art ref blog

SO YOU WANNA DRAW CATS AND DOGS BUT THOSE PESKY SNOOTS GET IN THE WAY

Here’s a hopefully helpful tutorial on how to draw them from memory but it also helps to understand and break down how to see their structure when you use reference!

Remember, it’s always best to learn the anatomy of an animal first before trying to stylize it. This way you know the rules and can choose which ones to break!

Let’s take this chair for example, drawing a character sitting is not an easy task, I know. But with a little know how and can-do it can be pretty fun and satisfying. Drawing the object that is being acted upon first not only lends a little more realism, but it also really helps when you are drawing in perspective, case and point

Here is the difference between 1)drawing the chair first, THEN drawing the figure, versus 2)Drawing the figure first, then drawing everything AROUND that figure. #2 does not make a lot of sense, it’s all wonky and the proportions are all wrong, this is because the chair is conformin to the figure’s weight.

Example 2, stairs. Figure 1 will always look more believable than figure 2. The figure drawing  in example 1, is under the forced perspective that the stairs lend. Example 2 makes for a confusing picture to look at. because we don’t know where the feet fall naturally, and the stairs are uneven and UGLY

With both examples where the character is drawn first, the weight of the character is manipulating the environment around it, instead of the other way around. Perspective is really hard to understand, but it is really important to practice it EVEN if it looks funny. In these examples right above, they do not give a very realistic/believable reading. It’s always gonna be a guessing game of where to put an object, and if you’re gonna have a guessing game it might as well be the CHARACTER you’re guessing about and NOT the environment.

NOTE: For whatever weird reason, the video on Youtube has a weird glitch around 1:25, you can view the complete video without glitch on my facebook at https://www.facebook.com/YuumeiArt/videos/915159028532872/?permPage=1

There are many ways to go about drawing backgrounds and perspective. In my old Cityscape Speedpaint tutorial, I drew out some rough perspective lines by hand, similar to how one would do it with a ruler on paper. But with drawing programs, there are lots of shortcuts to use.

The technique I showed in this tutorial is good if you need lots of precise perspective lines quickly. Using free transform allows you to create endless combination of perspective lines from the few grid brushes.

I use Free Transform to give perspective to the paint cans in the same way I did to the building’s windows in the cityscape tutorial. It’s quick and easy, instead of having to draw out each can individually. You can use this technique for more than just paint cans of course. Try it out with other things like a room with a table and a circle of chairs around the table.

This is one of intermediate shortcuts I use, but in the future I will be showing you how to build actual 3D backgrounds for multiple use in comics :) and how to integrate the 3D generated backgrounds into 2D drawings.

Every artist who sees this post should do the following:

- Watch the video.

- Follow the instructions

- Reblog

’What is hair and how i can render it?’

I got this question and I really wanted to show on very simple examples how to render hair. Because it really is… simple! Following this guide you will be able to paint hair in few minutes.

This is called the ribbon technique.

It is used by many artists out there. I just wanted to show you a couple of examples. As you can see I picked Adam Hughes and J. C. Leyendecker. Look at it and see how they paint the hair. It doesn’t look like a mop. It looks more like big, overlapping shapes organized in some fashion.

Try to imagine a string of hair like a ribbon. Ribbon symbolize a large portion of hair. Don’t focus on every single hair string, instead of this imagine it as bigger shape. It will catch light in highest point and it will have core shadows.

Establish where light is hitting the hair and where it turns dark. Start with big shapes. big brushes to get the lights and volumes right. Then You can go into details and paint small brush strokes to add details like single hair strings.

I attached two examples. First is very simple where you can clearly see and understand the similarity between hair and ribbon. Second example is theory put into practice. But it’s basically doing the same things as shown in simple example.

Let me know what you think about this?

I based my knowledge on James Gurney blog (author of Dinotopia and Light and Color book)

This is mostly for my friends who prefer GIMP to photoshop but it applies to an awful lot of things so feel free to pass it on. 

SourceForge, a popular repository for open-source projects, has had the option for developers to allow extra add-ons (read: toolbars, bloatware) to be inserted into their installers, but many opted out of this because the financial benefit was entirely SourceForge’s and just made their own software look sketchy. However, SourceForge is now forcing all accounts to include their add-on installers and hijacking accounts to do it, and some users are reporting the presence of malware in some. There is no way for a project to remove itself from SourceForge, and its high Google results direct users there instead of a project’s official page– the vast majority of projects on SourceForge are now on GitHub or Google Code instead. 

The story from GIMP’s official website: 

Some of you might remember that in November 2013, we abandoned SourceForge (SF) as the primary download site for the GIMP installers for Windows platforms and moved the files to our own download server,download.gimp.org

The tons of links on the web pointing to the former site made keeping the installers there as well a necessity, though, and since SF claimed that our outrage over their “installer with benefits” was based on a misunderstanding, this seemed to be a low-risk approach.

However we are receiving reports that people who get there by chance receive small installers that include additional software. And it’s no clicks on those ‘big green download arrow’ ads this time, we’ve tried ourselves. SF has not responded to our inquiry yet, and we found that the maintainer of the GIMP for Windows installers is locked out of that SF project now.

Please go to our own downloads page to get the GIMP for Windows installers.

and as always, never ever ever use “express installations” or leave unnecessary checkboxes checked when installing any software onto your computer from any source. 

Natural Black Hair Tutorial! Usually Black hair is excluded in the hair tutorials which I have seen so I have gone through it in depth because it’s really not enough to tell someone simply, “Black hair is really curly, draw it really curly.” 

by derpygurl

First of all this list is in no way comprehensive. (I could probably list 50 things). Second, this is just my opinion. I know a LOT of artists and I keep seeing the same things happening at cons year after year. I feel people need to start operating differently, otherwise cons really are going to be a waste of money and time. So this is what I think most artists are doing wrong when they try to sell their stuff at cons…

I’ve been asked a few times how my comic making process works now that I’ve switched to penciling digitally, so I’m going to do a write up about that. As always you can find all my blogging about making comics on this handy tumblr post.

So, previously I made comics completely traditionally. Here’s a write up of how I used to make comics. All of the pre-drawing of the comic still applies: I still do my thumbnails by hand, scribbled in a notebook. 

Now I draw comics on a Cintiq, in Manga Studio. Here’s what my initial desktop looks like:

That’s Manga Studio, and my template comic page. It’s 10 by 14 inches, and the blue lines are my safety, trim and bleed. All important artwork and dialogue/speech bubbles should go within the safety.

I draw with a red pencil (Pencil-Layout Red) from the Frenden Manga Studio brush pack. I can’t remember which pack I bought, but there’s only 3 on the Frenden site and I’m sure they’re all great. Frenden does great brushes. Why red? It’s just easier to see than blue. For some reason I have a hard time sketching with a blue pencil on a screen, although I still draw with blue on paper. I don’t know why that is. 

And here’s a rough comic page! Ta da! It’s pretty messy. I used a lot of reference to draw Nameless City. This is page 97, so a right facing page in the published book. Therefor the bleed on the second panel is bleeding off of the page and not into the spine of the book.

One of the best things about Manga Studio is its perspective tools. I’m not an expert in using them, so I recommend looking up someone who really knows what they’re doing if you want to know more. I mostly just use the 1 and 2 point perspective grids to figure out where the floor is in certain panels, so I can more easily place characters within space. Very basic stuff, but it has made my life so much easier. I would marry Manga Studio’s perspective grids if I could. :D

Then I clean up the page a bit. Eventually I hope to eliminate this step, because it’s time consuming. All I do is adjust the colour of the pencils to blue and trace over the figures I feel need improving with red. I usually only do this with main characters, an attempt at keeping everyone consistently drawn (lol).

This is what it looks like with the rough pencils turned off. I never had to do this when I drew traditionally, and I think it’s because I’m not yet used to inking over digital pencils. People ask me about inking and how I “find the right line” to ink, and the answer is I just do. But for some reason I can’t with my printed out digital pencils. So until I become more accustomed to them, I need to do clean up. It sucks! Just an extra step I want to eleminate.

Then I bring the file into Photoshop and prepare it for printing. The pencils always print darker than the look in PS, so I put down a layer of white overtop the pencils and adjust the layer’s opacity to 55%. 

Here’s the paper I use for printing, same paper as I’ve always used: Strathmore Bristol, smooth surface. I cut down these 17 x 14 inch sheets to 17 x 12 so they’ll fit in my printer.

My lovely printer! I do adore it. It’s an Epson Artisan 1430, the size of a keyboard and it’s been great. I printed out 200+ pages of blueline comic pages on only two cartridges of ink. 

It’s printing!!!

And done! Now for inking.

Unfortunately I didn’t take a picture of this page when it was half-done, but here’s the finished product. I don’t ink my borders because I can’t draw a straight line, even with a ruler. :D Borders I do in Photoshop. 

I use a brush for inking. These are the brushes I use: Raphael Kolinsky watercolour brush, sizes 0, 1 & 2. I use the 1 for most of the page, the 0 for finer details and the 2 for larger areas. Anything that’s a straight line is inked with a pen. I tend to use Faber Castel pens, usually a small or extra small. 

So that’s pretty much it! After I finish the page I scan it and prep it for printing in Photoshop, which is pretty boring. 

The main question I get when I talk about my process is “Why don’t you ink digitally? Then you won’t have to scan.” I would very much like to eliminate scanning from my process, but at this point, I really love inking traditionally. It’s the part of the comic-making process that I enjoy the most, and I also think that traditional inks give my comics their unique look. I’m just not ready to take that step and ink digitally for my graphic novels, although I have done it for shorter comics. Maybe someday, but not now. :) For now, this is how I work. 

For non-artists, let’s give you a little perspective.

For me, an illustration takes a bare minimum of 6 hours. Mind you, that’s JUST the drawing part. Not the research, or the communications, or gathering information. Just drawing.

That’s if it’s a simple illustration.

My art deco or more detailed stuff can take 20+ hours each.

Even simple, cartoony things still take at least 3 hours.

Let’s go with the second one. 2 illustrations for $25. Figuring 6 hours each. 12 hours total, for JUST the drawings. That’s approximately $2.08/hour. 

Asking these prices is an insult. But what’s even more hurtful is there are people out there that will take these jobs. Which only encourages rates like this to be acceptable. And there are people who will try to say these are just what you have to do to get started.

I believed that. So my first coloring gigs were just $10/page. The day someone offered me $25/page for just flatting work, I realized just how wrong I’d been. I’m still not making the rates I’d like, but now I refuse anything below $25/page. Because there is value in my time.

In any standardized industry, even ones that pay piece rate over hourly, these numbers are criminal.

    If you are an artist who wants to make money off their art, I highly suggest you buy The Graphic Artist’s Guild Handbook. It goes in depth about copyright issues and even contains contract and model release templates. The 2013 book *I believe* states the average professional charges $72 an hour. This article calculated that to make a 40k annual salary you would need to charge about $60 per hour.

  After graduating from Art Center in 2012, I think I asked for somewhere between $35-45 an hour and got laughed at by multiple big name clients, which was infuriating, sadly expected, and terrifying with over $100K worth of student loans staring me in the face. If they tell you it will be “great exposure” that’s a red flag. Ask yourself how their exposure can compare to your Tumblr, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Flickr and Facebook pages combined? 

And when you do get a decent paying gig, PROTECT YOURSELF. You have the right to negotiate and revise a contract. Do not start a job until you have a contract signed. If they don’t provide you with one, MAKE ONE. And make sure you have your bases covered. You can specify in a contract that maybe two revisions are included in your cost, and if they ask you to revise the piece more than twice, they will have to pay extra. In terms of payment schedule, I usually do the 50/50 Method (50% before, 50% after) or the 3/3/3 Method (1/3 before, 1/3 in the middle, 1/3 after all work has been received). Both of those are pretty standard in the industry, as they guarantee you will get compensated for your time, even if the job goes bad.

Remember you have a skill, and you have spent time honing that skill and you deserve to be adequately paid for that time and effort. You will have clients dismiss you because, honest to God they think, “Well, I could do that if I wanted. Hell, my five year old does it now.” No they can’t, because they didn’t, they don’t, they won’t and they probably never will. And good luck hiring a five year old. They can’t keep a fucking deadline.

There are 2 openings for cartoonists at Coming of Faith, a website I’ve been working for for the past year. 

Coming of Faith is a website that was initially set up as an outlet for articles and opinion pieces done by Muslim Women, for Muslim Women, but has grown much larger over the past year and has broadened to include minority women as a whole. They cover news, entertainment, culture, style etc.

As the Cartoonist:

-You will be expected to keep contact with the editor through email, be able to submit pitches for short, funny/witty, stand-alone and relatable comics with themes relevant to feminism/minority women. These pitches must be pre-approved by an editor before submission of the finished comic. 

-Comics are expected to be submitted regularly at least 2 times a month. 

-All work is watermarked with the site’s logo, cannot have been submitted to other sites or posted anywhere else before it goes on the Coming of Faith site/twitter/fb page.

- Each comic goes for $15-$20 a piece, payment can be provided by check or paypal. Contract will be provided. 

How To Apply: Email me at [email protected] with the title “CoF Comic”

-Provide a link to website/art blog that shows samples of your work.

-2 samples of comics of your own that you feel would fit well with the site, or to showcase your art style that we can expect for the comics. There is no need for 30+ hr paintings, this is a sample of the style of the past comics done for the site. 

How to draw Dreadlocs!

See Part One: Rendering Natural Black Hair Coming Up Next: VOTE by sending to my Ask box!  (Until March 1st). Feel free to suggest any style or subject matter within drawing natural hair!

Questions? Comments? Tell me all about it!

Admit you have talent

No, seriously, do it. Say it right now, aloud, in front of your computer. “I am a good writer/artist/musician/singer/whatever.” Just admit it to yourself. Because I swear when you do, your work will become better. You’d be amazed at what you can produce when you feel confident in your abilities.

Stop comparing yourself to other people

“I’ll never be as good of a writer as Hemmingway/Bronte/Rawling!”, “I’ll never sing like Adele/Florence Welch/Joan Jett!”, “I’ll never paint like Picasso/van Goh/O’Keefe!”, “I’ll never draw like Davis/McCracken/MacFarlane!”, “I’ll never play like Hendrix/King/Cooder!”

No. You won’t. You will never, ever be as good as them. And they will never be as good as you. Every artist is unique. You have your own voice just like they had their own voice. Don’t try to be someone else; be you.

Be proud of your work

Wrote a shitty poem? Song? Manuscript? Paint something you didn’t like? Drew something wrong? Who. The hell. Cares? At least you DID something! That’s more than most people can say! You finished a piece of work. Be proud of that accomplishment.

Realize that not everything you do will be great

This ties in with the previous tip. You’re going to do shitty things. It’s part of being an artist. Stop putting so much pressure on yourself to create something great every time. Strive for it, sure, it SHOULD be your goal. But realize that sometimes you’re just going to do something that sucks, and then get over it and try to do better the next time.

Be proud of your talent and enjoy it