reanimatedmagpie

[reanimatedmagpie]

hello we made a part two of the whole comic me and death are making

[reanimatedmagpie]

Hey!! I absolutely love your work, your art, comic, designs, etcetc are just.. so SO good. ALSO, I was wondering if you possibly had any art resources? More specifically art resources for someone that’s just starting out. I would love to get into drawing but there are a million videos and books and articles out there and I have no idea where or how to start.

Art school would be amazing but gosh dang it I’m broke </3

first of all ive never gone to art school proper, or any real amount of college at all for that matter either, its not terribly hard to get ahead of your peers who do with proper work ethic and knowing where to look for, the 'self-taught' label is becoming increasingly arbitrary because the internet's made it all easier than ever to access if you know where to look

admittedly i was starting out at a very different time in the internet and speaking a different language, so i cannot quite recommend what i was using when i started between language availability and modern expectations of say video quality, however! i do have some pointers

at a glance channels like proko [though more so the older videos] are pretty handy but also

i can tell you what to look for and general principles

if youve not already, look up and commit to practice the way youre supposed to hold the pen for art. genuinely good for your artwork, but, more importantly, helps you strain your wrist less. considering especially in the beginning artwork can take a long time, you need to get into those habits early. look up wrist exercises while you're at it and try to warm up your hands before starting. it is genuinely exactly like sports you cant skip the stretch. /

look for specific things. 'get good at art in 10 days' is the same as 'get fit in 10 days' even if its not impossible to learn some very useful fundamentals in that time, you know thats not what they have for you. you need to be looking for things like 'color contrast' 'muscles of the leg' 'how to do cleaner linework' when searching on the internet /

I would avoid short form content or even just shorter videos altogether or anything with a super flashy presentation for anything but like, simple software tricks, that stuff is not really usually interested in teaching things as much as its here to get algorithm points. it used to be a lot less of a thing and i feel sorry for people that are learning with this so saturated in the space ngl definitely steer clear off pinterest too. they wouldnt need to cocomelon you if they had something useful. did you know straight up art lecture recordings are out there btw? /

if you want an overview of a broad variety of things you want a book. yes i know. they are all fairly useful i would personally say and if you do not have a library in your immediate area, did you know the internet archive lets you borrow books digitally if you have an account? for human anatomy i really recommend the morpho series, for animals my go to was Gottfried Bammes, and i cannot recommend the Understanding Comics and Making Comics for sequential art, but generally speaking, books often want to appeal to people that are just starting out, so most of them that have a technical drawing aspect at all will help a beginner in some capacity. if you dont yet know which ones are 'good' i generally recommend looking into ones that mention the author is an art professor in the back /

important note: sometimes people consider the text on the page in those books as filler and Only look at the diagrams. that's not the case, you do in fact learn things if you read it /

also when reading those books take care to not just copy down the process but try your best to understand why. its not so much what it looks like so much as the thought process behind it /

use gesture drawing exercise tools like sketchdaily.com [if you do not wish to see nude models make sure it's filtered to clothed] if you do not yet know what gesture drawing is, that's a keyword to look up /

The secret sauce to drawing any creature is its bones and muscle. Trouble with faces? draw some studies off of photos of replica skulls. struggling to get what the hell is happening with the neck? look up a diagram of the neck muscles. a lot of 'anatomy for artists' resources are ultimately just translations of the scientific fact, so if youre not finding anything good there, go to the source! ive been doing that a lot lately. /

watch speedpaint videos! i know they dont come up as often on youtube naturally anymore but you get a Lot of insight into things from watching people whose art you like [and even don't like!] draw /

Draw real life things from real life. your pet or perhaps family member or friend, strangers on public transport, buildings outside it doesnt actually matter what just that you do it. photographs lack real life depth information most people's eyes can capture irl /

i know it can be kind of difficult these days but you shouldnt discount or ignore traditional even if you are not planning to focus on it. understanding of irl art mediums is really valuable even if you plan on being primarily digital because the less predictable nature of them builds confidence and helps you be more present among other benefits. its one of the many reasons youre not gonna find life drawing classes that allow students to just whip out a tablet /

hang out with your artist peers! ideally in spaces where people are actively making something like OCTs[Original Character Tournaments], game jams, even fandom spaces can work though i do not recommend that last one so much because they tend to be less interested in you as a person and more just seeing free art of their favorite guy and arent very friendly to beginners ngl. best find spaces specifically for original work, people tend to be more supportive there.

there really isnt a strict order in which you have to learn things. you can in fact go all in on turtle anatomy for a while if thats what interests you, why not, etc. but some good places to start are, in no particular order

anatomy of the face

anatomy of the torso

rotating cubes in 3d space [volume and perspective. generally not that scary i just find people overthink it a lot and get anxious]

how motion works[even if youre not at all animation inclined]

composition, color, contrast

various linework techniques, various panting techniques

mammal anatomy, bird anatomy, reptile anatomy, bug anatomy's nice too

basic plants, basic buildings, basic machinery

Anything deeper than that will be dictated by your own interests, this is just what would make you a very adaptable generalist. look up references whenever you struggle, study things you find visually cool, let your interests guide your research for the most part

but also, if i were to call Anything my big cool piece of advice, it's don't just sit around and aimlessly wait for your art to get 'good enough' to do something cool. start some little projects [and i do mean little. like under 5 pages of comic, a silly animation to a Short sound byte etc] and look up what you Directly need for them try your best. like a one day project, then a three day project then maybe a week long one, etc dont go right into anything long term right away, get practice finishing things first!

[youd be surprised what comics make you draw too, my last thing just had a random model t car in it for fun]

Because nothing, and i do mean nothing will teach you to make art in practice quite the same as making even a tiny project featuring the thing you want to learn

[reanimatedmagpie]

[reanimatedmagpie]

will there be lgbtq characters?

all of them

[reanimatedmagpie]

People don't like to admit it bcs cringe or w/e but Homestuck really did revolutionize the webcomic as a storytelling medium and I am endlessly frustrated that before webcomic artists could really stretch our legs fucking webtoonz swooped in, set a new, more restrictive standard, and then monetized and monopolized the ever living fuck out of the concept of The Webcomic until it drove away anyone who couldn't be a professional quality manga artist for free, and now the only webcomics that actually feel like spiritual successors to Homestuck are so obscure they're basically cult classics that you have to beg people to read.

Like it's just so wild to be in high school and see Homestuck be like "we're using like fifteen different artistic mediums to tell this story bcs we can" and be really fucking inspired by that, only to grow up and see basically every webcomic ever have to conform to One Single Standard or fucking perish.

[reanimatedmagpie]

Hello! ive been forgetting to post here honestly but me and a friend made a Whole Thing go read it here

[reanimatedmagpie]

tiktok stunt haha funny. please talk about the ice raids

[reanimatedmagpie]

and now, after the incredibly high strung audition here's some of her in a pretty dress because someone deserves a little identity crisis /positive as well

[reanimatedmagpie]

Hello! ive been forgetting to post here honestly but me and a friend made a Whole Thing go read it here

[reanimatedmagpie]

fog of war in the grocery store

[reanimatedmagpie]

dead rat doll thing :)

[reanimatedmagpie]

[dungeon coursers HARPG] magpie's "brief" detour into horse art part 19

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[dungeon coursers HARPG] magpie's "brief" detour into horse art part 18

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[dungeon coursers HARPG] magpie's "brief" detour into horse art part 17

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[dungeon coursers HARPG] magpie's "brief" detour into horse art part 16

[reanimatedmagpie]

[dungeon coursers HARPG] magpie's brief detour into horse art part 15

[reanimatedmagpie]

[dungeon coursers HARPG] magpie's brief detour into horse art part 14