This is a sideblog!
*Do not repost my art on tumblr or twitter
*OK to repost on instagram or facebook without permission, but please add a link to one of my accounts.
Hello! can’t believe i remembered the email adress for this account
anyway after what feels like f*ckin years, i moved to a new blog here> @alciedoodles
unfortunately you won’t find any art of the fandoms i used to post about here, but if you’re still interested in my art you’re welcome to check it out :)
thank you all for sticking around! i will no longer be checking my inbox here either so if you have q’s, drop em by my new account, or by my twitter (@alciedoodles too)
Random question but is there a way to make sure you dont draw the head too big? Its a really big issue with me for some reason and i spend more time trying to fix the head than actually finishibg the piece when i notice
i could be an ass and tell you that “any size is fine because its your style and you do what you want”, but if you are uncomfortable with the way your art style is coming out to be and especially if you identified a problem that you dont know how to fix directly, then yes, any advice from other artists is welcome. i understand your problem because it’s something i’ve had trouble with for years and still sometimes have a hard time doing when drawing from scratch.
you know what, it’s not bad to make proportion mistakes, because sometimes all the fixes you need to bring to it is simply resize it, then redraw the lines if you’re picky about consistency in your lineart.
my biggest, perhaps most condescending advice that any artist out there will immediately give you without second thought is: practice. nothing comes up naturally if you dont spend ages perfecting it.
want a more technical, specific advice? head width doesn’t surpass the width of your body. it can get really close to it, but never more. so, when you draw your sketches, keep in check that the head isn’t wider than the torso!(we’re speaking realistic/semi-realistic human proportions, not cartoonish/anime and all that).
(fact: the human head, despite being relatively small at birth, doesn’t grow in size as much as the rest of your limbs. which is why babies have comparatively big heads compared to the rest of their body for standard human proportions, then as the body grows, the proportion decreases. which is why you generally draw younger characters with bigger heads than adults.)
MORE UNDER THE CUT. THIS POST GOT LONG.
look at the big picture. always. ESPECIALLY if you’re drawing on a digital platform. ALWAYS zoom out of your drawing from time to time after spending a lot of time working on one part of the drawing, because tunnel-vision is in most cases the #1 cause of proportion errors.
here, let me tell you one thing: don’t skip on making a sketch. dont skip on making even a more detailed sketch over a sketch. im confident that your brain has the intuition to make accurate proportions when you’re quickly doing some basic shapes, more than when you’re trying to draw the full picture from scratch without any sketch to guide you. and what’s more, using multiple layers of sketches will help you notice mistakes even more as you refine the lines, and be able to correct them in real time.
the first picture was drawn solely on instinct and mechanical memory. are you the kind to be extremely meticulous in everything you draw to the point even the sketch has to be perfect? dont be, no one will see your sketch but yourself. its the foundation of the art piece. it may look unsightly or abstract, but its inevitably what will help you hold it all together. it captures the movement, silhouette, composition, etc. the second picture is also mostly fast, rough strokes, but with a higher level of detail. here i’m already focusing on making things look more coherent, for example, to get a sense for how the clothes will fit around the character.
as a general rule of thumb, what you should remember when practising on realistic/semi-realistic proportionality in human anatomy is that Everything is relative. what does this mean? well. maybe you’re not looking at the right thing. maybe it’s not the head that you’re drawing too big, but the shoulders ratio is too small. maybe you’re drawing their neck so thin that as a result, you don’t draw the shoulders wide enough to look ‘viable’. tweak things around and check what works for you. hell, sometimes necks can even be WIDER than the head at the base. just look at All Might’s mighty neck.
in conjunction with the above, let me give you one more tip that you should always carry around with you when you want to practice body types. anatomy is not an absolute, perfect number that works for all bodies. that’s why the numbers they give you in anatomy classes are just standards, or averages. if everyone’s body was 7-8 times the size of our head, short people would logically always have smaller heads than tall people, but it’s not always the case. some people have heads bigger than average. some people have rounder, or longer head shapes, thicker or thinner necks. the differences may be subtle enough that some people cant perceive these things at a quick glance, but they do exist. take these two characters for example:
comparatively, they both look like they have ‘correct’ proportions (if we don’t nitpick about their big anime-like eyes). though, if we look closer… they obviously have some proportional dissonance going on.
as you may have noticed, the character on the right doesn’t just have broader shoulders; he has a thinner head shape and a thicker neck, which accentuates the shoulders width and make him look more... buff, when in reality he’s rather average.
anyway, i hope this disorganized mess of a ramble was helpful in any way. if you have any more questions, let me know ;)
Dude I feel with you regarding the fandom thing; I don't get involved in fandoms anymore ; it just evolves to sth completely "independent" from the actual show and ppl kinda control things and create unnecessary drama ?? Tldr; enjoying sth by yourself will make the joy last so much longer
word my dude. i wish there was an easier way to enjoy fanworks without having to eventually touch down on the drama. you can only cover your eyes/ears for so long before its too much lol. just do your thing man.
i was wondering....what was the reason for you not being into haikyuu anymore/where did you stop? i hope you dont mind this question, i just started the fandom and was sucked into it w your art and it makes me a lil sad haha
i was sure i answered this somewhere in the past but i can’t find anything so:
fandom issues? community? behavior in general? i don’t do well staying in the same environment for too long because i get tired of people’s misgivings too easily and too fast. i had a lot of friends (still follow some of them on my new twitter), and they’re not to blame, but fandoms just seem somewhat doomed to spiral down to a lost cause the more it goes deep into headcanons and fan material. i don’t get involved in drama, or i avoid it at all costs, but sometimes it ends up reaching too close and it hurts friends, groups, etc. its not worth it. its better to stay on the surface. i guess the solution would be to not get involved? but it’s just kind of too late, it’s already left a wrong and lasting impression so haikyuu is kinda cursed for me. i adore the show and the characters, but ive tired of it and it reminds me bad things.
sorry that you showed up late :( i’m glad at least the stuff i left is still circulating among the fan content to the point that it attracts people in. i’m very flattered! i hope you’ll enjoy it more than i did!
hi!! i’ve stumbled multiple times to your haikyuu fanart on pinterest and instagram but could never find the actual source because there was no credit/link to the original artist, which kinda sucks. for you and all the people who want to support you since they can’t find the original blog. i finally found it though, so i was wondering, do you have an art tag so i could see all of the art!! c:
i don’t have an art tag, this is simply my art blog so the only posts you’ll see are art and answered asks! you can filter tags by fandom, if you’d like, but i can’t offer anything else. thank you for the interest though! im well aware that i can’t stop reposters, specifically those who don’t credit, sadly. :(
Here it is, the full list of participants! Drop into my ask if you have any questions and please check out all the incredible people that will be featured in the zine!
hey :) so your art is. SO BEAUTIFUL. your lines are so *clenches fist* good I love your style So much. I was wondering if you had a youtube or something you recorded your process on! Your comics and other arts are so pretty, I live for your style and if you have anything like that I'd love to know about it!!! (sorry if someone asked this already) 💛💛 thank you <333
i had one, though there’s only 2 speedpaint videos and they’re actually pretty old to compare to my current works T_T if you wish though, i could record the next time i draw a full comic or a colored picture! (hopefully i wont forget to do so)
Hi I was wondering if you had any tape of tips for anatomy? I’ve been doing studies from references but it doesn’t seem to be developing idk if I’m doing something wrong
anatomy is such a broad and vague subject that it’s pretty hard to answer without going on for ages about every part of the body! :(
id be glad to answer for a specific part, otherwise if you need practicing/learning tips, i did give some on this post here (not a step-by-step, but more like a general guide).
I was wondering where do you get your fire alpaca brushes from and on what setting are they one? I can never find the right brushes! Thanks!
for photoshop brushes, i used the settings as explained on this post; again, keep in mind the quality is exceptionally improved if you work on a large canvas.
on firealpaca, it’s quite the same. you should have a list of different brushes (simply in the ‘brushes’ window), it’s the second one of the list.
i don’t change anything to it, aside the width; which generally is around 25px for me. it’s also interesting sometimes to decrease a bit the opacity, if you know what you’re doing!
Not the same anon, but how does mono/bichromal shading work? (Love your art btw!)
Hello anon! I’m glad to feed your curiosity with some of my pretty basic knowledge of colors on digital art programs. It may look complicated to get a good balance of colors, but it’s actually not that hard with the way I do it. The hardest part (for me) is the shading.
Keep in mind that 100% of this is how I, myself, do it, and in no way you are obligated to do exactly the same. Any other outlet is totally valid.
I’ll be using this picture as an example for my walkthrough!:
The walkthrough is under the cut!
Here I skipped the sketch + lineart process, since it’s off-topic, so right now what we have is the background layer and the layer with the lines (if you use multiple layers for the lines, that’s ok too, although I’d recommend that you keep them grouped in a folder).
Our next step will be to determine our range of values in greyscale.
You might be thinking to yourself ”What the hell that means?”, here, I’ll explain it as quick as I can…
Greyscale value = The lightness of your color determined by a number between 0 and 255. For 0 = Black, and for 255 = White, any number in between is a shade of grey, and the shade is determined by whether you’re closer to 0 or to 255.
In simple terms, we are just going to pick our lightest and our darkest shades of grey to work with. Once you chose them, it is recommended that you do not use anything outside that range.
Whether your light source is strong/intense, you’ll want to have a higher range between the two values. A stronger light will make more contrast between the reflected light and the shadows; a poor light will create very poor contrast.
The next step is shading, or, better said, lighting. Since I decided to leave the foreground on the lowest value of grey (due to the fact that the light comes from behind), instead of the better known process of painting shadows, I paint the lighter areas with the brush shown below.
I specifically choose this brush for the fact that the opacity is controlled by pen pressure. Instead of colorpicking different shades of grey to paint the different areas, I pick the grey from the light source and adjust the pressure accordingly to how much light is reflected onto that surface. This does require some level of knowledge on reflective light, cast shadows, etc… But don’t worry, you’ll get it!
For the final step, we’ll need some degree of subjectivity and personal preference! Other than tips for adjustements, there’s not much to learn. It’s all up to how much you fiddle with the program’s filters and layer settings.
In this picture, I started by changing the color of the lines to a dark blue, then set it to multiply. Then, I used a large airbrush like the one shown below on low opacity to vaguely trace the contours of the light source (the windows), and the objects right in front of it, with the same color as the light source. What that does is create some sort of glow, which gives the picture a better sense of how intense the light is (on top of looking a bit more realistic).
In the end, I decided to adjust the greyscale to something much lighter. The darkness of the greys I used was a little too gloomy for the vibe this picture is meant to give off.
The most reliable way to do that is using the “levels” window, and to mess around with it until you obtain something that you like. Be sure not to overdo it, sometimes you may think it looks good, but try to remain within reason of what’s ‘good’ to your eye!
The reason I changed the lines to a blue color is so that they would stick out better once I decided to use an orange-y color overlay. Putting too much of the same color can actually be extremely eyesore unless you know what you’re doing, so it’s recommended to use at least two (what I use the most are complementary colors!)
Don’t feel obligated to stick to the same method. I recommend that you try every possible layer blending style and play with opacity/colors to see what results you get. Try that on greyscale pictures, and when you have a better view on how it works, you can even add more colors to your base picture…
In these two examples, I used a layer set to difference on a pretty low opacity, and filled it with a very saturated blue. You might have tried the ‘difference’ blend mode once or twice and thought it looked ugly as hell, but give it a try with the options I mentioned above.
What is your set-up when it comes to digital art? (Love your Blog and hope you're having a nice day (^w^ )
i dont know which part exactly of my setup you requested to know, so ill basically just give a bit of everything?
right now its a bit...different from what it used to be. heres a visual on my work desk:
for monetary issues, ive had to sell my old computer and buy a cheap laptop which i use mostly for gaming. the one i’m using here (a different one that i got from my father’s work, because the gaming computer has multiple broken keys that are essential for shortcuts in a drawing program) has a 32 bit software, which gives me rather limited access to the programs i can use. ive tried to install photoshop CC and others to no avail, so i’m using FireAlpaca (which is good enough by itself, but limited in terms of filters and brush settings, and to tell the truth it is rather disabilitating on the long run!).
the tablet i’m using is a Wacom Intuos 2, its extremely old and run-down, i got it around 2009 (it was a gift from a graphic designer so it already had a couple of years on the run). as you can see, it has blue tape all over different places (even the pen is taped around, i accidentally snapped it in half one time lmao), when i leave it unused for long periods of time, it is really hard to get it to reconnect. however, it still works perfectly, i have (almost) no issues with the pressure and the size is excellent.
in terms of the setup of the program:
i like to have the least amount of visual disturbance when i work on something. i only keep open the tabs i use the most (tools, brushes, brush size & opacity, color picker, layers & navigator), and try to make as much space as possible for the canvas. there may be times where i make the window smaller so i can fit a reference picture to the side of the screen, but thats rather occasional.
before i forget an important detail: using a large canvas!!! this is the size of the canvas i used above (zoomed out at 25%):
the canvas size MUST be at least 2000px wide (for me anyway), it may be a natural beginner thing to do to use smaller ones because it seems easier to navigate, makes your program lag a little less, and you just dont know how to handle so many pixels. well, its actually quite simple: you use bigger brushes, and at the end of your picture, you resize it to a more stable ~800px (even a very large .png file can take a lot of megabytes, so when uploading to tumblr or any site, its better to have a resized copy of your art; the website WILL automatically resize it anyway, but the result might be less satisfying than if you did it yourself).
a while back i made an example of the difference of the quality in the brush strokes when you use a 500px canvas (left) vs when you use a 2000px canvas (right):
unknowingly, even with large brushes, a larger canvas gives you more accessibility, precision, and freedom to correct mistakes, add details, etc. again, if you are uncomfortable with the idea of a large canvas, it isn’t mandatory, but verily so recommended. try increasing the size of your canvas gradually!
if you’re curious about my brush settings, i made a post a while back here!
