information you need.

Just go to their profile (link provided) and hit "Send message" on bar at top left.

savageorange said:
wall of advice

I've actually tried cleaning the scanner before, and nothing changed :\ It's also not mine and not immediately in my access on a day-to-day basis, so that's kind of beyond my power if something needed to be done about it, but noted all the same, thanks.

As far as my pencil goes, I've been using an unmarked mechanical pencil for the past year with no visible sign of what size the leads are (it looks like 1mm). I have actually bought various assorted pencils in anticipation of this one finally running out, but it hasn't after almost 300 drawings. I don't really "know" what type of pencil or lead does what and haven't experimented out of comfort. Most tutorials online are more "this is how I do my art" rather than "I am teaching you how to improve YOUR art" so I haven't had much fun reading up on those either. I should really just try things out, but yeah. I've tried seeking out information a LOT and never had much luck.

I guess the scanner being dirty on the inside [underside of the glass] is also a possibility, then (and you can't clean that without access to a clean-room environment :/)

An unmarked mechanical pencil is .. probably HB. 2B-9H is possible IIRC. Softer grades tend to break a lot due to the thinness of the lead — I don't even know if grades softer than 2B are available for <=1mm mechanical pencils.

Yeah, tutorials tend to be bad in that I don't know how to get you to understand my technique, I only know how to tell you what I do way.

Books can be better:

• I'm currently in the middle of working (literally) my way through Nicolaïdes' "Natural way to draw". IMO this is THE best, teaching wise; he is clever and thoughtful, and explicitly says at the start "This is not an attempt to teach you how to draw; this book is about teaching you how to learn to draw". Focuses a lot on getting you to experience things in a very direct way (like an extension of your body), so that you gradually gain an intuitive feel for everything. Also emphasizes that reading ahead is not helpful and may be harmful -- it's primarily about doing the work so that you have the experience and gain your own insights. Big time investment, but really worth it.
• Andrew Loomis' books are available freely online. They won't guide you through developing your skills in a structured way, but all the techniques and background knowledge explained are worth knowing (and cover a heck of a lot of ground). Best used as a reference IMO.
• Vilppu's Drawing manual provides another structured course; more focused on construction IMO. He has good insight but IMO is not quite as good a teacher as Nicolaïdes.

Learning to draw IME is mostly about just drawing a heck of a lot, but in a structured way (ie. just 'drawing stuff' will boost your skills, but deliberately practicing X or Y in a focused way will boost them quicker and give more insight)

savageorange said:
Learning to draw IME is mostly about just drawing a heck of a lot

Thankfully just doing that has carried me far so far. It's been about a year, so now it's time to learn properly :P

I'll see what I can do about books. Getting new pencils won't be a problem. Books/reading might be a thing just due to time, but frankly I'm happy to get -any- lead on proper learning/teaching, so that's very helpful for me and I appreciate it. Right now I'll see if I can find better scan settings and upload some more stuff up here anyways.