#it's not that hard to get more than one reference and NOT to colorpick the brightest of them all

[lark-of-mirkwood]

So upset about the fact that there are artists who whitewash Raphael from Baldur's Gate 3, like ... That man has bronze skin (human form) not LIGHT PINK 💀 And then when I point it out and that it's not okay, leaving a tip on how to avoid that mistake next time, they don't know what I'm talking about and are offended!

"I color-picked from a screenshot" DID YOU EVEN LOOK AT HIM ONCE

"Why do you come to my post und comment something like this???" AS IF I CALLED YOU NAMES OR SOMETHING, omgg

It can happen that you pick the wrong skin color, that's okay, especially as an artist without much experience, but listen to other artists who point out to you that that character looks whitewashed, be open to LISTEN and AVOID picking the absolutely wrong skin color next time. Simple.

Glad blocking exists 🫶🏽

[sovonight]

Sovonight,

Your art is so beautiful! I was wondering if you have a method for choosing what colors you use in your art. I always struggle with getting my colors to look good together.

I'd really appreciate it if you have any advice (and time to explain ahaha). If not, that's okay!

Have a lovely day!

~Anon

yeah ofc! here are 3 things i do:

on days where i don't want to spend time picking a palette from scratch, i'll just reuse a palette from a past file (like i did here). if i happen to need different lighting from the original palette, i'll achieve that with layer modes. but the more different the goal is from the starting point, the more adjustment layers are required to get there, and at some point it's just easier to get the palette right on the base layers in the first place. so if i have a new specific lighting situation in mind from the start, i'll usually just create a new palette, and i do this with or without a reference photo.

when i use a reference, i almost never use the reference photo's colors exactly. not only are ref photo colors hard to pick accurately from to begin with (since the high level of detail in photos means that even adjacent pixels can vary widely), but matching a ref photo's colors exactly usually ends up looking lackluster and kind of underwhelming. so rather than trying to match the reference colors themselves, i choose colors that invoke my impression of the reference overall. i might choose colors solely by eye, or i might pick colors directly from the reference to start with and then adjust the colors individually from there, or i'll adjust the colors directly on the reference and then pick colors off the adjusted reference (i actually did that here). they're just slightly different ways to get to the same point, but i find that some days i need that slight deviation in the process in order for the colors to click for me.

when i'm colorpicking without a reference, i usually find it helpful to first fill the entire canvas with a color that isn't white/black/grey. i usually have a general idea of what the light situation is (daylight, evening, firelight, etc) and choose one color based off that for the background. from that point it's just a matter of using your color theory intuition / guess-and-check to choose the right colors for the lighting situation. i'll usually make my best guess on the color wheel, put it on the canvas, go "wow that looks really wrong," and then ctrl+u (hue/saturation/luminosity) to adjust the color to fit. a tip for making guesses is to start with the color you want to see when it's in the context of the canvas (say i have a dark nighttime scene that's pretty blue, and i want to color in a yellow flower, i would start with the shade of yellow i want on the color wheel) and then think about how the lighting affects it (i would drag the yellow somewhat towards blue on the color wheel, so that the actual color leans green, and i'd darken and desaturate it quite a bit since it's a dark nighttime scene). sometimes i also apply layer modes to "mix" colors and then just merge those layers onto the base layer to make it the new base color. like if i know i need the color to be darker and more blue, i might add a multiply layer with blue instead of doing the equivalent on the color wheel. if i need to brighten, i might use overlay or glow, and if i need to increase saturation in general i'll use linear light.

[sycamorality]

(from earlier about the ancient oc) do you have any sort of design staples in your ancients? with masks, wings, bodies, etc i am just interested in drawing one, ocs are fun

most of what i have is based on the in-game murals we see!

the stripes on endless and pearls are based on the stripes we see in the karma 1 mural, karma 3 mural and ancient holding a spear mural - and endless' colors (the blue/purple) are inverted of the greenish-white and green we see on the ancient that gets fuckin murked in the karma 1 mural! their little cloak also has the same pink-ish red you see on a lot of the murals, and the boney-white is also colorpicked from the murals

the weird tube hair also comes from the murals - specifically karma 3 mural and this downpour ancient graffiti - but there's also this one with a gas mask (named unq - gas mask in the files) and this very abstract one (which can be argued as an ancient, skullduck in the files)

masks are sort of hard? the best you can do is really reference in-game art. i've never really drawn an ancient mask other than fit on a slugcat! kociamieta has a really good guide on masks that imitate the in-game murals, and i've seen @/mewguca do animal-based designs for their ancient's masks, which is really cool! generally masks are whatever you do of them, and i have a whole post on ancient mask headcanons (though with no art; i barely draw ancients ehe)

i make my ancients appear sort of like, creature-y? i give them a snout (you can see this with endless clearly in the doodle i did of them and omens and pearls a little more clearly in this doodle of them and saint) and digitigrade legs- you can see this both on endless, pearls and eclipse- though eclipse is also like. 80% creature because of their lore, which i do really wanna get into an some point

wings aren't a thing all ancients have, i think it's only specifically ancients with the bird-like feet (which you can see in the karma 2 mural, karma 5 mural and scholar mural) that have/had wings - eclipse, out of my ocs, is just an outlier lmao.

i would've uncluded art but!! i couldn't get anything to look right so. aha. maybe i'll try at some point later

also for quick finding-

karma 1 mural, karma 2 mural, karma 3 mural, karma 4 mural, karma 5 mural, spear mural, scholar mural, downpour graffiti, gas mask graffiti, skullduck/abstract ancient(?)

[kinmokusei-stars]

My Inuyasha oc Kouko's last reference sheet was a bit outdated, and hard for me to properly use and colorpick from, so I figured I'd make a new, more in-depth, easier to use one! Now with a nicer formal outfit, because the last one was an eyesore- LMAO SUPER happy with how this came out though! o(≧▽≦)o This should make drawing her a lot easier, and just all around looks nicer.

Kouko Yoshida, Also known as 'The Sapphire Swordmaiden', is a stoic demon slayer wandering on her own with nothing but her sword, her horse, and her wits. Though her height, with her standing at about 6'2, and her closed off demeanor can make her look a bit cold if not downright intimidating, deep down she's actually just a warmhearted softy with a habit of feeding fish and other animals she comes across on her adventures and picking up pretty rocks. She's more of a gentle giant than anything else when it comes to people or animals, even if she harbors a deeply set grudge against near all demons for reasons she refuses to share.

She meets the main cast through a misunderstanding started through her having a jewel shard or two on her person that ends in the crew gaining two more shards, and a new party member.

She sticks near Kagome and Sango a majority of the time when she isn't alone, mostly because they seem the most trustworthy, with her being unsettled and freaked out by Shippo, and giving Miroku a near constant silent treatment after their first interaction. Though oddly enough Inuyasha seems to be more on her good side than either of the other guys on the team, with her seeing being half demon as being more trustworthy than a fullblooded one. They do end up falling in love, but that's only way later down the line after a long buildup.

I'll write down some little extra little facts about her below, but if you're interested in Kouko's backstory and relationship with Inuyasha more in-depth, you can check out her backstory post, and my “Get to know my ship!” Post

- Her horse is named Aiko, who she takes with her everywhere. She's had him for years, and he's her baby, she'd kill a man for that horse if needed, and likely has at some point. (I intend to draw Aiko in the future!)

- Her favorite hobbies are fishing and collecting rocks she finds pretty. Fishing soothes her mind, while also being a good way of getting food, and collecting rocks is just a culmination of her "Oo shiny" mentality and makes her happy LMAO She has a small bag of all of her favorites she's found over the years.

- She prefers meat over a majority of sweet foods, whether it be fish, chicken, or something else, she's happy with it. One of the few exceptions though is persimmons, which are her favorite fruit, and hold a special place in her heart.

- She has a lower, soothing voice. It gets rumbly and purr-like when she's tired or extra relaxed.

- She's afraid of bugs. Not things like Mister Centipede, but normal, run of the mill bugs. She gets so startled everytime Myoga pops up.  Huge demons are light work when compared to the actual two to three inch bug, and her excuse is how easily they could wriggle their way into things like clothes and bags, but they mostly just ick her out.

- Her emotional weakness is fire or smoke in general. She hates the smell of it, and tends to sit a ways away from any campfires they group has, either polishing her weapon, or sewing up rips in her clothes. This only changes later on, when she's gradually brought closer to the campfire little by little, and reassured that she's safe with them over time.

That's all for now! Any other little details will be shown throughout drawings or small comics!

[silima]

Do you have any tips for small artists?

i have no idea what level of technical skill u have so these are some pretty general tips but here u go! these are also mostly focused on fanart lol cuz that's what i like to make.

number 1 rule of art is that people like art that is interesting!!! it's gotta make them feel something or they will ignore it!! i used to draw so much art that was just like, a character standing there doing nothing. and i would try very hard to have nice lineart and pretty shading and all that good stuff but in the end a character standing there doing nothing is boring. if you have really good technical skills, then some people will still be like "wow pretty art!!" or "so photorealistic! how cool!" but generally speaking it's gonna take soooooo long to actually reach that level of technical skill if every drawing u make looks like this 🧍. if you wanna improve fast, you're much better off experimenting with all sorts of types of art.

so, what do people find interesting? lots of things!

ship art is an easy way to make an "interesting" drawing, b/c people like ships and b/c you've got a character interaction happening there. even if they're just leaning on each other or holding hands or something, there's personality in that. even when i was really shitty at art i always noticed that my ship art got more notes than art of just 1 character.

in general, character interactions always make things more interesting. u certainly don't have to only draw romantic ships--draw some characters who are friends hanging out and having fun, or draw characters who are family hugging each other, or something. or draw people fighting!!! if you're not yet used to drawing characters interacting, it can be a bit of a pain at first, but it opens up so many fun possibilities (and reference photos can always help you!! google images is honestly the best of all resources for that lmao although more specific stuff like adorkastock is great too).

even without character interactions, u can make drawings that try to evoke an emotion of some sort. dark and angsty? lonely? happy and cute? this is one of my favorite drawings ever and i think it's super, super visually interesting and tells a story without the need for more than one character or any sort of words/dialogue, just from the pose and the background and the whole vibe of it. it feels so peaceful and lovely. of course, it makes a difference that this artist clearly has a lot of technical skill, but if this same artist drew a picture of aang looking like 🧍 on a boring white background i would definitely not love this art nearly as much lol.

screenshot redraws are also pretty popular!! personally i would strongly advise that if ur gonna redraw a screenshot, you should be adding something interesting to your version. if you colorpick the exact same colors from the drawing and try to copy the style as closely as possible, it's a little boring, right? why would i want to see the exact same picture twice? one artist who does screenshot redraws really well is viorie (who i think has removed/deactivated a lot of her stuff, thus the repost, sorry):

like this is very clearly an artist that had something of her own to bring to the screenshot she was redrawing!! that's what makes it cool, appealing art, even though it's "just" a redraw.

and of course my absolute favorite thing to make drawings "interesting" is to make comics. comics are the best!! u get to draw a whole story!!! lots of types of comics that you can make, too. a lot of the comics that i've made lately are my own writing and tend to be more serious, but if you're looking for something easy, fun, and simple, try drawing incorrect quotes or make art/comics that are based off of other people's posts, fics, or ideas that you thought were really cool (w/ appropriate credit obviously).

on that note, drawing fanart for other people is especially effective for putting yourself out there because it's often hard to get your foot in the door on social media when you literally have 0 followers and no one is seeing your stuff. you draw something for a popular fic writer or a humor blog, they're happy because they've gotten fanart and they reblog your art, you're happy because now all their followers are seeing ur stuff. lol this sounds so transactional but it's really a lot more fun than it sounds. make art for other ppl! make some friends! join discord servers, join group chats, comment nice things on other peoples' work, & check out fandom events, like big bangs or ship weeks or whatever. it's good stuff.

also, use different social media. it might seem like what tends to be popular in one corner of the internet is gonna be pretty well-received everywhere else but that's not always the case lol. tumblr, for example, usually puts a lot of emphasis on consuming content "from a fandom" rather than consuming content "from an artist"--it's hard to build an individual brand, people just want More Insert Popular Fandom Content and don't really care who it comes from so long as it fits a certain type of art; in my case, atla is a way more popular show than lok, so my atla art gets significantly more attention than my lok art does, despite the fact that i don't make that much of it. on the other hand, on instagram, people really like my lok/red lotus art because that's sort of my "brand" and my atla art tends to get less attention. (this works out for me because i like lok way better and i also have way more followers on instagram than i do here.)

& ofc when you talk about becoming a "popular" artist... i mean, i'm not gonna be the person who tells u "oh you should ONLY be doing this for yourself!! if you're doing it for attention you're doing it all wrong!" because obviously i love attention and i love making art that people like. i would not draw nearly as much if i didn't have fun sharing it! but if you let yourself get too sucked into the idea of making "popular" art, you're gonna feel super drained and fucked up and you eventually will burn out hard (ahaha.............). there's a balance to strike between "i'm making this art because it's fun" and "i'm making this art because i know people will like it." on tumblr, my atla art is way more popular than my lok art, but i don't care abt atla nearly as much as i care abt lok, so i'm never gonna like, make an in-depth comic about the atla main cast the way i have for the red lotus, the lok main cast, and kyoshi. what a waste of time! even when you're looking for advice about how to become a "big" artist, ultimately, you've gotta make the art that's fun for you, and with luck you'll eventually find an audience that also enjoys that type of art.

[sparrowminder]

I know there's sometimes a dissonance between illustrated guides to cat colors vs how they actually look like in real life. How can one tell what specific cats' fur colors are if they're different from the guide or colorpick pictures for using in art? Also, can we point to a cat of a different color on, say, YouTube and ask what their pelt color's description is? (Asked because I saw Queen Feliyam and she's a pretty golden color)

None of my references are colorpicked, however I do always look at photos when making them to try to get an accurate representation of what the color looks like. Most photos will have a somewhat darker and less saturated color than you want for art, so I recommend keeping photos only as a visual reference and manually picking colors rather than using the eyedropper.

There is a large range of what colors can look like, but for more common colors it's not too hard to tell the difference. Blue can be a lot of shades, but it will always look gray, and no other base color really looks like that. When you get into rarer colors like cinnamon, well, you can safely rule them out for most randombreds, and purebreds tend to come with their colors labeled.

The largest pitfall is red and cream, and I see people mix that up a lot. Most "yellow" cats are actually red with low rufousing - cream is a duller sandy/buff color. There is a good amount of overlap but if you've got a darker yellow cat it's probably red, not cream! Again, apricot cats that exist tend to have that pretty loudly proclaimed because it's such a rare color.

If you would like some practice getting attuned to what colors look like on different patterns, in different lighting, etc, I recommend browsing catza.net. Unlike most other sources, they are very good about labeling the colors and as all the cats are show cats we can pretty well assume that they're correct. They use the EMS color code system so you can search very specific colors and patterns.

You can absolutely ask me what color cats are, though! Queen Feliyam, when in better lighting conditions, looks definitely cream to me! While fawn wouldn't be totally out of the ruling if she were a particular breed, it looks like she has nose freckles which definitely sells me on her being red-based.

[daaziscoolbesties]

i yearn for one(1) thing only, and that is to have a nice, simplistic, cartoonish artstyle. an artstyle that doesnt rely on anatomy, but the "movement" of the drawing, if you get what i mean.

i dont want realistic proportions and traditional colors and basic poses and gradient shading, i want funky lil dudes in funky poses with funky styles littering my sketchbook :( but alas i havent figured out how to develop that kind of style yet, my brain wants anatomy to look nice but also i dont want to draw eyes. i dont want to take time out of my day to learn how to draw lips i want to draw a line that extends past the characters face. i dont want all my characters to have pointy chins with curved cheeks i want their heads to be round and friend-like or full of sharp edges depending on their personalities and styles. i want to give them all not-quite human ears, blob feet, simple faces, but at the same time i want enough detail to convey the story or emotion im trying to tell.

ive spent so much time recently agonizing over how to use 3d model websites, using real-life references and tracing over them for practice, color-picking from real images to try and do realism and failing miserably, but you know whats easier than that? funky little dudes. little dudes who do not care if their legs are too long or their hair is too bouncy. i dont want my characters to look human.

ive spent enough time on the artfight website to realize that most people who classify their characters as "human" have the most basic ass designs (no offense to people who like basic human designs its just not my thing) or its like dnd-medieval style outfits which i cant draw for the life of me (ive tried). again no offense to people who actively enjoy and draw characters like that. i just need my dudes to have that certain,,, off-ness to them. tails are cool. wings are swag (especially if they arent even like,, fully attached,, ), elf ears are so wonderful to me no matter how much theyre overused, horns are so much fun to draw, and colors!! i have no knowledge in the color theory department so this works great for me!! the only thing i really know is dont shade with black, other than that i just colorpick from references usually but i dont want to do that!! i want the colors to hurt people's eyes but in a satisfying way. like the character's design is so nice to look at that you dont mind your eyes hurting a bit. like how im enjoying writing this post even though its 2 am and the brightness on my computer wont go any lower.

and then another thing ive noticed from being on the artfight website is that a lot of people classify their characters that are anthro/have anthro features under humanoids/monsters. like i made a google form to find some people to attack and someone sent me in a character with some sort of animal (wolf? idk) arms and legs. like dude!! peak character design i love her. but me personally? i cant draw that shit, its so hard for me. i tried a while back and its just Not my thing. nothing against furries i just. cant. and i dont want to either.

and i got another submission that i accidentally deleted that was like full anthro/wolf-like like my comrade,,, i cannot draw animals what makes you think i can draw an animal who acts like a human lmao. i can do like. very basic tails, and also animal ears but i cant do the arms and legs and such i just dont know the anatomy, and i know i was talking about how i dont want to care about anatomy but i feel like for anthros you really do need to know at least basic animal anatomy so you know how the limbs look and shit and i dont have that knowledge and dont feel like gaining it.

and then there were some submissions that i absolutely adored. there was one that like, was vaguely human shaped but definitely was not a human. they had a dark-ish lavender colored skin and horns and tusks and like goat ears and a sorta fluffy tail with spikes on it and they had wings and such and they were such a pleasure to draw i love them. and they had a fairly simple outfit too, nothing too complicated. and then i also enjoy object head characters, theyre so neato to me. i got one of those and i really wish i had the motivation to work on it cause it looks so fun.

i want to make funky characters but id have nothing to do with them because the only book i ever tried writing (key word tried - never got past planning it out) had strictly human characters in it, and most of the books i read are humans/humans with powers in situations specific to them so id have no idea what lore to make with the dudes. assuming i have the motivation to make lore and backstory because honestly i just really enjoy character designing its super duper fun.

(side note a song about trucks doing the deed came on just now and its interrupted my flow, apologies).

i only have three actual characters right now. one is an original roleplay oc whos design is literally athletic shorts, an oversized long sleeved grey sweatshirt, long purple hair, and demon horns. the second one is my persona whos design some sorta medival knight outfit kinda thing? but not ugly it looks really cool (idk one of my friends designed it bc i won some contest from him but the drawing was on a super small scale so idrk the details,,,) with a plague doctor mask and crown, and shoulder length wavy brown hair, dyed bright pink at the end. and then my last one im not too comfortable using other places because theyre a character my friend is using in the story hes writing, and thats really the only place theyve been used. but theyre easily my favorite and im already writing a ton so ill talk about them too.

they're a sorta elf species thing from another planet, with pale green skin and pointed ears. they also have a tail, its like,, super thin, but with a feathery bit at the end. probably not the texture of a feather but i dont know how else to describe it. they have short, curly, almost-draco-malfoy-blonde hair that when it gets too long they can put in a man bun. their eyesight is kinda shitty so when they got to earth, they were exploring some supply closets around the airship. drop off area. thing. like airport but for rocketships and also fancier. yeah. they were exploring that area and found a nice big pair of round glasses with grey frames. and they also found a cowboy-style hat and a sharpie so they wrote their name on the underside of the brim of the hat and stole the hat and glasses (but left the sharpie in the supply closet).

yeah theyre my favorite, my absolute beloved, my child, so cool. i want more characters like them but with maybe a bit more snazzier designs. theyre super cool and all but they could have more pizzazz if they werent in a story where its too late to give them more pizzazz. i just want to be able to give my characters thigh-high boots with a bunch of buckles and fluffy hair with tons of accessories crammed in and abnormally large and long ears that can harbor many piercings and horns that can hold rings on them and special little details on their outfits like who knows what but i dont have any characters to do that too, so i have to make them from scratch, which is always hard especially when you have artblock.

and i also have like 17 characters i need to fully draw, line, and maybe color for artfight before august 1st. so i dont know. i have many things to do and plenty of time to do it but instead i spend my time halfway watching repetitive youtube videos that get boring or sleeping all damn day because i stay up too late doing things like this or i just do nothing at all and its tiring and frustrating but i also feel nothing about it like theres no consequence if i dont do it besides you know. not doing it, not gaining that experience, not making something i enjoy.

so i should do it but i dont for whatever reason, i think its called executive dysfunction but im not sure. this post started out very differently than it ended and i said somewhere up there that i was writing this at 2 am but now its almost 3. this is so many words why couldnt i have put this energy into something productive