#my pose ref was supposed to be kinda perspective stuff

[somegiantmess]

Happy birthday to an old and loyal friend, @percevall! <3 Also passionate and very supportive, one of the people that make me want to keep doing the things I love~

I love Ariall's new design so much, had to draw her again like this, but realistic-sized and colored this time!

Hope you like her! 🎉

[pioneeroverc-my-5000th-sideblog]

Summary of May:

I don't know how this month went by so quickly. The last two weeks have just been brain static lol

Um… it looks like I spent most of the time trying to get myself to finish that bridal alt and then got stressed by other stuff happening which I have not gotten on top of or recovered from. Not a great month for studies, but I managed to get at least a little bit done and started catching back up with my Ges Draw Party videos, so… I'll take it

I am happy that I've been exercising more though! Even got one of my 'started walking in one direction and accidentally walked nine miles while exploring' days in, which is one of my all-time favourite things to do and which I really should do more of. Anything over 10k steps in one go is sooooooo good for my mental health. Also been having fun playing Ring Fit and running outside.

Plan from April:

at least one day/week playing games (not art but important to relax with) ✗ I REALLY NEED TO DO THIS BECAUSE I AM NOT GETTING ENOUGH BRAIN REST

Draw May 4th/5th pieces ✗ did May 4th, couldn't decide on what to do for May 5th + was kinda late starting

Rough (pose) sketches for all 4 FEH alt ideas and finish current one before 8th ✗ well this is fun (I do have one pose sketch and a bunch of ref for another idea though)

10x scared ✗ 6

4x 100 comp ✗ aghhh

Proko - review notes + watch shoulder critiques ✓ finally something I have done!

Proko - pecs and breasts I guess ✗ started, but decided I needed to keep going on shoulder anatomy because it's more important to understand

4x Ges Draw Party ✓ YES!!!! WIN (I did 7)

DAB Lesson 7 - 4 vehicles ✗ 2 though

1x master study - comic background or screencap study with perspective ✗ did do a Moebius flying boat study sketch though so xD

June plan:

at least one day/week playing games (not art but important to relax with) (DO THIS!!!!)

use my organisation spreadsheet consistently

meet communication deadlines

review Proko notes

3x FEH alts

10x scared (shoulder tracing)

4x 100 comp

1x FEFDraw video

4x Ges Draw Party

DAB Lesson 7 - 2 vehicles

1x master study - another Moebius ship

notes and improvements from finished stuff:

ACTIONABLES: USE PHOTO REFERENCE FOR EXPRESSIONS!!!!! JUST DO IT ✗ however have been trying to use face photos more for perspective, do hair studies ✗ doing better at this tho, decide whether majority of piece is going to be dark or light and base contrast around that ✓, draw out ribcages (+ shoulder bones) for every sketch ✓, use photo/RL reference for EVERY HAND - even doodles ✗ but most of them + using reference WAY better this month by trying to take perspective into account , do a separate detail pass the day after ‘finishing’ something ✗ too impatient lol, use photo reference for folds ✓

5MIN SCARED IDEAS: find good hair examples and trace ✗ …I might have done this? it's in my study file but might be from last month, trace torsos for gesture ✓ , review/learn leg muscles ✓, draw one hand ✓, identify fold type in clothing photos ✗

heath: bad line quality (I thickened some of the lines in a really scribbly way), armour not correctly 3d, folds don't make sense, still not sure of structure of torso

b/odhi: bad values makes it hard to look at (too much contrast), figure not conforming to perspective in places, hand is awful, doesn't look like he's sitting on the boxes because of where the horizon line is, messy/scribbly lines on the ship, ambiguous positioning of up arm vs the thing that's supposed to be to the side of it

lyon: hair is kinda clumpy in a bad way (needs flyaways or something along the length of hair sections, I think), torso anatomy nonexistent lol, I don't know if that's where ears are supposed to go

mid/een: not happy with the expressions I ended up with, m's legs look too long even though he should proportionally be ok??, lack of shoulder anatomy knowledge intersected with lack of perspective knowledge and made his arm look really weird BUT I HAVE NO IDEA WHY, shaky adherence to horizon line, a's far wrist is way too small, her torso is also all kinds of messed up, had trouble reconciling anime stylised face + actual real face anatomy (flat vs. planes of face), HOWEVER I think the rendering came out pretty nicely and the bow was surprisingly straightforward to draw. all the things I'm annoyed about here are, I think, the result of me hitting my skill ceiling and not knowing enough to solve problems - so I am trying to be more okay with that xD

ACTIONABLES: draw out ribcages/shoulder anatomy for every sketch, trace heads + ears for placement, study Otomo 3/4 faces, draw box in perspective + horizon line (at least H.L.) before placing characters, keep tracing shoulders

5MIN SCARED IDEAS: draw one hand, shoulder/ribcage tracing, review/learn leg muscles, draw one hand, trace heads + ears, Otomo study

[xuune]

oh wow i haven’t been on tumblr in so long bc mobile is shit but how tf did i forget abt ur art ??? fukcin blows me away wow. any tips on anatomy for a rly bad artist? ik practice, but i get so frustrated when it doesn’t look like what i see in my head :(

yeah lol mobile on tumblr sucks major ass now. i cant even publish drafts on there. and im in the same boat wiht you on anatomy lmao. it might look like i know what im doing, but sometimes not really. maybe im just good at deceiving ppl on the way i draw when its kinda inaccurate 

anyway, i also struggle with never really composing the shit i want, and even i tell myself to go practice anatomy but im never really granted a lot of time in my life, so i gotta make use of whatever i can find whenever i draw.

this post is actually long, so if you just want anatomy resources, you can check these out:

stuff that i made tutorials/tips on: torso/hands/pose

these are all very condensed tutorials/tips, so a lot of this is just collection of stuff that i’ve learned/noticed from others. this might be helpful, but idk man 

here’s a list of other resources for anatomy/any other refs 

this one was mentioned in the list, but its easily looked over: posemaniacs, it has different modes you can try out (timed/casual study), and its good for practicing foundations in anatomy. i paid more attention to this one when i saw a twitter post of it  

bodies in motion is a site you can also use. it has a catalog of images to see people acting something out, and you get to see all the frames of it occurring. even though you’re just looking at images, its still a reference to learn how arms, legs, or torsos move B^) its a good way to pay attention to the smaller details like the various muscles in bodies 

and honestly, check out what other ppl say too. there’s a lot of artists out there who might’ve already wrote some shit that i mentioned or have new info that i never thought about. just type in “anatomy/art tips” into any kind of search bar and you’re sure to find something useful at some point. but main takeaway i really want you to have is to seriously study from life. dont do it based on memory or anything. there’s no other general advice that i can really give besides 1) practice 2) study from life 3) dont stress out and take your time. if you want me to give a specific tip/tutorial on a body part, i can try, but the amount of depth i can give is really based on my own knowledge of it 

now for the 2nd part of this post: 

COMPOSING SHIT OR MAKING STUFF LOOK LIKE WHAT YOU EXPECTED IT TO LOOK LIKE: 

“i get so frustrated when it doesn’t look like what i see in my head :(“

i suck at it, whoever is reading this prob sucks at it (and they secretly know it too) we all gotta start somewhere. you’re kinda asking for composing stuff while also anatomy tips, but its kinda broad, so lemme mention something about composition:

use perspective grids or at least practice using them first. the best way to understand how things are supposed to look is also based around the way you’re trying to see it in, like a certain angle of some sort. here, lemme give an example where i drafted a sketch a lot: 

ok cool, got a pose i want, got the general idea, niiiiiiiiiceee. but i didnt think it was good enough, but i still managed to plan out a pose anyway with that grid on the bottom. it helped me gain a focus on how these characters were supposed to lay down on the ground, but it still wasnt good enough yet. character on top was facing their right instead of the person in front of them, which wasnt what i wanted. 

then i sketched it again. this time the “camera” of the scene was more based around the front of the characters rather than the side, and now the character is looking at the person below them. but wait, it wasnt good enough yet. i didnt like how relaxed their position looked. 

i changed the position of the character to make it seem more convincing that they were pressing hard into the ground and possibly sneering at the person below them. they held dominance over the person simply based on the way theyre positioned in the scene. the way people move suggests a lot about what is happening in the scene and what might be apparent about their character. i was able to make a pose i wanted with the help of a perspective grid, and it really does help at times. use perspective grids to help you out with making anatomy. also, dont forget that what you learn from simply observing how bodies work can help you out with giving clues to how the bodies should look at a certain angle

but am i a master at using perspective grids? no, lol. i always have to make several perspective grids while i draw as a way to convince myself that i really am drawing my shit right. 

some of the resources i listed lean into something related to perspective, so there’s that. there’s definitely tutorials out there to understand how to use perspective grids, so i suggest you search those up too. there’s a program called carapace thats specific for creating perspective grids, but im not sure where the original download site is, but if you want to know what it looks like or where to download it, google is your friend. if you use digital media and your drawing software offers a perspective grid function, then i highly suggest you learn how to use it. 

i wouldnt say that there’s a specific thing you need to learn first (i.e. learning perspective before anatomy), but if you want to just simply learn how to draw anatomy, then go ahead and find whatever you can. if you wanna create some cool ass poses with some interesting perspective shots, then take what you learn from anatomy and apply it to how you practice your perspective shots or vice versa. there’s a lot of variety in what you can do and how you can do it simultaneously with something else to learn something out of it B^) 

[ryonello]

Any tips to improve in drawing?

i feel like this advice is more of a personal opinion but i wanna say - draw what you love !! i know there are lots of tutorials and stuff around advising u to do studies n learn from the masters n while fundamental knowledge n stuff is important, if ur not enjoying what it is that ur drawin it all kinda feels like ...... a chore instead of a fun hobby ur passionate abt yknow ??

[OKAY THIS ENDED UP GETTING SUPER LONG THE REST IS UNDER A CUT LMAO]

LIKE MAYBE ITS JUS ME im built differently i think; i was super excited before last year to go back to uni after droppin out of my first degree but to do digital art this time and for a few weeks it was real exciting n i was learning but after like a month of me being forced to draw stuff i didnt care about i was ........ burning out . real bad . real fast - so i dropped out again after like . one semester and i may be missing out on industry tips n gettin pushed outta my comfort zone but im drawing more & at a higher level doin like,, apex memes than when i had to force myself to design a building or whatever it was

every time u draw a thing u get +10 exp to Drawing That Thing so the more you draw it the better you get - and sometimes u gotta slog thru the first few levels before it gets Fun but when it’s fun u wanna keep doing it n u jus snowball ur way to bein good at ur thing !!

snoop tutorials on fundamentals like anatomy & perspective & other basics - get a grasp on em n then go apply em to things u care abt ; do some studies from photos and turn em into fanart or smth , examine the art of an artist you like and pick apart what it is about it that you like n try n apply that urself without lookin 

my dirty lil secret for posing is i pull up a ref with the pose i like & then on a new layer i go in and basically draw a like ... mannequin over the ref , jus a funky lil skeleton so i know where all the joints n planes n curves n stuff are bc a lot of the time u can get distracted by whats goin on w their clothes or smth - n then once u hide the actual ref u have ur own pose model there that u can Understand vs jus tryna wrap ur head around the forms in a flat image if that makes sense !! n then i can go in and flex the proportions and everything to suit my style but i understand how everything is Supposed to work

lemme know if u want any more Specific advice since i think this all jus got a bit rambly but !! DRAW THINGS YOU LOVE draw what u care abt n what u enjoy n what u think is fun !!