learning how to walk again

who this girl is?? i dont know, and i really dont care. all i know is that this was one of the best and worst times i've had on a computer.

ever since i was 15 yrs old its been a fantasy of mine to learn how to color comics...thats young u say?? no. i new that my all time "dream" was to DRAW comics professionally at 8yrs old..i did start young....i remember when i was in third grade i used to sell my drawings for a quarter each...didnt sell too many cause i was as lazy back then as i am now. soon after i started to get better at drawing i noticed "inking"...(the guy that "traces" over the pencilers lines..we've all seen "Chasing Amy") and i wanted to try my hand at that...by the time i was 12, ALL my drawings were penciled and inked by ur's truely... not professionally by any means, but i was studying my fav guys Jim Lee and Scott Williams and those guys were the best... i was looking at "Wild Cats" one day (when i was 15, that was 1995 and the internet was created a yr b4 that) and the colors really jumped at me...and i was like who's this Joe Chiodo guy?? well he was the guy that colored practically every comic at Homage studios including my boss Marc Silvestri....im like damn this guys good...ever since then i new that i wanted to learn how to color too..i found out what program he used and it was something called photoshop 3.0 (yes Nei..."2.0") and u use it on something else called a computer... and i was like SH#T!!!! i can barely spell and they want me to learn on this.. "computer".....blah!!

so i put that dream and the highest shelf i had and focused on pencils and inks...i did pretty good at booth, in fact my first paying gig was inking...did that for about a yr while my pencil skills progressed much slower....

i've never really had a computer b4...just laptops (which im good at breaking) and i didnt think laptops could handle a program as big as photoshop... my friend recently gave me his old one cause i told him i wanted to learn how to color one day....turns out this thing wasnt up to par...through in some ram to make it faster and crap....but that was pointless cause i didnt have a monitor, tablet or keyboard...so i begged the very talented and good friend Nei (she colors professionally [link] )to go with me to best buy to help me pick out all that crap...so anyway's i've had all the junk for about a month now and my friend came over who photoshops all the time and went to art school, to have a drawing jam.. and he was like...so eBas, show me all the magic u've been cooking up on photoshop...and i thought to myself...dammit, i havent even touched it yet...this inspired me to find some matches and pull down my pants and light that fire under my ass...

two days ago, im staring at a blank screen.....and for the first time in a very long time...i...had....no...idea...what i was doing...............people pay att here....this is actual advise im giving here..................not like the other stuff i post, i just write down my thought process. but this is something i learned that really helped me................fear was the main reason that everything took me so long to learn...because i learned how to ink... all my pencil lines were too "perfect"...i was always afraid to mess up...always "afraid" that someone might look at something i did and say...man u suck!! i cant tell u how many sketchbooks i started and never finished because of this..."fear"....i had this fear until i was about 20yrs old...too timid to "attack" the blank white space....i cant count how many unfinished drawings i have because i would get to a point in my drawings that i felt happy and if i continued i might "mess" it up...fear.... and this "fear" kept me from growing...every time i wasnt drawing...i wasnt letting me learn...so from 15 (when i got the fear) to 20 i had waisted a lot of time not learning cause i kept stopping...and i realized that if i had just learned to attack everything i did i would be much better than i am now....i got a sketchbook that NOBODY was ever allowed to see....ever...and in this book, i grabbed a sharpie that i cant erase...and just attacked the page... NO FEAR...i wasnt affraid to mess up cause nobody would ever see.... this taught me to focus one my weaknesses and not care about what it looked like.... this is advise i've given to many up and comers....fear holds u back....and remember that everytime ur not drawing...ur not learning.......ok advise over...

so i picked up that pencil/mouse thing for the tablet and remembered that im suppose to attack every new medium, like painting or photoshoping....so i started scribbling a face for the SOLE purpose of getting used to the tool not caring about what it looked like cause nobody was going to see it anyway..i already had the drawing knowledge i just didnt know squat about shop...and MAN i wanted to poke my EYES out with that sorry excuse for a pencil!!! i kept thinking im never going to learn how to color comics...but just like everything else...its just a matter of time....and i stuck it through remembering ...NO FEAR.... and by the time i got to her hair i was rocking and mojo was oozing all over the place and what almost drove me mad in a few hrs was the most fun i had in awhile....

i stared it like any other drawing....drew the "cross" down the middle of her face...very wobbly lines.... and then the jaw and head....i dont know how to "do layers" or anything else so all this is on one...i was told that u are suppose to go from dark to light and my brain just dont work that way...i've always had a white empty space...so erasing my mistakes were easy cause i just swiched colors to white and used that....by the time i got the hair i was feeling pretty good about all this...and then my brain went retarded again...i couldnt get the rendering quite like i wanted and by instinct i realized that i was coloring the hair dark to light instead...which was much easier than the face cause the face is white...

knowing all the commands took a load off....having to go to "Edit, undo" was SOOOO annoying and i made myself learn the commands...saved so much time...and by accident i learned the "Alt" button selects the....um..that color squeeze drop thing....i dont know....and some other short cuts keys....so at first what started as simply a no fear approach at learning the tools...turned out to be a finished piece.

the hair came the easiest cause i have a hair fetish...it was very natural for me, i was whisping lines by this point cause that undo button sure puts u on that fast tract to no fear....i tried not to over do the single strands of hair and use the same frame of mind i use when convention sketching... rookies tend to think u can actually see every strand and draw ALL of them in...so annoying...i also kept the light source in mind and have only four main "sheens" on her head...

i really dont know what to say here, this is my VERY FIRST ATTEMPT at photoshop, and since i have no idea what im doing i cant say squat....i just know this was fun and getting over fear 8 yrs ago has really helped me a lot.....and two days ago, something that doesnt happen too often in life did, i've come that much closer to my childhood dream of learning how to color...i've been very happy the last two days accomplishing the next step in my artistic career.. and i couldnt wait to tell Nei.. the only color friend im close to..

this took about 5hrs to do... i already finished my second attempt at shop(will post it in a few days) and it kicked this ones ASS...speaking of which..... GO ASS!!!