#ask kaiami

shin ran into him while traveling

Hope this is helpful!

I hope you don’t mind if I answer this publicly so that I can address it with more people! To be honest I’m not the best person to ask because I wasn’t formally taught, but I can show you how I personally go about doing things. I haven’t done studies since college, and instead just wing everything as I go.

By creases I’m assuming you’re referring to clothing folds. I answered a similar ask a couple years ago so these pics are being recycled.

Usually I draw the base of the person first, then put clothes on top. Where the folds are will depend on the fit of the garment

As for folds, it’s kinda intuition with me. They will act differently depending on what kind of clothes and how they fit.

It tighter clothes, there will be areas of strain where there are joints and curves. In loose clothing, the folds would be determined by the natural drape of the fabric.

As far as fingers go, they’re definitely tricky! They’re tricky because there’s so much concentration of stuff happening in one area and it doesn’t take much for it to look like something’s off.

The good part about hands is that you have your own that you can use to reference, so if you are having trouble, get out your webcam and take pictures of your hand in the pose that you want, to refer to as you draw.

Most of the time I draft out the palm/back of the hand and then add fingers in. If it’s a hand pose that I’ve done many times (ie relaxed hand on the right, I had to draw for fashion illustrations really often), I’ll just draw the box or freehand.

Ahh! I’ve been thinking about getting that paint for a while! Is it good?

Sure thing! Here’s step by step of how I approach profile view.

I start out with a shape, and then bump the nose out, the then draw the silhouette for the mouth. Lips looks kinda like a squiggle.

Noses come in all kinds of shapes and sizes so there isn’t a set shape you should make them. It depends on the character you’re drawing.

Eyes also depend on the character but to be general, I draw some kind of top lid, the iris outline, and sometimes I do bottom lids or eyelashes.

The basis of my understanding of figures are from fashion sketching (which are extremely elongated figures; my fashion figures were generally 10 heads tall), so while I’m not the most qualified person to ask, I’ll give it a shot!

The body is just several shapes put together. There are some lines you can distinguish to make the drawing process a little easier. I always always always map out a rough sketch of the pose before I draw the clothed figure.

When drawing poses, you can use your guidelines to help you find where everything goes. In fashion figures, there is almost always a high hip, so I always find which way the hip and shoulders are going first.