A few things for art that I’ve learned if someone wants to know these:
(Note, there is no need to stick to anything that you don’t want to. Art styles and intentions can be as you please. You’re free to fudge or break any “rule” here. Also if anything here seems off, feel free to call it out, I’m only an intermediate artist so don’t know everything.)
(These are my observations mixing from general knowledge as well as my own body as reference. Bodies are varied.)
Your skull is longer than it is wide. So if you’re drawing a front facing person, you can draw a decent part of their skull with a circle. But that circle doesn’t work if they’re looking to the side, it needs to be extended a bit.
Eyes should remain the same hight, but width will change. If you’re drawing them at a 3/4 angle, the one further will be thinner than the closer one.
Also related to eyes, even if my style doesn’t show this (I’m thinking of messing with it though), if they’re looked at side on, their shape changes. They don’t stay the same almond-ish shape and instead you’re only seeing one eye corner so it looks more like a cone with the actual eyeball protruding a bit.
Again eyes, but the space between your eyes when looking face on is room for a third eye. Another way to measure, like say if they aren’t looking straight on, is the nostrils/edge of the nose should line up with the inner corners of the eyes. (This one is ofc broken the more cartoony it gets)
The top of your ear hits the same line as your eyebrows. The bottom of your ear hits the tip or bottom of your nose.
Your neck isn’t straight looking at it side on. It has a gentle curve backwards. (Another in I haven’t implemented due to a cartoony style but want to mess with)
Your back isn’t straight either. The spine has a natural bend and comes in a bit around your midsection. Out from the ribs, in at the mid, then back out around the pelvis. This is mostly noticeable from side view.
The top part of your arm (shoulder to elbow) and bottom part (elbow to wrist) are roughly the same size. And together they are about the length of your torso, ending around the pelvis
Elbows hit the middle of your body when arms ar straight out to your side. I personally say end of the ribcage since that’s where I feel it when using my body as reference, but it’s roughly the same. So if you want to know where they’d be at any point, you can draw an arc. (The arc has to be accurate tho)
Your palm is roughly the size of your fingers. The way I measure it is the size of my palm is the size of my middle finger. I also know that my hand covers around half my face vertically or horizontally (not exact but close), so I use one fourth of the head to make a circle to gauge palm size. (It can make it a tad in the big side, but it works well enough)
Each leg piece (hip to knee and knee to ankle) are roughly the same size with the knee in the center and both are roughly the same size as your torso (this is one I’ve heard and measured up with me, but I haven’t made conscious thought to check it, feel free to take it with salt, tho it does seem to line up)
Fat follows gravity, no matter where it’s carried. Instead of drawing it as a round circle, try drawing flowing down.
Fat also tends to affect more than one place, so if you have them fat in one place like their stomach, their limbs might also carry some as well as their face or hands.
When shading, don’t just make the color darker. Move it to a naturally darker color (blue or red for example) as well as give it more saturation. The more saturation the more stylized.
As mentioned above, but colors have natural values, so you can’t always just put colors over a greyscale drawing. Yellow is very light while blue is very dark. When picking colors it’s best to look at your values and when using greyscale, it’s good to know the values of the character.
This one is more just a personal advice thing, but get in the habit of checking your values often. They are often why coloring can look muddy or clash. Value is how to naturally draw attention or add contrast.
Also, unless you’re going for lots of colors, try being selective with them. Using certain colors sparingly will be how you draw attention to areas. What I’ve heard but haven’t directly implemented is one main color, one secondary, and two or so accents (not always including things like black or white)
This was just a list off the top of my head. Feel free to add to it with your own thoughts or say if anything I listed is off (I’ll try to edit it if that’s the case). I’ll occasionally reblog (here or my base) if people add more to this list. And feel free to add or ask for references.
And remember, these aren’t hard and fast rules. These were just my observations can be fudged or omitted for whatever your intention or style is. Or just because you like the way you draw better. Do whatever makes your art you.
Thank you for reading, have a cookie 🍪