How to draw from a reference photo:
I usually use references as super basic guidelines for my drawings, but when I feel like I need to practice my proportions, draping, whatever, I like to try to use references more accurately like this. It usually doesn’t turn out exactly how I want but I find that it helps me improve my skills. This is going to be a long post but hopefully it helps some of you. By the way, I’m not saying there’s a correct way to draw or anything, this is just how I do things...
First, I do some really basic blocking. (I use MediBang for all my drawings and my phone, no stylus). I don’t have a specific brush for this, but for this I just used pen and then I’ll reduce this before drawing another layer on top of basic line art.
This next layer always makes me want to give up because it never looks good enough to me but it’s just meant to add some structure before I do my final line art. For this layer and the next I use the pen (sharp) tool at around 77% because it’s more forgiving than the normal pen tool and I just like how it makes my lines look.
Now I do my final line art, usually in a color that goes with the drawing. I should’ve chosen more of a red shade for this but it still worked out okay. Most of the time I use black and overlay it later but I’m trying to change some things around. I usually copy this layer so it strengthens my lines a bit, which just looks better in the final drawing.
Next I’ll create a closed palette based off of colors from the reference itself, it’s easier than guessing and helps me remain more consistent. I start off with base colors and go in with the shading later. Usually I’ll do all of the skin tone first, then hair, then clothing, but for this I decided to lay down all base colors before I started shading.
Next I add shading. For this I use the watercolor (wet) brush at a really high(?) opacity (more sheer). I usually do shading on a separate layer Incase it comes off too strong. I’ll start off laying down some base colors, stronger at first, and then blend them out with the colors around them.
Next for some finishing touches, I copy the line art layer again and hide it and then overlay the original over the drawing. Usually this alone does not provide enough structure so I’ll unhide the normal copied layer and just reduce it so it’s about 50%.
I hope this all made sense and helped some of you guys out! Sorry this was so long lol. If any of you are curious about certain steps or want to see another tutorial (?) let me know!
