DrawMe!WriteMe!

when my little brother was even littler my mom came up with the 小兔子 bunny game to get him to eat

(it took forever for him to finish meals)

I’ve been getting quite a few asks about the process for the patterns in my stylized artworks, so I decided to put together a couple of tips regarding them. 

Firstly, what you need are

—  CUSTOM BRUSHES  —

Most of the patterns I use are custom brushes I made, such as those:

For the longest time I was convinced making brushes must be super extra complicated. I was super extra wrong. All you need to start is a transparent canvas (2500px x 2500px max):

This will be your brush tip. When you’re satisfied how it looks, click Ctrl+A to select the whole canvas and go to ‘define brush preset’ under the edit menu

You will be asked to name your new glorious creation. Choose something that describes it well, so you can easily find it between all the ‘asfsfgdgd’ brushes you’ve created to be only used once

This is it. Look at it, you have just created a photoshop brush. First time i did I felt like I was cheated my whole life. IT’S SO EASY WHY HASN’T ANYONE TOLD ME 

Time to edit the Good Boi to be more random, so it can be used as a Cool Fancy Pattern. Go into brush settings and change whatever you’d like. Here’s a list of what I do for patterns:

- under Shape Dynamics, I increase Size Jitter and Angle jitter by 5%-15% 

- under Brush Tip Shape, I increase spacing by a shitload. Sometimes it’s like 150%, the point is to get the initial brush tip we painted to be visible.

- If I want it to look random and noisy, I enable the Dual Brush option, which acts like another brush was put on top of the one we’ve created. You can adjust all of the Dual Brush options (Size, Spacing, Scatter, Count) as you wish to get a very nice random brush to smear on your  backgrounds

The result is as above. You can follow the same steps to create whatever brush you need: evenly spaced dots that look like you painted them by hand, geometric pattern to fill the background, a line of perfectly drawn XDs and so on. 

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE

—  PATHS  —

But what if you want to get lots of circles made of tiny dots? Or you need rows of triangles for your cool background? Photoshop can do all of that for you, thanks to the magic of paths.

Typically, paths window can be found right next to Layers:

Draw whatever path you want, the Shape Tool has quite a bit of options. Remember, paths are completely different from brush strokes and they won’t show up in the navigator. To move a path around, click A to enable path selection tool. You can use Ctrl+T to transform it, and if you move a path while pressing Alt it will be duplicated.

Now, pick a brush you wish really was in place of that path you’ve drawn and go to layers, then choose the layer you want it to be drawn on. Then, click this tiny circle under the Paths window:

Then witness the magic of photoshop doing the drawing for you while you wonder how tf have you managed to forget about this option for the past 2 years 

You can combine special brushes and paths for all sorts of cool effects. I mostly use them in backgrounds for my cards, but you can do whatever you want with them.

(I hope it’s alright I post this, I just found it on google. uwu) http://fuckyeaharttutorials.tumblr.com/ - A great general resource. My references are all things that are useful for me, and are fairly simplistic and easy to follow but, there’s a lot more compiled over here Tablet/Digital work Sai Brushes

3 good painting brushes

Pencils

Flat brush, great blending

9 great brushes

some background brushes, nice blending etc

Shading and Coloring

Coloring

Coloring, both Cell shading and watercolor

Brush Work

Shading

Layers and Linework

Cleaning Lineart

Layer Effects

Drawing in simple programs

Drawing in MS paint

Drawing in Doodle or Die

General Drawing Nature

Drawing forest interior

Clothing

Clothing Folds and general drapery

wrapping hands before a fight

Different Shoes

Baseball cap references

Drawing Jackets, Shirts, and Pants

Drawing Glasses

different pant areas near crotches for different sexes

People

Faces and Heads

Semi-realistic eyes

Head perspective w/ nose and jawline

Head perspective from all angles

Noses

Braids

Realistic Hair

Hair tutorial, using the hairline to map out

Shadows and Light on Face

Ears

Drawing profiles, cheek and nose/mouth plaes

Profile Tutorial

Drawing and shading lips

Expressions

Different Body Language

Facial Expressions

Body Language

Skintone and coloring

Simple color palettes for different races, pakle to medium to dark for each

flat coloring tutorial

More in depth palettes for different skin color

Painting Skin color, tips for both light and dark skin

Anatomy and drawing realistic humans

Female Anatomy

Shoulders

Tips for Women

Crossing arms over large boobs

Understanding anatomy

Different types of male bodies

Gesture Drawing

Drawing different body types

Hands and Arms

Hands and fingers 

Simple drawing fist from the side

Correct fore and upper arm length trick

Lots of different ways to draw hands

Basic shapes in hands and fists

Legs and Feet

correct hip shape 

Quick leg cheat sheet (from the side)

Drawing hips and legs, some w/ feet different sizes and perspectives

Feet

More feet and shoes

another great feet guide, how they look from different angles

Knees

Programs assisting in realistic drawing

Drawing a face in different angles of lighting

Time limit, choose specifics you want to draw, practice for figure drawing, females, males, heads, athletes for muscle practice, et

Rotate different hand gestures, different angles, 20 differents hands, a foot, a male figure, and a head

(Takes a long time to load) 9 different female facial expressions which can be viewed from 21 different angles

Color

6 Color Palette tools

Interactive color harmony tool

Color scheme designer

Color Palette

More Color Schemes

Nature, Warm, Cool, and skin tones 

Idea generators

#1

#2

Character Creation

Really in detail checklist and questions for creating a character

Character aging (drawing)

12 Common Character Archetypes

10 Helpful Notes on Character Design

Writing Character Bios

World Building (There is character stuff in it)

30 Day Challenges

animal, or animal/human hybrid challenge

Color Palette challenge

Art Improvement challenge

30 day monster girl challenge

OTP challenge

Homestuck specific stuff- http://homestuckresources.tumblr.com/

Drawing Karkat’s hair

Drawing Dirk’s hair

beta kid land color palettes 

not the most useful, but trolls with their blood color as their hair color

God tier ref sheet, some might be outdated

God Tier Palettes

Fantasy Drawing

Drawing wings on a humanoid character.

Arm movement, also relating to wings 

Mermaid anatomy

different types of bird wings

Martial arts/bending references

Fonts

18 Different Fonts

Typography resource post

Other

Making and printing an 8 page mini comic on 8.5 x 11 paper

Wheel of Arting! If you’re at an art block, drag the wheel and do whatever the arrow lands on

A list of art referrence accounts; containing human anatomy, fashion/clothing, animation, historical things, tips, tutorials, inspiration and the like.