All of the tutorials, references, artwork, etc. featured here were not created by me. This is just an area for people to find anything related to helping others improve their art skills.
Please do not hesitate to submit or notify me of resources and tutorials for anything relating to art you can imagine will help people in their improvement of art. Since art is such a subjective and vague term, this can mean anything from writing to cosplay to cooking to even home construction.
Hey, if you don’t mind sharing, I’ve always wondered how you got that soft celling look on your characters in your comic. Any tips? I’m currently working on my own comic and I kind of want to go for a less harsh form of cell shading. Thanks!
A couple people have asked about the way I color things and I’ve been meaning to post a tutorial on it :]. I’ve never been too good at describing my process, but I hope this helps!
Anonymous whispered:Your designs always have such lovely details. May I ask, how do you find the time to do so much intricate detailing? I feel like it takes me forever to do stuff like that and it's a bit discouraging. I end up sticking with simpler designs despite loveing more detailed designs. I've tried using custome brushes but your details look so much more natural.
so you want to draw a character with sharp teeth? that’s cool! you have a lot of options. like most things, how you draw fearsome teeth can be improved by looking at nature and i’m gonna show you how.
omg dont be ashamed at all!! Hands are generally tough to get used to, lots of artists struggle with it! so dont be ashamed i feel you.
and I actually have made a hand anatomy guide before in fact! If you want to get better at drawing hands I def recommend you learn the basic anatomy first. Please check out the ones I made, I try to make it simple and easy to understand:
There’s my guide to the anatomy, but here’s some more tips that I’ve noted to myself that I’d like to include
First off, I’d like to just note on the fingers: if you pay close attention to your own hand, you may notice the fingers are ever ever so slightly curved inward. It’s a very subtle detail, but I noticed that, despite how slight it is, it can make a hand look more lively, and less stiff.
Second, the “M” on the palm! Your hand moves in many ways, and because it does it creates creases in your hand. The most prominent creases appear to make an M shape; this is handy to remember for what I’m going to talk about next. (It also could be a “W” I guess, or to be more specific a “ )X( “; just think of it in whatever way helps you remember!)
SO now that you see the M, draw your hand as a basic blocked shape and add your details. As you do, you can see that the M divides the palm into four basic parts!
When the hand moves, parts A, B, or C of the palm, alone or in different combos, will create the general poses that the hands do normally. These parts are the parts that move, with D being stationary, no matter what!
Here’s a chart of all the possible combos. Once you have down what part of the hand moves for a certain pose, you can change up the fingers and tweak it a bit to do what you need to make it more specific!
This is simply my method of drawing hands. God knows there are hundreds of tutorials out there by other artists, but personally, this way helps me the best (after learning the anatomy first).
This way I can divide the hand and combine the parts in any such way I need!
Hands take a lot of effort to grapple, and you need to practice them a lot, especially foreshortening of the hand; that’s really something you need to learn through your own studies. Look at your own hands, draw hands from life, from magazines, shows, comics; just draw hands! You’ll eventually figure out a method that works best for you. So to get better at drawing hands; draw hands!! And don’t stress over it, have fun with it!
For those of you that like everything neatly organised, here’s links to EVERY ONE of my first 150how to THINK when you draw TUTORIALS, in ALPHABETICAL ORDER for#SkillUpSunday!Enjoy, link, pin, share! Cheers!
This was a request and at first I wasn’t sure if I had anything to provide with, but as it turn out it got a little longer than I expected because there were actually things I had to say!! Wow!!
Anyway, this is some guidelines I follow when I try to make the face expressfull, more specifically the mouth! It is often neglected, since it’s actually pretty hard, I’ll admit. But I’m here to help (hopefully…)! A mouth expression tutorial as per request. Enjoy and hopefully it will help some a little. ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ
Draw the teeth at the right angle.
This is super important. The upper jaw follows the angle of the head, and the lower jaw will depend on how open it is. Make sure you have a rough estimate of where the teeth are, and how much of them you’re going to see!
The lips will VERY roughly follow the same angle as the teeth. It really depends on the character, but it gives you a sense at least.
If you DON’T do this, you’re going to lose so much volume and the mouth is going to end up looking unrelatable. I showed this example in this tutorial:
It’s not just the lips!
The cheeks, chin, and tongue play a role too!
Try look at your own mouth or references! I have a very pliable and large mouth, so that’s one reason why my characters have it too lmao.
ASYMMETRYYYYY (ง ͠° ͟ل͜ ͡°)ง
I cannot emphasize how important asymmetry is when drawing expressions. It applies not only to the eyebrows to achieve the Dreamwork Face™, but also the mouth. Seriously if you draw a symmetric mouth I will deliver myself to your mailbox and then shout at you until you fix it.
Look at the difference between these two for example: which one has more “life”?
I think you get the idea.
Push and squish - give it flow
Here’s an old drawing I have but it illustrates how I think when I squish the mouth, and use folding and wrinkles to my advantage.
Look at your own face and see where skin bundles up, where it creases the most and when bumps appear on your chin. Subtle details makes all the difference!
One VERY effective detail is illustrated in the first sketch, where I pull upwards on one side, and downwards on the other. That’s a good detail to use when the character is making a skewed expression, or is extremely frustrated. I encourage you to play around with that concept bc it’s ~super effective~!
EXAMPLES:
Happy: Your entire mouth is pushed upwards, not just the corners of your mouth!
I tend to draw a :3 mouth bc I’ve been drawing Lance too much….. You don’t have to but it’s basically imprinted in my motor memory by now.
Pouting/frowning: corners are pushed down, middle pushed slightly up. Sometimes, there’s a slight dip in the middle too. It can give a sense that the character is biting their lips.
Showing frustration/intimidating/is intimidated: basically showing a lot of teeth. The corners are as open as possible and the middle sorta more squished. An extremely important detail here is showing some of the gums, and open space between the cheeks and teeth. That way it looks like the mouth it open to it’s full potential. Here is also where you basically MUST add folds and bumps, or else it’s not going to look relatable.
(Here I am again with the pulling upwards on one side and downwards on the other, as illustrated on the last sketch)
And then again, here’s just another doodle showing how important it is to show the gums. It’s the same face twice, but the second one looks slightly more frustrated doesn’t it?
As you can see, this last one is very versatile and I draw it a lot. Play around with the basic shape and see how much subtle details makes a lot of difference!
That’s it!
I hope that cleared some things up and was somewhat helpful! Enjoy drawing ✨
v__tori asked about: uhhh posing characters interestingly when theyre just like talking or standing around, this is comic related so camera angles factor into that too i guess,,
I’m going to answer the second half of this question in this post (framing), you can find the first part about posing & acting here!:
As with the previous post, I will be focusing largely on sequential story telling (comics, storyboarding, etc), but it will still apply to a single image!
So when framing your shot, you want to think about what exactly it is you’re trying to say.
As an artist, you’ve got two ways of giving your viewers information: Through what they can read (dialogue), and through what they can see.
Writers are often told “show, don’t tell,” and this is just as relevant for art! Wherever possible, you want to show your viewers what it is you’re trying to say to them. Your audience is smart, you don’t need to spell everything out for them.
Where you place your camera changes what the viewer sees, so what is it that you want to tell them? How do you want them to feel about this situation or character?
Here’s a scribbly example for you:
With the first panel, I wanted to mostly focus on Greta w a lil bit of Edel in the shot… but most importantly the view is a little off kilter! :
Tilting the horizon line like this is called a dutch angle, and using it gives a shot a sense of unease, disorientation, or in this case desperate, frantic action! (I also just happen to like drawing stuff slightly from above LMAO)
So: - What is it that I wanted to tell the viewer? Greta is worried about Edel, and there’s some sense of urgency here. - How did I want the viewer to feel? I want the viewer to feel concerned and a little uneasy.
The next panel isn’t really anything special, Greta is the main focus so she’s the only one in the shot! A mid long shot like this lets you see how Greta is acting.
The next 3 panels are closeups of their hands. What I wanted to tell the viewer is that Greta is scared, and how tightly she’s holding onto Edel. So, the focus shifts from Greta’s face to her hands.
Then we zoom back out to some mid long shots so you can see their faces again & how they’re interacting. The sixth panel is also quite close to them, it gives the shot a sense of intimacy!
Does that make sense? I hope so 💦
As with the previous post, I would recommend studying films - this time to get a better understanding of shot framing, and some ideas of what kinds of shots you can use.
With this in mind, why do i think this shot is framed this way?
Your main aim in doing these studies is to try get into the head of the artist/director.
To give you an idea of what you’re looking for when you’re studying these films, lets have a look at a couple scenes from kung fu panda 3:
So: Po goes off to fight Kai, everything’s been building to this point and Po seem’s to get a strong start!
We’re given a wide shot of the two of them sharing equal portions of the screen, on a level plane. As neither one of them dominates the screen, we’re given the impression that they are equals.
Quickly however we learn that Po’s signature move does nothing to Kai, and shown just how much stronger he is than Po. Immediately, Kai is given more screen presence, the angle changes to look up at him, giving that sense that Po is inferior. Because of how the shot is framed, Po is literally beneath Kai.
We’re shown Kai looking down on Po’s fearful expression,
And pretty much every shot after this has us looking up at Kai, low down from the ground, or looking down on Po from high above. The intent here is to create a sense of fear and anxiety, by putting us and/or the protagonist beneath Kai.
These shots are also tilted a little, remember the dutch angle I mentioned earlier? They’re doing the same thing, creating a sense of unease with the unsteady ground plane.
But then these roles are reversed later when the tides change, and Po becomes stronger than Kai. At this point, Po is the one lifted above Kai, and Kai is left looked down upon, giving the viewer a sense of power over him!
While you’re studying these scenes, I recommend doing some 3-tone thumbnail studies to really get a feel for the composition.
Don’t worry about making it look pretty, just try to understand how the shapes are being arranged in the shot. Why do you think the shot designer made these decisions?
The more you try to understand why something has been done this way, the more you can apply it to your own work!
It’s Meg for this week’s TUTOR TUESDAY! Today we take a little look at hopefully some exercises that will help with drawing horns! So go draw some peeps with horns, my dudes. If you have any recs send ‘em in here or my personal. Keep practicing, have fun, and I’ll see you next week!
Trakoclock asked:
Hey, if you don’t mind sharing, I’ve always wondered how you got that soft celling look on your characters in your comic. Any tips? I’m currently working on my own comic and I kind of want to go for a less harsh form of cell shading. Thanks!
