So I redrew a commission.

TL;DR – Don’t accept DM’s of people selling you commissions without looking at their works. Personal opinion, btw.

Also, DO NOT GO AFTER THE ARTIST. I DON'T CONDONE THAT KIND OF REDDIT BEHAVIOUR!

So, I do tend to pay artists to draw what I wanted… Mostly related to my rabbit OC, but sometimes someone else. Paying artists to draw (or any other kind of service) is called a “Commission.” I have a particular kind of taste in artists, and when they’re open, I look at their prices and pay them along with what to draw and other references.

That’s how I go when doing commissions… BUT this time someone come up to ME and ask that I commission them. Out of my curiosity, I looked at their artworks, and… Well, it’s not the best, but I decided to be nice and commission them. So, I tasked the artist to draw my Bomb Rush OC with a background. It takes a while, like a couple weeks (it’s usually like that for some commissions), and after helping the artist on what needs to be in there, the end result is this:

Still better than Destiny 2's Lightfall DLC.

There are some glaring problems with this one, notably the background in question is a crusty blocky mess. The proportions is a bit off, and the shading… Well, it’s sinful IMO. Worst offender here is the skateboard, which I told ‘em that the wheels should be on the graphic side, but it’s on the grip tape side. It’s an amateur DeviantArt-quality piece of work. The price for this is the same as another commission I paid someone else: $70 Canadian. Now, I’m gonna be careful when saying this, but we know that art is subjective and “terms of beauty is the eye of the beholder” or something around those lines… But consider the commissions I paid in the similar price range, those looked better. Hell, even the ones that are cheaper made me feel I underpaid them.

So, I gave ‘em straight: It needs improvement. One of their main paint apps is Procreate, which I heard it’s not terrible, but it baffles me on what they did to the background. I gave ‘em a few pointers, and show them how I normally do my art. I want them to take a good long look at them and wonder they could improve. So, a second chance has commenced, and it’s gonna be a basic standing pose… For $80 this time.

They learned how to draw from friends, which is not the worst advice. Show them some tutorial videos is a good place to learn and improve, and even some professionals showing how they draw is a better place. There’s also some books you could buy on Amazon that’s in a reasonable price range ($10-$40) that gives you a diverse set of tutorials. I learned how to shade better from a guy named David Lillie, took some art advice from the Etherington Brothers, and even used a few pose references from Kate Fox. Yet, my style is inconsistent IMO.

So, yeah it also turns out I’m not that good of a teacher. The proportions are way off, despite I gave ‘em ample enough reference material, and even a closeup on her face.

Yet, the damning thing here is that the outlines are off… So I varied my outlines on CSP, the thicker lineart on the objects, thinner outlines on the details. So I request some changes on the look, and charged me $15 for it. Alright, fine, and this is the result.

The lineart is better, it's not necessary to put too much detail on the hair, so I told 'em to reduce it. So, I decided not to spend another dollar more and just let ‘em proceed with the coloring. Here’s the end result.

Artist must've taken the wrong advice, because the shading here is worse than before. Where is the light source? Why the bottom of her legs & her socks are shaded like that? Why the shoes so shiny? Least there's some rim lighting, but oof.

I just noticed something: The cheeky bastard reverted back to the old outline. At least the background is an improvement. Yet, I’ve wasted $95 on this. Why does someone who claims in their bio to be a "professional artist" make something this amateur with glaring issues? So this reminds me: Why don’t I draw these myself? Well, this is why I wrote this article: Decided to do some personal justice, and tell you how I draw them.

STEP 1 – ROUGH SKETCH.

Assuming that Procreate is an Apple exclusive app, likely meant for iPads and an overpriced pencil. For me it’s Clip Studio Paint with the XP-Pen Artist 13.3 Pro tablet. This gives me ample advantages from my previous screen-less Huion. Downside are the odd glitches this thing had when it suddenly switched screens on me (as in drawing on the next screen, not the one on display). Luckily, my process never had such a glitch after updating the driver.

For starters, I grabbed the backdrop from Bomb Rush Cyberfunk I had for the first commission, and painted over the piece. The pose was going to use the same one as the commission, but it looks like she's gonna lean back from the railing. I used a regular figure model for the proportions.

The Skateboard from my Bunshee drawing is reused here.

Here's one thing that the commissioned drawing lacked: Perspective. I traced over the backdrop from Bomb Rush Cyberfunk but with some colorization on the tiles. When I looked at the outline, I think this should be in a better pose, so I did just that, and I think it's better this way.

STEP 2 – ROUGH COLORS.

Next is the slightly easier approach: Colors. Now, I already had colors down in the bag, since I made the character. To make it interesting, I made 3 variants. The 4^th one had patterned stripes on it, so I don't want to bother. The other reason is that I made 3 custom skateboard decks, to show off. These will be in a higher resolution, which is just me repainting them... On Inkscape.

The mask one is the most difficult to remake.

After remaking these, I used Photoshop for the purpose of warping them to the skateboard, since that model's in a funny angle. For Vib, I wanted to add the lips, but the issue is that I can't draw lips good. Hell even for the model texture, I couldn't get them to look right after a couple hours of trial and error.

Autumn Vib and her Mask skateboard.

After coloring her in, it's off to the background.

STEP 3 – BACKGROUND.

I’ve rarely done backgrounds for my drawings. The last piece I did was me using a 3D render for the skatepark backdrop, and 2D for the outer reaches. This time I do some minimalist work on the setting of New Amsterdam. I’m going to use the same backdrop as last time, which is the Brink Terminal level. I could get cheap and open Photoshop and use the “Cutout” filter, but I think it’s best to make separate layers for the background colors and make your way from there.

Look, I'm sorry for the lack of pics for this step, but it's just me making a minimalist version of the background shown on the last pic. Just flat colors n' all. Once I'm done with the background, I decided to enhance it a little, by adding a layer for me using the brush tool to make subtle dark shades all over.

STEP 4 – SHADING (+ OUTLINE COLORING).

The fun part: Shading. I never did soft shading, only hard, cel-shading, which in this piece would fit into the drawing. I should've experiment on with a halftone brush I wanted to do for a long time, but decided to do that next time.

Here’s a fun little feature called “blending modes,” which is magic if you know what you’re doing. For beginners, I recommend applying a “multiply” for dark shades and “soft light” or “Overlay” for highlights. However, DON’T use the solid black or whites. Use darker/brighter colors that fit with the setting.

The last thing to do is color in the outlines on Vib, which is tricky to pull off. The way to do this is I make a VECTOR LAYER, that I grab a color, use the mouse to carefully glide through the outline surrounding the color. If there’s a conflict, then the one in front gets colored over. However, the outline layers are supposed to be darker, so this means that I lower the opacity to maybe 25%-40%.

I have to duplicate the colored outline layers for the alternate costumes because of said variety of colors. The reason for vector layers is that it’s easier to fill them in by clicking on the “operation” button, then click on the outline, and under the “Tool Property” tab, click on the “Main color,” and use the color picker to grab the color in question. Once you’re done, right click on the layer, and click “rasterize.”

Pic here is the end result. By the way, I forged a new sig.

Main outfit (Spring)

Cherry Bomb (Summer outfit)

Sepia (Autumn outfit)

This is how it's done, people. I may not be some sort of professional myself, but least I could do better. Shading does need work though.

CONCLUSION.

Yeah, this is something I wanted to do, and an amateur commission is practically a wake-up call for me to get off my high horse and start drawing. There’s another artist who coincidentally offered me a commission and their back catalog consist of amateurish works on DeviantArt. Feels like the same person when their bios are a bit similar with some variations. I turned that offer down. “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me,” as the people say. I vowed to not take these commission offers after that experience.