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.
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Do you have any tips for showing different textures? Mine always turn out exactly the same.
Hey Luv, sorry about the delay.
My biggest tip to you, is to be an observer of nature. If there's something you want to draw, really look at it. What are the colors? Where are the shadows? How does light reflect on it? That's been the most helpful tip I've ever gotten as an artist.
But if you're looking for a quick fix, I'll share a little cheat sheet I made with you ;)
1) Start with a base gradient
2) For shiny surfaces, start with a brighter color and add the light patterns. For duller surfaces, used a shadow color and add the shadow patterns
3) For shiny surfaces, add your block shadows. For duller surfaces, add your lines, details, and highlights
And that's it. Hope you found this at least a little useful. Best of luck my Luv, and stay awesome <3 <3
I have been experimenting with transparency art (thank you so much for your tutorial!), but my biggest question is: how on earth do you get it to overlay on other colors? Its absolutely mind bending
With much patience and frustration š« (>>>The previous tutorial<<)
The key to making transparency work with colours, is getting the colour saturation and opacity levels to visually match.Ā
Letās lay down the basics. I've got these two coloured boxes and I want one of them to be transparent. But I also want them to stay the same colour until someone clicks on them, right?
Of course, the problem is that as soon as we drop the opacity, the colour saturation also drops and we get this:
So what you have to do is hyper-saturate the colour of the low opacity area until it matches the full saturation one.
Or as close as you can get. If you can't get it exact, colour-pick from the 50% opacity area and recolour the 100% area so they match. This works best with colours that are already muted or pastel.
That's the basic principle. It gets 10x more complex when you start adding multiple colours and backgrounds... Full tutorial continued under the cut (this is going to be a LONG post) vvv
I'm going to use my Hill King ectober piece because it's a good example of how this transparency trick works on complex pieces.
The first step is to plot out approximately what colours/mood I wanted to end up with in the final piece.
Next I push my saturation ALL the way up.
And then drop the whole background opacity to 40% (Keeping all your background layers in a single folder is the easiest way to do this) I fiddled around with the individual colours, pushing their saturation and hues until I was satisfied with this sort of pastel look.
And here we are with the lineart added in. A few things needed to be retouched to accommodate the lines and thatās normal. If you have to change a few things make sure to pull your colours from the 100% version and not colour-pick from the low opacity.
Now to make the transparent section. This part may vary depending on your drawing program. I'm using Krita but I'll try my best to make the process applicable to other programs.
This is where it gets complicated:
Save two versions of your image.Ā
One with lineart and colours at 100% full saturation.
One with the low opacity colours and NO lineart.
Make sure you have a white background under everything so that they are NOT transparent yet. Saving the two versions as flat images is VERY IMPORTANT. Do Not merge all your layers. Just save as a PNG.
Your two versions should look like this:
On a new layer draw your cut-away shape. This is the area that you want to be transparent at the end. I used an eraser for the stars and crown so they show up as the colours underneath. If you can, make the edges of your shape just a little bit blurry. Hard edges will show up and reveal your trick.
Duplicate this layer so that you have at least two copies.
You are now going to cut your shape out of the low opacity flat image. In Krita that means setting the cut-away shape layer to āEraseā and merging it down with the low opacity layer. With other programs it might mean selecting your cut-away shape and manually ctrl+x cutting the shape out or using some kind of clipping mask.
If youāve done it right, you should be able to see your high saturation layer with the lineart underneath.
By dropping the opacity of your high saturation layer it should blend in seamlessly with your background. In this case, I drop it down to 40% to match. Youāre going to get this funky little ghost effect with the lineart from underneath.
If I had kept my lineart as part of the original low opacity image when I saved it, it would have ended up looking like this:
Now, remember how I said to make a duplicate of the cut-away shape? That comes back here. The cut-away section of lineart is stuck at 40% opacity. If we simply plop our lineart back on top of everything at itās current opacity, it stands out too much. (In my opinion, this might be perfect for your piece!)
But I want it to blend in a bit, more like this:
So I take my lineart and my cut-away shape and do the exact same thing as before. Except this time I keep my shape at 50%. In Krita, with the Erase layer, this means it only erased 50% of my lineās opacity. I have zero idea how this would work with a clipping mask, sorry :(
Which gives us this:
(Use a black background under the see-through area to show it off)
And thatās it! We now have transparent colours that blend seamlessly with the full opacity sections and lineart that is clear but doesnāt distract from either version!
Turn off all your background layers and save as a .png image (this wonāt work with a .jpg!). Upload your pic to tumblr and see if it works. If the transparency doesnāt show up correctly you may have to scale your image down to a smaller size! Tumblr is very picky like that.
This process isnāt perfect and it sure takes a lot of time but the effects can be super cool and totally worth the effort! If youāve made it all the way to the end of this LOOOONG tutorial you are a BAMF! Put a little āyeehaw!ā in the notes for yourself and Happy Arting!
iām still learning anatomy myself so i wouldnāt use this as more than just a general tip butā¦. I am fascinated by speculative monster anatomy and this is something i discovered years ago and thought i would impart amongst my fellow monster enthusiasts :)
mind you, the second set of pectorals can look kind of funky so i understand aesthetically why people would prefer not to draw them but! if you are someone interested in anatomy, i think this is a thing people dont really think about when giving their OCs wings/extra limbs and i think itās kind of neat!
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good tutorials are few and far between ( a lot of artists seem to get caught up in the superficial trappings of portraiture rather than the nitty gritty fundamentals), but these breakdowns by Bryan Lee are just fantastic. Ā Super applicable tips and tricks, no matter your personal technique/approach.
so metropolitan museum of art has a register of books theyāve published that are out of print and that you can download for free! theyāre mostly books on art, archeology, architecture, fashion and history and i just think thatās super useful and interesting so i wanted to share! you can find all of the books available here!
Do you design a lot of characters living in not-modern eras and youāre tired of combing through google for the perfect outfit references? Well I got good news for you kiddo, this website has you covered! Originally @modmad made a post about it, but her link stopped working and I managed to fix it, so hereās a new post. Basically, this is a costume rental website for plays and stage shows and what not, they have outfits for several different decades from medieval to the 1980s. LOOK AT THIS SELECTION:
OPEN ANY CATEGORY AND OH LORDYā
Thereās a lot of really specific stuff in here, I design a lot of 1930s characters for my ask blog and with more chapters on the way for the game it belongs to Iām gonna be designing more, and this website is going to be an invaluable reference. I hope this can be useful to my other fellow artists as well! :)
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yall look at this shit ad*be is tryna pull now on ppl who have outdated software:
(note for context: iām all for piracy, but in this case my copy of CS6 was downloaded years ago when they were giving it away to students. i got it totally legally.)
so here is what NOT to do if youāre a loyal fan of adobe who has the cash to shell out for a newer and shittier version of the product you already paid for.
1) DONāT use your search bar to find and open the Run app
2) DONāT type in services.msc
3) DONāT find Adobe Genuine Software Integrity Services and right-click to get a dropdown menu, and donāt selectĀ āpropertiesā
4) if you happen to click properties, DONāT use the startup type dropdown to locate the option to disable the program. be sure you DONāT click apply to finalize that change.Ā
5) DO NOT do the same thing in order to also disable Adobe Genuine Software Monitor
if you do all of these things, this WILL disable adobeās ability to monitor the software, and you will be forced to continue using the same older software that you already paid for instead of having to sign up for a newer, shittier version and pay more for it. so if you have lots of cash to spare and are cool with putting it the pockets of racketeering capitalists, definitely donāt do any of these things.Ā
however, you SHOULD reblog this to spread the word, as we certainly want to make sure lots of people know what NOT to do :)
My 2 sold out tutorials BOOKS are coming BACK to KICKSTARTER in the HIGHER TIERS of my brohthter Robinās How to WRITE campaign THIS OCTOBER 2019! BUT! The ONLY WAYto get the books is to join the SECRET LAUNCH CLUB MAILING LIST by sending āAdd me, Lorenzo!ā to [email protected]. We WONāT be announcing the launch date ANYWHERE online ahead of the campaign going live!
My drawing tutorials books will NOT be on sale ANYWHERE in shops OR online outside of Kickstarter for at least the next TWO YEARS, so this is a VERY RARE CHANCE to get them!
Lorenzo!
My 2 sold out tutorials BOOKS are coming BACK to KICKSTARTER in the HIGHER TIERS of my brohthter Robinās How to WRITE campaign THIS OCTOBER 2019! BUT! The ONLY WAYto get the books is to join the SECRET LAUNCH CLUB MAILING LIST by sending āAdd me, Lorenzo!ā to [email protected]. We WONāT be announcing the launch date ANYWHERE online ahead of the campaign going live!
My drawing tutorials books will NOT be on sale ANYWHERE in shops OR online outside of Kickstarter for at least the next TWO YEARS, so this is a VERY RARE CHANCE to get them!
Lorenzo!
being a self-taught artist with no formal training is having done art seriously since you were a young teenager and only finding out that youāre supposed to do warm up sketches every time youāre about to work on serious art when youāre fuckin twenty-five
when i was in undergrad, it was kind of mentioned in and offhand way that we should do warmups, but we were never shown what that meant. And, yāknow, we were young so it didnāt matter so much.Ā
Being older now and having an art job itāsā¦kind of essential.Ā
So: a quick primer for those of you who are likeĀ āok but how do i actually go about doing this warmup thing.āĀ
1) you may be tempted to doĀ āa warmup drawingā which is just a drawing that will take longer than it needed to and probably be frustrating and kind of bad because you didnāt warm up first. Itās tempting but always a trick your brain is playing on you! Do not trust!Ā
2) warmups will vary based on what feels good to you/what task youāre 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 youāre going to be using, whether thatās your tablet or your sketchbook or a drawing pad on an easel. For these circles you should make sure that youāre 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!Ā
In order to ensure that youāre drawing from your shoulder, when youāre holding your pencil or whatever drawing tool youāre using, the only part of your hand that should be touching the drawing surface is part of the last two fingersāsome 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.Ā
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 iāve already drawn as a precision exercise, but i donāt do that unless iām feeling loose
b) spirals! i donāt always do spirals, but if iām stiff and the circles just arenāt 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 itās all about making sure iām comfortable with how iām moving so who really even cares about how the spirals look. Not me!Ā
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 Iām 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 donāt always remember where I picked up my warm up exercises, but Iām 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 Iāll often take the time to do some rough shading on at least a few of them
f) spidermans! This one is really good if youāre going to be storyboarding or working on dynamic poses. Just fill a page full of spidermans doing all sorts of acrobatics.Ā
g) beans. I donāt do beans too much anymore, but I know a lot of people like it so Iām mentioning it here. Fill an area with different size bean shapes without lifting your pencil off the paper.Ā
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 youāve already drawing. Repeat with a wavy line. Iām bad at this one, which means I probably need to do it more.Ā
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 youāre getting bored, etc.Ā
This is a long list, I know, but I usually donāt take more than 10 to 15 minutes to warm up, and I can warm up one handed while Iām drinking coffee, so, multitasking hurrah.Ā
Sometimes Iāll advance to a precision warmup and find that I havenāt loosened up enough yet; itās 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 Iām not feeling it before I start, by the time Iāve gotten to the end Iām usually Ready For Drawinā. Brain hacks.Ā
so, yeah! thatās a lot of words, but! Warmups are important! Save your joints, take less advil, do better drawings!Ā
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