Hi Lloyd!
I'm flattered you like my drawings. Thank you very much!
The truth is, I'm pretty much entirely self taught apart from the occasional tutorial or so. It's been, heck, about a three-year-long experience of trial and error for me. Only recently have I started considering myself somewhat decent.
I doodled before a bit before then, but I would say my real starting point was around the end of 2006 when I bought a drawing tablet and decided I wanted to draw foxes.
The only decent tutorial I could find was
this on how to do muzzles. Apart from that, I just (frustratingly) tried to scribble out what I wanted and hoped it worked out. Some artists recommend looking at another piece of work for reference. Truth be told, even though I often intend to find good reference pictures, I rarely do this and usually end up trying to figure things out on my own.
After I hired Tod to do the pencils for Crimson Flag, I'll admit I leeched some traits off of him from tracing his foxes over and over again.
Most notably would be the four fingered hands and ruffles in the ears.
You'll probably get this anywhere, but I'll say it again because it really is true. The only way to learn how to draw is to practice. Aside from the comic, I'm trying to draw one or two drawings per week. I've been doing this for nearly a year and I've improved tremendously just by drawing over and over again. In June I did a Sketch Month, in which I drew a sketch every single day for 30 days straight with no exceptions. Again, marked improvement from start to finish. I'm going to do another one sometime soon.
It's going to be very frustrating at first. It was for me. But keep at it. If you *really* want it, you'll get it.
Good luck! And post your ventures for us to see.
Also, yay, Shifti page. Will check a few of those stories out some time.
