In 2012, I drew a random drawing of Rapunzel, and then in 2013, I redrew it, and then the same in 2014... and 2015 and
2016 and 2017
So now it's time to continue tracking my progress and redraw Rapunzel the seventh time
here goes
Take seven, let's draw Rapunzel! um, so you'll see in my first pass of the sketch I'm being very loose very
very sketchy *heh
pardon the term, and I'm trying to just lay out the
drawing and make sure that the character fits on the page and then all of the elements of her body fit on the page and
so I know her pose and
Everything and then after that's done I go in and start adding in details to each of these very sketchy lines so I'll darken some
lines and I'll also draw completely new lines because when you lay out your sketch and you have all of these
wavy lines everywhere it helps me at least visualize
where a line should be - so if like one line is
A little off to the left I'll see it in that first sketch, so I can be like: "Okay so when I draw this
like for a more
finalized version I want that off to the right a little bit" kind of thing does that make sense so you'll see that kind of
happening here in this sketch process and I also flip the canvas because it's very important to help see if your character is
what's the word?
balance! that's it
You can see if your character is balanced by flipping the canvas and it's really helpful because it like it
sets you back from the art and gives you a new perspective on things so I definitely recommend that - I wish I had a
way of doing it
traditionally like there's ways to do it but I wish there was an easier way to do it I think that would really help my
traditional art but for now I'm definitely going to take advantage of it with digital art
Oh!
And you'll see this time this is the very first year that I'll be including
Pascal!!
I just I felt like I needed a little something I did change up the pose this year it's still very
fluid and like there's motion to it even though this pose is a lot
stiffer like she's not doing an action she's just standing there but it's still
soft and fluid in my mind
here
I'm flipping the canvas again and I'm noticing that her head just a little off to the right and I actually fixed that by just
making her hair more voluminous on that left side there and
that probably was a bit of a 'cheaty' way to do it but I think it helped a little bit and you'll see I'm rotating
different elements and trying to help with that balance and I'm adjusting her face and I just want the character to look
You know? balanced - I keep using that word but it's very important because when your character is not balanced it just gives you
your art that, I don't know, that noob-ish feel and I mean I still make this mistake but I
just think having a balanced character just gives that whole illustration that little extra nudge it just makes it look all that much better
So if you're doing digital
definitely just flip the canvas it takes like a few seconds and you'll see a lot of mistakes in your art
Now we are moving into the line art
And there's not much to say here it's basically the same as how I would always do line art
I guess I actually this year included her small
shred of brown hair from the movie - one thing I do need to mention is that every time I
do these redraws of Rapunzel
except for the first two times *heh* - I don't look back at that drawing that way when I redraw it
I'm just redrawing it from my memory of it and it allows me to put a lot of more of what I've learned
throughout the year into the drawing without looking back at it because
I've noticed in the first couple when I look back at it I used the exact same
colors I put her in the exact same pose I I tried to
emulate the things that I did best in that picture and tried to include the things that I do best now whereas nowadays
And when I redraw it I'm only using how I draw right now
I'm not allowed to look back and see what I did really well last year and
I think this really helps Chronicle like my progress because now once I'm done drawing I can compare them and see
hmm what have I gotten lazy at and
'ooo!' what have I improved with and yes
we do improve over time which I talk about all the time because it's really really cool I mean yeah but
we can also get very lazy and complacent about things and
By redrawing the same picture every year I'm able to track that progress and I'm able to look back and see
what do I need to improve upon
what did I do better last year what if I improved in now what have I done well this year and
it's just a very good
checkpoint and it really helps me just see where I'm standing as an artist and what I want to improve on now every year
-oh I'm doing the laces, laces they're so fun to draw, I'm cheating by using layer styles so if you want to know how to do those laces
definitely Google 'layer styles' in Photoshop I think you'll learn a lot
There's so many different ways to use them and I think yeah just do a little research and you will you will be pleased
anyway every year with Rapunzel or these videos when I draw a Rapunzel I like to make a little bit of a checklist of what
I'd like to work on for the year and
I feel like this year I did very very well I don't remember what my checklist was but I'm pretty sure
I've improved in a lot of the things that
I've always wanted to improve on just because I drew a lot more this year than I think I have in the last ten years
put together so I've improved like traditionally and
I've actually haven't been doing as much digital
lately but I'm just enjoying art and I don't think the medium really matters I just really like drawing
anyway the thing that I want to improve on for this year I'm gonna limit it to just one thing so that I know
I work on it and that is I want to work on the
compositions of my
Illustrations - if you don't know what composition is it's the way you layout a drawing and it's about the way that you?
lay out all of the different elements in one drawing and make it look like one cohesive whole and like
you know that's just you're really worried about the placement of each element and trying to make it all look together and cohesive and
That's something I really want to work on because lately I just draw a random character on blank page and I really want to work
on like either using the hair to
Incorporate the drawing into a shape or the layout of the arms or
using shapes and squares and circles or something just in the background to
encompass that shape or also maybe drawing backgrounds that aren't just behind the character but also
contribute to making the whole
illustration more pleasing to the eye in some way, so
That's what I'm going to be looking into and maybe studying as well I want to maybe just look into some lessons or something or
I don't know Google some tips or something but that's what I want to work on for this entire year it's a very short
to-do list I guess but it's something that
I've always wanted to improve on and it's just
never really been my focal point and I think for this year I really want to work on that
So that's what I'm gonna be working on let me know what you want to work on for this year what are your
2019 art goals I can't believe I just a 20-19 we're in the year
2019 we're living in the future I can't I can't get over it
I still remember when we went from 1999 to 2000 like that was
'woah' and it's been almost 20 years since then
*nervous laugh * haha, okay
Let's just look at the drawing. I'm still working on the lineart, I'm adding in all the flowers again using layer styles
The layer style I use the most often is the 'stroke' layer style so what I'm doing is actually drawing in white and then Photoshop
automatically adds the line art around it it's pretty cool
You gotta be worried about it a little bit because it can be very
Pixely and gross so work on a very large canvas and that sometimes helps with that problem
it's probably best to avoid it as much as possible but
it's one of those little lazy things I do but I like the way it looks
especially from a distance just don't zoom in too much
all right now we're going into the coloring and that is something I want to talk about because
Over the year I feel like I have definitely improved with my color schemes and my color theory I still don't like
know it well enough to be able to talk about it and like explain
why, I make the decisions that I make but the tool in Photoshop if you I think it's control-B but
it's the color balance tool and this allows you to
take all of the colors in the drawing if you have them all in one layer and as you use the
Sliders you can add more pink to every color in it or you can add more red to every single color in your drawing or
more blue or green or more yellow you know you get the gist
and by doing that it creates more cohesive color schemes and it helps me realize that
like maybe I want to color
something green okay and
the rest of the drawing is very
purpley and pink I can then pick a green that has more purpley or pink tones to it and that really
helps the whole drawing look more cohesive overall and
this tool has just
Just playing around with it it's teaching me so much and the way that you can look at colors and the way different colors
look next to each other and like
Sometimes you could color it like this I'm coming her skirt in with a straight purple but sometimes if you use like a light grey
next to really saturated colors it could look purple like its
colors are crazy, our eyeballs are crazy, and like, I have so much to learn! and it's just so exciting, okay well
I'm getting a little crazy but I just I think it's really cool and if you're having trouble with color theory and
if you happen to have Photoshop or I don't know if any other I assume other art programs have something very similar but
it's the color balance tool and you can just play around with all the different colors and you can see what your drawing would look
if it was leaning really heavy to the orange side or something like that and it's just so cool and
I've just learned so much just by playing with this, so if you're having trouble color theory even though I can't explain how it works
just play around with this and just pay attention the way the colors change and
the way
they all just look you know just pay attention to those things and you'll slowly pick up on stuff it's helped with my traditional art
and
there's no colour balance tool and traditional art. You have to just take the colors you know especially with markers, so
it's definitely helped my brain is picking up on things and eventually hopefully
I'll be able to explain that but for now look at the drawing I'm coloring in all the line art and
I'm trying to help it be more cohesive with the whole drawing you can see her skirt and her dress are leaning very
purple right now I was looking at a reference
of I think it was official Rapunzel art but it was very cell shaded and 2d and I was using the colors from that
But it didn't look enough movie-like to me and I wanted it to be a little bit more movie like so I started playing with
the colors myself and trying to adjust them you can see I changed that purple skirt to a little bit more pink
And I'm just trying to make it look overall a lot more like
like the the movie version because that's my favorite
Rapunzel oh and here I'm coloring in her hair with again, that same color that they had used with this 2d drawing
It was just. Oh a little too out there for me so I'm toning it down
adding some simple shading I'm actually shading it with like a little bit of a
purpley Brown color, but it looks Brown next to this gold see color theory is crazy
and then again I use the
hue and saturation tool to adjust
Layers a lot and then you can see like her hair looked pretty good but then when I go in and color the lineart with
this like orange e brown color it just makes the whole hair look brighter and
*mouth pop!*
Like it pops you know so I really I really like that and then I just play around with the levels a little bit
Then I have the flowers which are on a separate layer and I use those layer style so I can like
automatically change the color of the line art on that with just one click which is pretty cool again layer Styles look them up
and then I can go in and I can like lock the transparent pixels on that layer and I can just go in and
color all of those
little flowers different colors and it won't color outside of the lineart - pretty cool - and then here I'm adding
texture to her bodice, this is a trick I learned actually while doing Rapunzel probably five years ago now and
it just looks so cool you just add a separate layer and you kind of crop it to the
Shape that you need so like this would be her bodice and I have it underneath the layer of the laces that's the word
that way I could just draw all over that entire bodice and I can create that texture and then I just lower the opacity
Of it and maybe even set it to multiply so that it can you can see those shadings
shading of the bodice through it and then here I'm coloring in Pascal
originally I'm just picking like a random green color and hoping that it works really well but then later when I use the color balance
tool it actually adjusts that green color a lot and helps it
fit more cohesively into the drawing I keep using the word cohesive that must be annoying by now I *hehe*
anyway, just drawing in Pascal and then of course the lantern
because each drawing has always included the lantern I can't exactly skip it and like I mentioned about the
composition I added in these little square lanterns like they're really far in the background very
simplistic and
That's kind of supposed to help and layout the drawing a little bit more like there's no background but I think it helps just
You know layout the drawing and lead your eye exactly where you need to go I'm experimenting
we'll see what happens in the future but
yeah adding in that star
actually it's the Sun isn't it
This is the hardest part I gotta be honest I think I just started drawing in the Sun like either last year or the year
before and each time I feel like I get worse at it
it's so hard to draw like a perfect circle with these like perfect shapes coming off of it I
decided to keep it really simple like maybe Rapunzel drew it herself even though I think in the movie she draws that Sun perfectly
because it's like ingrained in her mind that's actually really important part of the movie isn't it
okay, that was a bad idea than to leave it so poopy but
it's maybe she's using the lantern that
I drew, she just she's being such a good friend even though she's like "that Sun looks 'merhh' but I'll use your lantern" yeah I
Don't know oh and then I'm adding shading in I'm being a little lazy with the shading
but you'll see it actually looks good in the end and what
I've been doing is I just create a new layer set it to multiply
and
a light purple color and then color that all in add with shading anywhere that I need to and I can do it over the
entire
drawing and I don't have to switch colors for different elements of the drawing
oh, there's where I just used the color balance you see how the colors all just look brighter and
just more cohesive - gorgeous - and then I decide to add a background as well just like a
light color like it's glowing and then I added more shading to her this makes it a little more
atmospheric and looks like she's actually standing in the darkness and not just in front of it so that's my finished drawing for
2018 I think it summarizes up my art for the whole year pretty well
Yeah what do you guys think? which year do you think was my best year I know a lot of people like
was it 2016? I think there's a lot of people's favorites
but...uh....
as It's me saying this I have to say that the newest one is my favorite or. I'll just be very sad so
'wah' - thank you guys for watching let me know what your 2019 art goals are for the year
and
Let me know if there's a drawing that you redraw every year and if there's not
maybe you should start one you know it's never too early you know
start it up and redraw it every year it's such a fun exercise
anyway thank you guys for watching I'll see you guys all next week actually next year
that's jokes never funny anyway have a delicious evening full of WAFFLES!!!
BYE!