Art resources for Stormlight!
Hey do you want to draw Stormlight fanart? Is the world so dazzlingly large that parts of it are beyond what you're currently able to draw? That's a pretty common experience! So I've put together a list of resources you might find helpful. Assume that none of these resources have image descriptions.
Pose and body type references
Stormlight has a lot of action poses and some variation in body types (I see you Cord I love you Cord) - expand your ability to draw poses and body sizes!
Trueref.io - free reference photos made by artists. Models are in underclothes. They're generally thin and have a variety of ethnicities.
Nappy.co - free reference photos of Black and Brown people of various sizes in modern clothes and settings.
Howard Schatz - a photo series of the body types of various world-class athletes
line-of-action.com - this website offers timed figure study as well as animals, shapes, hands/feet, expressions, and environment drawings.
How to draw fat people - a tumblr list of resources including free access to the book Morpho: Fat and Skin Folds
Adorkastock - free reference photos with a variety of models, and a sketch resource for timed figure studies
Drawing Asian and Black Faces
This is a challenge for a lot of artists who are new to the Stormlight fandom! The books describe the Alethi as having tan (NOT "tanned") skin and epicanthic folds, and Sanderson has described various Rosharan ethnicities and stated that only the Shin would have people who look white. Unfortunately that's not always clear to readers. Check out Kaladin Isn't White here on tumblr for a compendium of resources on various Rosharan ethnicities, relevant WoBs, and Brandon's facecasts! Here's some more resources and guides that could be helpful too:
Drawing East Asian Faces by Kat Tsai, a visual development artist - a very helpful guide to drawing East Asian faces
Drawing Asian skin tones and hair, a tumblr guide to misconceptions and avoiding whitewashing
Drawing Black skin tones and hair, and drawing hijabis, a series of tiktok guides
Skin tone tutorial by Lauren Cannon, fantasy artist, which covers light to dark skin as well as fantasy colours
Drawing blushing on darker skin tones, a tumblr guide
Skin tone variations, undertones, and face references - this will also bring you to a photography project called Humanae, which catalogues human faces of various ages, ethnicities, and genders and assigns their skin tone a pantone colour. A great resource for exploring various face shapes!
A huge list of drawing references relevant to Stormlight on Pinterest - thanks to @stormscience for putting that together!
How to Avoid Whitewashing Skin Tone
Once you start exploring darker skin tones you might be frustrated with the colour not working out the way you intended. Here are some guides to using colour theory, and why colour picking doesn't always work:
Using colour theory to get the right skin tone - a tumblr guide
Lighting dark skin - a guide by Nilah Magruder, illustrator, that discusses lighting and colour theory
Using Temuera Morrison as an example of a polynesian man - his features and skin tone are useful not just for drawing SW clones but for drawing Alethi like Kaladin, thanks to this WoB
I see you Rysn I love you Rysn
Options on a manual wheelchair for active users - a tumblr guide that describes what the different features on a manual wheelchair are for, so you can customize a chair for the character you're drawing.
ClipStuido 3D model manual wheelchairs - assets for drawing
How to Draw Wheelchair Users - a tumblr guide to choosing the right chair for your character
How to Design a Wheelchair for Active Users - a tumblr guide to modern manual wheelchairs
Database of cultural clothes - a tumblr list of lots of websites for clothing inspiration from around the world
Stormlight fashion - a tumblr blog dedicated to fashion run by @botanicaxu! Thank you!
Do you have other references? Let me know if there's something that helped you out. I could've sworn I had some sword handling references but they disappeared off the face of the internet. Thanks for reading and thanks for sharing--together we can encourage each other to make more canon-accurate Stormlight art, and stretch our skills to be more inclusive, just like Sanderson!
