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Anatomy Tips by zephy.fr

I created a quick walkthrough on my process! You can do the same with any digital art program and brushes you like. As always, learning comes with critical thinking and if you feel this does not apply to you, then no worries! There’s no correct way to do things as long as you achieve the results you want. 

The technique can be customized with different brush types and colours, and can be as simple or heavily rendered as you so desire. I hope it helps a little! I like to do lighting like this in my own work for a sense of atmosphere.

draw all your poc characters in black and white, without greytones, and check if they’re still recognizable as poc.

no, having a cartoony/anime inspired art style isn’t a reason to not learn how to do this either! i get the feeling that a lot of well-meaning artists do this bc they feel afraid that if they try drawing poc they’re gonna end up making accidental caricatures, but it’s not really great to have a bunch of characters labeled “hey! poc!” and not take the time to learn how to draw them.

resources that i have found helpful:

mel-lion’s guides on drawing black features

chuwenjie‘s guide on drawing east asian features

humanae, great place for finding reference pictures

Boop.

JUST SOME THOUGHTS! I don’t really like the “go from the top up” advice on drapery/clothes - if you’re having difficulty try it like this!

I’ve been getting a lot of asks lately about the brushes and textures I use in my work, so here’s a BIG FAT REFERENCE POST for those of you who were curious! Bear in mind that I’m really lazy and don’t know what half the settings do, so don’t be afraid to experiment to figure out what works best for you :>

BRUSHES

Pencil I use the pencil tool with SAI’s native paper texture both for sketching and for applying opaque color with no blending. Lower opacities give it the feel of different pencil hardnesses, while full opacity makes it more like a palette knife, laying down hard-edged, heavy color for detail work or eventual blending with other brushes. Ink Pen Mostly made this because I’m lazy and I didn’t want to have to keep turning my textures off/opacity up when I wanted to ink something (even though I don’t do it very often), or lay down flat colors. I find the line quality to be much more crisp than Photoshop, and you can manually adjust in-program stabilization to help smooth out hand wobbles. Round Brush The plain ol’ brush tool acts as sort of an in-between for me in terms of brush flow. It’s heavier than my usual workhorse brush, for faster color application and rough blending, but not as heavy as the pencil tool, which has no blending at all. I like to use the canvas texture on this brush to help break up the unnatural smoothness that usually accompanies digital brushes, but it works just fine without. Flat Brush A brush tool set to flat bristle (try saving this bitmap file to your elemap folder if your version of SAI doesn’t have it) is by far my favorite to paint with. I don’t use any textures with it because I think the shape of the brush provides enough of that by itself. I use it for everything from rough washes to more refined shaping and polish. It’s just GREAT.

Watercolor Best used for smooth blending, washes, gradients, and smoky atmospheric effects. Cloud Basically a grittier version of the watercolor tool, because too much smoothness weird me out. Good for clouds and fog, as the name suggests, or just less boring gradient fills.

TEXTURE OVERLAY

To further stave off the artificially smooth look of digital painting, I almost always overlay some sort of paper texture, and it’s almost always this one, which I scanned and edited myself. You’re all welcome to use it, no permission required!

Using overlays in SAI is just as easy as using them in Photoshop. Just paste the texture into its own layer above everything you want it to apply to, and change the layer mode to Overlay. That’s it!

Want a more prominent texture? Up the contrast. Something more subtle? Lower the contrast or reduce the layer opacity. You can also use a tinted overlay to adjust the overall palette and bring a little more color unity to an otherwise disparate piece! Just be aware that too much texture can hurt the readability of the work beneath it, so I’d err on the side of subtlety.

Hope that helps!

A long time ago an anon asked my thoughts about drawing backgrounds, so I finally got around to putting this together. It’s more prop-centric, but it still represents my philosophy to backgrounds. 

MMMMMM I HOPE THIS COVERS EVERYTHIGN im so sorry i use the same process for  literally everything

second part of this tutorial i guess

As heavily (really heavily) requested, I now bring to you all a tutorial on drawing kinky coily curly beautiful hair. I personally don’t think there is any one way to draw natural hair, but for the tutorial below I use a custom made brush pack. Any square pastel brush will work wonders for you though! Unlike the last tutorial there won’t be do’s and don’ts but I will again start off with this warning. 

If you have a character who is canonically black and wears wears their hair unprocessed and you choose to only draw them with straight hair instead thats #wrong. Let black hair be represented unstraightened.

OK NOW LETS GET INTO IT

First thing is first. You have to understand the basic shape of all curly hair. 

Curly hair has a corkscrew shape called a Helix.  What changes the look and overall denseness of the hair is how tight the helix shape of the hair is. The looser the curls the longer and more more S shaped the hair will be.The tighter the curls the shorter and coarser the hair will be in appearance. This is why black people with tighter curls appear to have shorter hair before they stretch out their coils. This is called shrinkage. 

The hair types can be kind of tricky to navigate if you don’t know what exactly you’re looking for. They range from 1-4 depending on who you ask. For this tutorial we’re only going to be paying attention to these six as they are the predominant hair types in the black community. The further down the scale you go the less S shaped the hair will be when stretched. 

3A hair is the loosest of the curly bunch.  It comes in a few variations and can even look like straight up ringlets depending on the person.  Ringlets are sometimes most apparent at the end of the hair. 3A hair has a really noticeable S shape and spiral pattern. This hair isn’t really textured it’s quite smooth in comparison but I love texture so :/

3B and 3C can sometimes overlap on the same head. It all depends on the person and other factors like whether or not they styled their hair. 3B hair is looser than 3C with the curls being around the size of a thin marker. This hair is very springy,voluminous,and dense. 3C hair is also called coily curly because of how tight the curls are. This is the densest and coarsest of the 3 category but it also has the most volume. 

To draw this hair use square pastel brushes or any square textured brush you may already have. Use a hard round brush to really define the ends and to draw fly aways. 

Even though this curly hair is so tightly packed it doesn’t hang straight down from the head. The curls push each other outwards and thats what gives the hair a big appearance. This leaves a lot of room for extra shadows and pockets of space you don’t  see with straight hair. So jot that down

Now we are getting into the coily and kinky hair types. This hair is very fine and is sometimes composed of multiple thin strands curling around each other to form one coil. It’s also dense! 4A hair is distinguishable from 4B because of its distinct S shape. 4B hair has a unique angled zig zag pattern. Both these hair types can be wiry and are less defined than other curl patterns. (Styling makes these curls pop severely tho)

4C is kinda new, but old to everyone who has this hair type. What’s fun and gorgeous about this hair type is that it can be wiry, coarse, dense, soft, fine or thin. Like 4B hair this hair type is very packed and less defined. Like all the other hair types this hair can be stretched and straightened. The amount of heat and method of styling will vary the results but a gentle styling of the hair will still leave it fluffy and textured. (But v much stretched.)  

For this kind of hair I love using really rough edged round brushes on a medium opacity. This gives the hair a soft finished look. 

Fun fact: the afro textures are so dense they hold shapes easily. This makes for some real interesting styling potential wink wonk

So the most fun part is coloring everything in. My favorite way to color is shown here and will be explained more in a Youtube video! 

1. ) Block in the shape of the hair with a solid color. Start off with your shadows first and keep them close to the face. 

2.Add your mid-tone second. Leave the edges and tops of the hair free for your lightest colors. 

3. Depending on the hair type you are drawing you can go in with a lighter color to add the highlights of curls. This will really make them pop but this isn’t necessary. If you are like me you really just focus on how the outline of the hair looks. 

4. On the outer edges of the hair I use the lowest opacity and lightest colors. For me this helps create a wispy and coiled look at the ends which is what I personally like on afros the most. Feel free to not do that. If you are not doing an Afro you can use a hard round brush to draw in defined s curls and coils at the ends. 

Remember fly aways are your friends. Not all black people just walk around rocking afros so learn to draw other natural styles. The hairline is usually solid for 4 type textures but you can add baby hairs if the hair is styled.

have fun drawing kisses now!!!!!!

disclaimer: these are all based on my body. I know there are a ton of different body shapes out there. It’s important to study all sorts of body shapes but I’ve only ever use mine as a reference.

How I draw skin Part 2: DON”T DRAW NATIVE PEOPLE WITH RED SKIN!!!! A tutorial

For the first tutorial on how I draw skin, see the post here.

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 

Hello there!

Yes, we haven’t done this in a while… but our inbox and chat are swamped with questions on the subject, so this article was very much needed.

it’s a simple list of art apps, but we know you love those :D

Enough with the intro, here it is, a list of twelve art apps you may want to check out.

ArtRage is an art program for beginners and professionals. With its minimal interface, it’s easy to keep the essential tools at hand without stealing space from the canvas. Panels can be moved around and tools can be customised. We all know how important it is for digital artists to be able to modify brushes!

Pros: easy to use; friendly interface; essential tools from professional apps available; available for iOS, Android, Windows and Mac

Cons: it may get sluggish with big files and when using big brushes, but performances also depend on the running machine; limited selection of editing tools if compared to Photoshop - ArtRage is more of a painting program rather than an editing one.

Paid

ArtRage Lite is a different version at a cheaper price, mostly for beginners, but also for professionals if they need the essential.

Now free, Sketchbook is the famous app created by Autodesk for various platforms.

Pros: clean, friendly interface; easy to use; professional features

Cons: lack of official tutorials; doesn’t offer as many tools as other apps (it’s down to the essential); paid subscription in Adobe style for multiple licenses

Free and paid

Black Ink is a powerful little program few actually know, but there’s a reason: this isn’t your classing drawing app. What’s cool about it is the vast selection of special brushes, completely non-realistic, and definitely able to boost your creativity.

Pros: vast selection of customisable brushes; excellent performance

Cons: not very easy to use; non-intuitive interface

Paid

This is probably the most complete software for painting, drawing and animation. It was originally known as Manga Studio, but with its updates and addition of features, it became Clip Studio Paint. 

This doesn’t say much about the quality of the features themselves considering the affordable price (if you haven’t used the app yet, that is), but among graphic apps, this one is the top seller.

Pros: professional features for illustrators; layout tools for comic/manga artists; 3D reference models; customisable tools; various sales with special prices

Cons: the interface may not appear intuitive at first; the program may lag (again, performance also depends on the running machine)

Paid

GIMP is the famous open source image editor originally created for GNU/Linux and available for OS X and Windows. 

Best known as Photoshop’s main competition, this is a manipulation program for both beginners and professionals who love design.

It offers many professional features, making the program a powerful tool.

Pros: professional editing tools; supports different formats; supported by different platforms; active community

Cons: in spite of the simple design, many options are hidden and it takes time to discover all the features; slow startup

Free

Krita is an open source painting app created by artists for artists.

Pros: easy to use; intuitive interface; great brush workflow; brush stabilizer; customisable brushes; general good performance; very enthusiastic, although small, community

Cons: it may be slow or even crash depending on the running computer and the app’s version; very few editing tools compared to Photoshop

Free

MediBang Paint is a free and light app for drawing and painting, perfect for manga and comic creation.

Pros: vast selection of brushes; cloud sharing; friendly, minimal interface (non-desktop app); also available for iPad, iPhone and Android

Cons: requires an account to use all features; non-intuitive interface (desktop version)

Free

Mischief is a sketching app with essential tools, useful for brainstorming and ideation.

Pros: infinite drawing canvas; friendly interface; easy to use; cheap pro version

Cons: few updates; offers only the essential (but that’s the point); no editing/adjustment tools

Free and paid

Corel’s jewel, Painter is the most famous software that offers digital tools able to give a traditional feel to brushes and canvas.

Pros: different selection of media; many professional features; PS-friendly

Cons: certain brushes may work slow; not easy to use at first; the software may crash (this is the most common report); pricey

Paid

Paintstorm Studio is a professional software for digital painting. It’s focused on the use of brushes and blending, which makes the software a little gem in the digital painting field.

Pros: good brush workflow; brush stabilizer; “close gap” feature; customisable interface and tools; professional features; affordable price

Cons: non-intuitive interface (desktop version)

Paid

Procreate is the powerful drawing app for iOS. 

With the very sensitive Apple Pencil, Procreate is so easy to use that many artists chose the iPad over the most famous graphic tablets.

Pros: friendly interface; makes it easy to organise files; excellent brush workflow; customisable brushes; video recording; affordable price

Cons: hidden features; only available for iPad

Paid

SAI is a simple app for artists who want to focus on painting and drawing. 

It’s well known for its good pressure support and its essential tools for manga artists, but SAI can be used by any kind of artist who wants to paint.

Pros: easy to use; friendly interface; light software; customisable brushes; tons of (non-official) tutorials

Cons: limited selection of tools, even basic ones; limited canvas sizes and uses; it might crash from intensive work, especially with big canvases and brushes; supports only RGB colour mode; lack of support

Paid

We hope you’ll find this list useful. 

If you think there are other apps that should have made this list, don’t hesitate to let us know!

Thank you and peace out,

G&M

Buy us a coffee ❤

Other articles:

10 inspiring and helpful YouTube channels for digital artists

6 inspiring Art Podcasts for digital artists

here’s a short little one:

Hi @dank-space-memes​!

Your answer is in understanding perspective! 

There are three main types! 

Once you understand how these grids work, you won’t have to measure out things or copy from a photo; you can design scenes in your mind! You can also move stuff and it won’t look weird because you will see how things appear to be different sized depending how they move away from vanishing point/focal points. 

Keep in mind that things farther away generally look smaller and things that are closer generally look larger to you. 

One Point Perspective

Here’s a rough thumbnail of 1 point perspective: 

& then an overlay with what I imagine your scene to look like. 

Note, your focal point can move but you’re going to want to adjust all the radial lines!

Two Point Perspective

& now with a weird angle of the props from before: 

Three Point Perspective

Basically, you have 2 point perspective but with a bird’s eye/worm’s eye view. 

& now with your props:

Hope this helps! :D 

If you want to help me pay for this blog, I made a premium version of this as a PSD file with all the layers so you can toggle them on and off as you please: bmc.xyz/l/perspective.

This requires a bit of initial study, but I also definitely recommend following along with some tutorials. 

Here are a few favorites: 

New perspective on perspective by HOON

Perspective Tutorial by Kinie

https://drawabox.com/lesson/1 -Boxes! Not exactly related to perspective, but will get you comfortable orienting shapes in space, which is needed for drawing things in perspective. 

@rawranansi/ @thundercluck-blog‘s amazing tutorial: https://thundercluck-blog.tumblr.com/post/158689805952/hey-friends-its-meg-for-this-weeks-tutor. 

For aligning people with a horizon, consider this handy advice from the legendary Andrew Loomis. His books are in the public domain, like Figure Drawing For All It’s Worth

Thanks for reading! If this post helped, please consider reblogging it or sharing it with your friends! ❤️