Can I get some tips for drawing heads facing upwards? The neck and chin always confuse me.
Yes! This is one of the hardest angles to get right, imo, because it’s such a rare position to find ourselves in. That, plus the foreshortening needed to get the face just right.
I’d start by doing some studies. Here, I traced over these stock photos to figure out where the contour lines of the jaw go, and the sculptural quality of the neck.
Then, I used the knowledge to draw a head freehand.
Some important notes:
The chin slopes into the neck with a pad of fat, muscle, and skin. Therefore, you shouldn’t follow the contour of the jaw. It shows as a “shelf”, as in you can see the shadow underneath. In people with more prominent fat, there will be less of a change in angle, and you will see less shadow under the jawbone.
Some people have a prominent adam’s apple that you can see on the track of the trachea.
The sternocleidomastoid muscle is important to show. It connects from just behind the ear to the clavicle. It is used in the turning of the head.
Another post by Wackart about neck anatomy: https://theredlinestation.tumblr.com/post/189113153780/can-you-explain-like-how-necks-work-and-how-to
-Mod Future (ko-fi)
Source: The13thBlackCat
a friend of mine was having trouble with a character of hers, he was middle-aged but looked too young, so she came to me for help. i'm something of a middle-aged-man-fan so i whipped up this quick thing to help her out. it might be useful to somebody out there so i'll share it here too!
could you do a body tutorial please? i always get stuck on the shoulders once ive drawn the head because they always look so board? i’m sure id struggle with the rest of the body too but once i fail with shoulders i usually give up and just draw creepy floating heads...
ooofok so
I’m gonna make u a shoulder tutorial cause a full body tutorial would be absolutely gigantic.ok so u got ur head right, i’m going for a straight forwards view point on this so
there they arenext is the neck, i typically make this thinner than the jawline and bring the length down so that the chin falls about half way between the jaw and the slope of the shoulders.
next i draw the slope of the shoulder on both sides and connect them with a horizontal line. The horizontal line is where you’d put the collar bones.I draw the slopes so that they extend past the ears. I tend to angle them at 45 degrees when standing normally.
I use this bit to quickly sketch in the collar bones and the tendons (?)the actual shoulder joint though i draw as round with a kind of, rounded corner????? both sides are p much even on each joint. I draw the joint as roughly the same width and the shoulder slope.I am god awful at maths so this bit doesn’t add up but it kinda ends up looking as if it’s split into thirds.
as u rotate the shoulders they over lap each other but the basic elements are still there, just shortened or behind something.
i’m not great at explaining shoulders all that well but i hope this helps at least somewhat.
i have some more tips but i have to get back to homework!!! i hope this was helpful anon
Leg Studies by ben_eblen_design
another art tutorial post :) this time it’s for rainbow effects
I taught myself to paint because I don’t have the patience for crisp lineart and now you know how to paint too
So my friend Night expressed a general desire for help with profiles, and I figured I’d go ahead and whip this up! I’m no anatomy master or anything, but this is stuff that helps me quite a bit, so I figured I’d share… even if I have no idea how helpful it actually is. Writing tutorials is hard! Ah well, I hope it can be of some use.
I'm a little confused. If it's racist to depict characters with noticeable epicanthal folds, then doesn't that imply that the epicanthal fold is considered an ugly feature by the person making the criticism? Seeing as it's a normal feature that many asians have...I can understand not wanting it to be exaggerated into a racist caricature, but leaving it out entirely? That doesn't rub you as being a little "Look, I left the East Asian features out so they'd be pretty!"? Which is racist in itself?
i’m assuming you’re referring to my we bare bears example. first of all, drop the ‘gasp you’re actually being racist against yourself??’ tone. i’m fine with dialogue but i have asian perspective and experience. be respectful.
no one said it’s racist to draw epicanthal folds. if your art is more realistic and detail-focused, it makes sense to include different kinds of eye folds. but in a cartoon, non-epicanthal folds aren’t translated. it’s not like you see little lines above a white person’s eyes. they’re just the typical round style. so it makes sense that the element of eye folds are left out entirely when it comes to all depicted races.
i used we bare bears as a good example because it’s the rare time asian characters’ eyes actually fit in with the style. they don’t need to squint, or be abnormally small, because no one else’s eyes do that. i don’t care that chloe has big eyes, because she’s a kid and everyone else, regardless of race, is similar. it matters more to me that her heritage is shown and celebrated rather than her having token asian traits.
sometimes cartoons can give asian eyes a lil difference and that’s fine too! candy from gravity falls has wider eyes, but they’re still round and cartoony. it’s a noticeable aberration from the style but it’s a small and harmless detail.
total drama, while not the uh, best example for a lot of things, has a great angular style. a lot of characters (gwen, izzy, duncan) have smaller eyes while not being asian. so it makes sense that heather, a polynesian character, has a bit of a half-circle shape to her eyes. it shows a diversity of eye shapes and sizes without focusing on racial stereotypes.
but ‘everyone has big eyes except the squinty asians’ happens. a lot. take trixie from the fairly odd parents. everyone’s eyes are round and big. hers are half circles, like 40% the average size. if her eyes are ‘accurately’ shaped, why does everyone else get identical cartoonish circles?
disclaimer: i grew up idolizing any representation i found, and i liked trixie a lot. and for children, it’s not the end of the world if exclusively asian characters are given small eyes. but it’s clear that she was designed by non-asian people, and there is always room for improvement.
onto more realistic art! when it comes to stereotypically limiting asian design vs. respectfully showing asian diversity, _ket2 put it best.
in conclusion, if you’re going to draw asian characters, don’t make them all have the same ridiculously small eyes compared to everyone else. asian people, especially artists, have been saying this forever.unlearn limiting racial preconceptions. learn from references and how diverse people look in real life.