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Overview of some topics when it comes to drawing characters who are burn survivors.

DISCLAIMER. Please keep in mind that this is an introductory overview for drawing some burn scars and has a lot of generalizations in it, so not every “X is Z” statement will be true for Actual People. I'm calling this introductory because I hope to get people to actually do their own research before drawing disabled & visibly different characters rather than just making stuff up. Think of it as a starting point and take it with a grain of salt (especially if you have a very different art style from mine).

Talking about research and learning... don't make your burn survivor characters evil. Burn survivors are normal people and don't deserve to be constantly portrayed in such a way.

Consider supporting me on ko-fi if you find this to be helpful.

edit: apparently tum "queerest place on the internet" blr hates disabled people so much that this post got automatically filtered. cool!

second way more important edit: How are people seeing this post where I specifically talk about burn survivors being normal, real people, and still tag this as "TW body horror"? Not a single one of these drawings or pictures is a fresh injury. All of them are healed. How the hell would you feel if someone tagged a photo of you as "trigger warning: gore"?

Disabled people are not your fucking body horror. Grow up.

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Doing the fresh eyes challenge as part of the learning body construction with a basic mannequin for the marc bunet learn to draw in 1 year plan

Above Is day 1

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:D i think ur art style and character designs are rlly neat !! Do you have any tips for making the same characters look consistent?

Thank u so much !!! 💜

The only thing I can think of is that you should draw your characters Over and Over again; they might slightly morph and change the more you draw them (specially considering artstyle changes), but you'll hopefully land in a spot where you're comfortable drawing them from memory.

Putting my favorite OC here as an example because I draw him the most + I love him.

His design isn't very distinct, he's meant to look like Just some guy, but you're still able to tell it's the same character, despite not looking super consistent the first few months I spent drawing him.

I reckon it's easy to get stuck with the idea that you need to be 100% accurate, otherwise your character will turn out unrecognizable, but I think you should prioritize what feels good and fun to draw, and everything else will hopefully fall into place : -]

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I played sims4 for 2 days so this is the Perfect time to draw Zayd a lot to get back in an art mood : -]

and since I'm already here, I might as well practice drawing Torso with him too,

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your art is so beautiful it makes me so. GAGHRHJ........ please jabberwick,, could you bless us with some lineart tips 🙏🙏

Hey anon! TY for the kind words!

I am often shunned for my line art methods, but here's a guide I whipped up about my own process!

My Bluesky

My Instagram

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how do you come up with designs for the borders in your art (e.g the most recent one from the 'thoughts on faces' post)? they're always so detailed and pretty... also do you have any tips on drawing backgrounds? because WOW the way you draw them makes me feel like i'm in a dream (in the best was possible)

That's a tougher question than what I was expecting it to be! My design work is sort of a self built, self perpetuating machine that I've been refining for years. The more you experiment and try new things, the more you build up an internal library of usable ideas that all interconnect and spin off each other. Pinpointing how I come up with specific things can be tricky, as it all comes from that internal library, built over years on trial and error!

What is easy to talk about are some of the inspirations I used to build that library!

vintage cut-out paper theatres, old advertising material, Anton Seder, art from the nouveau, deco and Dada movement, old fairytale books often have really beautiful border and detail work in them, old circus art and advertising material (I try really hard to search for authentic stuff, as opposed to modern recreations. New stuff never has the same sincerity)

As for drawing backgrounds, this video is absolutely spectacular. It is really fun and so informative!

https://youtu.be/upxBGNcryRs?si=mNKiQBIu9mC7p6Ef

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some doodles i did from yesterday's stream! these were just portrait warm ups, 10-15 minutes each! but i didn't like the wa y they looked so i tried to re-do them off stream on ms paint... BT NOW I LIKE THE 1ST ONES BETTER.....A ME...

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So the line art study of month 1 is done (I could do more but I was getting frustrated with it so I think it's time for me to move on), I drew 3 characters one was a character called Tu by neytrix (an artist I really look up to and am very inspired by if you somehow haven't yet check out her work) from the piece getting home, I only did one character from the piece because I didn't feel like copying a whole scene, it turned out really well I tried look at the process which the piece was created with and what shapes I could see in the character, after this though is when it started going down hill, uni completely kicked my ass so after doing the perspective on the 26/27 of jan I didn't do anything till the 2nd of Feb which isn't too bad but then after drawing Tu i didn't do anything till the 8th, I decided to draw characters from citizen sleeper so I picked two characters one thst I remember I liked when I played the game then another who's character design didn't look too complicated, I drew sabine and ethan, sabine went okay I'm decently happy with how drawingnthem went but I found their design very busy and hard to work out what was what (I only ended up drawing their upper body) then I moved onto ethan with the intention of drawing his full body, this went horribly, I tried drawing multiple times first few times I kept drawing him too small so I moved to a new page so I didn't feel like I was squishing him in so I tried again and the rage i felt trying to get him right was visceral I don't think I've been so angry at a drawing than I was at this, I had alot of trouble with his face shape and even more trouble with his fair (it was the hair where I got really fed up despite it not being that complicated) I ended up giving up because I was tired and frustrated I intended to try again today but I just don't think i can I might try again another time further down the line.

Here's the two drawing from citizen sleeper (with references next to them), I'm going to post them since they're just partial copies but I'm not going to post the drawing of tu

Full credit to Gareth Damian Martin (designer/developer/creator according to Wikipedia) and Guillaume Singelin (artist according to Wikipedia)

I'm calling it here for this month technically early since I've got until the 20th of February (since I started on 20th January) but I want to move on now

Thinking about trying to get back into digital for next month (partially) as well as using my sketchbook so hopefully that goes well

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Completed the basic perspective part of marc brunets 1 year drawing plan, just did 1 point perspective for this month since the plan doesn't call for 2 point perspective until month 3, I watched a few videos and took a few notes on some of the key things for perspective, on the top of the second perspective page I tried to use a grid that was shown in one of the videos but I didn't vibe with that method quite yet might try again at somepoint, overall I found the perspective for this month fairly easy as I have done the learn to draw in 1 month challenge so have done basic perspective before.

All I've got left to do for this month is the line art studies, I haven't done any drawing for a bit because uni has been kicking my ass but I'm trying to scrape back the motivation to continue, I'm not sure if I'm going to post the line art studies since it involves copying and I don't know how I feel about posting art that I've copied even if it's just for a study

Videos that I used:

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Comments: have recently completed the gesture drawing part of the first month or marc brunets learn to draw in a year challenge, I think there are a few with somewhat decent anatomy that show the gestures okay especially towards the end of the 30, but throughout I had significant troubles with proportions especially of the legs, 15 and any ones with legs bent in a similar way caused alot of difficulty in the legs as i just couldn'tbget it too look correctly which i think means i gotta improve my legs in perspective, I also took the full 5 minutes on each one, as well as some having questionable anatomy

Future action: I think in future I need to focus on reducing the amount of lines per drawing so I can cut the time down to 2 minutes as well as working on getting the proportions more correct and getting limbs to look like they're actually bent in perspective properly

Rest of month: all that's left for this month is to do some basic anatomy and then some line art based artist studies

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DO THE THING

This was an outtake but I love it. I bet someone could definitely make use of it!

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Hey, how do you draw fashion like you do? And how do you keep up with what's cool and alt on the urban/black/poc scene without falling into the "fast fashion" category?

I try to find things for my characters that match by either tooning it up (going by a stereotypical or archetype look) or trying to actually look at what's new online or in photos.

ive been on tumblr 10+ yrs and the former half of it was spent being an aesthetic blog. i followed a Bunch of fashion blogs back then (from lolita to cyber ghetto) and i def think that gave me a slight eye for fashion.

also, i dont particularly know what's cool usually, i dont have tiktok ! so i use pinterest for that, specifically hairstyles.

i also use pinterest for outfits but only Loosely. i just use it as a moodboard so that i get the gist of what id like to create, then go do my own thing.

the key to character design is not being afraid to do a few passes. sometimes the design in my mind isn't clear, and i gotta chip away at it a few more times.

also with most of my character designs, if im feeling stuck, i like to throw in a random element. that can be: generating a random palette and using it (ka'meisha was made this way!) or using a texture i have laying around on my pc and seeing where it would fit on their outfit (did this with chantay and coffi).

and obvs just looking at clothing shops you like! even if the shop doesnt have the clothing style you want (punk, for example), take a piece of clothing you like from them, then turn it punk!

and in general, dont forget to use layering, patterns, graphics, seams, and jewelry to add to a design ☝🏾❗️

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If you haven’t started already, start archiving/downloading everything. Save it to an external hard drive if you’re able. Collecting physical media is also a good idea, if you’re able.

Download your own/your favorite fanfics. Save as much as you can from online sources/digital libraries. Recipes, tutorials, history, LGBTQ media, etc. It has been claimed, though I can’t find the exact source if true, that some materials about the Revolutionary War were deleted from the Library of Congress.

It’s always better to be safe than sorry and save and preserve what you can. Remember that cloud storage also is not always reliable!

Library of Congress - millions of books, films and video, audio recordings, photographs, newspapers, maps, manuscripts.

Internet Archive - millions of free texts, movies, software, music, websites, and more. Has been taken offline multiple times because of cyber attacks last month, it has recently started archiving again.

Anna's Archive - 'largest truly open library in human history.’

Queer Liberation Library - queer literature and resources. Does require applying for a library membership to browse and borrow from their collection.

List of art resources - list of art resources complied on tumblr back in 2019. Not sure if all links are still operational now, but the few I clicked on seemed to work.

Alexis Amber - TikToker who is an archivist who's whole page is about archiving. She has a database extensively recording the events of Hurricane Katrina.

I'll be adding more to this list, if anyone else wants to add anything feel free!

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A Love Letter to Don't Starve

Some of my personal journal pages, breaking down Don't Starve, and the ways the game's unique art style (spearheaded by Jeff Agala) has influenced my work.

The first page features a spread of official Klei game art for the purpose of deconstruction and context. The second page features all my own characters and original art.

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Hello artists who can’t draw backgrounds

There’s a completely free website called roomstyler that allows you to create high-quality 3D renders of rooms that you can easily use as reference for actual drawings 

Here’s a few examples I’ve done

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Here's my guide to how I draw fat masc bodies! (please keep in mind that this is not an in depth tutorial. I only put the information that explains how my brain interprets it)