#ask away!!

Art program:

Procreate on iPad - no fancy settings or adjustments other than always setting stabilization amount to 'none' on any brush I use :)

Brushes:

Lineart:

The main character of my lineart brushes is definitely Tara's Oval Sketch NK which imo is well worth the $10. Only change I've made is setting stabilization to 'none'. I use this for almost all my drawings!

All lines and 90% of the shading, except for some soft airbrushing, was done with this brush in this drawing:

My other lineart go-tos are Procreate's standard brush Marker (found in the 'Inking' category), used here:

And here:

A Photoshop soft round brush dupe (that I do not have the source for, sorry!!), used here:

Last lineart brush is from the Inkling Brush Pack, used here:

Shading:

The brushes I use for shading are all standard brushes in Procreate:

Spectra ('Painting' category) is by far the one i use the the most, and is a really nice way to get some texture that varies with how large you make the brush. The shading here is almost exclusively done with this brush:

Medium Nozzle ('Spraypaints') is one I use to get volume when shading skin - the scattering particles is a very fast way to get a sense of depth - it's very subtle, but it's almost the only brush used on the skin here:

I also use it for my favorite back-lit-halo-effect, like here:

And here:

Or if I need to separate a character from the background, I'll do a light stroke of it like here:

Basically anywhere I want a soft gradient! I used to use Procreate's Soft Brush ('Airbrushing' category) for this sort of thing, but I really like the texture the medium nozzle brush gives.

Flicks ('Spraypaints') is what I use for freckles! I find that using it over a large area and then warping it so it conforms to the planes of the body gives a very nice effect :) If it looks too harsh, sometimes I'll put a 1% gaussian blur on the layer. Example process that is also a cheeky little sneak-peek on a submission for the @makehimsubmit event:

Area we're working on → spray of 'flicks' brush in the desired freckle size → warp the area so it gives the illusion of the freckles wrapping around the bodypart → clean up and soften edges → 1% gaussian blur

3D program:

I use justsketchme! I find it very beginner-friendly and intuitive to use, especially the iPad app (although it's helpful to have the in-browser option). I use CGtrader.com to find low-poly, free assets - justsketchme isn't really meant to be used to set up entire scenes like I'm doing so save your scenes often and test loading it in the web version to see if it's saving correctly between adding assets (i'm often hitting the upper limit of what it can here lol).

A subscription is required for most functions, but the free version is definitely still usable.

I find it's super helpful in exploring different angles for poses, especially - or if I want a foreground or background element partially obscuring something else. It was immensely helpful for this shot for example, since I wanted the ladder and bookcases to overlap in a certain way while still showing enough of the poses that it wasn't confusing to look at:

Also super helpful to keep proportions consistent across panels for this post, for example:

I make 3D scenes for almost all my art now, it's a lot of fun to set up a pose from the angle I originally envision it and then move the camera around to see if there's a more interesting angle! Also essential in figuring out where to put limbs when two or more characters are interacting lol.

I explore poses and angles with the 3D setups, and once I've decided on those I'll find or take reference photos for the anatomy - which this program doesn't do super well once you start manipulating the joints, especially the shoulder- and neck regions.

And last, but not least - although I have never been asked directly, I use a lot of

references!!!

I am not kidding when I say faces are really hard for me to draw, and by far what I have most trouble with. Bodies I can freehand with no trouble, and previously I would often have a huge drawing planned out I was excited about, only to have it suffer the WIP death because I couldn't get the face right. What works for me now is using references - I'll often cut together elements from several different pictures for the angle or expression I want to make. For the past year or so I've either gone through episodes and taken screenshots or used a GIF splitter and saved the frames I liked whenever I came across one on my dash with an interesting expression and/or angle. Which means that I have some insane reference folders by now lol:

I get a lot of praise for capturing Stiles and Derek - and I just want to be completely transparent with my process. I am not able to eyeball facial proportions and it just always made me too frustrated and abandon pieces. Just going straight for references and sometimes tracing especially the outline of the face and skull has helped me immensely in then being able to adjust the angle and expression to what I want.

it's also not just a case of tracing whatever mindlessly, but figuring out what to enhance and what to leave out for readability, as you can see in this 1-year comparison of sketches done over screencaps of stiles:

My best advice for this kind of process is to find pictures of the person you want to draw that you feel like really look like them (sometimes certain angles or expressions warp recognizable features!), sketch over it and try to swap back and forth between the image and your lines - try to keep a critical eye on what lines work and which are enhancing a feature that doesn't work for recognizability.

Also these are my go-to screenshots for Stiles' moles, in case any other artists are also going insane over trying to keep them somewhat consistent 😂 :