Lenden Makes Art

Everyone says NEVER TRACE!! THAT'S ART THEFT! Ok but we can do a little crime in the name of Learning.

Trace to learn, not to earn.

I like to take my own photos, but you can study whatever you want. Link back to original photos, and don't post copied artwork unless the artist is dead, cool with it, or both.

As always with learning, start every sketch with the intent to throw it away (trash for paper, quitting without saving for digital) This takes the pressure off and lets you make Bad Art, which is very important.

So let's make Bad Art of a Deer because I happen to have one handy

Start with a photo of your subject in a nice/neutral pose with all four feet visible. (so not like me)

Freehand copy it. Try not to stylize, focusing instead of matching proportions and pose. Don't get too detailed!

It's ok if your art looks terrible and has broken legs. I've drawn LOTS of deer so I have a leg up. Everyone's art sucks in their own eyes and here's where mine went wrong:

Either lasso-distort (recommended for beginners) or redraw a copy of your first sketch with your reference behind it (scaled to match the main body of your sketch)

Put the original and modified sketches together and compare the differences. Write it down if you want. This shows you where your eyes saw things the wrong size, so you can correct for that next time.

After learning about both deer and yourself, try freehand copying again.

Marvel at your newfound knowledge and skill!

but there's always room for improvement

You can stop here and move on to your real drawing, Or do another freehand-fix-compare cycle. I actually overcorrected my "draws heads too big" and veered into "heads too small."

Another note on tracing: Learning HOW to trace is more important than anything you could learn By tracing. Draw the Anatomy, not the outline. In real life, things don't have outlines, they have bones.

These are from the same shoot which is extra useful for consistency. The lines are minimal and follow where the animals joints are, and only important parts are drawn.

You won't know what Important Parts means right off the bat, which is where in-depth study comes in. You need to do learn the hard parts to do the easy parts right.

"Study the anatomy study the anatomy" but they never tell you HOW. It's not "read a book," It's more like flailing around wildly and crashing your browser from too many tabs.

This is going to be about How to Make a bones and muscle chart. Because even if your art sucks, you learn so much more by doing than by seeing.

References I gathered: X X X X X X X X

Get Set up. Get a photo, like above, but it doesn't have to be the same photo. And now... gather reference.

We'll start with bones. Search up "[animal] skeleton" and get photos or super scientific illustration. Add in things like "top view" to spice it up.

Next, search "[animal] skeleton sketchfab." This pulls up 3D models that you can rotate in your browser. Remember that these are art and the anatomy is only as good as the artist, so pick a good one.

Time for bone!

The spine is the most important, and in a lot of animals it will surprise you. Draw it in over your photo and then add spikes because skeletons are punk. These are not scientific and I didn't count them because their number doesn't matter to art. So you better be referencing from scientists and not me!

The rest of the bones and some notes. These are my notes to myself about things I want to remember. My personal discoveries in anatomy that made my art better. You can make the same notes but also make sure you have your own thoughts on there as well. that's how you help yourself the best. Be as detailed or vague as you want.

Same deal with muscle. Here are my personal notes to myself. Label stuff that is important to you. I actually grouped a bunch of muscles together based on what is visible from the outside. Muscles are way more complicated than this, but Baby's First Anatomy Chart gets to be simple.

This is good enough for me because I have intimate knowledge of the other muscles working under and over these ones. Feel free to add as many or as few muscles as you like. You chart your own course.

This is very VERY much not an anatomical chart. I'm sure there's nerds out there pulling their hair out looking at this. But listen, it works for art!

And you know the wildest part about this?

I don't need to look at it to use it. The act of making your own anatomy chart puts that knowledge in your brain. Like how you can make "cheat sheets" even for tests that don't allow them - the act of making the sheet helps you remember what you struggle with most.

And after all that complexity? Your simplification will be based on Real Knowledge and you'll put those random circles in the right spots.

Look at all this hard work you've done. Eventually this will be second nature to you.

I put together some photo packs and uploaded them to my gumroad. You can use them and this guide to study! So far there's only a Doe and a Fawn pack, but if I get sales I will put in the effort to do more for deer, horses, cats, birds, and anything else I can point my camera at.

Doe Pack

To clarify prev: if you’re making art or learning to do art or even vaguely thinking about art-like ideas, you can use the repository photos!

As long as you’re not using GenAI for it you can trace, sketch, scribble on, scrapbook, decoupage, satirize, collage, sticker over, sculpt, animate, make cartoons of, paper mache, finger paint, wood-burn, and anything else you can think of with the photos.

I've been resource gathering for YEARS so now I am going to share my dragons hoard

Floorplanner. Design and furnish a house for you to use for having a consistent background in your comic or anything! Free, you need an account, easy to use, and you can save multiple houses.

Comparing Heights. Input the heights of characters to see what the different is between them. Great for keeping consistency. Free.

Magma. Draw online with friends in real time. Great for practice or hanging out. Free, paid plan available, account preferred.

Smithsonian Open Access. Loads of free images. Free.

SketchDaily. Lots of pose references, massive library, is set on a timer so you can practice quick figure drawing. Free.

SculptGL. A sculpting tool which I am yet to master, but you should be able to make whatever 3d object you like with it. free.

Pexels. Free stock images. And the search engine is actually pretty good at pulling up what you want.

Figurosity. Great pose references, diverse body types, lots of "how to draw" videos directly on the site, the models are 3d and you can rotate the angle, but you can't make custom poses or edit body proportions. Free, account option, paid plans available.

Line of Action. More drawing references, this one also has a focus on expressions, hands/feet, animals, landscapes. Free.

Animal Photo. You pose a 3d skull model and select an animal species, and they give you a bunch of photo references for that animal at that angle. Super handy. Free.

however: masking is not my policy focus and it shouldn't be yours, either. masking is a very good mitigation against droplet-born illnesses and a slightly less effective (but still very good) mitigation against airborne illnesses, but its place in the pyramid of mitigation demands is pretty low, for several reasons:

it's an individual mitigation, not a systemic one. the best mitigations to make public life more accessible affect everyone without distributing the majority of the effort among individuals (who may not be able to comply, may not have access to education on how to comply, or may be actively malicious).

it's a post-hoc mitigation, or to put it another way, it's a band-aid over the underlying problem. even if it was possible to enforce, universal masking still wouldn't address the underlying problem that it is dangerous for sick people and immune compromised people to be in the same public locations to begin with. this is a solvable problem! we have created the societal conditions for this problem!

here are my policy focuses:

upgraded air filtration and ventilation systems for all public buildings. appropriate ventilation should be just as bog-standard as appropriately clean running water. an indoor venue without a ventilation system capable of performing 5 complete air changes per hour should be like encountering a public restroom without any sinks or hand sanitizer stations whatsoever.

enforced paid sick leave for all employees until 3-5 days without symptoms. the vast majority of respiratory and food-borne illnesses circulate through industry sectors where employees come into work while experiencing symptoms. a taco bell worker should never be making food while experiencing strep throat symptoms, even without a strep diagnosis.

enforced virtual schooling options for sick students. the other vast majority of respiratory and food-borne illnesses circulate through schools. the proximity of so many kids and teenagers together indoors (with little to no proper ventilation and high levels of physical activity) means that if even one person comes to school sick, hundreds will be infected in the following few days. those students will most likely infect their parents as well. allowing students to complete all readings and coursework through sites like blackboard or compass while sick will cut down massively on disease transmission.

accessible testing for everyone. not just for COVID; if there's a test for any contagious illness capable of being performed outside of lab conditions, there should be a regulated option for performing that test at home (similar to COVID rapid tests). if a test can only be performed under lab conditions, there should be a government-subsidized program to provide free of charge testing to anyone who needs it, through urgent cares and pharmacies.

the last thing to note is that these things stack; upgraded ventilation systems in all public buildings mean that students and employees get sick less often to begin with, making it less burdensome for students and employees to be absent due to sickness, and making it more likely that sick individuals will choose to stay home themselves (since it's not so costly for them).

If you can, eliminate the threat. With Covid, that would have looked like stopping it before it spread.

Next best is trying to substitute things for the threat. This is where a sterilizing vaccine would be.

Next best is to create things to prevent workers from contacting threats. This is where most of the options above fall — they are the best options we have right now. Internal air purification is great! The virus doesn’t come into contact with people. (We put an air purifier in my kid’s classroom for a couple years and got sick twice. Once per year. This year they opted to not use the air purifier and we’ve never not been sick. I’ve been sick four times this year. Good air filtration is supposed to be a little more effective at protecting disease spread than everyone wearing a surgical mask.) Everything else proposed above keeps sick people away from non-sick people and let’s people know that they ARE sick so they can avoid getting others sick. A+ plans.

Next best is administrative controls — keeping people away from danger with rules. This includes the lockdowns and the (much disproven) six foot buffers. People can choose to expose themselves to danger and DO when the alternative is inconvenient so it’s less effective than the physical separations above.

however: masking is not my policy focus and it shouldn't be yours, either. masking is a very good mitigation against droplet-born illnesses and a slightly less effective (but still very good) mitigation against airborne illnesses, but its place in the pyramid of mitigation demands is pretty low, for several reasons:

it's an individual mitigation, not a systemic one. the best mitigations to make public life more accessible affect everyone without distributing the majority of the effort among individuals (who may not be able to comply, may not have access to education on how to comply, or may be actively malicious).

it's a post-hoc mitigation, or to put it another way, it's a band-aid over the underlying problem. even if it was possible to enforce, universal masking still wouldn't address the underlying problem that it is dangerous for sick people and immune compromised people to be in the same public locations to begin with. this is a solvable problem! we have created the societal conditions for this problem!

here are my policy focuses:

upgraded air filtration and ventilation systems for all public buildings. appropriate ventilation should be just as bog-standard as appropriately clean running water. an indoor venue without a ventilation system capable of performing 5 complete air changes per hour should be like encountering a public restroom without any sinks or hand sanitizer stations whatsoever.

enforced paid sick leave for all employees until 3-5 days without symptoms. the vast majority of respiratory and food-borne illnesses circulate through industry sectors where employees come into work while experiencing symptoms. a taco bell worker should never be making food while experiencing strep throat symptoms, even without a strep diagnosis.

enforced virtual schooling options for sick students. the other vast majority of respiratory and food-borne illnesses circulate through schools. the proximity of so many kids and teenagers together indoors (with little to no proper ventilation and high levels of physical activity) means that if even one person comes to school sick, hundreds will be infected in the following few days. those students will most likely infect their parents as well. allowing students to complete all readings and coursework through sites like blackboard or compass while sick will cut down massively on disease transmission.

accessible testing for everyone. not just for COVID; if there's a test for any contagious illness capable of being performed outside of lab conditions, there should be a regulated option for performing that test at home (similar to COVID rapid tests). if a test can only be performed under lab conditions, there should be a government-subsidized program to provide free of charge testing to anyone who needs it, through urgent cares and pharmacies.

the last thing to note is that these things stack; upgraded ventilation systems in all public buildings mean that students and employees get sick less often to begin with, making it less burdensome for students and employees to be absent due to sickness, and making it more likely that sick individuals will choose to stay home themselves (since it's not so costly for them).

If you can, eliminate the threat. With Covid, that would have looked like stopping it before it spread.

Next best is trying to substitute things for the threat. This is where a sterilizing vaccine would be.

Next best is to create things to prevent workers from contacting threats. This is where most of the options above fall — they are the best options we have right now. Internal air purification is great! The virus doesn’t come into contact with people. (We put an air purifier in my kid’s classroom for a couple years and got sick twice. Once per year. This year they opted to not use the air purifier and we’ve never not been sick. I’ve been sick four times this year. Good air filtration is supposed to be a little more effective at protecting disease spread than everyone wearing a surgical mask.) Everything else proposed above keeps sick people away from non-sick people and let’s people know that they ARE sick so they can avoid getting others sick. A+ plans.

Next best is administrative controls — keeping people away from danger with rules. This includes the lockdowns and the (much disproven) six foot buffers. People can choose to expose themselves to danger and DO when the alternative is inconvenient so it’s less effective than the physical separations above.

- Within hours of surgery, I wake up from a nap to my cat gently sniffing at my incisions with great alarm.

- I was not allowed to shower the first day after surgery, and the cats, seeing that The Large Cat is not observing its cleaning ritual, decided I must be gravely disabled and compensated by licking all the exposed skin on my arms, face, and legs.

- I currently have to sleep with a pillow over my abdomen because my cat insists on climbing on top of me and covering my incisions with her body while I sleep (which is very sweet but not exactly comfortable without the pillow). She also lays across me facing my bedroom door, presumably on guard for attackers who may try to harm me while I'm sleeping and injured.

senshi stock

croquis cafe

line-of-action.com

quickposes.com

posemaniacs

clip studio paint models

pexels.com

sketchdaily

eggazyoutatsu atarichan drawer

designdoll

Freeimages: You can use the images in digital format on websites, blog posts, social media, advertisements, film and television productions, web and mobile applications. In printed materials such as magazines, newspapers, books, brochures, flyers, product packaging for decorative use in your home, office or any public place or personal use. The rights granted to you by FreeImages.com are: Perpetual, meaning there is no expiration or end date on your rights to use the content. Non-exclusive, meaning that you do not have exclusive rights to use the content. FreeImages.com can license the same content to other customers. Unlimited, meaning you can use the content in an unlimited number of projects and in any media. For purposes of this agreement, “use” means to copy, reproduce, modify, edit, synchronize, perform, display, broadcast, publish, or otherwise make use of.

Stocksnap: Every single image on StockSnap are governed exclusively by the generous terms of the Creative Commons CC0 license. Specifically, that license means you can do any and all of the following: Download the image file.Publish, revise, copy, alter, and share that image. Use the image (as-is or as you’ve altered it), in both personal and commercial contexts. Moreover, you can put StockSnap CC0 images to any of these usages without buying the right to do it, acquiring written permission from the image’s creator, or attributing the work to the image creator. In other words, there’s no fee to download or use these StockSnap images in accordance with the CC0 license. They’re free to download, free to edit, and free to use - even in a commercial project! You don’t even need to attribute the image to the creator, the way you do with other CC or traditional copyright licensing schemes. (However, even though it’s not required, we here at StockSnap do encourage you to include an appropriate attribution. It’s a nice thing to do.)

Burst.Shopify: Burst is a free stock photo platform that is powered by Shopify. Their image library includes thousands of high-resolution, royalty-free images that were shot by their global community of photographers. You can use their pictures for just about anything — your website, blog or online store, school projects, Instagram ads, facebook posts, desktop backgrounds, client work and more. All of their photos are free for commercial use with no attribution required.

Pixabay: Images and Videos on Pixabay are released under Creative Commons CC0. To the extent possible under law, uploaders of Pixabay have waived their copyright and related or neighboring rights to these Images and Videos. You are free to adapt and use them for commercial purposes without attributing the original author or source. Although not required, a link back to Pixabay is appreciated.

Viintage: All images hosted by Viintage.com are considered to be public domain images, each image is presumed to be in the public domain. It may be distributed or copied as permitted by applicable law. Viintage.com assumes no ownership of the images and they may be downloaded and can be used free of charge for any purpose. They may be downloaded and used for commercial and personal use. Understand “public domain” as the permission to freely use an image without asking permission from the photographer or the illustrator. Thus, the creator of the work will not sue you for violating his/her copyrights. It is your responsibility to make sure, displaying the image does not violate any other law. Viintage.com assumes no responsibility for how or where you use the images found on the site.

Morguefile. Big old free photo archive from the dawn of the web. “We are a community-based free photo site, and all photos found in the Morguefile archive are free for you to download and re-use in your work, be it commercial or not. The photos have been contributed by a wide range of creatives from around the world, ranging from amateur photo hobbyists to professionals.”

Open Access at the Met. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York: “Whether you’re an artist or a designer, an educator or a student, a professional or a hobbyist, you now have more than 406,000 images of artworks from The Met collection to use, share, and remix—without restriction.”

Smithsonian Open Access. Download, share, and reuse millions of the Smithsonian’s images […] from across the Smithsonian’s 19 museums, nine research centers, libraries, archives, and the National Zoo.

Posing Sites and Apps:

Adorkastock. Stock photos for pose refs. DeviantArt gallery started in 2007.

FreePhotoMuscle.com. (translated page link click here) Japanese stock photo pose site that includes buff people, but in funny poses and costumes.

CroquoisCafe. (NSFW, nude model poses warning) A stock photo pose site. You should be aware this org has been linked as pro-Trump. I leave it to y’all to decide if you want to use the resources or not. I highly encourage not financially supporting them and trying to support the individual models if you can.

Line of Action. Fantastic site that includes posing refs, community discussions from other artists, figure study, anatomy, etc. So much stuff in here.

PoseSpace. Extensive library of poses. Some free resources others are paid. I’ve not fully evaluated both, but you should be able to use this all mostly free and get great use out of it.

SketchDaily. This one is one of the better ones out there. You can time yourself, search by pose, clothing options, body type, perspective, etc. All real models.

JustSketch.me. A pose app for any device. Has apps for most devices and a webapp. Customize and pose models/props/scenes.

Quickposes. Pose site that gives you timed challenges to become more proficient at poses.

POSEMANIACS. Ref site with anatomical poses. All the ref pics are of 3D models with only the bones and muscles. Can be helpful for seeing how muscles behave in certain poses. limited to two body types tho.

MagicPoser. A wonderful app that’s great on mobile. Lets you choose size of models, number of them, style, etc. Significant features are use of snap point with the physics engine, adjustable lighting, multiple perspective, 360 angle, articulated hand posing.

Clip Studio Paint Modeler. Free 3d tool that works with Clip Studio Paint. You can import your own data or other models you find online. Not quite an alternative to Blender, but the integration with CSP is very nice.

Egg a Zyoutatsu Atarichan Drawer. (requires enabling flash player or downloading and using standalone flashplayer) Drawing tool for pose practice. The developer is working on an html5 version.

DesignDoll. One of the best pose tool apps out there. You can customize so many things. They also have an extensive collection of ready made poses here. You can use the free or pay once for life and have the poses integrated into the client as well as the ability to export your obj to other programs like blender or smt.

Stock Photo Sites:

Unsplash. Giant free stock image site.

freeimages.com. Another stock photo site, less features than some others.

StockSnap.io. Stock photos with a creative commons CC0 license, which essentially means you can use the photos however you want and don’t have to attribute to them. (though its nice if you do attribute)

Burst.Shopify. Tons of royalty free high quality images. Similar licensing to StockSnap.

pixabay. I feel like most people know about this one, but it features entirely free CC0 licensed Photos, Videos, and Music. No attribution required, but still nice to support a giant site with all this content.

Viintage. Big collection of public domain vintage photos.

Gratisography. For commercial or personal use. They specialize in odd, quirky, wild stock photos.

pexels. Great free stock photos and videos. Only a few stipulations of what they don’t allow, but their license info can be found here.

Faestock. An artist and model with a huge amount of fantasy and fae and other types of photos available. Their terms for use are here.

MorgueFile. Old stock photo archive that’s been around a long time.

Museum and Institution Open Access sites:

USA National Gallery of Art. Over 50k works available for download.

New York Metropolitan Museum open access. 490k works to browse. Even codes for Animal Crossing New Horizons patterns.

The Smithsonian Institution open access. Probably one of the largest open access collections available online. Around 3.9 million items available to view.