#i had a ton of fun looking for ref pics and practicing

[puali]

Wangxian “Sk8ter Boi” AU except that it’s just the song’s premise and they actually end up together.

[aliceindoodleland]

hiya!! haha i hardly feel i’m an experienced enough skelebro artist to answer this question, but i’m going to try my best to explain how i go about it!!

first off i wanna start with this: there’s no REAL way to “get it right”. the sprites from the original game leave a bit up to interpretation and give plenty of room for artistic freedom! (and the au bros are fanmade, so that’s like, dOUBLE artistic freedom!) the tricky (yet fun!) part comes with them not *really* being shaped like real skeletons, so ppl have to improvise!

1. references and practice are your best friends!!!! (my first drawings of sans and paps look NOTHING like they do today since i ended up drawing and practicing with them soso much). i generally like to search “skeleton anatomy” or “skeletal system” in google images for my refs and use something liiiiike: https://smhttp-aww-17174.nexcesscdn.net/media/catalog/product/cache/9/image/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/A/W/AWW_CH03.JPG

that to help me out! while sans and paps and their au variants are not shaped 100% like a traditional skeleton, you still need a pretty decent understanding of how the skeleton looks so that you can play around with it and adjust it as you see fit when drawing a specific character. i also like to reference other artists!! if i’m stuck and not sure how to go about something, sometimes i’ll look at the way other artists interpreted certain characters and draw inspiration from that! for example, some artists draw orange with downward slanting eyes to make him look more sleepy/lazy/depressed and i liked the way that looked so i adopted that as well! and in regards to papyrus types….

2. pick your papy poison. LOL this title is way more dramatic than it should be and honestly i just wanted the alliteration :P BUT what i mean here is papyrus body types are typically the hardest to draw (at least for me) and part of the reason is THE LITERAL HUNDREDS OF WAYS YOU CAN INTERPRET THAT MOUTH!!! seriously, this has caused me my fair share of anxiety and frustration. SO what i like to do is mix it up. when i said in the beginning that you have artistic freedom to do whatever you wanted, i meant it. you don’t have to keep drawing papy’s mouth consistently at all if u don’t wanna, it all depends on what you’re working on and how u feel (generally tho i keep it consistent within the same work but across separate pieces it’s okay to mix it up). when i’m drawing someone like us paps, i usually like to give him a big ol sansy smile, especially when facing the front. it’s simple and fast, and it doesn’t look bad! you can also give him jaw space or even draw his mouth like papyrus’ in undertale (tho with my style i find that looks odd more often than not)

here’s a pic of two mouth types! (sorry it’s messy and there’s not a lot, I rushed since i have to wake up early tomorrow!)

generally i make us paps’ face pretty dull and rectangular, and the same goes for ut paps! edgy bros like edge and sf papyrus get much more angular and sharpened features, and this can especially be seen in the cheekbones. here’s an older doodle of mine of sf paps from the side

sharp puppy. but yeah! edge bros get pointed chins and jaws and non-edgy boys get softer features. you can do whatever feels best for you though!!

i should wrap this up soon since it’s pretty late but another important thing to consider is:

3. body types. i prefer to draw my sanses a bit on the rounder/chubby and short side and my papyruses on the lanky side. that said, this is where the skeleton references and familiarity become important so you can stretch or compress bones to fit your body type needs without it looking too strange! feel free to add thicker bones onto the sanses if you wanna go for that heavier set look, but keep tabs on your proportions. it helps to draw a rough skeleton (lol) of your pose which includes thickness of the body and placement/length of limbs and posture. if you have trouble drawing chub sometimes like i do, look up some refs! they’ll help out a lot.

what i do sometimes is i’ll draw a humanish body outline, and fill the bones in on the inside! it’s what i did for orange in the kissy requests. he had a fleshed out neck before i erased it so i could see how the positioning of it would work. that’s also my method for hands. kudos to the artists that draw skeletal hands realistically. that is too many bones for me to worry about LOL. what i do is i make a sort of…hand bone?????? i’ll explain. i draw a regular hand and then add lines where the bones would be. pls pretend this isn’t the worst hand you’ve ever seen

so it’s not really how bones work, but it’s simple and it’s what i’m accustomed to. (hint: fingerless gloves are hot and get rid of a lot of your problems with this ;) )

i’m gonna have to end this here but overall, HAVE FUN WITH IT DUDE!!! these characters are hella fun and full of personality! they’re a joy to draw and the less you worry about getting it perfect and just going at it and practicing, the better you’ll become! a good tip for this is doodling! non serious doodling where you don’t feel pressure to make something come out right and can make a ton of mistakes helps you to gain a kind of muscle memory and better perception of how things should look and feel when you draw them. it’s so important to let yourself make mistakes, because you’ll learn from them and get AWESOME at it! good luck to you, my friend, i hope this helped!! <3 <3 <3 

ALSO once i get back next week, i’ll probably couple this post with a “speed” paint/draw of my process of drawing a skelebro since i feel that might also help? lemme know if you’d like that!