#wow my style is inconsistent

[ckswitch]

Two of my beloved OCs,, at least in this style,,

They are besties your honor

[lakituus]

i live vicariously through daisy

[skyyxlite]

oh yknow. just this guy again

a friend asked me to draw vegito and frieren together so this little thing also exists. cool

[bisexualbrasil]

I can be ur angle 📐📐..... Or ur dvelil 😈😈😈

[beepyscircus]

I watched the show btw

[cometnoodle]

i missed him

[harefish]

the girls <3

[7-7-cherry]

Happy birthday Jiro!! <3 love u big guy

[whostolethelifeboats]

God, my first attempt at an animatic for my little guys will always make me go insane even when its my own shit.

[mukoda]

[clenching fists so hard] i need to get a real art style.....

[herbertpocketsfidgettoys]

Some more why not

is it obvious who my favorite character was at this time

I love you old dip drawing I made wheh I was 12

[chiruio]

Been a while!

my style is a little inconsistent…. wow (￣ω￣;)

[troubldteenz]

“Wow. Melviathon’s really crushing your dreams.”

I love how inconsistent my coloring style is for these goobers

[cupofadonis]

Wow, it's been a while since I drew something based on Sonic the Hedgehog!...

Well, well, I tried my hand at the Sonic Ova style a little, and I liked it!!

Honestly, the world of Sonic Ova - Planet Freedom is for me the most beautiful, interesting and canon place, and I am very sad that this world did not and never received its continuation...

This whole story with Sonic living on Mobius or Planet Earth is some kind of nonsense to me, because when I see cultural inconsistencies in the Sonic canon (which does not exist?? wtf-) I feel almost physically ill. A lot of characters were lost, deleted despite games and comics.

Eggman as a character stands still, and Sonic's world is not even clearly divided into which states...

Sonic's Ova revealed its potential for me in one film - What happened to the people in the new territory of "Dark Eggman"? Was it the apocalypse? How long ago did this happen? Is this why people moved to the fly islands? Why did people acquire animal features (For example, Sarah's cat ears and tail)? Is this due to the merger with the "Mobians"? Were there anthropomorphic animals before the apocalypse, or are they a consequence of it? Maybe the reason?

What about Sonic and Tails' house? Damn, did you see this COOL DESTROYED PLANE?!? Now remember Tails' house from IDW comics, which is just a damn joke

I can't love the damn Black Doom saga enough because it feels like a cheap Metarex parody. The only good thing Black Doom brought was the character Eclipse from Archie Comics -...Oh yeah, he doesn't exist anymore either. Like Cosmo.

Sally was a typical good character from the 97's who could stand up to the mouse from Chip 'n' Dale, but due to the company's negligence we have no SatAm ending, some kind of porn parody in Archie from Penderson, #Rally4Sally

No Sonic Ova, no completed Sonic Multiverse, there is no properly explained story of Silver, Blaze and Elise from Sonic 2006.

What about the fact that it was Sonic who was the Ultimate Life Form in the plot of SA2? What? Don't remember this? But what about the blue flask that fell to Earth and was considered lost? I congratulate you on the bad narrative of the SA1 and SA2 game series, friends...

Sonic Ova and SA1-2 feels like the only correct versions, it pains me to see how Sonic’s character is now changing for a new audience and the psychopathic egoist and narcissist Sonic turns into a sweet and shy hero, although even taking into account the seemingly terrible and negative qualities, Sonic was a hero...

Changes have always been and will be, this is normal, I don’t want to shout that it was better before and the grass is greener, but for me the canon is only Sonic Ova vision, and I would like to add this vision for myself in my Sonic Ova AU. I think it would be fun. Just for me and my auditory...

So ... What do you think about all of this?

[barananduen]

Art Advice: The Misconception Behind "Study Realism"

Most people who draw anime/cartoons have, while asking for ways to improve, at one point or another been told to "study realism." A common response to this is, "But I don't want to draw realism!"

But, did you know that the purpose behind this suggestion is NOT so that you draw realism? They're not suggesting you change to a more realistic style. What, then?

Let's look at this through an analogy:

Say you don't know music yet and decide you want to learn how to play the Happy Birthday song. You're not interested in playing anything else, just the HB song, and you haven't started learning anything related to music at this point. OK, that's fine, and now we have our situation set up. Once you've decided this, you set yourself to learning the sequence of notes to the HB song. You practice and practice, and, after a while, you can play it really well without a hitch. After a few years, it starts feeling bland to you, and you ask, "How can I make my HB song better?" And someone tells you, "Learn all the other music notes," and "Study classical and other genres of music." And you reply, "But I don't want to play that type of music; I want to play the HB song!" (And that's FINE! It's valid; it's what you want to do.[*Footnote 1]) But without having learned all the other notes and other types of music, you can't make a remix of the HB song, or an "epic version," or a hip-hop-fusion version; you've capped at the end of the first paragraph of this story.

So drawing anime or cartoons is like playing the HB song, or any one song in our example.

And here's where our misunderstanding comes in:

"Study Realism" DOES NOT MEAN "Draw Realism"

Yes, you'll have to draw it to study it (not only your brain, but also your hand needs to learn the skill), but it doesn't mean that's what all your artwork will look like. It is meant to give you more tools to make your anime and cartoon work stronger, more appealing, and more unique.

How will it do that? The more music notes you know, the more types of music you understand and can play, the more original a remix /version of the Happy Birthday song you'll be able to make - and it will be unique. Because you will be able to take all that diverse knowledge and apply it to your song, making it stand out, and the next time you play the HB song, people will go, "Wow! This is a really cool version!"

So now we can be clear: There is a difference between learning something and performing it. You can perform whatever you choose, but by learning all the things, your performance of your "Thing of Choice" will be stronger.

What, Exactly, Will Studying Realism Teach You, Then?

I. VALUES

If you learn how to paint/shade with a full range of values (by learning realistic shading) that properly depict both volume and lighting, you will have no trouble simplifying that to cel-shading or gradient-shading in your anime or cartoon drawings, because you will at once spot when something is undershaded or the shadows are in the wrong spot.

On the other hand, if you try to do cel- or gradient-shading first, you are way more likely to a) undershade, and b) have an inconsistent light source. And when these things happen, you won't be able to tell *why* your drawing looks "off" or bland.

II. COLOR

By studying realistic coloring, you'll be able to learn how color varies across an item (say, a shirt) that is a "solid color." Example: you're drawing a character with a pink t-shirt, standing in the sun, at the end of the school day. The t-shirt is solid pink, however, the colors on it will vary from orange-ish to purple-gray, with some areas almost a bright red (and that's not even considering items around the shirt that would bounce light back onto the shirt and change its color). But you'll only know this (and how to do it) if you study realistic coloring.

Then you can apply that knowledge to your stylized artwork and make it stand out more.

Painting of a stylized pear, where I studied real pears to understand their coloring and texture. See how studying realism can enhance your cartoon work.

III. MAKE BETTER STYLIZED ANATOMY

By studying and learning realistic anatomy, you will be able to make stylized art that, for example, doesn't have one arm longer than the other, because you will have learned how to measure proportions, even if you don't draw realistic proportions. So that if you decide you want to draw unrealistically long legs (eg: Sailor Moon), you'll be able to make them look good and keep them consistent.

You will also be able to draw figures in any position, because you will have learned how body parts are made up and how they move, as well as foreshortening/perspective. Then, when you go to draw a pose you haven't drawn before, it will be WAY easier.

IV. UNDERLYING SHAPES

Although this is one of the least-mentioned aspects of art-learning, it is, in my opinion, one of the most important, because when you learn to see underlying shapes (the quasi-geometrical shapes that build up a figure), coupled with learning how to measure a form using other parts of the same form as reference (measuring the length of one body part by the number of times another body part fits in it, as mentioned in Section III, above), you will be able to DRAW. (Period.) You won't be able to draw just people. Or just wolves. Or just cats. You will be able to break down a new subject into its building blocks and come up with a very reasonable likeness. And whatever's different, you'll easily be able to make relative measurements to spot why and fix it.

Once you learn to identify underlying shapes and how to measure proportions in anything, you will also be able to pick up and reproduce any existing style without much trouble.

[link to Tumblr post with this artwork]

For example, this was my first time drawing anything Peanuts. I didn't have to do practice sketches for it (though there's nothing wrong with doing that). But I knew, from realism, that to achieve a good likeness, you need to measure body parts relative to other body parts, so I looked at Schulz's drawings and was able to determine: OK, Charlie Brown's head is roughly this shape, his body is so many heads tall, his eyes are this % of the head, the ears are this far in, the arms reach down to here, etc. I knew what to look for.

V. FOR THOSE WHO WANT SEMI-REALISM

If you want to do "semi-realism," you'll have a way easier time of it by learning realism and then stripping it down as much as you like, than by starting off with "100% anime" and trying to build it up without knowledge of realism. People think the latter is easier, because it *seems* less intimidating, but it's like trying to drive to a store you've never been to without knowing its address: you'll be driving around forever trying to find it, and it will be frustrating. What people call "semi-realism" is stylized realism, and you can't really hit it without knowing how realism works.

CLOSING NOTES

It also doesn't mean you should stop drawing anime/cartoons and focus solely on realism for X amount of time - you can do both concurrently. In fact, the most fun way to study realism is to do so on your favorite subjects; you can even turn your reference into your favorite character!

Studying realism is also one of the best ways to help develop your OWN, unique style; one which, when people look at it, say, "Oh, that's [your name]'s work!"

[*]Footnote 1: It is fine as long as you are drawing for yourself. As soon as art is a job and you're drawing for an employer, you have to draw in the style they tell you to. So, in this case, it's to your advantage to be flexible.

I hope this was helpful and helps clear up a common misunderstanding people go through when receiving feedback. 💞

MORE ART ADVICE ARTICLES

You can find the index to all Art Advice Articles [here] including:

How to Deal with Art Block

How to Have a Positive Outlook

How to Develop Your Own Style (coming soon!)

etc.

[moon-upright]

julian doodle dump ???

im obsessed with him. so ive been working toward drawing julian in a way that does him justice, and i grow closer yet closer.

here's my latest drawing of the boy (left) next to the very first one (right), which i made over 2 years ago now (wow!)

vvv

im getting there.. i do love the improvement. the problem is just whether i can replicate this vibe or not. like if i draw him this way today, will i be able to do it again tomorrow? we'll see

here's a random array of more doodles and unfinished drawings ive made between then and now. i doodle a lot, you'll notice. it's very much on display, how inconsistent my art style is 😭 though tbf some of these are considerably older compared to others.

i just want to get to a place where i can draw whatever i want and it actually looks decent a majority of the time. but im self-taught and have zero patience, so it's slow going

that's it for now. i kind of want to post more art, so there may be more doodles here in the future. my lack of consistency is what keeps me from posting them most of the time. like don't even get me started on my backlog of esme sketches that don't even look alike

but maybe i don't even care at all (i do)