#like i'm looking at the ref and i think i've drawn everything right
Explore tagged Tumblr posts
Text

finished portrait of amy :)
struggled a bit with this one, might come back to it later, but for now, this'll do
#my art#doctor who#amy pond#karen gillan#like i'm looking at the ref and i think i've drawn everything right#but it doesn't quite look like her and i can't figure where i've gone wrong#hmm
255 notes
·
View notes
Text
encore nnks
#you guys have no clue how many times I've drawn this stupid scene.#(<- enjoys it every time)#I think this is my first time actually Posting it though#usually I'm too nervous....lmao#and now I'm finally posting it :DDD good job me#my art#my aus#encore au#project sekai#nenekasa#nene kusanagi#tsukasa tenma#by the way. I spent like three or four hours on this. jesus.#I usually only spend ~1hr on like everything#but also this is Completely Painted#like. I didn't even do lineart. I made a very messy sketch and colored in messy then Did Shit#until it looked good#I kept having to redo nenes handssss#I don't really like her right hand still#but also there wasn't really a sketch I drew five lines as fingers and rendered them#so I think I did pretty good.#whenever I look at tsukasa your adventure plays in my mind cause I put it on loop and spent SO LONG struggling on his clothes#i had to do another sketch for his clothes. i literally pulled thed esign out of my ass becuase i didnt wanna pull out my old ref from like#a year ago#anywaanywayfnwaybywa. post
71 notes
·
View notes
Text
with that attack done, i have officially done more attacks this year than i did last year, despite having shitty wrists!!!
#🔪.text#i feel very accomplished#and really happy to be drawing#10 attacks isn't a lot but it's still more than i did last year!#i'm hoping to still get a couple more done but we'll see#even if not i'm happy i've been able to do as many as i have#and that i've been able to do personal art in between#i've drawn a total of 17 things this month!!#three of those are just very quick sketches but they're still art so they still count#and that's!! a lot!!!#i'm hoping to continue to try drawing even once art fight is over#i don't want to go back to not drawing for months and months and MONTHS on end.#idk when i'll be back to just using my normal program#parts of me aren't sure if i'll EVER be back to that#not because i think my wrists will never get better#but because tbh i'm really enjoying and having fun with my current system#i may make this ms paint for lines and my normal program for everything else my normal system from now on#i really don't remember the last time i've had this much FUN with art#like. i'm not worrying about if things look good. i'm not frustrating myself over getting that One Line right#i'm just drawing! and i'm having fun!#and idk if it's just my system i have going on or because i'm back to my roots and drawing sparkledogs and old ocs#oh that reminds me i should upload the little mini ref i did for aetoka here i don't think i did that#i'll stop rambling now lol
1 note
·
View note
Note
Have you ever drawn Sephiroth? Also my favorite post of urs is Cloud and Zack chained together and getting caught by a poll XD ALSO ALSO how do u find an art style?? I've been asking this question to a lot of ppl but never get anything that helps me- my "art style" is always inconsistent and I'm trying to do something that expression how I feel as a person while drawing a character (but maybe it's because as a person I'm all over the place and I can't pinpoint how to express myself) I can give a little ref for a few of my drawing to show how inconsistent they are😓 though some things stay the same a lot of other things change (people say I'm hard on myself but I feel like it needs to look a certain way for me to like it ig also also also the 2nd drawing was a fixed version of the og because it was well elongated.. can you tell im no good at anatomy-?)




ANYWAYS SORRY FOR THE RANT!! 😓
HI NO WORRIES FOR THE RANT!! Regretfully I have not drawn a whole lot of Sephiroth... perhaps that shall change someday? 🤔
Hmm I think I know what most people's advice would be, like "oh don't worry about art style just do whatever you like!" and yes, that's kinda true, but it's not really helpful. So here's my thoughts on the matter:
I find that the best approach to finding a style that fits you is to start by identifying your own tastes in art. Instead of worrying about consistency, focus on finding brushes/tools that feel good to use, colors and lines that appeal to you, and then play around with those. You'll find it a lot easier to make art that you like if you let yourself have fun with it, as opposed to subjecting it to pass/fail criteria.
For example, it's probably not surprising to hear that I love vibrant, colorful geometric art. I struggled for so long trying to use fancy brushes and weighted paintstrokes to make more realistic portraits, and it frustrated me because even if other people said it looked great, nothing I made looked right to me. Turns out it was my toolkit hiding my own art style from me. The moment I switched to solid colors and the goofy default pen setting, BOOM. Suddenly I was on a roll.
As for anatomy, you're already doing great!! My trick for anatomy (and for anything at all, really) is to break it down into simple 3d shapes. Fun fact, almost everything with the human body is just varying cylinders. Your neck? Cylinder. Hand? 5 cylinders attached to a cylinder that's been slightly squished. Torso? That's cylinder, babe! Arms? Legs? You guessed it, cylinders.
Challenge yourself HARD, EARLY. Don't wait until you think you're "good enough" to do a big intimidating project, or else you'll be waiting forever. Draw those difficult angles, perspectives, and compositions NOW, not later! It'll make the things that you're already good at feel ridiculously easy, and make those things come naturally to you, enabling you to focus your efforts into the stuff you do want to get better at.
#OK DONE RAMBLING! thank you for the ask and i wish you the best of luck on your art adventure!!#asks#<3!!!!
21 notes
·
View notes
Note
So I came from your insta and saw that you improved quite a lot over two years. I’m in an art rut right now and was wondering your tactics for learning to draw different positions and poses? And fabric? I’m just curious since you don’t have speed draws on YT.
oh thank you!
in the past two years, i think what's helped me improve the most is learning the balance of keeping consistency without taking myself too seriously. i find that when i'm in a rut or i feel like i've stagnated, it's bc i'm too in my head and i'm forgetting to have fun. bc yes, technical skill is good to acquire, but creativity is, in my opinion, more important of a priority because that's where the art comes from. the technical skill is just the tool to help the art get made, so hone it, but don't treat it like it's everything. it's no good being able to draw a bunch of cool stuff if you don't have the spoons to draw any of it or if you're so burned out, you can't even come up with ideas.
on the more technical side though, for me, study and practice time are when i focus on repetition so i can build muscle memory. if i'm studying from references (and not feeling lazy lol) i'll draw each ref at least 2 or 3 times to get those reps in, drawing fast and sketchy, just doing as many as i can. this really helps with things you'll draw over and over again like clothing folds. my hand will start to just have a better intuitive sense for the shapes instead of agonizing over each one cuz i've drawn it enough times. when i'm sketching, it helps me to fall back on that muscle memory so i can put more focus to other aspects of whatever it is i'm drawing.
it's about finding a balance really.. if i study too much, i never actually implement the things i learn but if i study too little, then my work stagnates and all looks the same. finding that balance for yourself will go alone way! when i'm in an art block, what i need just really goes back to remembering to enjoy the process and finding that spark again. if i'm not enjoying my art, then i gotta switch something up.
here are some other things i like to do for practice:
redraw screenshots/stills from my fav shows or manga (good way to study poses, anatomy, and scene composition w/o it feeling too serious.)
or pick a show/movie/comic and choose a character i like. draw them 3-5 times, copying the art style to a T then draw them again in my own style to see what elements i wanna take away from it. (again, a good way to study without Studying. i end up leaving the experience with new staples for my art style)
find fashion photo references and draw my ocs in the outfits.
switch up what i'm drawing with. like if i'm mostly draw in pencil, switch to only pen. if i'm doing digital, i put my go-to brushes in a new folder, don't touch them, then sketch with a brush i never reach for. just change one little thing and see how it affects the process. usually i discover something new.
i wrote a list of things i like to draw on the front page of my sketchbook (just stream of consciousness, wrote down like 100 things i like to draw. ex: oranges, apples, snails, leaves.) and when i don't know what to draw, i close my eyes and point to something then draw whatever i comes up.
hope this helps!!
8 notes
·
View notes
Text
THIS IS. SUCH A FASCINATING THING TO HEAR... Mani is something else entirely, unfortunately, LMFAOO BUT!!! This got me thinking......
Think of these as hypothetical What-If scenarios! The ages aren't hard and fast either, just general placements based on how things went for me LMFAO -- and pronouns listed are ones I imagine Moe using at the time. But it is retroactively It. Forever and always 👍

You know. Moe is so heavily defined by everything that happened in very quick succession when its egg cracked and it came out. Whole world fell out from underneath it. In the example given here, I actually don't know how things would have turned out for it... I just wanted to draw an outfit it would feel comfortable wearing as a """girl""" (and something it'd genuinely like, aesthetically!). Esp the little cape addition... that thing is hiding beneath So many layers of fabric LMFAOOO (and.. layers.... in general.....)

THIS ONE.... I LOVE SO MUCH ....... one of the cutest Moes I've ever drawn..... absolutely captures that freshly out desperately trying to socially transition but can't quite get it right or hasn't developed a full sense of self in its new identity yet. They tell you about second puberty when you transition. What they don't tell you about is the second awkward "teenage" phase you go through as you're growing into yourself again (for real this time). Also just... the euphoria.... 🥺🥲 Even if there's horrors... the euphoria is still there...

And some older sketches of this Moe! So full of life and wonder and whimsey........ all of which feel so fragile........ and the world doesn't have any kindness or patience about it. SAD.

World-weary autistic burnout Moe........ it's probably closer to 23. For me personally I just didn't exist when I was 23. Blacked out that entire year. Once it starts feeling alive again, it probably starts making mods to its outfit (in line w it's current look!). All things considered, it is very close to the current Moe! I just needed one more guy in-between Fragile Joyous Whimsy Moe and Got My Whimsy Back Bitch But I'm Evil Now Moe (the current one). Hey, where the fuck did it find that black band tee shirt btw??? Did it just come with that?????

More older sketches! I really like these ones, I almost wish I reffed them for this actually... the hair is so good here.
AND. FINALLY......

The most powerful of them all.......... baby.
#moe tag#moe lore#summoner oc#i've had these guys rattling around in the back of my head for. a while. if you couldn't tell LMFAO#this was SUCH a cool exercise though esp in how each version of moe would (or wouldn't.) take creative liberties#w its summoner attire. ALSO just wanna point out. how current moe ends up landing on the scalloped robe too.#the self is a circle.#my art
7 notes
·
View notes
Text
does anyone else get that weird feeling when you can look at a bajillion different art styles and go "yeah that's neat! love it! so cool!" and then as soon as you do absolutely any of your own drawing, there's just a constant alarm going off in your head saying "THIS IS INCORRECT AND IF YOU DON'T FIX IT, IT WILL LOOK TERRIBLE AND ANATOMICALLY INACCURATE" despite it being nothing different from all those other art styles you see and love??? like "uncanny valley" but w/ all your own artwork and almost all the time
like I was just thinking about this, because there's lots of awesome artists I follow on Instagram & Tumblr that have interesting styles that don't necessarily follow real-life human proportions. It's often different variants of anime art but that's not always the case, and across pretty much all these different styles you have different things like how the contours of the face are (i.e. chin, cheeks), or the size/spacing of eyes, or the way the mouth is drawn
but it's just occurred to me that whenever I draw, there's pretty much always a constant nagging feeling, that I have to fix every anatomical or rendering mistake and if I don't then it just won't look "right", and that's one of the biggest things that stops me from completing 99% of my art
like earlier today I posted a 10-minute sketch, and it was obviously not "good anatomy"- it was pure vibes, just drawing what felt right in the moment and immediately posting it without trying to correct anything at all. and as soon as I did it, it hit me- that was probably the first time I've ever just created a piece of art for fun with virtually zero concern about "accuracy". Everything else I ever work on is always constantly drawn-out and changed and modified endlessly because it never feels "correct" and I don't feel like I can proceed with it.
today I've spent more than 3 hours just practicing how to draw heads, and it was the same thing. I was doing okay, but it took ages to get through even the simple parts like drawing straight from an anatomy ref. and it drives me insane not just because of perfectionism or whatever... but the fact that there's not a single "correct" human figure.
There's a ton of natural variation in how people appear, that's why we're all unique ffs! Different people have differently-shaped faces, their noses look different, their cheeks are different, their foreheads can be different, the wrinkles or freckles or eyebrows or eye shape or X Y Z are all varied and unique among different people.
Of course there are certain basic proportions and principles, you don't put someone's eyes on the back of their head, but I know all the basic proportions at this point and I've made a ridiculous amount of figure drawings both live and from photo, quite literally hundreds of drawings ranging from 1-3 minute gestures all the way to 1-, 2-, 3-hour-long works.
So why is it that no matter who or what I draw there's always that piercing & uncanny feeling? that i'm never able to capture a likeness of someone whether real or fictional, whether I'm trying to draw realistically or stylized?? it feels like I'm still getting something fundamentally wrong all the time even when I've studied all the basics and so much more, and even when my own professors look at what I do and say it's correct.
it's probably the autism, since there's a ton of other things in life where I appreciate predictability and uniformity and certainty. math problems have correct answers, essays can have certain types of analysis, machines can be described in terms of mechanical principles. But art isn't like that, and I've had similar issues w/ my art classes before, I just never quite thought of it from this specific perspective. I knew I struggled with open-endedness in projects, but this feels like something even deeper and more infuriating than that >.>
going back to that sketch, I can look at it and see obvious simple mistakes that I didn't bother to fix because I kept it strictly to 10 minutes. the chin is an obvious one, for instance, and the eyes could be better too. but I don't want to go back to that artwork, partially because it's just a 10-min sketch and it's not really anything that profound, but also partially because even though I know I can make it better I'm scared that as soon as I start messing with it I'll never be able to look at it comfortably ever again because it'll always feel incorrect. Not incorrect because I didn't care but incorrect despite me caring so much. which feels so much worse than just making a silly mistake when you're drawing normally.
#rant post#vent post#long post#okay i think that's all the obligatory tags?#tumblr tags still confuse me tbh
3 notes
·
View notes
Text
7.3.24 there was a deadline for a DTIYS my IRL friend, kobra_the_artist , hosted back around February!! I had like...3 days to finish the sketch I started back in February. It's...A pain being late to EVERYTHING with a deadline, but at least deadlines help me push finish a drawing, I otherwise would let rot in my WIP folder for almost a year (hell, some sketches are like 3 years old that are rotting in there now, that I'm self-aware about, yet still keep forgetting. ._." )
I don'ttt have too much to say on this one? Since it was a DTIYS, I recommend checking out the insta post simply, I'm not about to take my friend's artwork and cross-post it to somewhere else, I feel, that'd be scummy to do. :T SO LINK TO THE OG CONTEST POST! HUZZAH! plusssss, I think I yapped enough on my own insta post. :v
I just rlly wanted to draw Kobra, as I love her sona's design. I adore demon-anything, can u blame me LMAO. I need excuses to draw ppl's OCs willingly and gladly more. It's so hard to motivate myself to draw something at all for people anymore AUUUUGH
Somehow I won 1st place??? Don't ask em HOW, as I found other people's entries much better than mine ngl, butttt I'll never understand, that my art is actually enjoyed by some people anyway, ngl. Even years later, I still sometimes feel, like I don't deserve to call myself an artist LMFAO
I also added a little funne below, we both wanted to draw for fun, once we were in a call just rambling and stuff. On the right, has been drawn by Kobra!! (You can open the green, first link above, to her insta itself! She doesn't have Tumblr. No one in my friend group does, but I love Tumblr tbh. :"))
You should try ceramic pans. They are the best flavour. /lh
ANOTHER POST THERE IS! WHERE ART IS! I might post character concept-refs next. I'm running out of "good-looking things" to post, that won't make me look like a total amateur from the 2010s DA era. I've only uploaded these in my scraps on DA back then, so maybe you'll get weekly posts, as I draw concept refs basically weekly, to keep my chara-base up to date for comms and art exchange!
I wanna do a DTIYS myself some day!! But maybe in 4 years, where I dream of having paid off all my art-debt finally I've been working so hard to pay off on lately...
#artwork#my art#digital art#art#artists on tumblr#character art#semi realistic#dtiys#dtiyschallenge#dtiys entry#dtiysart#dtiys instagram#doodle#meme#art tag#drawing#fainthed cherry#fainthed#o0fainthedcherry0o#o0cherrypie0o#Fainthed-Cherry#sonic oc#sona#sonas#sona sketch#sona art#oc stuff#ocs
3 notes
·
View notes
Note
What is an art piece you made that you are really proud of, and one that didn’t quite turn out.
what are the reasons you are/aren’t proud, what you would change/learned from the art, extra, extra.
I really like your art, and I’d love to know art behind the scenes ❤️
You can't make me pick between my darling babies ;w; But since i simply can't chose one, I shall instead name a few ^^ First, My Logan ref sheet :D I had been wanting to make ref sheets for the sides for some time now, I had originally planned a more simpler pattern to follow.
These are the original sketches, having Patton, Roman and Logan. Sadly FOR THE REST OF THEM, I might- maybe, perhaps... Have a bius ;w; Either way, I chose to switch the set up to be more to my liking. whilst also... being uh.. more complicated ;w;
So uh... I chose to do roman next. due to me not really drawing him much, witch is a damn shame- I love that little guy ;w;
I had wanted to do a more like, stage vibe for Roman, with thorns to hint to remus. But it never got done, and now i'm SURE it will never get done. due to me HATEINg line art ;w; Speaking of Remus~
THIS, RIGHT HERE- had NO RIGHT to be anything but a doodle. It's not the best, but it does get brownie points for it's wonderful color palette :)
And then this one :0 This was one of the first times I had did a more out there pose. I had been messing around with doodles when POOF! I just had to finish it ;w; Did you know though! at some point I was going to color it differently
This one.... This one is when everything went down hill I think- The pose is wonky, the backdrop is lazy, Everything just looks wack ;w;
Anyways ^^ Thank you so much for taking an interest in meh arts :] When it comes to me creating art, a lot of is motivation focused ;w; If i'm not feeling something it tends to not turn out well ;w; Sadly though, i've not drawn a lot of sanders sides in recent times, I've been more focused on my own oc's lol ;w;
#digital art#fanart#art#sanders sides#sanders sides fanart#ask#behind the scenes#sketch#my art#Thank you so muchith for your askith#logan sanders#remus sanders#roman sanders#patton sanders#virgil sanders
40 notes
·
View notes
Text
I'm glad you like it! Very much enjoyed the description of your reaction! I was really pushing for poster vibes by the end of it. Getting a little inspiration vortex going would be fun.
Like with how much I talked it up, it has no right to actually live up to the praise I've given it, but it still does :) Don't know how I managed that.
That is Nyx's PAK. I didn't know what sorta damage it got so I just went like she's basically a symabolic ghost in this anyway so it should be fine to just like give it cracks and a few stray wires.
Intially the plan was to have her and Miyuki fade into the background a bit more with their glowing eyes/PAKs being the main thing to draw attention to them. With maybe legacy repeating behind the Tallest in irken a bunch. Then I wanted to add Red and Purple mostly for self indulgent reasons. Then I saw the post about Zim being responsible for Callie's death and her love for the earth and I was like this goes in too.
That was ABSOLUTELY the feeling I was going for with Zim! I'm glad it conveyed so well. Actually you pointed out all the feelings I was really going for so I must of done something right.
Miyuki's pose made thing just feel really loopsided for a while and there was nothing really infront of her, like how Zim and Nyx were infront of the Tallest. Which was definitely symbolic at that point. So couldn't just like flip them or anything to see if that would help. I struggled there for a bit.
Then I really struggled with Lard Nar. I couldn't figure out how to pose him or anything. He had a chair for a bit. But it just didn't fit and the perpective was off and I just started on the line art and colors of Callie and Laska to not deal with him.
But I was like if I'm adding Lard Nar and Zim has a planet... Why not add Vort? Red's just waving anyway and I don't even need to redraw his hand to just make it look like he's holding a planet. So I probed you and Verm about your thoughts on the planet and smashed them together with mine. Boom! Rough sketch for it.
If both Lard Nar (the designer) and Miyuki (the comissioner) are in this then the Massive is a MUST. (I shrunk it later cause I was trying to unloopsidify the drawing. This was a constant and continuing struggle throughout.)
Thyme's bow. I have a character with a ribbon as a tie and one in her hair. I have drawn her more then anything else and that is why this bow was pretty easy for me.
Laska was super easy. Easiest aside from Zim right up until I had to shade her face. Then I could not for the life of me figure it out. There was a point where I had Callie and Thyme fully lined, colored, and shaded (and had figured out what to do with Lard Nar) where her face shadows were in a totally different style cause I just couldn't.
Doing the line art in Vectors honestly was the best decision I made for all of this. Though it did make me realize that while I hadn't really used Vectors in clip before for I kept expecting to morph lines like I did in sai and was very confused for a while.
I have drawn the Tallest a few hundred times at this point. Mostly stopped myself from finishing them out right first as a reward for myself(I love them). Look at that little bitchy hand Red's got on his chest. Cocky fucker.
Moving along.
First time I actually really tried drawing Miyuki. Her head and colors was a bit of a pain, but she came out great. Just a lotta line work and I was too distracted by everything else to get her done for a while.
My favorite part with her is that arm she's snaking around her back to grab at Callie.
The Massive took like three(?) days. Don't normally draw props or ships it was pretty fun though. Couldn't find a ref for a full side view so I used three angles I found on google. This is only notiable cause I really really struggle getting myself to use references. I think that's been getting a bit better since I started drawing fanart, but still.
Now Vort. Very fun to do. Very much a struggle. I experimented like crazy with this planet and it's moons. And honestly I don't even know how I got the moons like that. They were green and blue. Then they were orange and purple. Then some how I got a really cool texture on the minty one after messing with posterization and I couldn't replicate it on the others. Vort still looked off.
Those three days I was working on the Massive I was still working on other parts of the drawing to just keep up progress. When I worked on Vort. I only worked on Vort. (And Zim a tiny bit cause Earth was on the same layer and I moved it and the moon so he lost his fingers at one point.) Took two(?) days.
This is around the time saving started taking a while and I was sure it I even touched clip while it was saving it would crash. And while it didn't respond a few times I didn't have to find out if that was true.
Eventually I just I think Wave Distorted it and upped the tolerence on my selection tool to block out some of the more blended colors that were bugging me. Skipping over a lot of fuckery here but yeah. It turned out well.
Used a bit of what I learned from Vort on Earth, straight up stole and rotated one of it's moons and add atmospheres to things.
Background took a bit too. I knew what I wanted out of it and didn't know how to get there. There was a lot of trial and error. So so many layers. But it turned out better then expected.
This was honestly a lot more process stuff then anything else, but still. I wanted to write it out. It was a lot of fun and I really pushed skills. Plus like I stayed focused on something for over a week with out dropping and forgetting about it. So this is kinda a huge win for me. Makes me much more confident about drawing comics in the future.
Oh, and character interaction! Another breakthrough with this piece (possible the few before it too) I've never really been able to draw characters physically interacting or like reacting to each other before. Don't know why it. I just never could seem to get over that hurdle before so this is pretty major. Not only having so many character in it, but conveying what I want them to and not looking super stiff! Fantastic!
It is done! Here we got @spacegoathours Mina's ocs; Callie, Nyx, Thyme, and Laska with Lard Nar, Zim and three of the Tallest. Vort, Earth and the Massive. (I hope you like it!)
I went hard with this.
I was gonna draw 777 all week and instead I had a NEED to get this out. And it came out amazing! So thrilled! Very proud!
Imma come back and add more text later. Sleep is needed now.
#sorry for hijacking this reblog but I felt it was fitting to go on my tangents here#might not of been#but still#ghostiedoodles#refriedramblings#self notes#fav
342 notes
·
View notes
Note
You probably do a lot of life drawing seeing as how perfectly fluid your art always is so this ask might be redundant lol but,, i was wondering what kind of references you usually use? Do you just google similar poses, does it come from your mind, or do you have a go-to app to look through like pinterest?👉👈 i ask bc I struggle a lot with poses and usually when i look them up i end up drawing nothing bc its not. Ever good enough for me/what im looking for lol😔 still not sure how to even draw characters smoochin, rip
thank you, nonny!! i do a lil bit of life drawing, but man i really do feel the same way you do. while i'm happy to show some art when i get it done, the process can be a real struggle.
sorry this is gonna be long and all over the place lol hope it helps tho:
life drawing good: i recommend ditching the idea of finding the 100% Perfect Ref right off the bat. studying anatomy and life drawing (this site has a range of body types and fun poses) somewhat regularly, therefore growing my mental library so that i can try and make whatever pose is in my head happen later, has been more viable to me than spending hours looking for the Perfect Ref.
drawing a bunch of generic people skating without pressure of creating proper character art is good practice, and it primes me to then come up with a skating pose of my own.
ref hunting: i save pictures i might use as refs regularly in a browser folder - good refs, bad refs, boring refs - losing a ref standard can be helpful because at the end of the day it’s what you make with it, so it doesn’t have to be particularly mind-blowing to begin with. you don’t wanna reinvent the wheel or create the most never-been-done-before pose, you just wanna get a thing right.
pinterest is very good for poses, yes, though you have to know how to look for them - i.e. i found that typing out "dynamic pose" will not yield organic results, as opposed to looking up people in motion like athletes, boxers, skaters and such. for fighting, i recommend using photos or clips from (ideally staged lol) fights, as opposed to stock images where the models are standing for a while posing - the former preserves a lot of the movement. i also recommend looking up group photos from events or shows for interesting natural poses and people interacting.
best hot tip of all tho: what helped me most is to not treat references very religiously. don't be tied down by what's in your ref, or not finding the perfect one, because then you're focusing on accuracy and not necessarily on what you wanna communicate with your drawing. if you can't find what you're looking for in full, just use a part that you find interesting, and then bullshit the rest and revise accordingly.
idea-generating can be very hard but you can practice it like any other skill, because having a decent idea of what you wanna draw is helpful - you don't have to have the whole pose visualised 100%. it's the mood, body language and expressions, that i think are more important. looking at refs can help reveal your ideas and intentions, but i will not create them for you i’m afraid.
for example, speaking on characters smooching, i've drawn these using refs in pretty uptight way with no ideas beforehand - and i find them painfully boring because they're not rly communicating anything aside from a anatomical accuracy (more or less);
i was being too intent on staying faithful to the reference, and they're looking kinda stale to me. the only one that was done without any ref, was the bottom left - which i like! bc it's got spice and it’s portraying some emotion.
but i wouldn't have drawn it if i hadn't already started on the others, so maybe another good tip is to trust the process and not give up mid-work!! drawing stuff you’re not proud of is still drawing stuff, and not everything you create is gonna be satisfying. things are gonna click here and there, but you never know when, so don’t give up on your ugly artsy ducklings!!
#hope this makes sense. i need an editor#i hope you have an easier time and maybe some of these will be helpful anon!!
126 notes
·
View notes
Note
I just binged like 3/4 of your comic (slowed my roll to save some serotonin for later) and. Oh my god?? The art style is absolutely delightful! So warm and clean and emotive!! The characters are all so unique and likable!! I have never met these characters before today but I would protect them with my life. The most wholesome, aesthetically pleasing, delightfully anti-authority thing I’ve ever read. I genuinely can’t think of a comic that I’ve been more instantly hooked on. I wanna see Fleet climb a mountain and live their best life with all their friends 🥺 Do you have any advice on learning how to draw?? I’d love to be able to create something half this awesome some day! Thank you so so much for creating this and sharing it with the world :D
:']!! That's so very kind of you to say!! And I'm super happy that you like my comic so much! Rectify has been one big experiment for me, in both art and story telling, so I'm really happy to hear that it's been an enjoyable read :'']!
I hope you like how the story continues! ^-^
Sorry I've answered this ask a little late, I was legit trying to think of art tips ^^;; I only took an art class in high school, and I've kind of winged it ever since. I don't think I'm the best at giving art advice, and I don't just want to reiterate the things everyone always says.
I don't know how new you are to art, so these may or may not be all that helpful ^^;; There's a lot of specific advice that can be given about learning how to draw specific things, but if you've just started learning, the best place to start are basics!
*** Disclaimer: I'm not an expert or even trained in art :'] But if you want to see what I came up with, the advice is under the cut
Just keep drawing
I know that's the piece of advice everyone gives, but it really is the most important. It's so easy to try drawing once and give up when a drawing doesn't turn out the way you envision it. Getting discouraged is easy, but you have to tell yourself that there is a right combination of lines that will produce the image you want to make - you just have to keep trying to find it.
Drawing is both 'making your hand good at shapes' and half 'your brain learning the way shapes should be made'
There's definitely a technical aspect to drawing. Your hand will get more used to making lines and shapes.
But a big part of learning to draw is learning how shapes come together to create something bigger.
The more you look at art, the more you make art, the more your brain will understand how things come together.
Art is something you learn, so it's something you'll get better at :]! Even a week's worth of practice will show improvement.
Draw from a reference if you're teaching yourself how to draw something!
Using a ref is NOT cheating! I use refs! I've googled 'man throwing baseball' or 'person running' or 'hand holding a mug' so many times
There is never any shame in using a ref
If you're learning, you should only be using refs
It gets you used to drawing in perspective, without you specifically practicing perspective
Basic Shapes!
Everything can be broken into basic shapes. Even people are just a collection of boxes and spheres.
So if you've never drawn, draw some basic shapes and familiarize yourself with their 3D aspects
Then try breaking down an object into it's basic shapes!
Basic Color Stuff
The color wheel
Again, not sure how new you are to art, so I'm sorry if this is super redundant
complimentary colors like each other. The big ones are blue=orange, red=green, yellow=purple. Every color has a 'compliment': Blueish greens like orangish reds. Purpleish reds like yellowish oranges.
Experiment with color! You'll naturally like some combinations more than others and the more you experiment, the more you'll find things you like
Hue = the specific color
Saturation = how intense the hue is. Don't make every color super saturated, or it might be too overwhelming.
So, gonna get more specific here.
If you want to draw people, and you are just starting out, I would recommend starting here.
Find an image of a person
Break that person down into boxes and circles. Circles for joints, and boxes for the rest.
Draw lines down the front of the person to help you orient them
This will get you used to how a body comes together.
These two examples used came from https://twitter.com/JookpubStock on twitter. I highly recommend checking out their catalogue!
Now, I traced these. Tracing is a tool used to learn.
(( This may not be applicable to you, but if anyone's actually reading this, here are the tracing no-no's I follow:
Don't trace another artist's artwork.
Don't claim a trace as your own original work***
Don't sell a trace***
If you trace an explicitly free photo or model (like above) drop a credit or link to the original
*** unless you traced a photograph or work that you yourself personally made or took )))
Tracing a pose can help you learn how basic shapes come together to form a pose. The goal is to eventually create your own poses!
Once you're comfortable with that, try drawing the pose without tracing.
The other most helpful thing I did in art class was gesture drawing! You don't trace these - you just find an image and you give your best quick attempt at it. You capture the gesture. There's no limit to how much time you can spend on a gesture drawing, but the idea is to make them quick and loose!
I hope these have been at least a little helpful :]! Art is such a wide field there is so much general advice to give. The most important advice I can give is just keep drawing and don't be afraid to try new things ^^ Don't restrain yourself to one style. Just make what you feel like making in the moment!
11 notes
·
View notes
Text
Its mermay again! So here's a redesign of my siren Jekyll and a quick recap on the au! ⬇️

-Everything weird that Jekyll does is just accepted with people unknowingly making excuses for him and him just agreeing
-The story his classmates believe is that Jekyll was a rich kid who wasn't let outside much and always pampered. His parents bribed the college to let Jekyll in despite him not knowing alot of things
-The actual story is that Jekyll thought the doctor title sounded cool so he paid the college a bag of gold coins to let him attend
-You'd think with his limited knowledge Jekyll would fail but everyone is like..."oh cool, rich parents bribe colleges alot, heres some textbooks to catch you up. I can tutor you on weekends"
-Jekyll does have some general knowledge though! He has been studying humans for years
Oh hm, or should I give the au a different story?, I definitely could, but nah, I like making "He's a real fish out of water" jokes
And for general information about sirens-
Quite a few things I have retconned so this right here is your most reliable list
-Usually live in the deepsea and around the ocean floor
•Sirens•
-"Hair" is actually a bunch of sensory feelers! I'm hate drawing it and am greatly considering removing it!
-Can shapeshift
-You CAN eat them, but only if cooked by a professional (think pufferfish), there are no professionals
-Love meat, but can eat anything
-They like to hunt for their food
-Sirens hunting near the surface often shapeshift to look like merfolk, a peaceful species that often protect and trade with ships
-Sirens dont need to live underwater, because of this multiple people of died from what they thought was a normal animal
-Can turn people into Sirens, they prefer to just eat people though (People tuned into Sirens lose all memories)
-Sirens songs can range in power, some especially powerful Sirens can cause natural disasters
-Sirens never stop growing, especially old Sirens shapeshift to be smaller for convenience
-Sirens can live for a very long time (Immortal?)
-Some Sirens decide they're tired of being a Siren and shapeshift into a person
-Sirens are a rather neutral species that usually only attack if hungry or feeling threatened
-Siren personalities are as varied as humans
-Due to their shapeshifting powers it is VERY hard to kill a Siren, if you stab them they can just... shapeshift the stab wound away. Please dont try to kill a siren
-Merfolk are the children of Sirens and Humans. Unlike most fusion species(?) (Think ligers or mules) they are fertile. And most people aren't even aware Sirens and Mers are related
-As they can shapeshift, sirens also have natural forms that take no energy to be. Thus there are "Feather Fins" and "Deepsea Sirens"
Feather Fins: Very flowy, with wing-like fins! Colors and designs are based off of real birds, Jekyll is a strawberry finch
Deepsea Sirens: Very glowy! Im considering having their colors and designs be based off of real fish (or other underwater creatures) I've not drawn one in a very long time, so here's your best ref ⬇️
52 notes
·
View notes
Text
of mice and artblock
So, midterms happened and I abandoned this blog for a while. But now I’m back, and I come bearing mice.
*
I’ve been really struggling with finding subjects I like to draw. I’m happy to work on skeleton studies until Judgment Day to better understand anatomy, but I know I need to balance “homework” art with “for fun” art, or else risk losing motivation for learning to draw -- and I’m so used to writing fiction at this point that no subject really appeals to me artistically unless it’s got 5,000+ words of story attached (or at least some narrative/character ideas, yanno -- something for my brain to pick at). The obvious solution is to draw concept art and characters from my written stories, but I feel really intimidated by that because I’m such a beginner artist that nothing I create now will do justice to the vision I have in my head.
I need art OCs and concepts – things that I will only draw art of, and have never written a story about. Stuff that doesn’t have to match a previously established, written story, and that I can change as I learn more and my skills improve.
I ended up drawing a bunch of mice.
This was initially just a whim. Human anatomy requires a lot of skill to pull off, especially faces and hands, but mice felt more beginner-friendly to me. Admittedly, I was going for a more cartoony style as opposed to photorealism, so if you’re looking at this from a realism perspective then these are pretty poor mice. However, I don’t feel ashamed of them, which I am taking as a good sign.

I kept drawing one mouse over and over. I ended up calling him Leo just because it was funny – “leo” refers to lions, but here Leo is just a little mouse. But of course, giving him a name (and a gender, incidentally) is the start of a story. Via a flight of fancy, I got it into my head that I wanted to do a painting of Leo trying to catch a big snowflake. I made some thumbnails of what I wanted the scene to look like, and then cut out a roughly 7 inch x 7 inch piece of watercolor paper from a big sheet that I had under my bed, sketched the scene in pencil, and then finished with watercolor pencils (and a white gel pen for the snowflakes). The process probably took 2.5 to 3 hours.

So, now the lore is that Leo is a mouse living in a little house in an old tree at the edge of the woods, and he wears a red scarf. I did not like this painting. It seemed over-saturated and the colors didn’t quite work the way I wanted them to. I ended up watching a tutorial on color theory, and decided to redo the painting using my newfound knowledge of color schemes. I used this color palette tool to get an idea of what kinds of colors would look good together, and settled on a complementary scheme with bluish green and brownish red.
And then, everything went wrong.
I tried to redo the painting, still working traditionally. I rushed the sketch because I was so eager to get right into working with color. This time, to avoid over-saturation, I used watercolors out of a pan rather than in pencil form. Mixing the colors in the lid of the pan took a really long time because I was so picky about shades, and because I continued rushing I didn’t allow the layers enough time to dry. Leo’s scarf (now green instead of red) bled into his russet fur, and the mailbox was the wrong shape, and I tried to erase a pencil line and created a dark blotch over an area that was supposed to be white with snow – and then I gave up.

I had downloaded Krita, a piece of digital drawing/painting software, a while ago, but hadn’t had any success using it because my desk isn’t big enough to accommodate both a laptop and my small tablet. Using my lap to hold the tablet was an exercise in frustration, and I knew so little about how digital art works that I just felt really overwhelmed and lost whenever I opened the program.
However, Krita (like most digital art software) has an undo button that I find very alluring, so I decided to try it again, now on a shiny new desk from Ikea that is actually big enough to support tablet and laptop together. I think just the space on the desk really made all the difference, but also I was determined to get this artwork of a mouse to a place where I felt satisfied with it.
I spent a solid 5 hours working on what ended up being a very simple colored drawing of a mouse catching a snowflake outside his little house. I barely blended anything at all, and there’s no light source that required me to shade anything – it’s just flat color. However, I really like these colors, and I think I did well (for an absolute beginner). I want to go back and add textures/shading to give an impression of depth, but I'm not sure how.
Leo – like all of my figures – feels really stiff, so I also want to work on gestures/studies of mice doing things. And, thanks to the popularity of mice as lab animals and pets, there are way more reference photos of mice than I expected! Most refs depict the house mouse, Mus musculus, but I did find the work of a wildlife photographer named Dean Mason who spent 15 years photographing harvest mice (micromys minutus).
Unfortunately, all of the prior artwork in this post I had drawn almost purely from imagination, and I think it shows. I studied two mice from photos in pencil, then erased the lines until they were barely visible and tried to do the fur texture in ink (with a dip pen, so there is some unevenness when the pen was extra inky).

Left is my first attempt doing the fur texture. I was more cautious with layering pen strokes, so you can see the lines of strokes fairly evenly. Right is my 2nd attempt, where I was bolder with the pen. I like these mice more than the one I created in the digital painting; these ones (especially the right) feel more Beatrix Potter-ish, which is a vibe I like.
Do I want to go back and fix the anatomy in my digital art of Leo? Yes. I also want to take another stab at doing this piece traditionally, but this time, I'd go monochrome and try to do everything in brown. However, part of me is exhausted from drawing ten million snowflakes and does not want to relive that experience with a gel pen -- I've already done it once with a tablet pen, and that was enough.
I have a hazy, far-off goal of creating a comic of Leo having adventures with another mousy friend, but that’s so far in the future that it’s not worth spending time considering right now. In the nearer future, however, Leo’s friend might become a reality – I know he’s an albino mouse (name TBD) who either escaped from a drug-testing facility (I loved The Secret of NIMH movie as a kid) or else is a pet who was dumped into the wild by a human owner who no longer wanted him. Leo is outgoing and adventurous, and this friend is shy and cautious.
2 notes
·
View notes