Drawing Tips From Tumblr

really helpful technique ^ once you know how to divide by halves and thirds it makes drawing evenly spaced things in perspective waaay easier:

The perspective examples I showed above look complicated, but the underlying technique is very simple. You just keep splitting the rectangle until it's divided up evenly as many times as you need it to be.

Bounce light is something I didn't cover but I adore it!

Gamut Mask

(image via )

James Gurney is an absolute master and gives really good clarity on colour techniques. Yes, it is traditional paint focused, but the principles are the same. Yes it is informed by the environmental colour but as a painting technique it is achieved this way!

While it's not super important to know about the mathematical side of blend modes, I think it's worth knowing at least enough about how each of the categories of blend modes works and why they do what they do; if for no other reason than having a starting point when you start experimenting with them in your work.

An overview of the basic blend modes and how they work from Genevieve's Design Studio: Accessible with minimal color knowledge; practical and illustration focused. https://youtu.be/kMc87hQrJd0?si=TWCB365pKSfWS8p0. (16 minutes) This creator also has a ton of free resources you can download, including a Blend Modes cheatsheet, but fair warning: you have to create an account to get them!

How to Draw Native People: a Tutorial/Reference Guide

As requested, here is a basic guide for how to draw Indigenous peoples (mostly focused on North America)! Also please note that this is not an exhaustive list of Native American phenotypes/features, and more like an intro on very common features that can be found in us, and even then, not altogether at once on a single person’s face. I highly encourage the use of references and care taken into research when drawing. I may do a part 2 that goes slightly more into depth, but for now, enjoy part one.

Resouces:

How to draw Native Skin tutorial (don’t draw us red!)

List of Native American Celebrities, which include their tribe(s) and home country, with 1,250 names, to use for your referencing pleasure

How to draw black people by Peachdeluxe, & Black hair in depth by misslaney for mixed black Natives

How to draw Asian People, a guide by Chuwenjie, for mixed Asian Natives AND because it includes a lovely tutorial on monolid eyes, a shared feature of Native people

so. i was not happy with the 3D models of horses on offer in the CSP store or literally anywhere else i could find them, i needed one to use for my work, and i went ahead and made my own that is now available for the low low price of FREE in the CSP assets store.

textures included are greyscale basic shapes, multicolor basic shapes, and white with no shapes (but eyes, mouth, nostrils, and hooves emphasized for ease).

shape is ROUGHLY based off the silhouette of an Andalusian. size-wise, it by default stands at around 16 hands, but of course it can be resized to suit your needs. for that, I recommend sizing a human pose doll to the correct height (in centimeters), lining them up on the same plane, and resizing the horse to match the human doll's height. remember that a horse's height is measured at the shoulders!

it also comes with the following preset poses:

I made the textures by hand in my sketchbook. They're pay what you want with no minimum.

It's done! You can find the Absolutely Ripping It Up pack here.

Tear your artwork. Decay it. Blast a giant hole into it. Go nuts. Note that these are compatible only with Clip Studio!

please check out the photo ref i used!!

quick bricks

draw bricks. you know how bricks are patterned. don't draw an evenly spaced grid.

round the corners of the bricks.

add line weight to the bottom of some bricks. SOME. not all.

scuff the bitches

hey thank you so much <3

one of the most important things that i've learned on my way and that i've kept in my mind ever since is what makani states in [this post] sometimes i go into a drawing and just try to construct it bit by bit, only to realize that the eyes don't fit the mouth etc... then i remember to treat it all as ONE expression and (second very important lesson incoming) i erase everything and start anew (i know it feels bad to just delete a sketch of a head (you don't have to delete it right away, you can always just take another layer) but believe me it not only saves you tons of time, you also learn more when you just start over from scratch. the thing i do is as follows, i keep the bad sketch open and try to figure out what i don't like about it, and put extra focus in those areas in the new sketch. like i think the eyes were too dull in the first try? the solution is to draw them open even wider, turn up that expression a nodge, try to "bend" it). i know this sounds exhausting, you might think isn't it easier to just try to fix the first sketch? i thought so too for many years, but believe me, if you don't like it, start a new one. you will always be amazed on how good it can turn out (and, as said before, the benefit of analyzing your own art and trying to figure out what went wrong and fixing it in a new attempt is HUGE.)

third thought on this is "don't be afraid to push the boundaries". like i grew up being a huge ren & stimpy fan as a kid, i love classic cartoons, i love exagerated expressions so much, eyes popping out, sweat drops flying around, over the top visualisation of feelings. that's my shit (pizza tower i'm looking at you). then on the other hand i also love things feeling palpable and real, hence the weird mix of my style i guess... what i want to say is: don't be afraid to push your expressions a bit. not only is it fun, with the right balance it really adds to it all (in regards of body language and facial expressions likewise).

and last but not least, so important: use references. i often take photos of myself doing weird gestures just to see how the mouth or the eyes would look like for a specific expression, how the nose wrinkles, how the shoulder come up when trying to visualize that someone is tense etc etc. use ref, please, not only photos but also drawings, try to figure out how other artists translate certain gestures in their art, how can you stylize this (everything ofc without copying directly from them... like for personal practice everything is cool and chill, but respect the rules of the artist community)