i mostly reblog (fan)art

I might not explain this correctly. If I don’t, then just find a better description how to draw POCs with better art. There are a ton of posts here on tumblr.

First, I noticed that you draw lighter palms on black and POC hands. I appreciate that part, since a lot of people either aren’t aware of this detail or just ignore it because of their art style. However you didn’t blend their colors of their skin and palm. This makes their hands look slightly uncanny. You probably have a blending tool or a soft airbrush in whatever drawing app you use. Blend those two colors.

Light skinned East Asians’ palms(like mine) are basically the same as their skin color.

Also don’t make the palm too pale and unsaturated. There’s blood flowing beneath the palms. Make it a bit rosier.

Second, eyes. I didn’t find any problems of you drawing their eyes but since people tend to draw Asians’ eyes(especially East Asians) really weird, I’m gonna explain it to you anyway.

If you draw East Asians’ eyes like these three I’m pointing at…

Asians have so many types of eyes. Including small and slanted eyes, I’m not asking you to stop drawing those kind of eyes. But try drawing different shapes. Monolids. Double eyelids. Eyelids with less fat. Eyelids with more fat. Etc.

If you want to draw eyes more realistic, Caucasian eyelashes tend to be more curly than those of Asian eyelashes. Idk why. They just are.

Third. Black peoples’ hair is surprisingly not that hard to draw. You have to set up their hairline. Idk how to describe this. Just don’t add the hair like a ball of cotton. Imagine the har sprouting from the head.

If you want to draw a variety of black peoples’ hairstyles just google it.

Fourth. You draw thin black lines around the lips. This is fine if you intended to draw in a cartoony style, but it’s weird if you wanted to draw realistically. Don’t draw black lines around the lips. I don’t have much to say about lips, study them. Stare at peoples’ lips but don’t be a creep. Use photos as references.

Seriously, where did Steve find that armor? I hope he didn’t steal it from an aggressive warrior or something…I don’t want him to get in trouble, ya know? It’s been a year since this tutorial is on Patreon, so I’ll post it for everyone now! (I have to work on a reptile scales or transparent materials tutorial one day tho)

Underwater tutorial: https://darhak.tumblr.com/post/642964456883765248/steve-why-is-he-always-like-this-metal-tutorial

For those of you that don’t know what 4c hair is, 4c hair is a hair texture type that contains coils to small and tight that the hair appears to be more puffy rather than curly ( like to photo below ) this is in NO WAY to be confused with curly hair. there is a drastic difference.

As a black artist that primarily draws characters with 4c hair, I’ve been asked many times to do a tutorial on 4c hair so here we go~

before we get into 4c hair, lets take a moment to fully understand it by talking about hair texture in a general sense first

let’s take a look at this example of straight hair vs curly hair ( 1 type straight hair vs 3 type curly hair )

If you take a moment to compare the two you’ll notice straight hair is flat, it has no texture. Straight hair perfectly hangs down similar to liquid-like silk. It’s lack of curl pattern is the reason as to why it hangs perfectly flat.

curly hair on the other hand doesn’t lie down flat and silky like straight hair, It’s more thick. Curly hair in it’s raw and unstyled state has a trapezoid like shape this is because the sides of the hair spread more outward.

So why is this? Why is straight hair flat and curly hair thick?

the answer to that question is a thing called piling up. When it comes to hair texture, the shape of the hair strands aren’t the only thing that matters, its how the strands coexist with each other, Curly hair strands coexist by piling up on top each other.

moisture also effects hair texture too, different hair types absorbs moisture differently, thus the thickness of each hair type is different. 

…..soooo, how does this all relate to how to draw 4c hair?? 

Well let’s take a look at the drawing below. Notice how the arrows go outward more as the hair texture gets curlier. As we’ve already discussed, this is because hair piles up, The curlier the hair texture, the more it piles up on each other, the bigger it gets, the more outward the arrows go.

Out of any hair texture, 4C hair has the most curls. Because of this, the hair piles up on each other so much that it doesn’t lie down flat like straight hair, nor does it make a trapezoid like shape like curly hair, it instead becomes more cloud like.❤️

This is what you need to take into account when it comes to drawing 4C hair.

Think of it as piling up a bunch of cotton balls on each other. The most cotton on top of top to lead to a bigger patch of  cotton. this is 4c hair.

How to not draw 4c hair:

Garnet fanart. Let’s talk about Garnet Fanart. I notice a trend that when artists draw Garnet from Steven universe, her hair texture is usually changed to 3 type curly like texture. This subtle form of White washing has confused me because this is inaccurate. 

Garnet’s hair is in the shape of a cube. Though 3 type hair piles up on each other, it isn’t curly nor thick enough for their hair to stay in the shape of a cube. Curly hair lies down more than 4c hair. So garnet’s hair being in the shape of a cube is a dead giveaway that it is 4C. Why do you think hairstyles like flat tops are usually seen on black men with 4c hair? It’s because, the 4c hair texture is thick and strong enough to stay in whatever shape you put it in.

please, if you’re drawing a character with 4c hair, avoid drawing it like curly 3 type hair, this is very anti-black and texturist.

So, how do you draw 4c hair?

honestly, its the most easy thing in the world

i wanna clarify that blobby looking 4c drawings ( like the one on the top left ) can work depending on how cartoony your art style is.

Another thing that I want to greatly clarify when it comes to drawing 4C hair is, YOU. DONT. NEED. TO. DRAW. EVERY. HAIR. STRAND!…..like, seriously. I’ve gotten many messages about how 4C hair is hard to draw, and it’s always left me confused; but then I find out that the same people that have trouble drawing 4C hair, attempt to draw every single strand of hair. This is unnecessarily time consuming because it’s merely impossible to get every single detail down, especially when you have a simple cartoon style. 4C hair does not require much effort, all you’re doing is drawing lumps. It’s that simple, nothing more nor nothing less.

The reason why I greatly advise all of you to avoid drawing every single hair strand is because in real life, when you look at a 4C textured Afro, your eyes don’t pick up on each individual hair strand like straight or curly hair. 4C hair, appears to be more undefined and cloud like, so attempting to draw each and every individual strand is unnecessary and will most likely end up looking inaccurate.

Listen up you fucks because I’m not wasting thousands of dollars on an art degree to watch y’all fuck up basic color theory.

Red, yellow, and blue are the primary colors

If you’re using p i g m e n t.

Do you hear me? When you’re using traditional media, fucking actual goddamn paint, Bob Ross style, your primary colors are!

When you use paint, your primary colors are red yellow and blue and don’t forget it.

NOW THAT CHANGES COMPLETELY WHEN YOU GO FUCKING DIGITAL.

THE DIGITAL PRIMARY COLORS ARE RED BLUE AND GREEN IF AND ONLY IF YOUR WORK IS GOING TO STAY DIGITAL, ON THE SCREEN, AND NEVER LEAVE THE SCREEN, AND OF COURSE IF YOUR WORK IS GOING TO BE PRINTED. ON A PRINTER. WITH INK. THEN. AND O N L Y  T H E N.

ARE YOUR PRIMARY COLORS.

CYAN. 

MAGENTA.

AND YELLOW.

So say it with me folks!

Red yellow and blue, are the primary colors for traditional pigment that’s mostly used in paints and shit. You use red yellow and blue when you’re painting traditionally, Bob Ross style. 

Red blue and green is light, which is what you’re painting with when you pick up your tablet and go digital.

CMYK is ink, and ink only. You could use cyan, magenta, and yellow as your primary colors in paint if you wanted to be a complete dick, but they’re not your primary colors unless your work is going to be printed using. i n k. The only time they could be considered the primary colors in a traditional medium is if you’re using ink.

Is my icon. I painted this using RED. GREEN. AND BLUE. AS MY PRIMARY COLORS and they turned out fine. Of course, I used the finger smudge tool first and then the color mixing tool and then the blur tool, but hey what do I know.

Clearly using the blur tool only doesn’t cut it.

“Oh but Leo!” You say. “You used cyan and magenta in that color wheel!”

Well bitch guess what.

this is the digital color wheel. I’d say I mimicked that pretty well, don’t you think?

Oh and one other thing, notice how Blue and Yellow are directly opposite each other on this color wheel? That’s because we’re dealing with light, and with light, yellow and blue are complimentary colors.

Which is why when you mix them, it looks like this:

Which is a pretty neutral gray tone: They cancel each other out on the rgb color wheel when you mix them together.

BUT WITH PIGMENT THE PLACEMENT IS DIFFERENT

If you’ll notice, yellow and violet are now opposite each other, meaning they’re complimentary colors and if you mix  them, they’ll make a neutral gray.

But if you mix yellow and blue, same colors as before, YOU GET THIS:

Now keep in mind that the person in the video uses a darker blue, so they get a darker green, but the point is that it doesn’t make that neutral gray.

Now what happens when we mix yellow and violet paint?

Ah yes, you get a bunch of muted colors the more evenly you mix them.

What happens when you mix yellow light and purple light?

The reason the primary colors for light are so dramatically different from the primary colors for paint and ink is because your eye only receives combinations of red light, blue light, and green light. Our eyes do not have a sensor (cone cell) for yellow light. So when we paint with light, red green and blue are our primary colors. Because of our eyes.

Furthermore, paint primary colors are colors that cannot be created by mixing other colors together. For paint, they are red yellow and blue, because you cannot mix orange and green to get yellow. Mixing orange and purple paint does not make red. And mixing green and purple paint does not make blue.

Mixing blue and green paints will make cyan. Mixing red and blue paints will make magenta.

That’s why cyan and magenta aren’t primary paint colors.

However, you can’t mix yellow and blue ink and get cyan. You can’t mix red and blue ink to get magenta.

And that’s why cyan and magenta are the primary ink colors.

Brighter and stronger paints are created through tints and shades, through a thorough understanding of color theory and a few quality paint recipes. Not by bullshit posts on tumblr designed to mislead you.

The writer: 

  Collab I did with the amazing @sparksyart! They did the sketch, and I linearted and colored it! 

skin color ref because some of yall non-black poc and whites keep fucking up as if yall don’t know there’s other shades of brown when u racebend for woke points or something 

tfp kids as cybertronians!!! Jack is a motorcycle, Raf is actually a telescope, and ironically enough miko is ALSO a motorcycle, but one with HUGE spikes on the rims and back paneling so she can ram into enemies and pop their tires and such!