I feel like whenever we talk about things that are hard to draw, it just turns into an echo chamber of 'feet', 'cars', 'hands'...nothing new under the sun. So I wanted to start a topic for things you actually can draw, even though they're hard, or are usually considered such. Feel free to brag about anything you want~
I already mentioned how much I love hands in that tutorial topic, but tbh that's not really a LOT of effort, especially considering the styles I draw in. There's only so much time you can spend on five fingers and a palm...the one limiting factor on my ability, patience, usually doesn't get a chance to run out.
What challenges me are things that test my patience by requiring a lot of time-- no matter how talented you are, you can't finish painting a head full of hair strand by strand in 5 minutes. You need to be able to stay focused and think through what you're doing for quite a while...meanwhile, I always get lost, forget what I was going for, and worst of all, run out of motivation. >_<
There's one thing that I can draw where that doesn't happen, however: SPARKLIES
I spent at least 2 hours (probably longer) just working on all those crystal hearts for these comic pages, and I did them all in one session so I wouldn't lose my flow. And I loved every second of it~ ^^
I mean, I won't lie, it was a little annoying to have to keep rendering it again and again (I'm still human). And I didn't have as much fun in the far away shots, where the reflections get all mushed up together into little pixel clouds. But surprisingly, I never hit that point I usually do where I go "I WOULD RATHER DIE THAN DRAW ONE MORE X"...and when I'm drawing hair strands that usually happens within minutes, sometimes seconds.
I think it's the contrast that makes it work for me. ^^ It's pleasing to the eye, and to my artistic soul, enough to make me want to do it again and again.
Most super detailed fields (grass, hair, wood grain, wrinkles in cloth) are relatively monotonous in color, often because there are so many in one spot (grass and hair do have a sheen, but not a lot, and especially not when you're looking at them in macro).
Crystals, however-- and things like chains, metal accessories-- you need those bright points of light and deep spots of darkness, and LOTS of them, in order to make them look correct. Especially en masse...the heart only has 'pixel clouds' for highlights because the individual crystals assemble into a smooth surface (like a puzzle). If they were just randomly gathered into the overall shape of a heart, it'd probably look a little different...and part of me would love to try to figure out how to render that. ^^
