#i've been practicing drawing the same faces from different angles and trying to keep features consistent. pretty happy with this one!

[elzorton]

my professional opinion is that she is perfect and should never have to face the consequences of her actions ever

[pawseds]

Accidentally did a lineup of some Helvetia girls (plus Merlin) impulsively past midnight. I wanted to try draw different body types because I think of them as an extension of storytelling. Plus, it's fun and good practice! (I say this without ever having learned anatomy or having searched up reference for this lmfao oops)

Characters 1-3 and 5 belong to @theroyalzealot, and character 4 belongs to @katastrofish. Image description + more info from left to right under cut!

Marianne (red), 42 y/o: Pear-shaped, keeping in mind she's in her 40s. She also has small lip corner/cheek wrinkles. No idea what it is anatomy wise lmao. I designed her for my friend. Not much to say here? She's your average middle-aged woman who has curves in the right places. She's not on the athletic end because she sits behind a desk all day. I drew her in an A-pose because I didn't know I was going to be doing a lineup LOL

Molly (blue), 24 y/o: Slouch, shoulders slope more. She's the reason I started doing this lineup in the first place, because her designer and Marianne's original designer (same artist) draws them with the exact same body type and face shape, and given the big age difference and their very different personalities, I thought to try redesign her while staying true to being curvy/round. I tried leaning hard into softness since she's not self assured and is kinda melancholic sometimes. To match, I gave her a rounder face, a wider/rounder nose, and droopy eyes. (Marianne's French and Molly's Brazillian, so I wanted Molly's features to not be so Eurocentric.) I also changed her hair to try reflect her personality more.

Abaddon (green), 33 y/o: Hip dip, like she's always flexing. Originally desgined by someone else. I was drawing these with Mika on call, and this was the point they said they were curious about my interpretation of Abaddon. This woman is supposed to be fucking tall and built like a tree, so I really wanted to show that LOL. It's just angles, angles and hard lines everywhere. Whenever I'm drawing muscular/fit people, I try to remember that muscle is soft when unflexed, and that people aren't flexing all the time (unlike what media potrays). BUT. Abaddon is constantly jacked on hypergeometric steroids to the point of addiction. So I think being uncannily shredded at all times even when she's fully relaxed fits. Also, hip dip is there because she doesn't have a lot of fat. The same goes for the next 3 characters.

Melydice (purple), 30 y/o: Muscular, but not in the steroid kinda way like [Abaddon]. Toned af. Originally designed by Mika! I wanted to draw Melydice to contrast against Abaddon, by showing what a very athletic woman who's not constantly on steroids looks like. It probably would've been more effective if I've actually studied muscle anatomy! But anyway, I followed Mika's description for this: pretty average frame, but with broader shoulders, and all the muscle she packs hide beneath loose clothing. Maybe I should've drawn Melydice flexing her arm for contrast to see how fucking swole she is when she's actually flexing. But otherwise, I think she has a sleeper build. She takes her duties as a field agent very seriously, and she's been one since she was 18.

Eve (cyan), 39 y/o: Narrower shoulders. Ectomorph kinda build; leaner and not as muscular as [Melydice]. Very lean frame. Originally designed by another artist. I drew her in for variety and to contrast against Melydice. In my head, her body naturally can't build muscle as easily as Melydice's (and Abaddon's), thus having smaller muscles (and less fat) than them both. So she's more of the 'mean and lean' kinda gal, and would definitely look slim/narrow when her muscles are relaxed. However! Do not underestimate her! The fact that she's nearly 40 but has a body as toned as this means that she's been consistently training for ages! She can absolutely pack a punch if she needs to, I'm sure. She sure packed a punch in Hrothgar's criminal record by framing him-

Leyna/Merlin (orange), 30 y/o (stuck permanently at this age because she's dead): Narrower frame, but proportionally broader shoulders. L o n g l e g s. I've had the idea to draw a lineup for a long time, and I knew I wanted to include Leyna and Elmira in it. It's nice to compare/contrast her against Eve, too: they're similarly lean, except with how Eve is more muscular, Leyna's pelvis is narrower, Leyna's flat as a board, and Leyna's legs are proportionally longer. Even though both their shoulder widths are kind of the same, I like to think that skeletally, Eve's are narrower. It's just that she has muscle built on top of that. If Leyna were to work her shoulders/chest, I think they'd be broader than Eve's. She's lucky to have this build since she very often presents as male (she's genderqueer, uses any pronouns).

Elmira (magenta), 43 y/o: Petit but round. Pigeon SML shapes, as in I wanted to capture the 'small medium large' shapes of a pigeon and implant it into Elmira (since her surname is Golubev, aka pigeon/dove). Not much to say here, either. I didn't want her to necessarily be curvy like Marianne (though I could've done a better job at Marianne). I just wanted her features to be very round. She often wears a hijab but doesn't do it all the time, so it was about time that I started ideating what her hair would look like. One day, I'll achieve the thick and curly/wavy look I have in mind.

[danganronpa96]

How Do You Draw Bodies And How Do You Draw Them At A Prespective?

I'm going to split my advice into 3 points. Hopefully that makes things easy to understand as I'm not the best at explaining how I draw things ^^;

(everythin under ze cut)

Body sketches

Look at these fem and masc bodies I drew. I hate those "oh this is how you do male and female bodies!!1!" stuff it always irks me as anyone can look like anything lol. I am using a typical formula here but these ideas can apply to any body type for any gender.

For more dynamic posing, make the body more asymmetric, especially shoulders, arms and legs. I'm not an anatomy god, but I try to keep things consistent depending on the style I use (normal, chibi, simplistic etc.).

2. Use posing tools for poses and perspectives

Sometimes when I want to do a pose I'm not sure how to start on, I use a site called JustSketchMe. It gives you a few model types for free to pose however you like. Starting off, it might be a bit overwhelming and your poses may look weird, but after some practice you will get used to quickly creating rough poses you can stylise later.

These three references are the same pose I made, but I just changed the cameras position to create new perspectives to see how shapes change, what's now hidden, bigger, smaller, etc.

3. Learn the position of features at perspectives by using references

I cannot stress this enough, but references are your best friend and they love you so so much mwah. You can look up images on Google, Pinterest, or whatever else. Use stock photos, specially curated reference poses, drawings made by other artists, etc. Use tutorials. Look at what changes when a body is seen from above and below, and how extreme it is.

Here's a mixture of sketches from art I've done for this blog and OC stuff. See how different the body looks depending on where it's been viewed from. How the neck is hardly seen looking down. How the facial features are higher on the face looking up. Once you pick up on the little things, it really helps when you're doing more difficult angles.

Sorry if this wasn't the best, but I really appreciate the ask for the advice anyway! Allowing yourself to experiment lets your art become more dynamic and opens up more possible ideas. So just use a lot of practice!

[ruinmegently]

So I've been practicing drawing. I've always wanted to be able to do the thing. But I've hesitated because, well. I'm a life-beaten 30-somethin who's lost the sheen of being able to find even a modicum of good in anything I do. I often think I'm too old to learn a skill like this.

But I've been practicing, even just a little bit every day or two. Stubbornly. And when I draw a line and my head screams "look at that, it's so bad, it's so shaky, you can't even draw a single fuckin line" I've been telling it, "hey now, I don't have the muscle memory yet, that's what I'm working on."

It's important to put in the effort — because art is effort — but it's equally as important to be gentle to yourself while you learn new things. Drawing a circle isn't just about an end result. It's a push-up, it's staying hydrated on a hot day, it's grinding xp until you level up the skill.

So yeah, I've been practicing drawing and being kind to myself while I do it.

And you wanna know something cool?

first attempt:

several attempts down the road:

It fuckin works.

I have so, so much to learn, and I make tons of mistakes and have tons of flaws in proportion and perspective and lighting. And that's just drawing heads. I don't even know how to fit features onto them yet. But I've learned more by being kind to myself than I ever did by spitting self-hate.

More practice, in chronological order:

doodles, scratches, what does the pen feel like?

staring directly at my reference and trying to mimic it / understand what each line is there for:

staring at the same reference, but drawing it looking in the opposite direction so I have to think about what each line does, instead of just copying what I see:

how do different angles stretch or shrink the proportions of the face? how can I use different lines to help me keep things relatively even?

where is the light coming from, and how can I use lighting to help me make sense of basic proportions?

how does the underside of a chin work?? and all these lines that help me figure out where the "face" fits on the "skull" ... how do they change, what do they look like, at different angles?

Be gentle to yourself.

[ androgynous heads reference ]

[famous-pprophet]

I've been trying to learn how to draw and I love your art style so much I've been practicing by copying it (just in my notebook not like sharing it anywhere) as I love the way you capture characters and emotion but I was wondering how do you go about simplifying a character? I'm not sure if this makes sense but like what do you look for when taking realistic looking characters and translating them into a stylistic version?

Thank you for the ask! keep tracing and copying, its a great way of building the muscle memory and familiarizing yourself with breaking things down into shapes. It means a lot that my art is something that you wanted to use that for! https://twitter.com/meatgirI/status/1606375868959543298?s=20&t=ve-GgU0nMrUBRZnTj0kI3Q I would say that this tweet by meatgiri is a good way of finding different facial features and breaking the face/eyes/nose into shapes, and that its a really good way of getting started. However I also think that learning proportions and anatomy is a really good way of further pushing this skill. im going to explain it a bit, but if it feels overwhelming or makes art something thats not fun, you dont have to use any of it. youll pick up these things through practice and observation.

I like trace out these lines on my face. they follow these proportions that are applicable to almost all people. once ive got this figured out, i start to fill in the eyes, nose and mouth.

(some examples of characters... see how this rule still applies even though they look very different.

again see the tutorial i linked above to get a feel for breaking these facial features into shapes. this is what i would suggest to practice different types of faces if you dont have a super good understanding of facial structure

as you observe more in faces, you notice a lot of difference in face shape and structure. but this is a really good way to play with JUST facial features and maintain them consistently

if you want to get into facial structure, then you wanna start looking at the actual anatomy

try to picture where your face sits on your skull. this can help you decide how MUCH of the bone sticks out from under the face. if you are underweight, older, or have shaper facial features, youre going to see a lot more off things like cheekbones

so now even though im using the same skull as a base, i can still have a different face shape. because this person might be older, they have a stronger jawline, and their features are sunken in

and the cool thing is that this isnt just applicable from a 3/4th angle. the proportions are always like that!! they might change because of perspective or the angle but honestly at that point youd want to start trying to develop your sense of 3d space

this is just a really simple way of diversifying one single method of drawing faces. notice how i only used the one "base" shape

and here you can see examples of how their faces sit on the skull. obviously you dont need to be drawing perfectly anatomical skulls every time you draw a person, but it does make good practice to trace those shapes. basically training yourself to get better at observing different features!

you can get into even more varying features when you start to use different skull shapes too. all of these characters have different skull shapes and their features change depending on how they sit on that skull

here is a good demonstration of anatomically correct differences in skulls of different races. Obviously i tend to think of it as masculine/feminine rather than male/female, but this is a scientific model used for identification (which is based off of sex and not gender)

age can also play into your skull shape and facial proportions. combining all of this knowledge you can not only have a wide range of different characters, but you can also tell a story.

again the less fat you have on your face, the more sunken in your features are going to be. so you can tell your audience about your character just from this alone

this is a good example. its a soldier before and after war. you can see how the stress, trauma, living conditions, etc, have all changed how he looks.

obviously this is getting into the real nitty gritty anatomical aspect of it but i do think its a really good way to have your characters feel like they belong to the environment they are in. it also just further illustrates my point earlier, how you can have MANY different types of faces even if you are using the same base for all of them. again if this seems overwhelming, its ok! a lot of this is stuff you pick up via observation as you continue practicing. draw what makes you comfortable, draw what you think is fun, and start off simple. Also know that you really dont need to be going into such detail and drawing the skulls haha. thats really just moreso to demonstrate the fundamental understanding. Good luck with art, keep pushing yourself to learn more and draw what you see!! youll pick up on all these subtle details as you keep at it

[fishklok]

Hopefully my question makes sense, but how are you able to draw people/characters with distinct facial features and still make them attractive?? I feel like even when I do give my characters different eye shapes or noses shapes they still look the same, like I want my characters to be look different from each other and still look hot haha.

Hi anon, I hope I can help you out with this, but please keep in mind that I'm a self taught artist and I have no real character design training.

I think Metalocalypse is actually a good way to practice drawing unique features, because the show rarely repeats facial features on different characters, but the art style is simple enough that it's easy to recreate.

Regardless of your style, if you get the lines representing Nathan's high cheekbones, the nasolabial folds, the bridge of his nose, and the brow crease, his face will be recognizable

Giving characters unique specific features is an important step, but I think equally important is to think about what overall shapes you're going to keep in mind while drawing said character.

I've used this example before, but on paper Magnus and Skwisgaar have rather similar features

By which I mean they're both tall skinny dudes with long hair, gaunt faces, large noses, prominent cheekbones. But when you see them next to each other, you start to notice the differences between their designs that go beyond individual features. To the point where if you slapped Magnus' hair + goatee onto Skwisgaar, it would look very odd (I'm not going to recreate that, don't worry).

The difference that stands out to me the most is while they're both rather angular characters, Skwisgaar's overall design is much softer than Magnus'. His face is made up of more sloping lines that are rarely broken up. So when I go to draw Skwisgaar, I go into the drawing ready to draw a bunch of softer angles, while with Magnus I might as well get the ruler out.

Here are some basic sketches which are basically just me slapping the character's features down onto the page

Usually at this stage I erase my guidelines as I go, but I kept them there for the sake of this example. I don't draw the eyes in great detail because I find it easy to get too focused on things like iris size or pupil placement (and also I don't draw the expression at this stage), which can distract me from getting down the overall feel/rhythm/vibe of the character. It's like building a house. You gotta set the foundation before you start painting the windowsills.

Also use irl references.

It doesn't have to be exact. but sometimes it can be easy to lose your sense of reality when you've been staring at cartoons for so long. I'll usually rely on irl references for proportions or anatomical details, while for the individual features I'll reference the source material.

This really isn't a tutorial, I'm sorry. It's more me trying to put words to what goes through my head whenever I draw a character.

For something actionable, I'd say look at random mtl characters and try to identify the key shapes/features that make up their design. What was the first feature you noticed about them? If you were going to draw them, what kind of motions would you make with your hand? Also try doing silhouette practice, then move on to drawing the characters with no hair or other definable features.

I used mtl as an example because like I said before, the show's character design is great to study from. But the exercises I described can be used with actual people too. Sometimes I like to use the website This Person Does Not Exist to generate faces to practice identifying certain features. It's a good muscle to train.

This response went all over the place, I'm really sorry. I hope that in this ramble there are at least a few nuggets of useful information.

Also the attractiveness thing I cannot speak on lmao. Attractiveness is very subjective and I think my answer is...everything I learned about art came from those How to Draw Manga books.

[yuseirra]

hello! i hope you're having a nice day!! (: i've been following you for a long time, and i just wanted to say that your drawings are always really expressive! i'm not sure how to put it into words, but it's very easy to see how the characters you draw are feeling- do you happen to have any tips or advice on how you draw facial expressions? thank you! ;o;;

Hello anon!// Thank you for wishing me a nice day, I hope you have a good one too! Also thank you for following me throughout my different interests and for seeing my drawings for a long time. New followers are amazing, but it really cheers me up to hear from someone who’s watched me over for long, it’s thanks to people like you that I were able to stay encouraged and keep going!

Ah, and this is such a lovely message to get as well!// If I had to pick one thing that I’ve tried to incorporate into my drawings I think it would be expressions and feelings.. I’m really excited to hear that they feel expressive to you!! I’m not sure if I’ll be able to write a good one but of course! I’ll be happy to share some things I have in mind as I draw expressions!! 

When I draw expressions, I try to feel the same way the characters are feeling in that particular scene. I think this is the most crucial thing for me, since I draw comics and write lines I tend to get absorbed in the situation of the characters. I try to think what kinds of feelings would this particular character with this personality have there, and what emotions will be displayed through their faces. Of course, if I’m drawing fanworks my interpretations won’t be entirely perfect but I think it’s still very important to try to see through the character’s eyes. For me who tend to get immersed very easily, this is something that comes pretty naturally.. thinking about expressions is not something that’s too difficult for me because I am an expressive person! I can’t hide my emotions very well and it shows all over my face; but I think trying to get engaged with your own drawing & the characters portrayed is certainly the one thing that helps you draw better expressions. I believe this is something that many artists experience but when you draw smiles, you smile, and when you draw frowns, you tend to frown together. When you draw sad scenes, you also end up feeling kind of sad along with it, and when you do, I feel those kinds of feelings become part of the drawing!

So that’s the basis of how I draw expressions, but to be more practical about it, here are some ways on how I draw certain types of expressions, I sketched something really fast but I think it can still help you! I’m self-taught so this is not a tip from a  professionally studied artist ;v; but here’s some things I consider as I draw. I feel the most important features to reveal expressions on a face are the eyes, and mouth. If you watch and take note of how various artists draw those two aspects when they portray a certain expression, you will start noticing a pattern/get new inspirations on how to do them better.

Happiness/Smiles tend to be shown with larger-wide open eyes. They also have less wrinkles (there’s a saying that you age faster when you frown a lot because frowning uses more muscles, right?// so It’s scientifically proven too)

Anger/Sadness, or other various expressions that display some kind of frustration have more wrinkles displayed on the face, and the eyes are usually narrowed/tilted to a certain direction. The mouth is also very important, as gritting the teeth or widening them, closing them shut can reveal various feelings that a character may be facing at that particular situation.

Shock/Surprised expressions comes with very widened eyes and smaller pupils. Sometimes there are shadows sketched in between the eyes to increase the impact and show contrast with the eyes. These are some things I can think right off the bat and there could be exceptions/more things to consider, but I think it’s an okay place to begin! :)

One more tip I want to give (and this may not work as well depending on your artstyle) is the use of extra lines around the eyes. Since my artstyle is pretty sketchy, this is something that works pretty well for me. 

When you’re drawing strong, or pained expressions, try highlighting or shading around the eyes with extra lines. Also,the angle of the eyelashes(?) are very important with depicting what kinds of emotions you intend to draw.

some emotions are very complex and cannot be described with a single word. But with good use of the eyes and the mouth, and the combination of the two, it can be still be displayed effectively.

*note that pure smiles don’t need any extra lines around them.

** without the extra lines near the eyelids and beneath the eye, this cut below would have made up a pretty happy smile. With the use of extra lines, however, it is able to show a sign of sadness.

*** casual expressions don’t need the extra lines either.

This is how I’ve been drawing my expressions, and you don’t have to follow it, still I hope this helps! ‘v’)/ I feel the way someone draws expression is something that comes along naturally- there is a knack to how many people draw it, but the basis below it all would be that you have to feel the emotions yourself in order to be able to express it well (this is a personal take btw!!) So if you can, indulge, engage, and have fun!!/// There are many different ways to enjoy art but for me, I really have a lot of fun when I could feel and express through my drawings!