This is my attempt at using an art program (corel) I haven't used before just to test some things out. I decided to draw my cat Cabbage. Aha, but you know, for a test, I only used one brush for the entire thing. I wanted to see what all the other brushes do. Ahg. Judging by how the first try was, I think it'll be quite a while before I can really understand what a number of these brushes do, because so many did so many different things. Might be a good idea for me to see if there's a Fav Brush area.
Self Critique: Although this was a first try, I might as well talk about the things I feel I should improve on with this.Firstly, the brush I chose was part of the pastel brush areas, and I really liked how that turned out overall. It felt good to draw with and I think that is worked well with the subject. I overall do like the artwork that I made, and I'm even proud that the art actually looks liek Cabbage this time. SHe's really hard to draw with her under color patterns.
What I think I could improve on and what I should have done was use more brush types. Although this was just a test, I still think I could have improved this overall by adding in different brushes to make more textures on both the blanket and Cabbage. Cabbage more so, as the blanket was indeed more mottled and chunky. I should have looked into the various furbrush tools and the adjustments I could have done to the brushes I was using. My goal for this artwork's end product was not met because I did not try out more new tools and brushes.
Things to keep in mind for the future, for drawing something like cabbage, I should focus heavily on the colors and gradients underniether the black of her fur. The next time around I should fill out all of her body as solidly as possible with her underfur colors to prevent uncolored spaces when I apply the darker stripes. Alternately, I should start with Darker tones than what I did with the blanket, as I made too much work for myself recoloring the areas dark. (This is for the brushes related to applying something like Acrylic and pastel as their colors work in that way. Be careful about using the watercolor brushes, you will most likely have to work differently).
Oh and... I probably should have put in the wallpaper color in first. I didn't and that resulted in a bit high contrast for a background. Its not bad, but it's honestly too harsh to use such a flat white next time around. Don't forget in the future.
