Your Designs Always Have Such Lovely Details. May I Ask, How Do You Find The Time To Do So Much Intricate

So I asked a couple jokes earlier but if you're still giving advice - how is it you simulate a painted texture in digital art? Like, I dont understand the jump from sketch to pretty artwork??? Or just colouring in general tbfh

there’s no jump at all, more like steps. base color, shading, blend shading, more shading, highlights. it’s really simple, honestly.

you can leave the colors as a base, but if you want, you can add shadows.

for maximum impact on the shadows, make sure the blended shadows are of a similar hue to the base colors, and the cel shadows are a color that’s opposite on the color wheel. for example, here i used mostly warm colors like brown and peach for the base and blend, but with the cel i used a cool color, blue.

and you’re done!! if you want more of a painting-ish style, use textured brushes or watercolor brushes and lots lots more blending with them. keep in mind where the curves and shapes of your subject are, and use your light source to your advantage. color theory is also good to know! hope this helped some!

hi! i’m absolutely in love with ur OCs and ur art :0... how do you make ur characters so diverse? (currently struggling with same face syndrome lol)

TYSM <33 

I think it has a lot to do with big shapes and the relationship between the characters features. So with my OCs for an example I made the shape of their heads very distinct. None of them have the same shape, and the same goes for their eyes, noses and mouths. If you run out of shapes you can just change the relationships, like have one character with a square face, big round eyes and a small mouth while another has the same square face but with flat eyes and a low nose. 

This is used in siluettes and body shapes as well! One specific thing you can keep in mind is where a character’s weight is. Annix has a very square body with mass evenly distributed over her arms, chest and legs, while Aligra has all of her weight focused on her wide hips and big hands/feet. It helps to look at the body type of yourself and the people around you. I have long spindly arms and legs with most of my weight in my boxy hips!

Weight can also be used to vary the characters body language: Corvet has an exaggerated arch to her back while Kiropt pushes her pelvis out in a slouch. This movement in their spines completely defines how we read their personalities. Corvet looks high strung and snobby while Kiropt looks relaxed and careless.

When it comes to humans you get a lot of diversity for free if you make your characters different ages, etnicities, sizes etc. The most distinct differences between etnicities is the shape relationship I talked about earlier. If you make one of your characters white and one east-asian, the white character will naturally have thinner lips and a more pronounced browbone which already makes them different before you’ve even designed them.

Last thing I’m going to mention is perspective. Sometimes your characters faces look too similar because you always draw people from the same angle! Just making them look up, down or to the side a little can make a huge difference. Especially if you draw really stylized art since you can’t draw a nose viewed from the front with the same lineart as a nose viewed slightly from the left.

I know this explanation is a lil messy but I didn’t have time to do a proper tutorial. Thank you for asking though, and good luck with your art! :)

Eh, just a lil’ something. 

“ Where we’re going we don’t need proper proportions “

Here’s a little Art Tip about a very specific part of the body. Pop a squat and see how it looks on you.

Anatomy for Sculptors 35 by anatomy4sculptors

You should make more of these tutorials! They are very helpful :3

Well… I once made a torso tutorial.

So you might be saying: Lion why a guide on drawing black people? Well young blood it’s because a lot of people cant…seem…to draw…black people..Amazing I know. 

Racist (caricatures) portrayals of black people have been around forever, and to this day people can’t seem to draw black people like they are human. If your artwork resembles any of the above even remotely your artwork is racist and offensive. If you try to excuse that as a stylistic choice you’re not only a terrible artist, but racist too!!! Congrats.

Whitewashing is also a problem. A lot of people refuse to draw black features on canonly black characters. While this example isn’t colored, lightening the skin-tone of a character is also considered whitewashing. So lets start with features!

Now all black people have different noses thats a no-brainer, but black noses tend to have flatter bridges, and wider nostrils. Please stay from triangular anime noses and small button noses. Your drawings should not depict black people with abnormally large noses. (Especially if you do not draw other characters this way)

If you feel like the way you draw lips on black characters is offensive or resembles a caricature,it probably does and you should change it. ABSOLUTELY AVOID PLACING LIPS AT THE BOTTOM OF THE FACE. 

Hair is so diverse! Please get used to drawing braids, locs,kinks and coils! If you can learn to draw ringlets and long waves you can learn how to draw black hairstyles.

Add clips! Learn how to draw baby-hairs and never be afraid to add color Pinterest and Google are free my dudes! Also try using square brushes for blocking in coils.

OK THAT’S ALL YOU GUYS

Hello? Im getting into drawing and you leg so well? Any advice?

YES! Ok so disclaimer, I did not make this technique. The technique I use i learnt from Sycra on Youtube, please go check out their videos cause they are super detailed and excellent. I also learned my colour theory from their videos, seriousy good stuff. Ok so I usually start out with a hip box. How this is shaped depends on how you want ur character to look i guess but it’s roughly up turned isosceles trapezium. 

from here the basic measurements are about halves not including the hip box. I tend to make the thighs the same height as the torso. 

Ok so here is where Sycra’s technique comes in. They call it the lightning technique i think?? you essentially draw a curvy lightning bolt then connect it up.

line over top and adjust + feet

the actual composition of the leg i like to think of as tubes with one end smaller than the other. So the thighs are larger at the top and thinner towards the knee. The shin is a more pronounced curve though. You can also cross two lines over as shown and use that as a guideline.

I always use the lightning technique for legs from profile since it works best. The back of the shin is curved while the front is straight unlike the thigh which seems to be soft and curvy all over aha

I hope this makes some kind of sense??????

I don’t really think I’m that good at anatomy (or females) but this is quite a popular request so… I’m making a tutorial, and this is the part to show you what NOT to do with your fellow humans. More coming… eventually.

I suck at breast variations, but I try; see this page for awesome references: x

I'm a little confused. If it's racist to depict characters with noticeable epicanthal folds, then doesn't that imply that the epicanthal fold is considered an ugly feature by the person making the criticism? Seeing as it's a normal feature that many asians have...I can understand not wanting it to be exaggerated into a racist caricature, but leaving it out entirely? That doesn't rub you as being a little "Look, I left the East Asian features out so they'd be pretty!"? Which is racist in itself?

i’m assuming you’re referring to my we bare bears example. first of all, drop the ‘gasp you’re actually being racist against yourself??’ tone. i’m fine with dialogue but i have asian perspective and experience. be respectful.

no one said it’s racist to draw epicanthal folds. if your art is more realistic and detail-focused, it makes sense to include different kinds of eye folds. but in a cartoon, non-epicanthal folds aren’t translated. it’s not like you see little lines above a white person’s eyes. they’re just the typical round style. so it makes sense that the element of eye folds are left out entirely when it comes to all depicted races.

i used we bare bears as a good example because it’s the rare time asian characters’ eyes actually fit in with the style. they don’t need to squint, or be abnormally small, because no one else’s eyes do that. i don’t care that chloe has big eyes, because she’s a kid and everyone else, regardless of race, is similar. it matters more to me that her heritage is shown and celebrated rather than her having token asian traits.

sometimes cartoons can give asian eyes a lil difference and that’s fine too! candy from gravity falls has wider eyes, but they’re still round and cartoony. it’s a noticeable aberration from the style but it’s a small and harmless detail.

total drama, while not the uh, best example for a lot of things, has a great angular style. a lot of characters (gwen, izzy, duncan) have smaller eyes while not being asian. so it makes sense that heather, a polynesian character, has a bit of a half-circle shape to her eyes. it shows a diversity of eye shapes and sizes without focusing on racial stereotypes. 

but ‘everyone has big eyes except the squinty asians’ happens. a lot. take trixie from the fairly odd parents. everyone’s eyes are round and big. hers are half circles, like 40% the average size. if her eyes are ‘accurately’ shaped, why does everyone else get identical cartoonish circles?

disclaimer: i grew up idolizing any representation i found, and i liked trixie a lot. and for children, it’s not the end of the world if exclusively asian characters are given small eyes. but it’s clear that she was designed by non-asian people, and there is always room for improvement.

onto more realistic art! when it comes to stereotypically limiting asian design vs. respectfully showing asian diversity, _ket2 put it best.

in conclusion, if you’re going to draw asian characters, don’t make them all have the same ridiculously small eyes compared to everyone else. asian people, especially artists, have been saying this forever.unlearn limiting racial preconceptions. learn from references and how diverse people look in real life.