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Apr 2019

I can already tell that this is the kind of topic that will end up filled with tutorials and examples that will heighten all our feelings of inadequacy...but maybe that's okay, just this once. I mean, water is hell. Take all the help you can get.

As with many things, when it comes to drawing water, I just wing it. ^^ I've seen enough cartoons to have a general idea of what I'm supposed to do, and usually that's enough.

However...now that I'm drawing a character that spends a lot of time shapeshifting through water (and ice), I'm starting to notice that there may be some gaps in my knowledge:

For the moment, ^this is considered my standard. Deadeye has a very cartoony style, after all; any more realistic than that and our antagonist is gonna look more out of place than necessary. But...I can't help but feel like he's missing a little...something...

I know that water in motion tends to shine more than that, because of all the reflective surfaces, but I don't really want him to look "glittery"; that would be distracting. And the shading is kinda just...:smiley:. It doesn't feel right when I put it down, but somehow it seems to work. And in my experience, that means I'm close to a breakthrough, there's just an element of "actual purpose" that I still lack. I wonder what it could be...

As for the ice...we don't talk about the ice.
I don't get many opportunities to draw crystals; right now I'm still in my experimental phase! >_< I will say that I need to start thinking more about their 3D shape when I draw them, though, instead of just going "spike! point! edge!" and only later realizing that I have no idea how to shade the monster I've created...

Lastly, but not leastly, bodies of water. I think it's pretty easy to make a lake look nice; I like 'contained' bodies of water. This means, of course, that oceans are my greatest nemeses...with their stupid tides and the way they just kind of stop at the horizon with no discernible sense of perspective so you always feel like you're doing it wrong...
...so, uh, I did a study once:


It really is the best ocean scene I've ever done...and yet, I can still tell it has beaucoup problems...ugh, oceans...

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    Apr '19
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    Apr '19
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One thing is that water is largely transparent, so it generally looks more realistic if you can largely see through to whatever color is behind it. But that may not work with the cartoony style you have there so idk

The ocean thing actually looks really nice, I don't see a problem with it ^^
If you were going for more realism or detail in that particular piece then maybe kind of vertical stripes of reflections of the three moons on the surface. And maybe a darker band in the areas of sand that would be wet (since wet things are generally darker).

Not that I'm an expert or anything. Water is hard, yeah ^^;

FRICK I COMPLETELY FORGOT ABOUT THAT

...But, even if I had remembered to do it, I might have left it out anyway. That "dark band in the sand" is one of those things that always looks wrong to me in 2D, no matter who does it. It usually looks more like the water has a shadow or something. =/