Do you have any advice on how to draw complicated designs or even complicated clothes? Your kandi and decora inspire me a lot!
My main advice is that if you are struggling to make it look like decora, you may be trying to draw your details too small.
In this first image, you can see I tried to draw clips, but everything is drawn really small for some reason and deliberately not trying to have them overlap. Which is fine, but not really decora...
When we look at real life decora, accessories always overlap and fill in space. They have lots of larger clips and even the smaller clips are chunky and clearly visible!!! Do not be afraid to make your clips bigger than you think is needed. IMO clips looking "too big" looks better than clips that look "too small".
I usually do 2 layers for decora clips. The first one is drawing the top clips, and then the second one I've fill in the space on a layer below. It is very difficult to to draw all of the clips on one layer while also wanting them to overlap neatly, and is just so much faster to use multiple layers. I don't recommend trying to draw all overlapping accessories on one layer, its very frustrating to move clips or erase anything... (speaking from experience)
I kinda rawdog the accessories themselves without any sketch, or if I do have a sketch its just scribbles where I want to put accessories. Remember you can draw whatever you want as accessories!!!! Shove references in there do whatever you want thats one of the many joys of decora!!!!!!!!!!!!
For Kandi, its just kinda the same thing. If you want an arm full of kandi you have to draw an arm full of kandi. I like a variety in my kandi, so I try not to put the same types of kandi next to eachother. I would recommend also, if you're working with rainbows, to alternate starting your rainbow on the left or right side so that they dont always look like theyre going the same way.
You can always add a layer below or on top to fill out your kandi. Most kandi can be drawn just with circles/squares/hears/stars/rectangles/whatever simple shape you can think of. None of it individually is all that complex, just when its all together it looks impressive!
If you are struggling, you may want to increase your canvas size, or try drawing your circles bigger. In real life my cube letter beads are the same size as the individual pony beads, but when I draw them theyre much bigger so I can actually draw legible letters on them. Remember there are no strict rules for this, so if you like it then you're doing it right.
None of my character designs are actually all that complicated. They may be detailed, but not complicated. All of these are fairly simple to draw, just may take some time.
Decora and Kandi are both very personalized, so please please draw references to things you/your character likes. Just drawing rainbows and standard clips are fine and all, but think about charms or words or shapes or food or colors or objects that fit the character. It takes it up a notch and feels much more real.
