How To Feed A Muse

A master post of Thomas Romain’s art tutorials.

There’s not enough space to post all of them, SO here’s links to everything he has posted (on twitter) so far : 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12. 

-*WJS Cosplay Photography Blog*-

I made a short post with samples of sketches/studies that cosplayers can use for posing references. I save sketches like these onto my phone to use on shoots when I want to show them a pose and for whatever reason I can’t demonstrate it for them. Sometimes I even take a look during a shoot for inspiration and modify them for whatever fits. If you save these onto your phone for yourself as a cosplayer, I wouldn’t try to memorize them outside of one or two. Mimicking can be very useful but getting too attached and thinking these are the “right” way to hit these poses is counterproductive. Have fun with them and see how you naturally end up coming up with your own unique poses! And as always, ‘feminine’ and ‘masculine’ are just guidelines and there’s no reason you can’t execute either!

Feminine #1: Broad

Artist Credit: Aomori

Feminine #2: Broad

Artist Credit: Zero Resolution

Feminine #3: Broad

Artist Credit: Kate Fox

Feminine #4: Sitting

Artist Credit: Rika Dono

Masculine #1: Broad

Artist Credit: Aomori

Masculine #2: Broad

Artist Credit: Zero Revolution

Masculine #3: Action

Artist Credit: Mavinga

Couples

Artist Credit: Aomori

And of course, you can also take inspiration from your anime series or a similar series.

Yep, I even save kpop girlbands to my phone because the poses are really useful on the set sometimes. Hope these helped! If you liked this post, click here for some of my posing tips for cosplay photos. There’re examples there of the ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ poses being used for either gender and it can also give you an idea of how you can modify example poses and create your own!

A master post of Thomas Romain’s art tutorials.

There’s not enough space to post all of them, SO here’s links to everything he has posted (on twitter) so far : 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12. 

How to draw characters in your layout, at the right size.

Late last year I wanted to start a series of short tutorials called Tip Jar, as a way of saying thanks to my fans and giving back to my patrons. This is the first of the series I have made, showing my technique on quickly filling in lineart so you can get to painting without coloring outside the lines faster. 

Someday I hope to turn these into video tutorials when I have the income and the time, but for now I hope that I will be able to share useful tips in this infographic format.

Full tutorial image

Another format I’ve seen is timed links. When the month has been charged, the artist posts up a timed link available only to patrons who have already been charged that expires in 15-30 days. Afterwards, the link is no longer functional. In order to get content older than when you started, you’re required to pay the pledge amount for those months. That way you’ll only receive the newest month (and only after you’ve paid).

hey yall its me the Art Mom™ to help you shade pretty

rule 1: DO NOT SHADE WITH BLACK. EVER. IT NEVER LOOKS GOOD. 

red- shade with a slightly darker shade of purple

orange- slightly darker and more saturated shade of red

yellow- i think like..a peach could work but make it a really light peach

green- shade with darker and less saturated shade of blue or teal

blue- shade with purple

purple- a shade thats darker than the purple you’re using and maybe a little pink (MAYBE blue)

pink- darker shade of red

white- a really light lavender or blue..or i guess any really light colour??

black- okay listen dont use pure black to colour anything unless you want to leave it with flat colours because you cant really shade black lol

grey- a slightly darker shade of purple or blue (less saturated)

brown- slightly darker and less saturated shade of purple or red

I made some Balls of Colour to go with Art Mom™’s post:

Great Reference , a good hand how to draw is always needed ^_^  But, the thing is I MUST draw it for real :/

Finally finished it \(TwT )

Here’s my first tutorial! Made possible thanks to my patrons, hope it may be helpful :)

You can watch the timelapse video of that owl doodle here

[This is off one of Neonnoodle’s posts from SomethingAwful, but it’s such a useful technique I wanna repost it here.]

Here’s one approach I’ve found, which is based on the gamut mask idea, but a little simpler and tuned to working in PS: 1. Start with three color swatches: a red/magenta of some kind, a yellow of some kind, and a blue/cyan of some kind. They don’t have to be crayon-box “red” “yellow” “blue” — the nice thing here is that you can decide how warm or cool you want the overall cast of the color to be. So, for instance, you could pick a cool yellow, a purplish red, and an electric blue. Or a very orange red, a warm yellow, and a greenish blue. Or even substitute green for blue. Experiment here. Even colors which are completely hideous will mellow out, so don’t be afraid.  

2. Draw your 3 swatches in a tight triangle so that they are bumping up against each other in the center. Then use a smudge tool with scattering on for a blender, and blend the edges of each color into each other:  

(I also had pressure set so I wouldn’t blend too hard, but that’s optional. Scattering is the important one.) 3. Now you have a neutralized color wheel. The closer toward the center you go, the more neutral the palette becomes:

(here they all are against 50% gray)

4. Now you can start establishing the values for the colors you might want to use. Use the L (Lightness) with Lab sliders on the color panel (even if you’re using RGB or CMYK color for your document) because “Brightness” (HSB) is a load of horseshit.

5. By the way, here’s what the color wheels from those other colors from the beginning would look like:

And one other with more swatches:

Lighting is often underestimated in illustration – a lot of illustrators and beginning artists look at it as a decorative element, or as purely a tool used to showcase the form. A lot of beginning artists are afraid of shading and of using harsh lights. But even with the lighting mastered, even with perfect rendering and good understanding of form in space an integral element of the light remains missing in their pieces. 

Look at the samples above: the same character’s head has been used in every thumbnail, and the only thing I have tweaked was the cropping and manner of light used on the features. Every single one of these frames tells a different story and gives off a different vibe simply by using light to focus on the features I want you to focus on.

Read how lighting can be used to enhance character, mood, and interaction within your pictures below the cut.