#i dont usually draw lineless so this was pretty fun ^v^

[avariceaside]

Itty bitty guys

#i think im starting to get the hang of drawing mel! #so of course I had to combine my two biggest brainworm contributors :) #dont. dont look at her skeleton hand though #anyways #i dont usually draw lineless so this was pretty fun ^v^ #hades 2 #melinoe #hollow knight #hornet #hk ghost #avarice art

[ink-the-artist]

hey Ink! not here to ask you about art you didn't make this time, lol.

I finally did some experimenting with my colored pencils using some of your tips & tricks, and what I did looks pretty cool but HOO BOY did I underestimate how long it would take lmao. I only did like 2 little drawings, no backgrounds, and I started getting frustrated at it taking so long despite having fun doing it.

doing stuff like this will obviously take more time than what I usually do and I feel a bit silly for not realizing that lol. anyway, I was wondering if you had any tips for not getting frustrated, bored, or burned out? there's probably some basic stuff like "take breaks" but I figured I'd ask just in case you had other advice, lol. and maybe I'll be able to build up some drawing stamina too since I don't usually work on the same thing for long.

thanks for making those tutorials/guides btw! the thing about going over your sketch in a color and then erasing the graphite is really neat! fun to try and do more of a lineless style. :)

Oh man yeah, the time it takes to finish something was pretty much the reason I used to not like colored pencil at all for a while and part of what got me past that was just, starting to use less space on a paper. which sounds pretty obvious but my previous experience with colored pencil was having to use it on these big sheets of paper in my art classes and that was TEDIOUS (Ik this is also the reason so many people hate cross-hatching, because they only ever did it on big surfaces when taught it in an art class and they dont realize its not nearly so tedious if you shrink the surface down a bunch) Ik you mentioned that your drawings are little but you could try something even smaller and see if it helps, colored pencil is v good for detailed art so even a smaller drawing can look nice

also what I find most tedious in using colored pencil now is not how long it takes but whenever there's a lot of really boring coloring to do, like if there's a big space thats just one solid color that feels way more tedious to fill in than a space full of detail with different colors and shading etc, even though the second one takes longer. for me at least when the coloring isn't boring I actually enjoy taking the time and getting lost in the details

Try see if whatever you're drawing is actually best to do in colored pencil. if you're doing something with lots of flat color it might not look very different from if you used marker or colored it digitally, and you end up spending more time on it without getting any of the benefits of colored pencil in the end result. and similarly you could see if what you're drawing is best to do ONLY in colored pencil! you can color something with marker or watercolor first and then add all the texture and detail later in colored pencil. this usually really speeds things up and can be especially helpful if you're already comfortable with a different medium that you can just add colored pencil on top of

ok last thing is there's a LOT of different styles and ways of using colored pencil out there and some take much more or much less time than others. most of my colored pencil works posted here are done in a realism style that's more time consuming but some like the more colorful creature art (like Creature Activities or Leaving Milk Out For The Neighbors) have a style that take way less time. I def recommend looking at other artists who use colored pencil and seeing how they go about it because there's lots of different ways to do it! I don't know too many other artists that use a lot of colored pencil but one I really like is @hannahlockillustration ! if anyone else has any recommendations pls comment them

#admittedly i think the most popular colored pencil artists that seem to always go viral are the ones that do hyperrealism #which is often the case with other mediums but I've noticed it way more in colored pencil especially #i think its bc colored pencil is very good for realism the way oil paint is #nothing wrong with hyperrealism it just is admittedly difficult to find other types of art when its in colored pencil #art help