v.alexart

Dipper and Pacifica 🦙🌲

Just spent a long time replying to an anon who asked me about how to improve at anatomy and likeness, and then tumblr just decided to delete my answer </3, so I'm just gonna make a proper post out of it.

My biggest advice for improvement is to just get really, really, REALLY obsessed with something and then draw this certain thing non-stop until your hands fall off (please don't, do your stretches). Of course, doing proper anatomy studies is super important, too, but the second you decide to follow your heart and draw that yaoi ship that won't let you rest 24/7, you will see improvement in no time. And when you do sit down to do those boring studies? Draw your favorite character shirtless. Make those boring studies fun!

Here's some anatomy books I highly recommend:

Anatomy for Sculptors

Drawing Pose & Form

Every single Morpho book

These books have been the most helpful to me, especially Anatomy for Sculptors! Highly recommend just religiously copying every page from it. (These books can be found as free pdfs online, you do not have to purchase the physical version unless you want to. I know they're not exactly cheap.)

Here's some helpful websites/programs for studies:

Line of Action Insanely helpful website with lots of study material. They even have an integrated timer and randomizer for all their reference material!

Grafit Studio on Gumroad They offer a huge amount of anatomy reference packs of all kinds of poses and people. I've been using their reference for my studies for years! They do cost a little bit, but they also have a bunch of free test packs.

GestureDrawing! A timer and randomizer for your references! Works the same as the one from Line of Action, though with this program you can use your own references.

How to capture likeness:

It's incredibly easy to fall victim to "same-face-syndrome" but how does one avoid it?

Do studies of all kinds of faces! Old faces, young faces, asymetrical faces, round faces, long faces, square faces etc. You gotta draw faces that might not fall into our modern understanding of "beauty". I know, drawing conventionally hot people is super fun, I enjoy it as well, but if you want to improve at capturing likeness, you gotta understand all the little details that make a human face unique. Those deep wrinkles around someone's eyes, that little bump on someone's nose, that nice fullness to someone's cheeks. There's so much beautiful uniqueness to human faces, I highly recommend properly studying them. Look at an actor you like or a friend/partner you love and figure out in detail what makes their face the way it is, and try to think about how you would capture them on paper.

It's also incredibly important to understand the structure of a face. Where do the muscles sit that cause all of our expressions and how do they influence each other? What does the structure of the skull actually look like?

Here's two youtube tutorials that go into this more:

How I learned to draw better faces in a week by pikat

How I study heads/faces by Ullaiin

I believe that even unsuccessful works are worthy of publication

for the 10th anniversary of stranger things you MUST reblog this with 5 things that you actually enjoyed about season 5 and think were good choices.... then 5 things that you disliked about season 5.

my likes:

sorcerer flashback

that byler hug and will's whisper of "mike"

epilogue byler

will's friendships with girls

wrap it with ur jacket

dislikes:

henry being the most uninteresting loser villain of all time

will's SA in episode one purely being for shock value

keeping m11 ambiguous until the end

KILLING EL for mike's "development"

1- The music lol

2- The whole emotional arc of Dustin grieving Eddie and how it affected his relationship with the party

3- The sorcerer episode, especially the lasts scenes (the whole choreography of the scene, the special effects, the framing and lighting)

4- The costume design

5- Will and Robin friendship!

Dislike:

1- El dying :( and the buildup for it lacking emotional depth (in my opinion)

2- The concept of Mr. Whatsit/Vecna manipulating the minds of the characters not being explored. He was just there.

3- The coming out scene, its tone deaf and also the loads of homophobia from the Ga (but I guess that’s another topic)

4- The whole wormhole thing… okay??

example: we know he was institutionalized because of an aside in a coloring book. we know he’s on some kind of psychiatric medication from an aside in the DS game.

More doodles and unfinished things