drawingcarrotstick

quick tutorial on how I shade with solid black (a lot of people ask, hope this helps)

honest - insensitive

persuasive - manipulative

caring - overprotective

confidence - arrogance

fearless - cocky

loyalty - an excuse

devotion - obsession

agreeable - lazy

perfectionism - insatisfaction

reserved - aloof

cautious - skeptical

self loved - selfish

available - distractible

emotional - dramatic

humble - attention-seeking

diligent - imposing

dutiful - submissive

assertive - bossy

strategic - calculated

Hi there! Thanks! This is by no means tutorial (since I’m more of the ‘just winging it and hoping for the best’-sort) but I hope some of these tips help.

The biggest thing for me, personally, is what energy the head shape exudes. 

Think about the character’s shape language. Are they soft and round or hard and angular? Do they have a tall thin face, a squashed square one or a plump squishy one? Do their shapes make them look approachable or menacing? (not to say characters can’t look like and be two different things, but it helps readability to convey their general personality traits through shapes)

Much the same goes for the eyes. Think about the energy you want to portray here. Are the eyes alert/sly/sleepy/etc? 

Position of the eyes on the face is also important and can help either lengthening or shortening a face, depending on the energy you’re going for. This can also make your character seem either younger or older, as features on children’s faces tend to be more squished together. There’s of course a limit to how much you can push this if you’re aiming for realism, but the more cartoony, the more you can get away with. 

I think most of the same principles goes for the rest of the facial features tbh. Even on a “standard” head shape you can get fairly different outcomes depending on the placement, shape and size of the eyes, eyebrows, nose and mouth.

outfit ask meme!! but catered only to the things i like to draw a lot

Welcome to lesson one in this series I’m creating for beginner Art Witches!

We have all seen and heard about color correspondences. Red = Anger/Passion Yellow = Happiness etc. but the truth is that there’s much more to color than just it’s name. The psychological effects of color, and therefore the magic we can do with it, are much more heavily influenced by those other components. So let’s take a look at the three components to color: Hue, Value, and Saturation.

Hue

Put simply Hues are the categories of color. They are the general name we refer to a color by. Sky blue and Midnight blue are very different colors but they both fall under the Hue Blue.

In the vast majority of magical practices this is as far as the study of color goes. There are many lists of correspondences associated with each Hue which include planets, days of the week, deities, etc.  

Begin a color journal- Start by listing Hues and what your personal associations are to each one. Does the color purple scare you? Does yellow calm you down? This information will be the basis of your color spellwork.

Value

Value refers to how light or dark a color is. It’s typically broken down in a 1-10 scale; the lighter range (called High Key colors) are referred to as Tints whereas the darker (Low Key) colors are called Shades. When creating art and visual spells there should be a full range of values throughout the piece. (unless specifically done otherwise for a purpose). When you want to draw attention to a particular area you can do that by creating high contrast there (very light values next to very dark values).

“Wood Nymph” -Lumi

As you can see the image on the left, which has a full range of values (1-10), is far more eye-catching than the image on the right which has only the top 4 or so high key values. By putting the darkest black next to the lightest white in the eye area it creates an attention grabbing contrast and directs the viewer’s eye.   ….Last but not least…

Saturation/Chroma

This term is probably the most misused/misunderstood property of color. It refers to the intensity of the color. This is the range between pure color (most intense/vivid) and grey (no color, only value). This does NOT affect the value only the color.

The left image is very saturated, the colors are vivid and recognizable. The version on the right is very desaturated, almost completely colorless, but the values haven’t changed only the intensity of the color.

We have powerful emotional responses to these variations which, once we understand how to use them, can help us craft powerful spells.

Homework-

Color Journal- Grab some paper and a pen (doesn’t have to be fancy) and start critically analyzing your associations to color. What do you associate each hue with in general? Are there specific variations of that color that stand out to you? Which ones are more negative/positive? which ones do you feel most connected to? We’ll be getting into the science of favorite colors in the next lesson but for now get a baseline for your personal connection to color.

Create a Value Range- Just like the graphic here, get used to mixing your medium of choice into 10 separate values. You’ll gain more control with your medium and a better eye for full value ranges. You can use paint, ink, pastels, pencil, crayon, whatever you like to work with but keep it strictly to values, no color just yet. Record your experiences in your journal.

Saturation Survey- Find or make a series of images that are saturated and desaturated. What did you feel while making/finding them? What emotional impact does the color intensity have on you? Does a desaturated image look ghostly and creepy or soft and comforting? Do the vivid colors of a saturated image make you feel excited and amped or anxious and overwhelmed? Record your findings in your journal.

I hope you have a good understanding of the anatomy of color now. Try to incorporate some of the terminology we used when referring to color in your daily life to get used to categorizing them for later use. Maybe you want to use that high key desaturated yellow from the sunrise you saw in a spell for new beginnings and fresh starts! The next lesson will be exploring the science behind your favorite color so stay tuned.

Let me know if there’s a topic you want to learn more about, how your color study is going, or if you are a fellow art witch (or are considering this path) and found this useful.

Stay Creative Witches!

Have you ever started drawing one-point perspective and then realized that even though you could draw the diagonals, you still had no idea where to place objects for relative size?

Welcome to my tutorial for drawing some very easy, flexible, and mathematically accurate perspective grids!

Here’s an example of the kind of thing I do with this.

So you’re just starting to draw your perspective grid on its own layer. You can change the transparency this way and draw things over it later. There’s the horizon line and the vanishing point in the middle.

But when you go in to draw your verticals and horiontals, what is this?? How do you break up the “hall” into even spacing? Just measuring equal sections won’t work.

Luckily there is a trick. Find the point that is ½ of the way to the center.

Then, imagining that point is the bottom of your page, find the halfway point to the center again. Keep repeating the process.

That’s right, each time it shrinks by ½. I call this the ½ perspective method, but if you guessed that it’s the Fibonacci sequence you’re absolutely right. I just didn’t want to say that in the title because the idea of math might scare off some people.

Anyway, use these points to place your verticals and horizontals.

Look at how even that is!

But!!! What if you want to space things a little more closely than that? Well guess what!! It works with literally any other fraction you can think of!

again simply measure the space between your last mark and the center.

What a finished grid in 1/3 perspective looks like!

And the kicker? You don’t even have to put the vanishing point in the center. You can put it anywhere else on the page and the same rules still apply!

See folks this is the sort of thing they should be teaching us in Drawing 1. But for some reason no??

Anyway, I recommend making a bunch of these in different spacings/angles/rotations whenever you’re bored and saving them so that you can just import them later when you need them.

Some sample pages from Andrew Loomis’s series on how to draw comics, 1939-1961, concerning perspective and composition. (The changes in font and layout stem from the fact the pages come from different prints.)

I tried to collect the most useful pages, but of course I’m limited to only 10 images per post.

More lizards!! :D

Here’s the pattern, if you, like me, are self-isolating and find that you have a) beads, and b) time on your hands. (Or if you’re reading this from the future, after the virus has passed, and you just want some cute lizard friends.)

(Anatomy tutorial here)

Time to make some pins that aren’t enamel! :D

These are just basic introductions to different materials…there’s so much to each of these they really need their own guide OTL

Feeling that your drawings can look a little bit more fun? Do your character designs seem a little bit static or generic? Maybe they need a small push to their proportions!

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The “How to Make Your Art Look Nice” Series

Developing Style | Lighting | Flow and Rhythm | Thumbnailing | Mindsets | Reference and Style | Color Harmony | Contrast