Yajaira Attempts to Art

I don’t know how to deal with Steve honestly. Things are getting out of control at every tutorial… It’s been almost a year this tutorial is on Patreon and I don’t have a lot of new things to post, so enjoy!

You may ask yourself why don’t I post often… Well! I got a job in a 2D animation studio (Loomi animation) as a background artist! The team is awesome and I love the projects. I basically draw all day, so I draw less as a hobby but still. (I might post some 3D animation too in the next months, we’ll see). Anyway prepare yourself because I feel like my artskills are improving a lot since I started at the studio ahah!

Metal tutorial

Fire tutorial

skin color ref because some of yall non-black poc and whites keep fucking up as if yall don’t know there’s other shades of brown when u racebend for woke points or something 

Once you’ve got the hands, you’ve got the forearms, and from there you can keep most of the rest of the body in proportion :D

Being older now and having an art job it’s…kind of essential. 

So: a quick primer for those of you who are like ‘ok but how do i actually go about doing this warmup thing.’ 

1) you may be tempted to do ‘a warmup drawing’ which is just a drawing that will take longer than it needed to and probably be frustrating and kind of bad because you didn’t warm up first. It’s tempting but always a trick your brain is playing on you! Do not trust! 

2) warmups will vary based on what feels good to you/what task you’re about to do/what motor skills you want to practice. That being said, some good standbys:

a) circles. Just a whole page of circles on whatever drawing surface you’re going to be using, whether that’s your tablet or your sketchbook or a drawing pad on an easel. For these circles you should make sure that you’re drawing from your shoulder and not your wrist. In fact, you want to be drawing from your shoulder rather than your wrist most of the time! forever! your wrist is delicate please preserve it! 

In order to ensure that you’re drawing from your shoulder, when you’re holding your pencil or whatever drawing tool you’re using, the only part of your hand that should be touching the drawing surface is part of the last two fingers–some people prefer the finger tips, but I tend to favor the first knuckles. Either way, the fingers should really be ghosting over the surface, providing guidance rather than support. 

I usually start with big circles and then go to smaller circles and lines of ellipses, and then try to fit circles and ellipses inside other shapes i’ve already drawn as a precision exercise, but i don’t do that unless i’m feeling loose

b) spirals! i don’t always do spirals, but if i’m stiff and the circles just aren’t cutting it, spirals are a good fall back. I start from the center and work outward, going both clockwise and counterclockwise until i feel comfortable with the whole range of motion. Some people really care about getting perfect spirals but for me it’s all about making sure i’m comfortable with how i’m moving so who really even cares about how the spirals look. Not me! 

c) lines! straight lines! in parallel! i do a mix of vertical, horizontal, and diagonal. These are often more from the elbow than the shoulder, especially if I’m working on a smaller surface. For this exercise, I recommend holding the drawing tool perpendicular with the surface

d) connect the dots. This is a precision and accuracy exercise and takes two forms. The first is to draw two dots and then draw a straight line between them. The second is to draw three dots and draw the curve that connects them. This sounds a lot simpler than it is in practice. Take time to ghost over the line you plan to draw before actually committing to your line. (I don’t always remember where I picked up my warm up exercises, but I’m pretty sure I got this one from Scott Robertson. His how to draw and how to render books are very technical but also accessible and worth checking out)

e) cubes, spheres, cones, and cylinders. These help get your brain into a more volumetric space. I draw multiples of each, rotating the forms around, and I’ll often take the time to do some rough shading on at least a few of them

f) spidermans! This one is really good if you’re going to be storyboarding or working on dynamic poses. Just fill a page full of spidermans doing all sorts of acrobatics. 

g) beans. I don’t do beans too much anymore, but I know a lot of people like it so I’m mentioning it here. Fill an area with different size bean shapes without lifting your pencil off the paper. 

h) short medium and long line repetition. draw a short, medium, and long line on your page, and then draw directly on top of them 8 to 12 times, doing your best to exactly trace what you’ve already drawing. Repeat with a wavy line. I’m bad at this one, which means I probably need to do it more. 

And there are lots more options too! Hit up youtube to see what other people recommend, put together your own go-to list, mix it up when you’re getting bored, etc. 

This is a long list, I know, but I usually don’t take more than 10 to 15 minutes to warm up, and I can warm up one handed while I’m drinking coffee, so, multitasking hurrah. 

Sometimes I’ll advance to a precision warmup and find that I haven’t loosened up enough yet; it’s totally ok to go back to an earlier exercise! Also, all of this has the added benefit of kind of ritualistically getting you into the drawing mode so even if I’m not feeling it before I start, by the time I’ve gotten to the end I’m usually Ready For Drawin’. Brain hacks. 

I’ve never really wrote a tutorial before so apologies if this is bad

1. okay first thing I do is pick three colors, a mid, dark, and light. I like to check the colors in greyscale to make sure there’s enough contrast between each one.

I then plop down a blob of whatever my middle tone color is.

2. next, I take my dark color and just sort of randomly place it around. I try to make sure there’s a good amount of both the mid and dark tones spread throughout. I personally like to keep it kinda messy. I also have pen pressure on for both brush size and opacity, so I can have some blending action going on.

3. for the next step I do the exact same thing as before, except with the light color.

4. aight this is where we start adding details. see how you just have a bunch of colors and edges where two colors meet? use the eyedropper and go to an area where two colors meet, eyedrop a color, and then use that color to draw in your grass blades. I do this at every point where colors meet. should note I personally like to use a square brush, but you can really just use anything.

5. you can technically stop at the last step if you’re going for a more simple look, but to add more details I go to the “empty” areas of solid color and just draw in random strokes using a color nearby. it’s just a way to fill up the empty space.

6. basically more of the same idea of eyedropping and drawing. for more variety so things look interesting, I like to add random plant shapes.

7. and so the grass doesn’t look too plain, I add random dots of color and pretend it’s flowers and stuff.

Notes on what goes into how I do expressions/faces.

@gravitality

Hi!! I’ve absolutely been thinking about that, yeah, in fact I recently talked about that to my boyfriend just recently. It’ll likely happen after october! And to answer your second question! I made a thing on legs that i hope you’ll find useful!!

So. I’ve already explained basics on legs here, but I don’t think it hurts to go through some extra details to help you understand legs some more.

The very basic thing is to imagine legs as teardrops. Again, this has already been covered in said tutorial above, but I figured it’s still good to mention even the most basic thing that I know of. I still highly recommend you check it out to get in more detail and to see some other examples and practices that you do. But basically, think of legs in the shapes of teardrops, when it comes to shape. If you need a simple stick-figure to connect the legs in the first place, make sure that they bend at the knees a bit so that the legs don’t come off as stiff and unnatural. 

As you can see, this method works perfectly for realistic legs as it does for stylistic ones. Remember to use these as a guideline, never to be the exact base of the legs you will be drawing. If you draw traditionally, remember not to draw these guides too hard, or they will be hard to erase/do freestyle!

But how do you actually draw out the legs without drawing them perfectly straight, as shown to the left? The trick is to add volume to them, and how you do that can be winged to your own liking. The idea is to think in curves. As no leg is perfectly straight. You may make these curves minimal if you don’t want them to be curvy, but keep in mind, still, that not even your own bones are perfectly straight, so it is highly recommended that you make them bend, at least a little. 

It all depends on how you draw them as well. Say you put your legs together, as shown in this picture, what happens to the fat and muscle? Naturally, they press together, much like how thighs squish on the surface when you sit down (I’m sure most people know what I’m talking about). Make sure this shows in your art! This is very important to keep in mind, because it makes it all look more natural and believable. Try to cross your legs or stand up and sit down again for real-life examples!

The same applies for stretching your legs, more or less, except they appear to become more ‘hollow’ and slimmer. They become less soft to the touch, too, and might show. Try stretching your legs and feel where the muscles tense and where it feels ‘hollow’. This is very helpful with your art.

Many leg tutorials talk about legs without mentioning the behind. It requires a tutorial on it’s own, in all honesty, but this is the most simplest way to draw it connecting to the legs. Remember that it comes in many different shapes, and this is just a super basic guide! Two circles overlapping, while following the line and flow of the legs. Remember the muscle/fat as mentioned above!

Okay, so we got the basics of leg shapes figured out? What if you want o draw them in a certain pose, or with a certain silhouette, but perhaps do not have the reference for it? Or you want to blend your style into it? The key is to not shy away from doodling the form. Make mess, draw lightly and don’t care about the anatomy. That way you’ll get everything down without it appearing stiff. You can clean up the sketch later, always, and if you can, use a reference after you have drawn your pose, to correct your drawing.

Remember that the hips do a lot to the pose of the legs! Make sure they are in flow with your legs, so that it can look more natural. Remembers that hips ‘rotate’ with the spine.

I’ve talked about this method before when it comes to posing, and the same applies for the legs. One way to make legs appear ‘steady’ is to picture them standing in a line, and one of those legs need not to stray from the lines too much, making it steady. If you want a dynamic pose despite the steady pose, you can always have the other leg stray from the line, since it only matters that one leg is steady. This method can create good, casual poses without making them appear boring. (also notice how the teardrop shapes are used here, despite the highly stylized legs)

Do you want a highly dynamic pose, or them to appear unsteady, then skip the line entirely and make both legs aim away from it completely. As you can see, the legs appear more moving, in action, as if they’re fighting, falling, or dancing. As you can imagine, this is not a pose that one could stay steady on, suggesting that it’s taken mid-movement. More about posing and this ‘line’ method is talked about in this tutorial.