#however both his art and the works of mucha. for example. have shared inspiration from japanese woodblock prints

[treecakes]

art nouveau my beloved inspiration for art!

[stream-of-distracted-thought]

Young Artists! It’s OKAY to use reference!

It’s okay to use reference! It’s okay to use reference! It’s okay to use reference!

Reference is NOT tracing! Reference is NOT cheating! Reference is NOT bad!

No seriously. Professional artists use reference all of the time.

So today, in one of the art groups I follow on FB, a young artist went about asking for critique on some anatomy with is normally nothing super special. However, this person stressed that they did not want to use reference and that they “relied on reference too much”. (Which isn’t actually a thing. I’ll explain why in a second.) Since I went to college for art, it was drilled into my head by my professors to always use reference when drawing. And these guys were the working in the field and teaching on the side type of guys.

When I was a much younger Starteller, I do remember having this notion myself. That “good” artists didn’t need reference and could just draw whatever. This SIGNIFICANTLY hurt my growth as an artist and was just a wrong opinion on the subject, period. But living in a small town with little access (and little want to) to proper art classes, and growing up during the era of dial-up and low-speed internet, I didn’t really seek things out. I dare say I was too proud too. And my artwork, especially when it comes to human anatomy, suffered. I think a lot of this mentality comes from pride or the pressures of peers and expectations to be “the artist” in your class.

Toss that aside. Professional artists use reference.

While I am no longer working as an artist professionally, I am going to share a few examples of my own, demonstrating what it means to use reference, both from life and from other sources. I’ll start with what I’m most known for: My Wings of Fire Chibi dragons.

Above is my usual workspace that I set up, every time I make a new dragon.

I ALWAYS have the Joy Ang general body plans for each dragon tribe in my file to look at for scale reference and some body reference since both I, and much of the WOF community care about some accuracy to these designs. I also will have color references if I have access to them, be they my own color choices, or someone else’s. As in the case with Blister, I pulled a diamondback image from online to pull colors and her pattern from. I think of this use of reference as transferring one style, to another.

Sometimes, I’m trying to imitate a style exactly. An example like that is my Steven Universe OC. To be very close to the style of the show, I drew almost three pages worth of Pearl, to get her body shape right, as well as head shape. When working on my Black Pearl, I always have at least one of the Pearls (Yellow or Blue too) up in my file to make sure I’m recreating the style as accurately as possible. The same happened for Black Quartz.

References are not always styles or poses; they can be techniques, color palettes, or generalized lighting reference. And its not limited to just those!

I’ve recently found this wonderful little image that I have up a lot now when painting a bit more realistically, to help remind myself what colors to use to help make my shading have a bit more pop.

And I finally found this one too that will help me with painting the lighting on a human face.

Outside of my chibi dragons, (And yes, I do other stuff than dragons) I will use reference from life to help create.

When doing my usual style, I use a photo reference I find online or capture myself to help me transfer the simpler shapes into the lineart. An example of this would be Starteller below (who I use reference to capture a cat’s body shape), and the SkyWing wing shape, which I lifted from a Peregrine Falcon.

However, I use reference much more closely when working on my “uncanny valley” style that I like to use for my monster designs.

This here is a character of mine, the Entity of Fear. We’ll call him Fear for short. His references are: a caterpillar (Face and over-all body shape), an ant (legs) and a mosquito larvae (for the tail-end). I wanted him to look creepy, alien and parasitic so referencing creepy-crawlies to capture this effect.

When it comes to scenery you need both lighting and life reference. Below is the concept art I did for a college project called The Library. Using the chosen reference of our Director, I produced this library (which was used). I lifted some of the perspective from photos that I can’t locate at this time. (I did this project around 6-7 years ago)

This is the one that sold the director! ^

The Trinity Library in Dublin was what I looked at and you can see the inspiration in the concepts.

But wait, you may be saying. “This isn’t the type of referencing I’M talking about! I’m talking about leaning on pose references!”

Yea, pro-artists do this too!

I, for example, use a couple of ways. One is that I use (when doing cartoon humans) DesignDoll to create custom poses that might be hard to find online. I leaned heavily on this method for last year’s Inktober.

The other is looking at real-life reference, be that from photos or a live model. Below is an image of a painting I’ve put aside for a bit while developing my painting skills. The lineart however was referenced from a photo I found online, as well as a reference to Alphonse Mucha’s Art Deco Style. The other three are from a live model.

My workspace while producing the lineart ^

These three were done with a live model during college ^

And if all my examples aren’t convincing enough, below are some images of student and pro work-spaces. Seriously. EVERY PRO ARTIST USES REFERENCE.

The idea that you can lean too heavily on reference is a myth. Using reference actually makes your art better in the long run as well as giving you a stable idea of what you want when creating. How closely you replicate that reference is up to the needs of the project. Obviously, if you were doing a portrait of someone from a photo or life, you would want it to be exactly the way it appears there. If you are creating something that isn’t real, your references will be used more loosely.

References are not restricted to poses, photos or life. They include color schemes, styles and techniques too!

When something isn’t being used as a reference:

-Copying another person’s artwork to a T, or so closely that it is obviously plagiarism. POSES FROM LIFE OR STOCK IMAGES DO NOT COUNT!