How To Draw Native People: A Tutorial/Reference Guide

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)

hi! umm pls pls PLS if you have the time, do a thingy on arms when you get the chance, they are so hard i could almost cry aslkdjaskjsas, i keep forgetting how many curves an arm should have/how long it should be (in diff positions/when it's not resting at the hips) etc etc etc ahhh omg please!! thank you sosososo much, i l♡ve all of your art and i hope you have a nice day!! ✧ ㅠㅠ ✧

I don’t want to go into detail in terms of muscles, but I’m sure you can find them if you google arm muscles! Hope this helps u out a little!

do you have any advice on how to draw armor?? please im dying

yeas <3 so right off the bat i think its important to state but my like. basis from drawing armor is almost completely off of my history of drawing soulsborne characters...... i have a disease, but anywyas yea. i highly recommend it for explorations of interesting yet accurate armor design :-) my favorite designs are from 2 and demons, and i steal a lot of inspiration from their concept art. i simply think it should be ok to take how you draw/view armor or something like that from something else. armor is goofy just draw whatever looks cool.

how i draw armor is basically separating it into sections to focus on .. 

heres a lionel fr ref. layering is really important i think. i usually just kinda mix up what exactly i have fr each bit but uhhh that works.

from there its just shoving random metal, a cape, and some other doohickeys on top. i recommend looking at either preexisting armor or video game/tv show/what have you armor designs you like and just taking bits from it to make your own :-) 

for gauntlets and the like i usually just simplify it to the point of pointing out where the knuckles are. theyre pretty simple to just shove shit on top of to mkae fancier but theyre super basic. sabbatons too you can get away with just showing where the foot will bend cus they got sooo many segments. think worms. worm shoes. 

other than that. if u dont wanna draw a bit just shove a cape on top. i promise no one will notice. people will think its cool. capes always improve a design. i draw every single character with armor with a cape so i dont have to draw it sometimes. or so i just have to draw hints of it. its fine cheating is epic. 

uhhh thats kinda all my off the top of my head tips i hope any of them help feel free to ask more specific shit im not good at teaching shit like this :pensive: 

hey! can i please get good references of like, simplifications of leg muscles and i guess legs in general? probably the pelvis too, the lower body is just killing me right now. (i mean in art, my own legs are fine =P)

No problem, anon! Here are some notes on legs that I’ve picked up, but there are probably some more thorough ones (with actual muscle names lol) floating around the web if you want to check those out as well. Just remember to balance curve/straight on either side. 

***EDIT: The stick figure thing is called “crickets” by the creator because they look like cricket legs. I just remembered that.***

Here are some of my favorite guides to muscle simplifications by Will Weston and Sycra Yasin: 

(Source: Will Weston on Instagram)

(Source: Sycra Yasin)

And for good measure, here’s some refresher on more gestural ways of looking at limbs: 

^ Leg examples by George Brigman

-Mod Future (ko-fi)

Varying Your Body Types

By me, Sara D. (Heh.)

I think it’s very important for artists to vary the types of bodies they draw! Not only does it add visual interest and diversity, but different body types can enhance your characters! (Plus it’s more realistic; when was the last time you walked down the street and everyone had the same body type?) I know I have a hard time drawing different bodies, especially with men, so I’m making this tutorial to teach myself as well (I’ve heard the best way to cement learning something is to teach someone else).

So! Bodies! I’m going to use women for this tutorial because I feel they have more variety in their bodies. One of the most obvious ways bodies differ is in their amount of fat.

[Click here for full size]

On average, people store fat mostly in core areas like the bust, the waist, and the hips. It is important to remember that people gain and lose weight differently, and this is true no matter how fat or skinny one gets. However, these are common places people store fat:

The face and neck can be immediate indicators as to how much fat the rest of the body has; when someone loses or gains weight, it’s initially obvious in the face. This is possibly because the eye is (usually) drawn first to the face.

In addition to differences in the amount of body fat, bodies vary vastly in their proportions. The two main ways they differ is skeletally and in fat distribution. The hip to shoulder ratio is skeletal, and someone with wider shoulders might look more powerful or masculine, and someone with wider hips might look more grounded or feminine.

The torso to legs ratio is also a skeletal ratio. Someone with long legs in comparison with their torso might look taller than someone of the same height with a long torso, and they might also look skinnier.

(I say as I finally get some visual variety all up in here.)

Because the hips are also one of the places with the most weight gain in women, large hips can also be a matter of fat distribution. The three main places where the fat ratio really matters is in the bust, the waist and the hips (making up the core of the body).

While men usually carry weight in the belly area, the fat distribution can really vary with women. Some women carry more weight in the bust, some in the belly, and some in the hips/thighs. Some women carry more weight in two areas, like the bust and the hips, the bust and the belly, or the belly and the hips. Some women show no obvious bias to any area and carry weight equally.

[Click here for full size]

Taking into account skeletal ratios, fat distribution patterns, a vast human weight range, muscle tone and age, there are endless permutations of body types. It would be a shame if you used only one!

Oh, and that first image looks really interesting as a gif.

disorganised thoughts

Artist: IAHFY

Some drawing tips previously posted on twitter. More drawing tips on my patreon. Hope some of these can be helpful.

disclaimer: I am east asian. if anyone who is not white sees anything wrong with my phrasing, inaccuracies, or insensitivity, or something I missed, please feel free to add on. I'm just one person with one perspective; none of what I say should be taken as The Singular way to draw an Asian character. if you havent done so already, please take the effort to expand your view of Asian culture outside this one tutorial.

if a white person reblogs this and adds something stupid I'm going to bite and kick you like a wild animal

i’m still learning anatomy myself so i wouldn’t use this as more than just a general tip but…. I am fascinated by speculative monster anatomy and this is something i discovered years ago and thought i would impart amongst my fellow monster enthusiasts :)

mind you, the second set of pectorals can look kind of funky so i understand aesthetically why people would prefer not to draw them but! if you are someone interested in anatomy, i think this is a thing people dont really think about when giving their OCs wings/extra limbs and i think it’s kind of neat!