Beautiful, cute, dulzura, A quick question, do you have any advice for drawing? I see your drawings and I just fell in love with them, I just started drawing again but it's difficult...
I don't know, sorry, English is not my first language, using translator jiji 🤎🍁
(note: this post is long, grab a snack lol)
ah! no problem, don’t worry about the translator haha (pinterest link - this is my masterboard for human references! I’ll talk about it more below)
I think my best advice for anyone wanting to draw is to break down your piece into shapes! (also, depending on your style, using different line weights)
from my experience, while looking at the whole reference is good, it’s easier to break down individual parts! while some parts can look complicated, a lot of things can be broken down into triangles, squares, and circles (or half circles)
I focus on character art, so I’ll be speaking about that - but it can applied to scenery and objects too. a lot of characters clothes are broken up into colored articles already - in the top reference, Ghost has a red bandanna on his arm! that bandanna helps break up his arm: the top near his shoulder is triangular, the bandanna itself is overall rectangular, and the bottom of his sleeve is a square
of course, depending on how you’re posing the character it can change the angle of what we’re seeing - there’s also an accommodation that your art probably won’t be a 1-to-1 copy with your reference. Ghost’s right arm (bandanna) has a white rolled up sleeve - while the model’s sleeve is square, I prefer to draw rolled sleeves more triangular
I think line weight is also important depending on your style! I prefer thicker lines around the entire character, and defining qualities also get thicker lines
I like thinner lines inside the character to help define dimensional shape and form. I use thicker lines on the inside of the body if there’s a shape/area that’s more in the foreground - example: König’s chest and midsection have thick line art to help differentiate from his left arm (behind his body)
I know a common piece of advice is to use real life references, and I agree… but, I never hear people talk about how to use references in a way that actually helps (“just draw from real life”, or “drawing with a reference is good practice”). I experienced that and wasn’t able to take anything away for years!
within the past year or so I seriously took a look at how using references can help me, so I want to try and talk about that - if I had trouble learning from references I’d wager someone else has
here’s my best example of using a reference because I actually remembered to! I labeled the figure to make it a little easier to follow
(1) my first tip is using a reference to figure out how the body ‘flows’. the human body has a lot of soft, rounded lines when you look at a picture - very few things are legitimately straight and sharp. I used the reference specifically to figure out how men’s pecs are shaped (of course, this is just one reference… because this is my headcanon for König’s body type haha)
(1) looking at references can help you understand how muscles move. in the reference with the woman, you notice how her right arm (down) muscles are layered - the shape portrayed by the reference lets you see how an arm’s muscles might be laid out in that position
(2) my second tip from the König reference is to look at negative space! the highlighted red portion between the arm and midsection is roughly the same negative space as the reference. if you’re using a reference and something feels off with the placement of what you’ve drawn I’d recommend looking at the space your reference takes up
(2) the negative space trick helps me line up where proportions should meet up - the distance between her arms lets me gauge how the rest of her body should be proportioned
(2) while it doesn’t match up 1-to-1 with the reference when layered overtop, it doesn’t have to! the negative space between the arms was enough for the sketch to mimic what the reference looks like. art doesn’t have to be a 1-to-1, but negative space can help you figure out ‘why does that arm look funny?’, “that arm looks funny because, compared to the negative space of your reference, it’s too (far away/close) to the body.”
(3) my last tip is the simplest, so I’ll just be referring to the König figure! when using references I look to gauge the distance between different body parts - it helps me get more realistic proportions. the bit I specifically compared to was the man’s stomach placement compared to his waist. I didn’t copy it 1-to-1 because I like the idea König has more of a tummy, but the reference allowed me to figure out an anatomical placement for where König’s stomach would be compared to his waist
I hope my advice wasn’t terrible haha everyone’s art journey is different, but these are tips I would have liked to know a few years ago (specifically the reference material ones lol). I wanted to focus more on the reference material because when people say ‘just use a reference, it’ll help’ it didn’t do it for me
I personally needed a more in depth explanation on why I would use a reference, what should I be looking at - because just drawing a person doesn’t necessarily help, and how should I be learning from it - I accidentally taught myself negative space before I knew what it was
but uhm… yeah, I hope this wasn’t awful! good luck on everyone’s art journeys, just remember that you’re allowed to take your time and try different things
if you guys have any other questions about my art feel free to jump into my inbox; process wise, inspiration, etc - I’ll answer anything I can<3
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Hi, how did you learn to draw Steve's physique?
Ohh what a complicated thing to answer...
When it comes to how I learned to draw anything, it's hard to say anything too specific since it's always a culmination of many years of assorted study and practice... but I can try to do my best to explain some of the biggest things that helped me learn, some tips I keep in mind, and maybe at least some places to start/delve further.
(just a little disclaimer it's not like my drawings here are going to be 100% medically accurate.. they're just to illustrate concepts!)
The main thing about learning various physiques is understanding anatomy. Which feels obvious, but I don't mean proportions; these are important, but perhaps more important is understanding the skeleton and how it moves and learning where muscles connect to bones and where fat grows on the body. When you understand how these function on a more mechanical level, depicting form and movement in a way that feels natural comes in tow.
For instance, understanding things like the pronation and supination of the radius and ulna, as well as the fact that muscles can ONLY contract or relax, will help you understand a bit better which muscles will be flexed and which will not while someone moves. It's inherent to the positioning based on the structural makeup of the body... It's not like you NEED to memorize all the muscles and bones, of course, but understanding and gaining at least a passive familiarity with the concepts really helps.
In tandem with this concept is the way parts of the body flow into eachother. Muscles ALWAYS come in groups because they can only contract. Whatever muscle is there to lift something, there is a muscle on the other side to pull that bone back down. What this results in is a series of straight edges next to curves, which gives us a lot of really lovely "s curves" and dents and folds and so on and so forth just naturally occurring.
I would suggest at least learning the "bony landmarks", which are bones (usually) visible on the surface of the body. things like the iliac crest, the great trochanter, the 7th vertabrae, the acromion process... These can be used to help you understand the parts of the body as angles and relationships, rather than trying to remember lengths and sizes, which vary immensely... (since you asked about steve, he can be our model... also study these on your own don't just take my word for it haha, these are the ones I personally keep in mind)
I've done the same thing with body hair... learning where it grows and in which directions... It helps me make up variations without needing reference, because I have a set of rules I can follow.
The biggest thing that helped me understand all this on a much deeper level was my ecorche course. I sculpted this guy. We started by sculpting the entire skeleton to understand the bones, and then we added muscles on top. Not every single muscle, of course, but the "artistic muscles" AKA the ones which directly affect the surface of the body. Doing this let us see where muscles connect, because we would make a shape, put it on the bone where it actually goes, and then you get to see how other muscles overlap that.
This helped me, perhaps, more than anything else. But I also didn't just start with this course, I had been drawing for years before I even took it. I had been in school for years before I took it. Not that I think it wouldn't be helpful to someone just starting out, but I do think that the more you know going in, the better an in-depth course like this will help you and stick with you. Classes are also expensive, though so I'm not really like... recommending you pay potentially thousands of dollars to take one... But it did help me a lot, personally.
I also, of course, have done many figure, gesture, and master studies...
These just help you quickly gain a stronger understanding of generalized anatomy, and gives you real life examples of and practice with of how people move and balance.
What all this does when combined, is gives me a very solid ability to depict movement and form in a way that feels relatively natural from my subconscious without the need for reference.
The rest of how I've learned to draw his physique is honestly mostly just stylization. I understand the body, and this is how I am depicting it for his level of musculature.
And as I move into depicting him in other ways, either moving in comics or in animation, realistically rendered, or extra stylized, these concepts inform every step of that process for me! When he keeps the same/similar relationships between parts, he gets to still look like himself.
It ALSO really helps when putting clothes on, because the way cloth falls and bunches and lifts is all directly related to the form it is on... So the more you understand that form, the more you can depict clothing and movement in a way that feels natural.
This is all, of course, true when I draw anyone, you asked about Steve so I'm trying to mostly show with him! But because I'm just drawing from raw information of general anatomy rather than trying to study one body type at a time, it allows a lot more "give," I think!
Like, here's most of the cast from TTA so far... actually, they're not as varied as I thought they were nevermind LMAO ignore this part
But, it also makes monster and alien design much easier! It's a lot easier to come up with non-human anatomy when I understand human anatomy, because I can manipulate the knowledge I have...
There is infinite more to study in the world of anatomy... The complexity of the human body goes extremely deep. For our purposes as artists, we need only depict a fraction of it, but more information rarely hurts the process.
I'm sure there's something in here that's wrong on a technical level, I'm mostly going off of memory. But that's kind of my point - I understand enough generally and conceptually that when I am missing something and need to find reference for it, I understand what I'm looking at. It's much easier than trying to learn AND draw at the same time.
I hope even one thing in here helped you! Sorry it's so long.
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I love your depiction of Hamilton and Lafayette, it’s so funny! Lafayette is so sweet and happy and Hamilton just has beef w/ the entire world. I can’t wait to see more of their brotherly relations in ur AMAZING art style
God, they're so narrative foil coded
Seriously though, there's some fantastic contrast between them. They're just similar enough (both roughly the same age, both insecure and glory hungry, + their "shared father" or whatever Lafayette said) - and yet they manage to be exact opposites at the same time.
I could say more but I think this bit from Mike Duncan's biography about Lafayette basically gets at what I'm trying to say:
"Like Lafayette, Hamilton grew up without a father. He also lost his mother to a fatal illness at almost the same age Lafayette lost his. But where the tragedies of Lafayette’s childhood made him the heir of a fabulous fortune, the tragedies of Hamilton’s illegitimate childhood left him systematically cut out of his family’s inheritance. So where the dark clouds of Lafayette’s life were lined with silver, the dark clouds of Hamilton’s life were simply dark. Lafayette emerged from childhood buoyant and effusive, Hamilton cynical and reticent. But even though Hamilton started life a penniless bastard on the periphery of European civilization, and Lafayette started life an insanely wealthy heir in the heart of a great kingdom, they fell into an easy friendship. French was not the only language the two young men shared. The also shared a code of personal honor and a desire to prove themselves to the world."
-Mike Duncan, Hero of Two Worlds, The Marquis de Lafayette in the Age of Revolution
Now, I am not qualified to speak on the real figures, but I do like to write. So, there is a narrative opportunity here that drives me insane.
Like, cast Hamilton as brilliant, but overly cynical with a habit of assuming the worst in people, and give him a negative character arc where he comes close to recognizing the potential good of humanity but ultimately falls into his more authoritarian tendencies. Then contrast him with Lafayette who's more naive. He's not quite sheltered but unfamiliar with the sort of selfishness and greed he'd have encountered if he grew up in a more vulnerable financial position. In coming to America he, like Hamilton, is forced to reckon with contempt, greed, and the failings of democratic government. But, unlike Hamilton, still manages to come out of it with a generally positive opinion of humanity.
I'm just saying, if I were writing history to contain ✨themes ✨ they are a perfect opportunity.
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yet another oc that only exists because i wanted to write something very specific
(middle is a little older, hence her scar healing. i like to think she gets a glass eye at some point)
anyway this is mira! (they/she) since that wip is almost 20k words and counting i won’t give away too much but long story short she’s the result of meta going “one last time, i promise” and adopting yet another kid
also galaxia kinda indirectly picked the name :)
i’ve mentioned before that i headcanon that pretty much all astrals are autistic and this is just kinda an extension of that. whereas meta tends to suppress his emotions and conform to others, mira…doesn’t. she gets uncomfortable and upset and lashes out at people easily, and working through their emotions is no small task.
the main reason i chose to write them that way was for the sake of narrative but i’ve grown attached to it because there’s a lot of ideas there i’d like to explore. stuff about navigating emotions and relationships when existing is so suffocatingly uncomfortable. it’s not something i could center around Kirby himself, but i think it makes sense with a post character development meta knight.
they are very loved (omg oldee cameo???)
kirby was definitely very excited to have younger siblings after being used to being the youngest in the room for so long!! (with the like. one and only exception being gooey.) he’s super affectionate with both of them and wants to have a close relationship one day, but for now mira is pretty unappreciative of that fact lol. they don’t like being pestered for hugs
everyone else is okay tho
(i know that’s hard to read. oops. “obvious bite marks”. siblings being siblings.)
mira also has a very love/hate relationship with the egg kid, being so close in age they kinda Have to get along but in typical sibling nature they also fight a lot. sure it’s probably rough for a while but i think in the end they’d be good buddies. maybe not as close as Kirby and Bandee but still.
anyway i have a lot of thoughts and am very busy but. i’m really enjoying writing about all this lately it’s been fun ^^
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My player/keykid in missing link
Me personally my least favorite color is red but lore is lore and if they have to get red outfit it is this what it is.
Some headcanon stuff for the outfit choice -
..They have the same lore as player just adding some juice in and there cause design wise there is nothing canonically mentioned ^^
Cause authority figures encouraging the keyblade war they subconsciously anti authority in any way but also can understand when it’s reasonable (still get the anti itching though).
Nept insisted them to change clothes = get them annoyed and they want to do the opposite of what they were told to. But they also can’t really say no to the people who took them in so they just wear the uniform jacket on over the clothes they already have.
The hair hoop was item they got later on making it themselves cause its felt like something that could help with their memories (which is an item that they had in their khux design that live in my head rent free, they got it cause its spiky to avoid head pats).
Symbol in the shirt is heart and wing, to reference their magic wings they would almost always use in their first life. They probably can have them again but they can’t remember right now.
Spark “birth mark” on their face they got from their heart reincarnation.
They still didn’t figure out they can change their appearance by will, or they would probably wake up with different hair every day just to mess with people.
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