#tldr the secret to expressiveness and cuteness is to draw by feeling and use soft pretty colors and Lots Of Shiny

[cozylittleartblog]

Hey hey, your transformers art is amazing and I love how cute and expressive everything is! I'd love to see how you go about making them!! (U don't have to I just wanted to say your stuff is neat!!)

hey hey, thank you so much for enjoying them and letting me know too!!

i’m not suuuper good at explaining, especially with broad topics, but i’ll do my best for you! i don’t have one process for everything, it depends on what type of drawing i’m doing. a lot of my stuff starts out as thumbnails though, which are REALLY FAST little drawings that only give the Bare Minimum of information and are usually drawn real sloppy like. here’s some examples, they’re p much the best i have on hand rn lol (i linked the finished comics after them so you can compare if you want)

finished comic ^

finished comic ^

they’re basically stick figures with just enough detail to tell which characters which, and almost no-effort aside from thought going into poses/body language, and especially facial expressions - the best expressions come from just Drawing Some Crazy Exaggerated Bullshit and running with it. i like to draw what the emotion feels like, not so much what it looks like, y’know? they dont even have to be perfect representations of what the finished things gonna look like, stuff can change in the actual sketch and lineart and Later In General(tm), i just try to get the Vibes down.

sometimes i do my lineart directly off my thumbnails, sometimes i dont, depends on how good the thumb actually is. doing that is good for getting really fluid expressive stuff though, or at least i think it is. i don’t really do it for Print/Commission Quality stuff xD after linearts done i do colors, and i try to use soft, muted colors. lots of saturation hurts your eyes, but when things are more toned down they blend together better and look cute! honestly i cant explain my understanding of colors too well since its really subconscious but just pick what looks cute together honestly. it helps to not use raw colors - my reds actually have a touch of pink in them, my yellows have a touch of orange in them, most of my blues actually have a little green or purple in them, etc. and after colors are done... that’s it, really! if there’s shading it’s probably a soft color on its own layer set to multiply, it helps unify everything. some subtle gradients here and there can make something look slightly deeper than it actually is and there’s something about going a little overboard on the glitter and shiny effects that just Enhances The Cute Factor. same thing for subtle color overlays and tinting your lineart (using a color that isn’t just Straight Black, like really dark pink or really dark blue. theme it to the character, be aware of contrast and complimentary colors, stuff like that)

... genuinely no idea if i answered your question at all but I hope you got something out of my ~ * ~ rambling ~ * ~, ill leave you on a progress gif because Why Not