#I like drawing cartoony muscles

[moaccyrk]

Here in Brazil, on top of being Halloween, october 31 is also know as "dia do saci", a Saci being a very famous folk character in my country.

In this piece, I drew a witch and a saci stablishing a friendship based on being spooky, magical and super fucking jacked.

[ittybittybumblebee]

Ive decided trying to draw foreshortening in realism is hell actually

[hotpotatopotat]

What or who inspires your art style?

Uhm honestly, I don't know totally! I know there are answers like Skippy and Corndog, Hori ofc, a few others for sure. But mostly my artstyle was developed as a way for combat my joint pain. My style for example used to be something more like this, but it was just too painful to continue to output this level of art (2021)

So I started drawing more cartoony and simple things, that at first I couldn't even color. I really needed to develop my muscle and draw fast because drawing a couple hours at a time was all I could manage.

Over time I guess I just got...better? And was able to mesh a more realistic style in with my cartoons, color, shade, and make comics all within my time frame. I feel like I'm slowly making my way back up?

Thanks for asking!

[dragengyrr]

"Lose the jacket"…

More Alastor in dress from this post because I am completely normal about it (I’m not).

@prince-liest : answering previous asks, let’s establish now that if I mention you directly in my posts, you are free to link the art to your fics without asking (after all, it wouldn’t have existed without them). I’m pretty sure I’m not done with them. Cheers <3

Artist’s little side note (because I feel like rambling again): so Hazbin gave me two life improvements (well, three, if you add the music) - one was stepping foot into the unknown aroace territory and being hit on the head with realisation that it was my home all along, making my questionable behaviours and reactions in the past a whole lot less… weird. At least for me, the allos probably still thought I was weird af, but that’s their problem now.

Second improvement was discovering a cartoony style that just sits right with my hand. I’ve always loved cartoons, had a little nostalgic era at the end of high school where I went back to the stuff I’d watched as a kid (Jake Long, Ben 10, Kid vs Kat, Samurai Jack), then I was discovering shows that were made quite recently already as an adult (Over the Garden Wall, Gravity Falls, The Owl House), I loved them for various reasons… but every time I tried to play with their style, I couldn’t get past a few drawings.

I also never truly worked out my own cartoony style, so I thought I’d be stuck with realism for all eternity - which is not bad by any means, it’s just that added pressure of your own artistic ego whispering into your ear that if you misplace one tendon or muscle, or get the proportions wrong, you’ll likely burn down in some special part of hell, specifically for artists that are too lazy to check their anatomy atlas for every single drawing they make. Or maybe that’s just me.

The point is – I don’t remember the last time I produced so many drawings in such a short time, and it’s a blast. And I can focus on posing and emotions more than anything, thus learning new tricks, and it might improve my realistic art as well, right now limited by my fear of it somehow looking incorrect (because that would surely mean the end of the world).

-End of ramble-

[runningwithscizzorz]

HOW DO YOU DRAW FACES??!?! seriously, everything about your art is pure eyecandy, I love it SO MUCH, but faces. YOUR FACES. the faces are perfect. they capture every detail. they feel so human. so expressive. i would love to know how you draw/structure your faces because it's the biggest thing i'd like to improve on with my art!

Art is a translation of how you perceive the world. Art is both extremely watered down and painfully vulnerable with emotions. The artist translates the world, and people translate the art. Lots of art gets lost in translation. My goal is to make people read my art regardless of my language. I want my art to speak louder than my simple cluttered words could.

How can you read a face with no words? You have to find your own way to do that, but here’s a very rough way of how I read people and attempt to translate their world into mine.

One practice is drawing straight from a reference. I've been watching TLOU, which has some of the best acting ever and is perfect for screenshotting specific moments to recreate. Pulling scenes from episode five, I stretch and amplify the facial features to properly read their emotions in my style, ex, making Ellie and Sam's eyes bigger to amplify their youth, smoothing out facial wrinkles for simplicity, and (my favorite) exaggerating the mouths so they emote louder.

Second method is feeling how your face moves. Ethan Becker on YouTube explains it better (go watch all his videos) of how to feel and observe how your face compresses and works with different features to properly express emotions. Using your own face as a stencil to understand how your muscle and jaw work is both simple, and always accessible for artist reference.

An example of how I break down bits of a chapter into chunks for each panel while still attempting for it to run smoothly like the writing. Honestly, a lot of this part rides on wanting to do the author justice for their fabulous work. You want to show them how much their work affected you and why it’s totally worth it to draw their stories.

Some examples of scenes from media (that almost made me cry) and how I translate and manipulate it into my style. This is why I redraw scenes from movies so often, not only is it fun and easy, but it’s a great way of studying the masters

But, to actually answer your question, I think the reason my drawings are so expressive to you is because I still follow somewhat typical human anatomy while still being cartoony enough to break the uncanny valley and create an aesthetically pleasing style. I’m still practicing and studying everyday to get better. You must work as much as possible to attempt to properly translate the world.

[your-unfriendlyghost]

How I draw: Proportions/sketching

The first response to a few art questions from @johnny-and-clyde :))

sketching:

So I honestly used to be a lot more…intentional about my sketching?? Up until a few months ago I would draw out actual sketches that I’d then cleanly ink on top of in a separate layer, like this:

I’d try to keep things loose and easy, but I’m not fantastic at that lol

I have a tendency to over complicate sketches- It’s not super obvious here, but I did semi-map out the anatomy under the clothes and fabric folds. That’s probably a good thing to do, generally, especially since I was and am still learning anatomy.

I don’t do it much anymore tho, because I often got caught up in little details that just wound up covered by clothes 😭 So I generally focus on mapping out the clothing shapes over the proportions/ anatomy. Definitely study anatomy anyway tho- this only works for me nowadays because I did and still do study anatomy a lot lol

These days though, I don’t r e a l l y sketch that much. I mean, I do- but instead of making another layer and inking it, I kinda just clean up the sketch the way I would if I were using pencil and paper. I don’t have a lotta example images of this, because it goes from the sketch to the final lineart in one layer?

tried to reverse-engineer it here on this Angela drawing. idk how helpful that is tho lol.

Idk, most important thing for me while sketching is remembering that everything has a 3D form, and also to FLIP MY CANVAS FREQUENTLY so that it stays balanced lol. -also- I almost always take note of the ribcage, the clavicle angle, and the hip angle when planning poses

-And I consciously try to keep things from getting stiff, and think of the pose as an intentional composition. I actually struggle most with plain standing/walking poses, because I very often can’t think of ways to make them look…idk, interesting? That’s why it’s taken me so long to finish pt.2 of my Outsiders character designs- I can’t find good dynamic-but-also-stagnant poses for them

proportion:

Honestly man idk I just sorta say “fuck it we ball” and hope for the best. I used to think a lot more about this one but as it’s become more and more natural to me I become less and less able to define/describe it?? I dunno lol.

My art style is semi-cartoony, and honestly kinda inconsistent in terms of proportions. I generally aim for the hands to be similar in size to the face, and for the shoulders/chest area to have enough space to fit the clavicle…but none of this is really a conscious decision? It just sorta happens. The heads/eyes of my characters are usually stylized, and so the hands end up a bit bigger to match the faces, and I tend to exaggerate muscle mass but not really muscle definition…And I also stylize things for characters to better contrast each other. For example, I’ve noticed I draw Steve Randle stockier/bulkier than he is to better highlight Soda’s slenderness.

(see how they’re not as drastically different in build as I draw them? Steve seems bulkier mostly cos he’s shorter but has a similar amount of mass I think) (don’t quote me on that tho idk how to put this shit into words lol)

I have a pretty decent idea of how proportions are supposed to work from years of studying them, and I have no idea how to explain any of it. Just…do a lot of figure and gesture drawing, use a lotta refs, and it’ll make sense eventually 😭

[glitterclan]

Question!!! How do you do your anatomy/sketches? Your style is so good and a perfect blend of cartoony and realistic and I need to absorb it like a sponge

Also!!!! How do you do the poses? I always have to find specific references

what you see in glitterclan posts ARE my sketches! they are very quick and unpolished drawings done without references. i've been drawing cats for so long that everything is sort of muscle memory at this point

[finchwingart]

OMG I'M YOUR FAN

I really wanted to know, do you draw humans too? Or just animals? Your style is very realistic, did you initially imagine having a style like that?

I draw humans very rarely, I'm just so unconfident with them n don't enjoy drawing them so much ToT In my gravity falls phase tho I drew SO MANY I was actually improving for once, but then I stopped lmao. Oops

Here's the One (1) 'human' character I have

about having a realistic style, it has it's ebbs and flows I guess? I love going really cartoony but drifted a little bit away from that during uni cause I was embarassed of it, which I'm really mad at myself at. I think I was worried people would look down on me for drawing lotsa cartoony animals but I was dumb. I do enjoy drawing more realistically though as it's very comfortable, drawing from reference is nice n simple, but I really need to stretch my muscles and try more cartoons n characters again bc stylisation is the hard bit tbh.

I do stuff like this sometimes!

[t0mashek]

Mini character guide for my fellow McSpirk fanartists!

I feel like I finally have a satisfying level of muscle memory down for how I draw each of our guys in a recognizable way! My portrayals of Kirk, Spock and Bones aren't usually drawn with a reference, and they definitely don't look all that realistic, but I figure at least one of you out there might like to have a peak into what I do to try and make them recognizable!

Before I show the specific lines I always like to use, I would like to shoutout all the artists out there with same face syndrome. I had very bad same face syndrome before I started drawing Star Trek fanart, the variety of characters in Star Trek REALLY helped me draw better characterizations of people! BUT, if same face syndrome is something you currently struggle with do NOT let it deter you from posting your beautiful art!

Even when drawn with the same basic face structure like I did here, it's still very easy to tell who's who, just with the use of colors, hairstyles and facial lines!

Now, for anyone who is wanting to pinpoint what I try to keep consistent in my drawings of the boys, I highlighted the lines I find most important in my drawings of each of them. I try to keep my style slightly cartoony, so I like to exaggerate!

The roundness of Jim's face is what I always try to make the most pronounced in all of my art of him. The contrast to the harsher angles of the faces of Spock and McCoy is one of my favorite things to include in my art. He has a button nose in combination with those apple cheeks, they're my favorite thing about Jim to overexaggerate!

McCoy on the other hand? Give him his TRIANGLES. I try to go for a much more square face when drawing Bones, but for the lines and features within his face we love our good old friend the triangle. That man's eyebrows are pointy, and I love to give him his mouth lines. I like to balance out the sharper lines I draw on his face with the round lines of his hair.

Spock has the bangs, ears and eyebrows that play a great advantage to us, no other bro serves like Spock. While I love the pointy sideburns on all of the boys, Spocks sideburns help me play into the length of his face. He's got a straighter face and straighter nose compared to his human boyfriends. And while he and Bones both have those handsome mouth lines, you can differentiate the shape of the crease to fit their faces! When I'm drawing McCoy's mouth lines, there's more of an angle, I draw Spock's lines straighter, similar to his face and nose.

I hope this might help some of my fanartist brethren out there! Or at the very least give you a little peak into my art process! If anyone finds this helpful and uses it to draw some art, I'd love to see it! The variety of styles and character potrayals I see in all of the Star Trek fanart I browse on here never fails to warm my heart. These goofy little guys never fail to stand out from one another, no matter how they're drawn, and that is just so special to me.

Live long and draw fanart, little gay people in my computer!!! 💛🩵💙🖖

[soft5ku11]

Hey so I'm also an artist and a gainer and I was wandering do u have any tips on drawing fat men

Well, it's all about shapes - at least to me. Keep the shapes connected in the right way, with the right volume, and heaviness. That's what I try to focus on. Fat goes over the top of regular anatomy, so learning how that works first can really help.

What I did was just draw whatever and I learned as I drew more of it. It's all about trial and error, learning and evolving and recognising what you want to improve, rather than being discouraged by "this looks bad". Don't compare yourself to others, only yourself.

But, as with anything to do with art, collect inspiration, collect a huge amount of references. Print out your favourite artworks from other artists, smack 'em through a holepunch and keep em together with a treasury tag. Never be afraid to use yourself for a reference picture either. If you cant find something, just save the time instead of mindlessly scrolling image results on your search engine of choice. Especially since you're a gainer, you can use your own body to study how any niche angle or pose might look with your body type.

To add onto this, of course it'll vary from style to style but exaggerate your shapes, (coming back to the shapes thing) for example, I'll use this artwork of my DND guy that I recently did:

See how the shapes of certain parts aren't necessarily more muscled or fatter? The feet and hands for instance, they look better and read clearer if you exaggerate them a bit, and I already set the hands and feet on the 3D reference model I used to almost maximum. You can do this with heads to an extent as well, but it could make the character's proportions feel off. That part is a balancing act and you can find basic proportion guides for the body online to help with that. But - the thickness of the arms and legs and even the neck pulls the figure further from realistic proportions and more into a cartoony illustrative look. I could go on for ages about this but that's the basic gist of it.

One thing I think is exceptionally under-represented in art advice that I've seen in my time is DON'T UNDERESTIMATE THE POWER OF HAVING ARTIST FRIENDS! Learn from each other, talk about stuff, gather and share resources amongst yourselves, etc etc. You learn more when in groups, that's why school isn't one-on-one.

These are just some tips off the top of my head, there's always more out there and I'm sure one of these things won't work for you and others will, but make the leap like you've done here and ask other artists too. Lots of people would be willing to give some advice to help you get going, and you asking will also benefit others who might be too shy to ask so even if you don't take my advice, you can be happy that you've pulled it out of me for others to see at least XD

[mushroominaforest]

Can I get some Human anatomy tips ? I'd Google it but I like hearing from fellow cartoony artists. If you have no tips or anything u can just ignore me :)

All you gotta do to achieve good humans with accurate anatomy in your art is to only draw Canadians in the winter

Jokes aside, honestly just practice. There’s no quick and easy trick to do good anatomy, you have to put in the time. Study references, do billions of figure drawings, look at skeletons, bone structures, muscle and fat formations etc.

Dont just practice drawing people standing in the pick your character/sims stance. Draw ‘em walking, playing an instrument, playing a sport, (yoga is a good one for more complex pose practice).

Bear in mind this is coming from an art major, so I probably have snobbish opinions about the « right » way to draw lmao.

And if all else fails, just draw Canadians in winter.

[baraturts]

Hi, everything’s been good. Out of curiosity how did you learn to draw the turtles, especially when it comes to their facial expressions and bodies ? Do u have any tips or references that could be helpful ?

Hi, things are going relatively good. Hmm, I'm probably not the best person to ask this, heh. My drawing progression and process has been (and is) a bit all over the place.

For anatomy, I'd recommend searching for terms like "comic book anatomy" and "simplified male anatomy for artists". Some pretty good free resources out there, especially on YouTube. Then you look at those recourses and simplify even more! I don't draw a lot of muscle detail, just focus on making the main muscle groups visible and ignore the rest. As long as that's in place and you have alright proportions (another thing to study, hooray), things tend to look passable.

I also have a little folder of screencaps from the movies (mostly OOTS), always handy! Some taken my self, some "stolen" from here on Tumblr. I've never really used refs for expressions, but I also don't draw a lot of very exaggerated/cartoony expressions. I keep it subtle and often find my self subconsciously making the faces I'm trying to draw, heh. And I guess that's my final tip: Draw! One can't JUST look at YouTube videos and tutorials, you gotta draw a lot too. But never be afraid to use references, that's how you learn and drawing is how you hammer that knowledge in to your hand!

Don't be afraid to ask if there's something more specific you're wondering about or if you want me to red-line something. I find that easier to be helpful with. I'm not a very good teacher on broader subjects, my answers to those tends to boil down to: JuSt GoOgLe It, sorry, haha.

[antisocialsocialite]

DEATH NOTE HEADCANONS

bc i need to get this shit outta my brain

if/when these conflict with canon i simply do not care

L is Asian, Mexican, and English, to varying percentages (see above sentiment)

Light is half siblings with Sayu- Soichiro is his biodad and Sachiko is his stepmom. Soichiro and his first wife (Light's mom) separated very early in Light's life and she didn't keep in touch, so he regards his stepmom as his real/only mom

Rem uses they/them pronouns. Ryuk uses he/they.

Misa is a tech geek (this is practically canon but im explicitly saying it)

Matsuda and Naomi would've dated if they met, and he would've thought she was such a cool badass and she'd feel appreciated for her abilities/passions. Matsuda would be a housewife for her, working part time when asked to come in

L is vegetarian

L is autistic, Misa has a cluster B personality disorder, and Light has both

Watari is a lowkey sybarite

Light has a praise kink, but Not a worship kink. sure he wants to be a god and be worshipped, but that's not the kink, that's just mental illness.

During the Yotsuba arc, Ryuk and the others in the shinigami realm were constantly gambling on different events unfolding. it was riotous and everyone was bummed when Ryuk got summoned back by Misa, bc he was the ringleader for it all

Misa suffered muscle atrophy and malnutrition from her confinement period, and it had a real impact on her for a while afterward. She had an entire floor to herself in the KTF HQ because the stairs to get to other floors/amenities were hard for her. Mogi and L were the two people to primarily assist in her recovery.

Misa would be responsive to therapy, Light wouldn’t be, and L simply would not go

Matsuda is undiagnosed neurodivergent and literally everyone else in the room knows but him. he also has an anxious attachment style, originally just to Soichiro but grows to the others as well.

Misa loves music, L has not heard a new song in at least 3-5 years, and Light can recognize top hits as they're circulating but has never invested any time in really paying attention to music. this is depressing to me and Misa.

Light doesn't like abstract art. He thinks it's silly. L likes it equally to realism, although he isn't, like, deeply passionate about it. Misa draws in a cartoony style

Ryuk and Rem are related in some way. i believe this bc of their similar builds, compared to some other shinigami types/builds

Matsuda and Misa like romdramas and romcoms. They require tissues in case of tears. L and Light like thrillers/mysteries/psychologic horror. They race to be the first to figure out the resolution/mystery presented. L is winning

[cherriow]

Is rodger a twink

I guess he fits some of the descriptions but id like to say no? He isn't like short and he DOES have body hair (but he's blonde so its not as visible as it would be with someone who has a darker hair color) also he's not a sub

i guess the slim and the gay part does fit him? (hes pan) but hes not like the weak type of slim, he has a bit of muscle but its more like.. not poking out much? like compacted a bit. obviously my style doesn't really do him much justice HAHA its very cartoony anyways heres a rare image of Rodger without clothes.. originally added the ant underwear as a joke but i actually kind of like it so its canon now. him also having stupid bug related t-shirts is also canon also i drew the scar wrong in the last drawing oops.. this is the correct way it looks

[chocodile]

2023 was certainly the year of the rabbit. I felt like I didn't do as many ambitious pieces this year as I would have liked.... lots of sketches... lots of sketchy comics, which certainly count as ambitious, but don't really flex the art muscles the way full rendering does. I also spent a lot of time working on offline stuff and crafts which often required weeks of work to complete.

In the end, there were more big pieces than I remembered. Even January/February/March, which were pretty crummy months for me, still got some cool art made during that time. (Ironically, the "Sleep with One Eye Open" piece shown for March was both "vent art" expressing the massive amount of stress I was under during those three months and my most numerically successful piece on Tumblr this year.)

But I'd still like to do more experimental stuff in 2024. I miss working with the zany colors and the more abstract psychedelic cartoony style that I feel defines me as an artist... you can see it here and there this year, but much of my output was more directly representational.

Overall, 2023 was a year that challenged where my life priorities were (in a mostly positive way) and did bite into the amount of time I could spend drawing, but I'm still happy with what I made this year and happy with where I'm going creatively. I enjoy that I'm doing more story/character-driven stuff again and feel way more engaged with my own work than when I was doing more one-off pieces, even if those one-off pieces were "better".

Here's to a good 2024!

[your-unfriendlyghost]

How I draw: Use of references

Second response to a few art questions from @johnny-and-clyde let’s gooo!

I love references! Like most artists I did have that phase where I thought I was better than everyone because I didn’t use ‘em, but lemme tell ya- starting to use references took my art from this

(Art from 2021-2022) To some better lookin stuff, and eventually to the stuff y’all know me for now lol!

Nowadays I do use references for almost every drawing, but the amount that I reference them varies Occasionally it’s pretty direct, like my drawing of Curly Shepard, in which I HEAVILY referenced a photo of myself for the pose and fit:

(I don’t dress like this on a daily basis the pic was taken at a Twilight-themed school dance ok) (I’m not cool enough to wear that many necklaces w/o a good reason 😔)

In drawings where I directly reference photos that don’t belong to me, I put the reference in the post under the drawing, so folks know I didn’t plan the concepts/compositions on my own. But usually I don’t directly reference things…

Usually I use a bunch of different references for a bunch of different things. This is for two purposes:

1- Making sure everything stays vaguely anatomically decent, that the fabric folds in the right places, that the perspective works, that the lighting looks good, etc…especially in tricker/unusual poses. Um I’m also pretty sure that I might have some form of aphantasia, or at least a really weak “mind’s eye”, which is probably why I struggle with composition/planning in art and why I do so much better with references

Like here, when I used this pic of Emilio Estevez’s character in Repo Man to make sure I was getting Mark Jennings’s face shape right- just glanced at it off to the side and (more or less) drew what I saw

Or here, in this pic of Steve Randle- I didn’t know how to even start to draw the angle I needed, so I took a pic of myself and used that

2- Capturing the likeness of a person. For most new characters I draw, I take a bunch of screenshots and roughly redraw them and occasionally trace them to build muscle memory, all while taking little notes about unique features they have. Then, once I have a feel for them, and enough odd-looking line drawings to look like a crazy stalker, I’m ready to start actually drawing post-able art yk?

Here’s an example from 2023 where I studied Nancy Wheeler. Final product ain’t fantastic, but this was two-school-years ago so it’s basically ancient in my book lol

I do still use refs often in the finals, but less directly and with less adherence

But I will say, for rougher/cartoonier drawings I don’t use as many refs. Like, I didn’t use references for these (although I did pose in the mirror to get the arm right in the self-portrait lol) :

Lastly, I also find it’s nice to have a mirror/window nearby to look at my own anatomy and reference that, although that’s mainly just useful for characters who look semi-like me/have similar builds to me lol. Like I can reference myself for drawing Steve Randle or Johnny Cade (at least his face lol), but not so much for drawing like…Dally or Evie or Marcia. Still, it’s useful, especially when I can’t find a specific reference I want, yk?

Anyhow, those are the main ways I utilize references in art! Hope some of this was helpful :))