my weird style

The style is great! I would love to see some output that you do toward the quick draw activity in this style/technique > It would be refreshing to see an approach to the activity from a really different angle... might even get the rest of us thinking along new lines.

Nah, you could still do it. Maybe clean up some of those broken lines, and if you want, try experimenting with line weight. :)

Yeah it's good that you are developing your own style, but you shouldn't let it stop you from doing other things. Just jump in see how you do, I reckon you'd be surprised, once you get your style down it's unconicous and it can creep in to everything you do, without you trying. Anyway no-one ever learnt anything by doing nothing! hehe

It's also good to try and experiment with different styles. You will find that art jobs ask you to adapt to styles for the chosen games etc so may be worth starting early to work at different styles.

In my programmer mind there are still very basic concepts in art that will hold true no matter what style you apply them to :)

thanks for your comments people, i know those two pics arent perfect but its sort of the most abstract that i get and the most realistic (mad hatter being the abstract ofcourse). if you want to see any more i have a few sketches in my gallery (there will be a link on those pages i think).

makk could you post a link to perhaps some theory writing or a photoshop tutorial, currently i sketch my lines and scan them, then invert the layer and make it a screen and do the colour behind it.

JohnN thanks for your encouragement, i might give that activity a whirl but i dunno if you noticed, none of my sketches have feet/shoes, i cant do them :'(

matias, ive developed my style over years n years of drawing, back when i was a kid i allways wanted to be a cartoonist. So my cartoon style sort of developed into this bizzare thing. I allways try to give realism a try but fingers crossed ill be able to develop a bit more with a more focused art class this year (yr 11)

Jacana, im unfortunatly a person who can get frustrated when something i draw goes horribly wrong. So often my attempts at different styles have left the floor littered with scrumpled up peices of paper. Im trying to broaden my horizons but only time will tell how well that goes i suppose

thanks again for your words of wisdom everyone

Solution to not being able to draw feet = practice! In the past I spent evenings in front of TV drawing my own feet (and hands). I also used a mirror so I could see different views.

As for realistic vs cartoon both have their own pros and cons. If you redid your clown pic with a realistic technique it would change the mood of the pic (probably not for the better.) Having tackled cartoony pic syndrome in myself I personally think that the main difference between a pic that is seen as cartoony or realistic is proportion. So spend lots of time measuring things!

I don't reckon that sketchy line work is an issue beyond personal taste. Smoothline techniques are just popular at the moment because anime and comics are in this style (although comics have been changing since the late 90s) In the past I did my sketching in blue (any colour other than black/gray is fine), then inked the pic in, scanned it, then removed the blue in photoshop, then selected 'Threshold' to remove the grays (make it just B&W). For colour I am currently setting the layer with my pencil sketch to Multiply and putting it on top of all the colour layers that I have*. I would be interested how others set up colour in Photoshop as a suspect their are many ways to do it.

*with the exception to white highlights. I put this one on top, with layer set to normal.

cartoon does have a lot to do with proportion, it also has a lot to do with detail, cartoon you will often have much less detail and less emphasis on all the shapes and curves of someones body.

Feet/Shoes i hope to get over but thats only a matter of time

my line works allways kinda sketchy, its just my style.

um sorry but cartoons emphasise shapes and curves of the form so u dont need detail.. try and think of feet as triangles and fingers as legs.. well thats what i did when i was just lerning, and try and draw for atlest 1 hour a day this way shapes stay fresh in your mind, and they slowly buld up day after day

Hmmm, funny how we (Moonunit, Adie and myself at least) describe what 'cartoon' is from the perspective of our own techniques. But I suspect that we are looking at the same elephant from different angles!

Moonunits pics are certainly cartoonish in appearence, and this has been achieved through a reduction of detail and simplification of shapes (as moonunit mentioned.) This technique has however resulted in an emphasis of the basic shapes (Adie's point) that make up a clown!

My mention of proportion refers more to the aspect of distortion. This is done to emphasise shape/form (there it is again.) However, I think proportion and distortion are more accurate terms. A realistic image of a female can be presented as a silhouette to emphasise her feminine shape- definitely not cartoony until the her proportions are further altered. If moonunits clown was photorealistic but with the same out of proportion hands and mouth I would still rate it as cartoony.