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How to Draw Native People: a Tutorial/Reference Guide

As requested, here is a basic guide for how to draw Indigenous peoples (mostly focused on North America)! Also please note that this is not an exhaustive list of Native American phenotypes/features, and more like an intro on very common features that can be found in us, and even then, not altogether at once on a single person’s face. I highly encourage the use of references and care taken into research when drawing. I may do a part 2 that goes slightly more into depth, but for now, enjoy part one.

Resouces:

How to draw Native Skin tutorial (don’t draw us red!)

List of Native American Celebrities, which include their tribe(s) and home country, with 1,250 names, to use for your referencing pleasure

How to draw black people by Peachdeluxe, & Black hair in depth by misslaney for mixed black Natives

How to draw East Asian People, a guide by Chuwenjie, for mixed Asian Natives AND because it includes a lovely tutorial on monolid eyes, a shared feature of Native people

get drawin!!

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Art tutorials by Disney artists Griz and Norm Lemay

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MALE HEAD LIGHT REFERENCE TOOL by William Nguyen

Click here to use the interactive reference!

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Know what I’m salty about?

In all my art classes, I was never taught HOW to use the various tools of art.

Like yes, form, and shape and space and color theory and figure drawing is important, but so is KNOWING what different tools do.

I’m 29 and I JUST learned this past month that India Ink is fucking waterproof when it dries. Why is this important? Because I can line something in India Ink and then go over it with watercolors. And that has CHANGED the ENTIRE way I art and the ease I can create with.

tldr: Art Teachers: teach your students what different tools do. PLEASE.

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Standard Art Print Sizes (in & px)

4" x 6"        (600 pixels x 900 pixels) 5" x 7"        (750 pixels x 1050 pixels) 6" x 6"        (900 pixels x 900 pixels) 8" x 10"      (1200 pixels x 1500 pixels) 8.5" x 11"   (1275 pixels x 1650 pixels) 11" x 14"    (1650 pixels x 2100 pixels) 12" x 12"    (1800 pixels x 1800 pixels) 12" x 16"    (1800 pixels x 2400 pixels) 16" x 20"    (2400 pixels x 3000 pixels) 18" x 24"    (2700 pixels x 3600 pixels) 19" x 13"    (2850 pixels x 1950 pixels) 20" x 24"    (3000 pixels x 3600 pixels) 24" x 24"    (3600 pixels x 3600 pixels) 12" x 36"    (1800 pixels x 5400 pixels) 24" x 36"    (3600 pixels x 5400 pixels)            

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being a self-taught artist with no formal training is having done art seriously since you were a young teenager and only finding out that you’re supposed to do warm up sketches every time you’re about to work on serious art when you’re fuckin twenty-five

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I stumbled upon a website that allows you to blend any colors evenly no matter how opposite on the spectrum they are.

sharing the knowledge

very helpful art resource

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A long time ago an anon asked my thoughts about drawing backgrounds, so I finally got around to putting this together. It’s more prop-centric, but it still represents my philosophy to backgrounds. 

I’ll try to do something more about drawing actual background spaces in the future! Please let me know what you think, if anything is unclear, or if you have suggestions for other tutorials you might find helpful!

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For all the artists out there

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teach me?? how to draw?? the action of kissing????

Step 1. yearn

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Freaky Fred Shot 89, Finished

I learned a lot about improving my animation workflow on this one, and I think I’m finally getting the hang of animating in CLIP Studio Paint. I’ll post the link to the finished collab once it’s up.

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Quick art tip - child proportions

Ok this is a real quick one but let me show you how to get more-or-less accurate sizes for child characters. Kids are tricky to draw, they are - from toddler up to about teens people change radically almost every year so pinpointing character’s size during those years is pure hell.

What you need to do to make everything super easy for yourself is to check their Head Proportion. What makes kids look like - well, kids, is that their heads are proportionally large in comparison to their body.

Average adult is about 7,5 heads tall in comparison to their own body, however with children under 10 that number is just under 6 heads with about 1 head shorter the younger you go down to 3 heads as an infant.

Easiest way to figure the so-so head-height of a certain age is to find images of said age group and do a quick count on them

at which after you can replicate it in your own works - don’t mind if it’s not 1:1 with reference, finding images that are actually of the age you need is tricky and kids in general vary a lot so someone might be a lot taller than others. You have a bout  0,5 -1 heads of wiggle room before it starts to look way older.

Proportions are super important in art and i lovingly recommend everyone to figure out basics of them - it’s the easiest way to get notifically better with art. I could go on about proportions but let’s wrap this up. Need to note however that head proportion is not same as character height - a character can be 15 feet tall but still have head-height of 6, HH is simply a way to scale out the body.

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Dude what? She tied you to the kitchen chair? Broke your throne & cut your hair? From your lips she drew the..? Broooo

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Credit: https://imgur.com/gallery/4LXnrWO

Original comic: https://www.buttersafe.com/2019/03/21/the-water-cycle/

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art tips post

for all the artist following me

Have two sketchbooks: One for finished and high-quality art (stuff made with Prismacolor or Copic if you use that or art for your portfolio) and the other sketchbook for more messy doodles. This way you have a place to try new things and mess up as much as you need. When I only had one sketchbook I was scared to draw in it because I didn't want to mess it up

Do studies. I cant tell you how much I've improved just by doing studies of shoes, hands, noses, and all that. This works for when you have art block too since you’re not really making stuff up and just learning how real things work.

Learn from others. I’ve never taken a real art class because 1. I can’t afford it and 2. there’s no good art classes/programs at my school. I’ve been following several artists and learning from them over the years and they’ve helped me tremendously. Just please do not steal art because that is never okay.

Break down concepts. If you notice there’s something wrong with your piece then figure out why. You can’t get better if you leave mistakes and don't try to understand whats going on. If the color is weird figure out if the values look right or maybe its the saturation of the color.

Watch youtube tutorials. Here are some youtubers I think are pretty good art teaching all things art: Draw with Jazza |  DrawingWiffWaffles |  Proko |  Baylee Jae

Have an inspiration folder/blog. Sometimes you just need a collection of starry nights or a misty forest or even a French bakery. All of those things can help you get inspired to draw. It could even be completely unrelated to what you plan to draw.

There are no dumb ideas in the creative process. If you want to draw a lizard in a dress go for it! If you want to draw various pastries with faces do it! Don’t let the thought of it being too dumb stop you because if I’ve learned anything in my several years of drawing it’s that an idea can lead to another and another and another and you may get a really good idea just from doodling dumb things.

Here’s a few things that can get you started on drawing better:

Dynamic poses | Dynamic clothes | Dynamic figure drawing

COMPOSITION | PERSPECTIVE | CONSTRUCTION

Anatomy:

Legs

Arms

Hands

Heads

Body (Female) (Male

Color Theory

Improving your sketchbook

Most importantly, don’t give up! You may not immediately get notes or followers but it’s more important you get better than to have popularity. How do you think those popular artists got to where they are now? To be good you’ve got to work at it.

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oh hey new guide thinggg~ some basics on how to practice! there’s SO much I could add to this, so it’s just the basics :O

short (kind of): there’s more to practice than doing something repeatedly, it’s also learning new things, problem solving, and honest critique. Each of those is its own skill…also be nice to yourself!