art refs, what else

[drawingden]

How to Color Hair (tutorial) by SPARROUU

Support the artist and buy them a coffee!

[stuffman]

People have written a lot of touchy-feely pieces on this subject but I thought I’d get right to the heart of the matter

[pervocracy]

This is 1000% more motivating than every preachy “real writers write every day” post on all of Tumblr.

[thats-what-sidhe-said]

I call this the “two cakes” rule and remind myself of it when I start comparing myself to other people.

[anushbanush]

im bad at colors, could you give a tutorial?

Sorry for taking so long Anon!!!

1. Choose your colors wisely

When it comes to colors, I try to pick 3 main colors. Then I make sure that my artwork revolves around these colors so that the colors won’t clash or look out of place. By doing this, I end up with one harmonious piece. Here are some examples:

2. Using 3 main colors, choose a good background.Backgrounds are super important because they set the mood of the piece. 

Look at the impact of the background. In the first image, the light blue lessens the emphasis on the plants and allows more focus on the girl. The overall feel is nice and more summer oriented. While the second image creates an illusion which makes the leaves look like they fade out in the darkness and gives emphasis on both the leaves and the girl. The overall feel is more of a tropical forest. When choosing a background color think about how the other parts will look above that color like which part will have more emphasis and depth.

3. Match the color of the foreground to the 3 main colors and the backgroundAn example is my drawing of Steven and Connie snorkeling. 

If you notice, the one with the X shows how the original colors don’t mix well while the one with the check shows how the colors are more unified.

Step 1 - Mix the original color with the desired color in order for it to match the background. Step 2 - Incorporate that color and you are done.4. You can also search for color palettes on the internet to make you more inspired. You can learn more color combinations too.That’s all! I hope it was helpful!

[drawingden]

Simple Grassland Tutorial + brush settings by PeachyKat

[wannabeanimator]

Lighting your Painting: 4 Ways to Solve the Lighting Problem

Fundamentals of Painting

“Most of the time when we are painting, we get so overwhelmed with all the info, which is why practicing the lighting fundamentals beforehand will be beneficial for future work. This will be a pretty lengthy article, but it is pretty comprehensive in terms of necessary fundamentals. 

Fundamental #1: Importance of the Plane

When painting and using light, you need to switch from the form build-up approach to thinking about the right plane structure to make the right lighting decisions.

If you can simplify the elements into the proper planes you will understand the structure better and you will be able to assign the right values (when lighting).

Fundamental #2: Light Properties

There are  some consideration to make when thinking about lighting. I will try my best to explain some of properties and explain how the lights affect the values and colors of a scene.

Light-Shadow Ratio: The light-shadow ratio determines how much of a contrast there is between light and shadow. A higher contrast is created due to sunlight, and a lower contrast due to overcast weather for example. This is caused by different intensities in light.

Value Keys: Value keying is mainly a design technique used to adjust the value scale while maintaining the light-shadow ratio. Depending on the light situation we have a specific value key in the scene.

Value Compression: Value compression is needed, because we as painters can´t get the full range of light into our paintings. We need to decide, if we want to expose for the light side or shadow side and sacrifice the values on the other side

Light Color: The first thing to understand about light is that it constantly changes it´s wavelengths, therefore changing it´s color. To simplify the process just identify the light as a warm or cold light.

Shading Components

Fundamental #3: Light Set-up

Now that we know how values and colors and affected by light, let´s look at how to set up lighting situations. These lighting situations are always used, and can be divided into natural and artificial light:

Light Types: There are only 3 basic light types you need to know to light your scene. Key Light, Fill Light and Rim Light.

Light Sources: There are only so many light sources that exist. Knowing about them will help you identifying them in any given reference and use them creatively.

Global Illumination: The characteristics of global illumination is the use of bounced/reflected light. It is used to calculate where reflected light is coming from, so we know which planes receive what light in any given scene. You need to treat it as a diffuse light source. It is most effective when there are a lot of shadows.

Fundamental #4: Material Behaviour

Many Material renders disregard the properties of Light. The reason we have learned about light in the first place is to convey materials in different lighting conditions and make them congruent to the scene. Let´s look at the materials and how light interacts with different surfaces.

Learn how to think about shapes, value, color and edges and understand it to apply the knowledge of physics to adjust your values and colors. A proper artist knows both the mechanics of painting and of physics.”

For full explanations complete with image examples, go to the article.

[drawingden]

Life study– shirts by Spectrum-VII

[drawingden]

Exercise 48 Results: Painting Blood Step by Step by CGCookie

[drawingden]

Storyboarding Basics by VIkrant Jadhav

[arexcho]

Hey man I really enjoy your fan art! It's wonderful & very inspiring ✌️ My question: I can draw, but only if I have something to look at. I can't draw from my imagination. I'm like a photocopier. Do you have any suggestions of where I can go online to learn proper illustration? Thanks so much & I sincerely hope you create more fan art! 🖖

Hi! Drawing from a picture doesn’t mean you’re not using your imagination. It’s just a different approach. Not sure if this sounds weird but copying things I liked when I was little was how I started. I copied and traced anime posters and paused movies, placed a piece of paper on top of the tv screen, and traced what I saw. Even in school we did a lot of master copies and I know artists who copy images they see but turn it into their own or they make it obvious that they copied it. I think it only becomes an issue when you copy something and try to pass it along as your own original idea and also try to make money off of it.

When you’re copying, think about what you’re doing while copying. Like in the case of master copies, I try to understand the artist’s process. Trying to see what he/she saw while he/she was creating that piece of work.  It’s like walking in the artist’s footsteps. So instead of copying for the sake of copying, do it with purpose. There really is no “proper” illustration but I guess you should look at what successful illustrators are doing now. A great place to start is to look at places like:http://www.juxtapoz.com/news/illustration/http://www.juxtapoz.com/news/illustration/http://3x3mag.com/http://lightgreyartlab.com/There are a lot more great places to find illustrators but these are just some places off the top of my head.There is also the Society of Illustrators which I feel is a great launching pad for students trying to get some recognition.http://www.societyillustrators.org/Also, if you want to gear your work towards feature animation/film try taking a few schoolism or cda classes! I believe they offer online courses if you’re not close to the campuses. They’re really great and you get to learn from people currently in the industry. For more references for visual development artists that are currently in the industry I recommend looking at the “Art of” books for a lot of the animated films from studios like Disney, Pixar, and Dreamworks, etc. Just remember to keep drawing and develop “taste” to create a style and see how far it can take you :) Hope this helped! Please feel free to ask more questions if I missed anything.

[nyoncat]

expression studies

[astroprojection]

if you’ve ever struggled to find makeup blogs by ppl who are close to what you actually look like, a very cool person on reddit has compiled a spreadsheet of more than a hundred makeup blogs, arranged by skintone. The spread also includes other useful information such as hair color, eye type (hooded, monolid, etc.), and skin type (dry, oily, acne prone, etc) to hopefully help you find bloggers similar to you so that you can find swatches, recommendations, and/or makeup looks tailored to your needs! :D

(btw, the spreadsheet uses mac shades and other foundation matches but if you don’t have any of these foundation brands, just go to findation and put down whatever brand + shade matches you to find the corresponding shades in mac or other brands)

[lepagemegane-blog]

which softwear do u use? i looooove ur style and how u do colors

Hi !! (: Thank you! I use PHOTOSHOP CC and here my process

[exadorlion]

can we talk about popularity issues??

i’m really frustrated that artist that aren’t big can only get big through popular accounts. i’m so mad at this? this might sounds hypocritical but i’m so frustrated when i see artist who only get 12 notes on a drawing even though is better than average like coming from someone who went through that process,, it pisses me off that no one gets recognition unless one BIG person recognizes you. it’s fucked up that a community doesn’t believe something is good until a popular account comes by and says “oh this is good” and everyone jumps on that. this happens to so many artist (myself included) and it hurts that people only consider “talent” until someone BIG says something.

to those “smaller” artists,, i believe in you and i will support you 10000% of the way! don’t lose hope because you will get there and just believe in yourself! there might be times where ur confidence begins to waver and self esteem issues begin to rise but trust me!! if u think ur art is good, then its good!!

to those “popular” artists,, please support the smaller class,,, u don’t need to reblog or like every single one but they try so hard and recognition is rarely seen!! i’m just asking for a quirky ask saying something small like “good shit 👌🏼👌🏼” and that artist would be SO much happier!!!

i know this is unnecessary but it’s an issue that no one really discuss and it makes me hella sad

[wannabeanimator]

Question: is there a stabilizer for the pen in OpenToonz? i used my tablet but my linework is shaky when i dont use a stabilizer.

The brush tool is kind of similar to Flash, at least for me. It auto-corrects my lines when I draw, and I’m pretty shaky, too!

Double check your settings. If you’re still getting shaky lines, I’m not sure what’s causing it; it might be the tablet driver.

Update:

hazzkc said:

In OpenToonz, you can adjust the auto-smoothness of the lines you make by changing the “Accuracy” on the Tool Options Bar, left of the min and max brush size settings. If you don’t see the Tool Options Bar, right click -> GUI Show/Hide -> Tool Options Bar.

[drawingden]

Anatomy Tips: Torso by Ecchi-Senshi

[maruti-bitamin]

A Small Scanning Tutorial

For TGA-Tsurugi and a few others who inquired about scanning in and editing traditional media. There are, of course, many ways of going about it, but this is what has worked best for me personally. 

Here is the comparison of a blurry photo and a scan of an image.

Scanner Model: Canon LiDE 35 (8 years old now:D)                                      Photoshop (7 or CS both works)

1. To obtain the scan, I set the scanner mode at 300dpi on Colour Photo.

2. Go to Settings-> Set Fading Correction to “Hard"  (On default, images can scan in quite faded, so setting it to hard can reduce colour loss. But keep in mind, it will pick up all the dust and sometimes over-saturate the colours but that can be easily fixed.)

3. Everything else on the scanner, I leave at default, and scan.

4. Once image is obtained, I will clean off all the unwanted dust and textures in Photoshop with eraser and healing brush.

5. Now to adjust the colours.

6. For altering brightness, I go to Image->Adjustment->Curves.  On RGB, there are 4 channels. RGB itself is great at adjusting the light and dark. (Move the curve around with your mouse to test it out.)

7. For other colour adjustments, you can use the 3 other channels in Curves. (Red, Green, Blue.)

8. As mentioned before, scanning pictures under "hard” fading correction can oversaturate. To fix that, go to Images->Adjustment->Hue/Saturation. 

9. In the menu, there should be “Master” and also 6 other colours. You can choose to adjust the image entirely, or adjust selective colours.

And that’s pretty much the process for obtaining and editing a scan. 8)

Hope that helps!

[maruti-bitamin]

Facts & Resources

Due to some requests, I’ve gathered here most of my previous tutorials and fact posts. I hope this will answer some questions!  Watercolour Tutorial Scanning Tutorial Materials List (Will update it with the most recent materials soon.)

Shipping 12" x 18" Prints Watercolour Textures 1 2 (Feel free to use! I’d love to see the results too.) Good Reference Books for Backgrounds

p.s. Painting process/ work in progress can be seen here