#it's a huge misconception that art is about training your hand to create better shapes

[lylahammar]

Artistic "advice" that follows this format of "do this ✅ don't do this ❌" has ALWAYS been a massive pet peeve of mine, and this is a huge one of many reasons. There is no "right" way to do art, I don't care what your personal feelings are about it. You can have stylistic preferences, but that's subjective personal taste, there are no rules. A lot of the time, this kind of advice comes off very counterintuitive and anti-stylization.

But in the case of what OP's talking about, it's an even larger issue. The spectrum of body types on the planet is MASSIVE and more diverse than any single artist can imagine. Literally any physical human trait that you can claim is "incorrect" in art is present in someone, often a lot of people, in the world. Stop telling people they're wrong for drawing in a certain way. It's entirely unhelpful. It's far more productive to give advice on how to find reference material and use it to help you represent specific traits that you have in mind.

you know those posts that are like

INCORRECT way to draw a fat body ❌

CORRECT way to draw a fat body ✅

I saw someone use an example of a body that had a round potbelly and slimmer limbs for the INCORRECT version, saying it looked bloated or pregnant… when it literally looked exactly like my body.

yes it’s important to know the dynamics of body fat on characters, how it hangs, how it folds, etc. because a lot of people draw fat characters as Skinny Lite™️ and that’s a representation issue.

but as long as a character is big and round?? that’s a fat person! fat people look like that too!