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
so no one really asked for it and it doesnt have particularly anything to do with demitale but i made a little sketche tutorial on how i draw clothing as well as arm muscles u-u hope this is helpful to you guys as well!
draw all your poc characters in black and white, without greytones, and check if they’re still recognizable as poc.
if they look completely fucking indistinguishable from your white characters then u should work that
Some advice for if you’re having trouble drawing hands proportionally, for basic pictures–
Put your own hand on your face, with the heel of your palm on your chin. Pay attention to the overall width, and where your fingertips and knuckles are. Then draw a rough outline of the hand over the face you’re drawing, and match the proportions to yours. You can adjust up or down a bit from there if you feel the need, but that should be a good base visual.
I've always loved drawing people and especially portraits. Your art is so inspiring! Do you have any advice on drawing portraits with accurate proportion? What aspects are the most important in portraits, do you think? And what are good exercises? I'm sorry for bombarding you with so many questions! :3
Thank you! There’s one thing about drawing portraits that I don’t think I’ve ever touched on, and it’s the technique of constraining features. Basically, it becomes easier and more intuitive to rotate the face in 3D space once your mind grasps exactly where the features are located and, furthermore, where they can’t be located.
I use a weird double trapezoid shape that I’ve depicted below in red to keep track of facial feature placement every single time I draw a face. It follows the top of the eyebrows, touches the corner of the eye, traces down to the corner of the lips, and finally ends at the bottom of the lips.
The shape of the constraint will change depending on the person’s features, and it works for every angle of the head. For me it really internalized where each part of the face was, as well as where it started and ended. It kinda helps moderate your drawings; i.e., you’ll stop drawing features that are wildly misplaced or off-sized. I don’t literally draw this shape out every time I draw a face, but I see it in my mind’s eye 100% of the time.
If you’re still learning proportions, a good exercise is to grab pictures of people and trace this shape over them (either digitally or with a marker or something) to get an idea of what realistic constraints looks like. Then go back to studying faces, and constantly check your drawing by tracing along the eyebrows and down to the bottom of the lips to make sure that things aren’t off (e.g., the constraint isn’t terribly asymmetric). It takes a while to get used to, but it might help you get a good feel for portraiture.
There’s one other unrelated thing I like to do with faces, and if you’ve seen a lot of my pics you’ve already picked up on it. If you kinda add some shading to the area on the cheek just below the eye and down to the nose, I think it adds a decent amount of depth to a face. Don’t go overboard of course but there’s another little tip that could be of use.
Masters of Anatomy
Do any of the mods have tips for drawing a full body in side view? I always get it wrong
There’s a really good side view breakdown in Bridgman’s Constructive Anatomy book, however I can’t find it! I did my best to emulate what I know.
If you already have the front view down, it’s a simple thing of translating the proportions over to the side view. One thing that helps me construct the body is using boxes to construct the head, ribs, and pelvis. The shoulder usually sits with bias towards the back, unless the person is slouching or their shoulders are raised in tenseness. I would recommend studying the bone structure of this if you really want an analytical sense of how it works!
-Mod Future (ko-fi)
Love your artwork!! :) as a professional illustrator, would you tell me some advice on developing potrait? im always mess up when it comes to potrait drawing. i really dont know how artist like you can be so precise in developing value for face. Thank you very much :)
Hello and Thank You :)
The first thing if You want to do portraits is to know anatomy. Start with learning what is under the skin and understand how it affects the face. When You got that covered You must know how face is structured. That will give You the knowledge how to light head. Head is a cube-like object. (yea! NOT sphere!) On face we have other little cube-like object (nose).
A great exercise is to find photos of a face and draw structure lines over it.
Example:
You see clearly now? The structure of a nose, where cheeks are, forehead etc.
After doing this You will be able to create the face from a memory using these helping lines.
Like here. This is Michael Hampton exercise:
You see how everything fits thanks to the structure lines?
Drawing a face requires TONS of practice. Find thousand photo references and practice.
Understand the anatomy and face structure first. It’s basic.That would be the things I would recommend for everyone who start drawing faces :)
I hope it helps a little!
I have to draw a lot of gold and metal for my work, but wasn't happy with any of the metal tutorials i could find around. I prefer really specific instruction, so after some research i put together what i think works as a generalist's guide/tutorial. Not perfectly accurate, but i hope it's helpful!
i’m gonna drop an art tip here
i think an important thing to learn, especially if you start out with drawing anime, is that faces don’t necessarily have to narrow from top to bottom
i like to think of wide top, wide middle, wide bottom, and rectangle-like as the 4 main face shapes
what you should keep in mind about them:
you’re only halfway done: the jawlines, the width-length ratio, the amount of fat in the cheeks, the intensity or subtlety of the face’s curves are all important components you still have to decide on after choosing the shape itself
none of these shapes are exclusively feminine or masculine, don’t hesitate drawing them on any gender
most people in real life have some variation of the wide middle type
if you are trying to draw real people, getting the shape of their face down is the first step
i’ve seen tutorials say the shape of the face can tell a lot of the character’s personality - you don’t necessarily have to live by that rule. as long as you aren’t unrealistically drastic about their proportions, their face shape determines their inner qualities as much as it would in real life (not at all)