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NicLiew — Stay between the flags
Published: 2008-08-03 09:39:36 +0000 UTC; Views: 923; Favourites: 5; Downloads: 6
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Description
If you're not sure what a lifesaver is, they are the people who watch over you when you're at the beach and save you if you float too far out.Lifesavers, simply put, save lives.
Wanted to work on female anatomy and put a little "sex appeal" into my work.
In Australia we have red and yellow flags. These symbolise the safe areas you can swim. So the saying "Stay between the red and yellow flags" came to me when I was drawing this. I just HAD to do that.
Plain background for now, I'm thinking of painting a nice beach background in the future. I referenced my own line art I did long ago with a mouse for the pose, modified it a bit to make it more appealing and suitable for this drawing.
8-10 hours of work on this or 12-14 hours as I lost most of this last Sunday
Photoshop CS3
Please don't use my art work without my prior consent (which can obtained by contacting me via dA or email).
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Comments: 52
They don't have many down here in Tassie; it's too cold and no one wants to go swimming!
Except me! D:
Hehe
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Haha, yeah, I've been to Tassie twice, it's a nice place, love the serenity. According to my mate who lives down there he says it's been pretty warm lately though
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"How's the serenity?"
Love that movie.
Yeah, it actually has been really warm. I don't like it D: Haha
I do, but yeah. It's weird. It's supposed to be cooling down!
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Haha, the castle, a classic
Yeah, I've got a female friend down there who said "why's it so bloody hot!"
You Tasmanians don't tend to like the warmth
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Hah, I was born in Brisbane, and lived in Darwin for a year and a half, yet I'm a Tasmanian at heart.
We only like artificial warmth!
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ehaha, that which comes from an air conditioning unit! Does sound quite familiar to me to my female friend who lives down there.
Gotta love Australia's weather sometimes though! Such variety in scenery too
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Indeed, I've lived in every state except WA, and I just love every where we've been.
We drove on the way to and from Darwin to Hobart, and wowie. It varies. Within two weeks we'd seen forests and deserts and salt lakes... Man, what an experience.
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I've never been to Darwin/Perth, I've been to every other city. That must have been quite enjoyable! I'll have to put it on my life's to-do list!
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Most people save it for when they're old, but it's so enjoyable when you're young, I feel.
Darwin. Is SO beautiful, really... You MUST visit.
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Yeah, well I want to do some travel soon enough, the last time I went any where was when I went to Tasmania this time last year. It was nice, went fishing for the first time
I can only imagine! Considering every other place I have been in Australia has been so nice
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*squeals* 
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Wow, I really like that hair. And she has a nicely shaped butt! xD
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Thanks, yeah, I needed a bit of shading practice and anatomy practice so I thought I'd focus more on the "other" curves (aside from breasts/hips).
Turned out alright I think, it didn't look so right for awhile until I got towards the end steps though
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It turned out awesome.
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If you want, I can give you a hand 
Yeah funnily enough I spent very little time on her hair but I think the hair turned out quite well, guess I'm getting better at doing hair. Use to hate it, especially when I used my mouse to draw
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Ooh that would be cool
oh, do you have a tablet then?
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Yeah, for a number of years I've drawn with a mouse but I recently purchased a tablet
Are you a tablet user yourself?
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Well recently I've been neglecting my tablet for a pencil, (which I think has actually helped me a lot) but I hope to go back to digital soon
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Yeah, pencil really helps you to master your hand strokes and your hand eye co-ordination. Really helps with anatomy practice as well. To be perfectly honest I'm not a huge pencil artist.
I can run but I can't walk pretty much 
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Bamboo Fun. What about you?
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Running a Graphire4 atm, will upgrade to an intuos when I get a little better or when they get cheaper =/ They cost an arm and a leg heh.
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Ahaha, well much luck!! I should be starting up tablet work again soon, and I hope the traditional practice has improved my digital skills. I'm a little nervous to start again...
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Oh you too, good luck with your art. Give me a holler if you need a hand with your tablet work
I can give you a hand hopefully
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No worries, just leave me a note/comment and I can get back to you
Or if you want I have msn, but tend to be on at odd hours due to work =/
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Thanks
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Nah you'll be fine! Just have a little patience and faith.
No worries, what sort of "different type" of shading, there's a number, anime for example uses soft shading and cell shading normally.
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I wanted to try that sort of rough shading. I dunno what it's called... sort of like this.
[link] Sort of like this, maybe a bit softer.
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Ah alright, that's a mix between cell shading + soft shading in my opinion. You lay your base colours then you lay your shadows + highlights as solid colours (changing opacity if you want). Then you either chuck in a couple of gradients (though they tend to be a bit uniform so people tend to just shade with a paint brush) over the top
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Thanks!! I'll definately try it
Another problem I have is when I soft shade, I can't seem to help but make the arm look like a perfect cylinder, instead of an arm. Any tips?
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Mrm my tips would be to have a look at your own arm and go from there. Have a look at some photographs of arms and people and see how the shading works on their arms.
Basically what happens to light is, it doesn't collect at a central point. I mean it can but that's very unlikely given the light sources of many photographs, drawings, paintings, etc. So what happens is a shadow tends to build up more so on one side than the other. One side seems to have a highlight. Now not always in a photo or drawing/painting will you have a highlight in the arm. If you go crazy with highlights you'll end up with a very shiny and "plastic" looking girl.
I work from a lot of references, not just a singular reference. And this doesn't just include other artists from dA, it includes people I see on the bus to work/uni, my own body, friends of mine, photos of friends and family. Understanding the way light bounces off someone or someone's skin can teach you a lot about lighting. For example for my other drawing (care to dance), in order to get the shading of her hair right, I sat down on the bus to work (my uni job xD) which is a long bus ride. I sat there and looked at the way the light bounced of girls with long hair (cause it was a long hair painting) and I picked up what I was doing wrong instantly, and I came home, started blotting in and shading the shadows and highlights and bang, her hair looked exponentially better
So in a nut shell, my advice is to have a look at your own body, other people's, random stuff on dA, the way the light bounces off their paintings, photos, etc. and the way light bounces off your own arm. When you look at your arm it may seem dull if you have no light source, that also tells you stuff about lighting, it tells you that skin isn't prone to dull light sources. So daylight (excluding sunlight or large amounts of "natural light") will create a shade on your skin but it won't give it a highlight and it won't give it a massive shadow. Where as if you turn on a lamp and put your skin next to the lamp/right beneath it, you'll notice a highlight, a shadow and looking at those things from different angles really gets the perspective
Hope that helps, I'm sorry if I mumbled a bit! That's just how I do things, it might work for you! I'm hoping it does! xD
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Thanks!!
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Yeah, no worries, it really does help in my experience
Good luck!
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Awesome use of color! You've pretty much nailed it but if I may, I think you should've made her arms a bit longer but other than that this is fantastic!
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Yeah I know what you mean, but that's I wanted her arms to try not to detract from the picture, they were suppose to be pulling her shirt forward to make it seem tighter towards the back (hence the fairly tight fitting shirt).
I guess I didn't do that pose all that well then! xD
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I thought her arms were resting on her stomach in a sort of sexy way xD
But a little suggestion, even when you pull your shirt forward there are still a lot of smaller wrinkles, especially at the sides of your waist.
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Yeah I sort of had that idea too, so I kept changing the lighting on her shirt and stomach. Guess I shouldn't rush these things haha, confuses myself and people viewing my art! xD
Yeah I'm going to have to go out into the real world and find myself a girl so I can get her to pose for me xD Gotta love real world references, they work so well
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Oh 
Haha, well good luck!
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Oh I see, either way it's a very good picture. You did a very excellent job on the colors. You really did.
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Thanks, that means a lot
Makes all the effort I put in make it all worth it
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awesome job and the name tells the pictures story lol
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Haha yeah, I wanted to make it pretty obvious
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That's definitely a relief to hear!
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Oh awesome, the between the flags idea rocks my socks off
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Apparently it rocks her pants off!
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