Shai's art + anatomy tutorial stash/archive blog

hello friend!! i have a tutorial i made on twitter a while ago which is more or less how i make my colours more interesting. i still use the technique and in general it’s just a lot of colour adjustment nothing too special LOL here!!

My first shot at creating a sort of tutorial/guide, telling how I do things. On this initial chapter we’re going over the handy matter of Hands. Not meaning to be an encyclopedic explanation, only showing my own methods and self-taught clues. Hoping somebody finds it useful! :3 I’ll do more if this one is received well. So let me know~

Yeah sure! Sorry this is a bit messy, I hope my handwriting is readable

the textured blender I used is from @badbrushblog, it’s in their “Paint Pack” on their gumroad. The brush is Pigment Blend A/B (both are very similar), under “Other Brushes”.

This is the picture of it in action:

Iris. Tutorial + References by Anastasia-berry

How To Draw Braid by wysoka

Hips Tutorial by bokuman

“no that’s not dramatic and cheesy enough”

“getting warmer”

Drawing A to Drawing B: -the most obvious change is the exaggeration of the line of motion in the character.  

In Drawing B the line of motion is much more pronounced, creating more drama and movement to the whole composition

-The arms are open wider, showing more confidence and exuberance in the character, exaggerating their emotions so they can be more clearly read without having to look to the face for emotional cues.

-the legs are wider apart, adding to the aforementioned confidence but also giving the character a solid foundation, visually speaking.

-The head is tilted back and overlapped by the chest, adding a touch of dynamic perspective to the drawing.

Drawing B to Drawing C:  -Most obvious change is to zoom in on the character.  Character framing is just as important as what the character is doing.  Zooming in can help infensify emotions.  this shot is ALL about this character and what they’re feeling. -Because of the zooming in, the arms/hands would have gotten lost, so instead of making the canvas wider, the artist has elected to rotate the character slightly, bringing a dynamic angle to things and more intensity to the close shot. -While the character is more upright in this shot compared to Drawing B, in Drawing C the chest still slightly overlaps the neck, preserving the feeling of being slightly below the character (putting them in a position of power relative to the viewer), which helps maintain confidence and power in the character. -the chest is exaggerated to carry the majority of the body’s line of action so even though you cannot see the legs, our brains are able to fill in the gap and envision that line of action. -The cropping/framing of the character allows for a more interesting composition/negative shapes created by the positive (character) on the negative (background), creating more visual interest as well as a circular motion to the composition through the arms, across the face to the negative space for the eyes to rest in before dropping to the hand in the background and back through the composition again.

I’ve had a general idea what these things did but wasn’t completely sure what their specific functions were. I decided to sit down and figure it out, and I have thrown together a short reference guide for anyone who is confused about them. I know there are multiple translations of SAI floating around, so if some of these terms don’t sound familiar, just know that I’m talking about the three settings that appear under the texture in the brush tool settings (note that this won’t apply to any tool types except for brushes and watercolor brushes).

I don’t claim to be an expert so if you find I’ve made a mistake, let me know so I can update it, thanks! :3

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BLENDING (Color Blending)

This controls how readily the brush will inherit any colors you are painting over with it. For example, a 0% blending setting will pick up no existing colors, treating it as if you were painting on a transparent layer. A 100% blending setting will ONLY pick up existing colors (provided there are any). So at 100%, the color you’re using won’t even show up, unless you move to a transparent area. Blending is not affected by transparent pixels, so if you’re drawing on a blank layer it will have no effect.

So you can see from this example that the color I’m using gets harder to paint as the blending increases and more of the existing green is absorbed, until at 100% it is just completely turning green.

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DILUTION (Opacity Mix)

This controls how readily the brush will draw on a blank (transparent) part of the layer. A 0% Dilution will result in the brush painting very easily onto a blank surface, while a brush with 100% dilution will literally not paint on blank parts of the layer at all. Dilution is ONLY affected by transparent pixels. So it won’t do anything if the whole layer is already filled in (even with white). Dilution can be thought of as the inverse of the Blending setting in some ways.

So in this example, you can see that as dilution approaches 100%, the color I’m painting with basically becomes invisible. In fact, if you were to switch to binary color mode and look at this layer, there would literally be nothing there anymore!

Keep this in mind - if you ever can’t paint for some reason, check your dilution setting, it might have gotten accidentally bumped to 100!

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PERSISTENCE

This one goes hand-in-hand with blending. Basically, it controls how easily a brush shifts color as you are blending from one color to another. Rather, how long it “persists” if you will. Like blending, Persistence is only really relevant when painting over existing color so it’s mostly unaffected by transparent pixels. Basically, the higher the persistence, the longer it will take for the color to shift as you make a stroke, and subsequently, from which color to which other color it is shifting is dependent on the blending setting.

So for this example I’ve done the same test with three different levels of blending. I turned off all pressure sensitivity (actually I just used my mouse) to emphasize the effects in a controlled environment:

If blending is at 0%, persistence fails to have any real effect. With pressure on, there is only the difference of having to push harder, but the results will be the same as far as I can tell.

At a happy medium of 50%, persistence increase causes the orange that the brush is picking up to last longer as it goes into the green, until it never shifts to blue at all.

At 100% blending, there was never any blue in the first place, because as we already know, full blending causes you to only pick up existing color. So the persistence setting changes only how fast the orange changes to green.

Persistence is dependent upon the blending settings, so having them somewhere in the middle will probably produce the most optimal results.

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CONCLUSION

Ultimately how you use these is up to you, and is largely dependent on what kind of brush you’re making and what it will be used for. And most of these settings are meant to be used together in unison, so play around with them a lot!

If you are confused, or not sure what settings you want or what settings you should be using, a safe bet is to put them all at about 50% - that will produce fairly average results that are easy to work with, and it’s easy to remember in case you want to experiment but don’t want to forget your settings in case you decide to switch back. 

basic structure of human body

There’s three main groups: the flexors and extensors each take one half of the forearm, and the ridge muscles sit on top like a little tiara. Each group has it’s own unique form. Learning their anatomy will help you design awesomely dynamic arms.

Let’s try to make forearms manageable to draw. This is a body part most artists don’t quite understand. It can be real intimidating if you don’t know the muscles.

The arm has a simple chain design and the forms interlock down the arm.

To avoid the snowman effect, use straight, angular lines and look for asymmetries. Compare the apex of both sides of the forearm to understand the curvature better. Notice that the flexors reach lower on the wrist than the extensors and ridge muscles.

Look for this kind of thing when you’re drawing the gesture of the muscle groups. A wave rhythm where the curve on one side leads into the next curve on the other side.

Art Tutorial Preview

This one was interesting. I’ve seen a lot of tutorials on character expressions, but not really in relation to character’s personality. So I wanted to give it a shot. It’s easy to practice, take two of your characters and have them react to the same scene. Draw Draw Draw, you can do it!

Yo! Get full access to all my tutorials/references through: Patreon: [https://www.patreon.com/lunaartgallery] or Paypal Order: the 10$ package will get you 15 items of anything available on my Patreon, emailed directly to you.

How To Draw Flame by wysoka

Thank you to the Patrons who voted for this Tutorial! If you would like some bases to use freely for exercising your new knowledge, you can download them HERE. 

If you would like to check out my reference Pile that I used for this tutorial, check that out HERE!