Hoddypeak

...is a fool, simpleton, noodle, blockhead ------A buncha art references of various forms

[leylses]

fyi if you do figure studies, the croquis cafe guy is a trump supporter so here’s some figure drawing resources that aren’t that: 

senshistock sketch tool

senshistock’s deviantart (queen of queens tbqh)

fatphotoref (password protected, you can dm the creator for the password or ask me but i will only answer if i can see by your blog that you are an artist)

figurosity (free, kinda wild)

jookpub stock

photoref.org (paid packs, run by jenn ravenna tran, so you’d be supporting a woc artist/filmmaker!)

scott eaton’s bodies in motion (paid subscription and kind of pricy but good if you want to spend some time Really Focusing on Anatomy)

posespace (big library, also paid)

drawthis channel on yt

anatomy for artists course on proko (pricey but good)

always gotta mention schoolism

books:

force: drawing human anatomy

morpho books

figure drawing for artists: making every stroke count

andrew loomis books (ALL FREE!!!)

constructive anatomy (haven’t personally read this one but heard it’s good)

[varshnarsh]

i get a lot of questions about feeling creatively blocked/how to get through that, where to find inspiration, eliminating imposter syndrome— while there are so many nuances and challenges that can make this difficult to overcome for each individual person, here’s a more collective resource that’s literally has an abundant amount of guidance for creatives: The Creative Independent. containing interviews, essays, guides— i guarantee this will play a role in your processes. i’ve used this as a resource for years now and as a writer, i’ve benefited and felt comfort, validated, empathized with so many pieces from here.

[s-n-arly]

Skip Google for Research

As Google has worked to overtake the internet, its search algorithm has not just gotten worse.  It has been designed to prioritize advertisers and popular pages often times excluding pages and content that better matches your search terms 

As a writer in need of information for my stories, I find this unacceptable.  As a proponent of availability of information so the populace can actually educate itself, it is unforgivable.

Below is a concise list of useful research sites compiled by Edward Clark over on Facebook. I was familiar with some, but not all of these.

⁂

Google is so powerful that it “hides” other search systems from us. We just don’t know the existence of most of them. Meanwhile, there are still a huge number of excellent searchers in the world who specialize in books, science, other smart information. Keep a list of sites you never heard of.

www.refseek.com - Academic Resource Search. More than a billion sources: encyclopedia, monographies, magazines.

www.worldcat.org - a search for the contents of 20 thousand worldwide libraries. Find out where lies the nearest rare book you need.

https://link.springer.com - access to more than 10 million scientific documents: books, articles, research protocols.

www.bioline.org.br is a library of scientific bioscience journals published in developing countries.

http://repec.org - volunteers from 102 countries have collected almost 4 million publications on economics and related science.

www.science.gov is an American state search engine on 2200+ scientific sites. More than 200 million articles are indexed.

www.pdfdrive.com is the largest website for free download of books in PDF format. Claiming over 225 million names.

www.base-search.net is one of the most powerful researches on academic studies texts. More than 100 million scientific documents, 70% of them are free

[guildenstern]

https://libgen.li/ scholarly journal articles, academic and general-interest books, images, comics, audiobooks, and magazines you may otherwise lack access to

https://sci-hub.ru/ research papers and books you may otherwise lack access to

https://archive.org/ a very large collection of all sorts of media, notably out of print books. by using the wayback machine you can also access new articles which may be locked behind a paywall

all of these sources are free means of access, though some may be blocked by certain ISPs

[succubusboyfriend]

being a self-taught artist with no formal training is having done art seriously since you were a young teenager and only finding out that you’re supposed to do warm up sketches every time you’re about to work on serious art when you’re fuckin twenty-five

[succubusboyfriend]

someone: oh yeah, do this exercise during your warm ups! it’ll help

me: my what

[suave-eddboy]

[thepioden]

What’s up I have an actual college degree in art and I was never ONCE taught to do warm ups.

[sparksel]

when i was in undergrad, it was kind of mentioned in and offhand way that we should do warmups, but we were never shown what that meant. And, y’know, we were young so it didn’t matter so much. 

Being older now and having an art job it’s…kind of essential. 

So: a quick primer for those of you who are like ‘ok but how do i actually go about doing this warmup thing.’ 

1) you may be tempted to do ‘a warmup drawing’ which is just a drawing that will take longer than it needed to and probably be frustrating and kind of bad because you didn’t warm up first. It’s tempting but always a trick your brain is playing on you! Do not trust! 

2) warmups will vary based on what feels good to you/what task you’re about to do/what motor skills you want to practice. That being said, some good standbys:

a) circles. Just a whole page of circles on whatever drawing surface you’re going to be using, whether that’s your tablet or your sketchbook or a drawing pad on an easel. For these circles you should make sure that you’re drawing from your shoulder and not your wrist. In fact, you want to be drawing from your shoulder rather than your wrist most of the time! forever! your wrist is delicate please preserve it! 

In order to ensure that you’re drawing from your shoulder, when you’re holding your pencil or whatever drawing tool you’re using, the only part of your hand that should be touching the drawing surface is part of the last two fingers–some people prefer the finger tips, but I tend to favor the first knuckles. Either way, the fingers should really be ghosting over the surface, providing guidance rather than support. 

I usually start with big circles and then go to smaller circles and lines of ellipses, and then try to fit circles and ellipses inside other shapes i’ve already drawn as a precision exercise, but i don’t do that unless i’m feeling loose

b) spirals! i don’t always do spirals, but if i’m stiff and the circles just aren’t cutting it, spirals are a good fall back. I start from the center and work outward, going both clockwise and counterclockwise until i feel comfortable with the whole range of motion. Some people really care about getting perfect spirals but for me it’s all about making sure i’m comfortable with how i’m moving so who really even cares about how the spirals look. Not me! 

c) lines! straight lines! in parallel! i do a mix of vertical, horizontal, and diagonal. These are often more from the elbow than the shoulder, especially if I’m working on a smaller surface. For this exercise, I recommend holding the drawing tool perpendicular with the surface

d) connect the dots. This is a precision and accuracy exercise and takes two forms. The first is to draw two dots and then draw a straight line between them. The second is to draw three dots and draw the curve that connects them. This sounds a lot simpler than it is in practice. Take time to ghost over the line you plan to draw before actually committing to your line. (I don’t always remember where I picked up my warm up exercises, but I’m pretty sure I got this one from Scott Robertson. His how to draw and how to render books are very technical but also accessible and worth checking out)

e) cubes, spheres, cones, and cylinders. These help get your brain into a more volumetric space. I draw multiples of each, rotating the forms around, and I’ll often take the time to do some rough shading on at least a few of them

f) spidermans! This one is really good if you’re going to be storyboarding or working on dynamic poses. Just fill a page full of spidermans doing all sorts of acrobatics. 

g) beans. I don’t do beans too much anymore, but I know a lot of people like it so I’m mentioning it here. Fill an area with different size bean shapes without lifting your pencil off the paper. 

h) short medium and long line repetition. draw a short, medium, and long line on your page, and then draw directly on top of them 8 to 12 times, doing your best to exactly trace what you’ve already drawing. Repeat with a wavy line. I’m bad at this one, which means I probably need to do it more. 

And there are lots more options too! Hit up youtube to see what other people recommend, put together your own go-to list, mix it up when you’re getting bored, etc. 

This is a long list, I know, but I usually don’t take more than 10 to 15 minutes to warm up, and I can warm up one handed while I’m drinking coffee, so, multitasking hurrah. 

Sometimes I’ll advance to a precision warmup and find that I haven’t loosened up enough yet; it’s totally ok to go back to an earlier exercise! Also, all of this has the added benefit of kind of ritualistically getting you into the drawing mode so even if I’m not feeling it before I start, by the time I’ve gotten to the end I’m usually Ready For Drawin’. Brain hacks. 

so, yeah! that’s a lot of words, but! Warmups are important! Save your joints, take less advil, do better drawings! 

[concerningwolves]

[t-c-art-inspiration]

How on earth are you supposed to draw from a sholder? might as well tell me to draw from the foot. It makes no sense

[justpickupthatpen]

https://youtu.be/pMC0Cx3Uk84

https://youtu.be/NBE-RTFkXDk

:3

[stupidlittlesideblog]

Reblogging to save a wrist

[gayvampyr]

i hate that every time i look for color studies and tips to improve my art and make it more dynamic and interesting all that comes up are rudimentary explanations of the color wheel that explain it to me like im in 1st grade and just now discovering my primary colors

[gayvampyr]

“red and green are opposites 🥰” cool now how do i paint a tree with pinks and blues without it looking like a child’s finger painting or incongruous blobs of rainbow vomit

[gayvampyr]

ok i can’t explain it very well but im looking for tips and techniques for rendering art like

with specifically the highlights and colors being hues that compliment each other, don’t distract from the scene, and make it more interesting/visually appealing

is it too much to ask

[moreclaypigeons]

gonna drop some sources I have saved on Pinterest! I don't know if these all link back to the original sources so apologies for that

cohesive but still contrasting

This kind of talks about color and composition

This is a bit about landscape specifically

Values & composition

Contrast in composition

Balance in colors & values

This one's more for palette building but I think it's useful and can be applied to the other ones

Cohesion within compositions/lighting

"Chromatic fringe" - I also see people using this with shading, they bring in a transition color that is a different hue than the base color or shadow, it makes it so that less vibrancy is lost and it doesn't get muddy!

This one specifically has a lot of process behind the style of painting you're looking for!

Also one of my favorite artists who makes bright and colorful art like this is Not Sorry Art on TikTok & YouTube, her website is here and it's<3 my fav. She has some videos where you can see her process

With the oranges painting you put as an example, I noticed they painted the lighter values more toward yellow - they also exaggerated the hues of the undertones of the photo, so I'm guessing they either did it in their head or bumped the saturation up to get a closer look! I really love these paintings you shared and I definitely share your desire to paint/draw like that :)

[c-rowlesblogs]

Man, I’m kind of bummed out that the best resources for deer anatomy and body language are all on hunting sites. I mean, it makes sense, but it’s still kind of disorienting to be reading along and then have a description end with like, “…so if you see the buck’s ears do that, stay still and keep your gear from making noise”. I’m not crouching in the grass with a compound bow, I’m just an artist! I just want to draw a bunch of fake fictional deer and deer-adjacent creatures, not put on some forest camo and hunt me a Big Antler Boy or w/e in real life!! 

Yeesh, I bet I’m going to get targeted ads about hunting equipment now. Just another way that the Research Struggle can be really real sometimes.

[hallowedtalon-deactivated202104]

Here are amazing deer skeletal references by Rico LeBrun! They were created during production of Disney’s Bambi, to help aid the artists.

The link to download the images in their full glory:

http://www.michaelspornanimation.com/splog/?p=1548

[c-rowlesblogs]

Oh whoa, thank you so much!! This is awesome. I’ve seen some of these drawings before, but never the full set!

Edit: oh wow I just looked at the URL and it’s.. hmm. Hmmmmmmmm

Unsure.jpeg but thanks for the images in the post

[alberolingarn-deactivated202102]

@c-rowlesblogs it’s OK, we’re gonna be OK

[c-rowlesblogs]

Oh my god

[fluffygif]

Fantastic art

[kiwi]

HEY THIS IS IMPORTANT whats your favorite place to find drawing references?

[kiwi]

so far we’ve got

senshi stock

croquis cafe

line-of-action.com

quickposes.com

posemaniacs

clip studio paint models

pexels.com

sketchdaily

eggazyoutatsu atarichan drawer

designdoll

if you have any more please reply!

[nohara]

Unsplash: All photos published on Unsplash can be used for free. You can use them for commercial and noncommercial purposes. You do not need to ask permission from or provide credit to the photographer or Unsplash, although it is appreciated when possible. More precisely, Unsplash grants you an irrevocable, nonexclusive copyright license to download, copy, modify, distribute, perform, and use photos from Unsplash for free, including for commercial purposes, without permission from or attributing the photographer or Unsplash. This license does not include the right to compile photos from Unsplash to replicate a similar or competing service.

Freeimages: You can use the images in digital format on websites, blog posts, social media, advertisements, film and television productions, web and mobile applications. In printed materials such as magazines, newspapers, books, brochures, flyers, product packaging for decorative use in your home, office or any public place or personal use. The rights granted to you by FreeImages.com are: Perpetual, meaning there is no expiration or end date on your rights to use the content. Non-exclusive, meaning that you do not have exclusive rights to use the content. FreeImages.com can license the same content to other customers. Unlimited, meaning you can use the content in an unlimited number of projects and in any media. For purposes of this agreement, “use” means to copy, reproduce, modify, edit, synchronize, perform, display, broadcast, publish, or otherwise make use of.

Stocksnap: Every single image on StockSnap are governed exclusively by the generous terms of the Creative Commons CC0 license. Specifically, that license means you can do any and all of the following: Download the image file.Publish, revise, copy, alter, and share that image. Use the image (as-is or as you’ve altered it), in both personal and commercial contexts. Moreover, you can put StockSnap CC0 images to any of these usages without buying the right to do it, acquiring written permission from the image’s creator, or attributing the work to the image creator. In other words, there’s no fee to download or use these StockSnap images in accordance with the CC0 license. They’re free to download, free to edit, and free to use - even in a commercial project! You don’t even need to attribute the image to the creator, the way you do with other CC or traditional copyright licensing schemes. (However, even though it’s not required, we here at StockSnap do encourage you to include an appropriate attribution. It’s a nice thing to do.)

Burst.Shopify: Burst is a free stock photo platform that is powered by Shopify. Their image library includes thousands of high-resolution, royalty-free images that were shot by their global community of photographers. You can use their pictures for just about anything — your website, blog or online store, school projects, Instagram ads, facebook posts, desktop backgrounds, client work and more. All of their photos are free for commercial use with no attribution required.

Pixabay: Images and Videos on Pixabay are released under Creative Commons CC0. To the extent possible under law, uploaders of Pixabay have waived their copyright and related or neighboring rights to these Images and Videos. You are free to adapt and use them for commercial purposes without attributing the original author or source. Although not required, a link back to Pixabay is appreciated.

Viintage: All images hosted by Viintage.com are considered to be public domain images, each image is presumed to be in the public domain. It may be distributed or copied as permitted by applicable law. Viintage.com assumes no ownership of the images and they may be downloaded and can be used free of charge for any purpose. They may be downloaded and used for commercial and personal use. Understand “public domain” as the permission to freely use an image without asking permission from the photographer or the illustrator. Thus, the creator of the work will not sue you for violating his/her copyrights. It is your responsibility to make sure, displaying the image does not violate any other law. Viintage.com assumes no responsibility for how or where you use the images found on the site.

Gratisography: You may use Gratisography pictures as you please for both personal and commercial projects. You can adapt and modify the images and get paid for work that incorporates the pictures. This includes advertising campaigns, adding your logo or text to an image, printed in any size print runs (e.g., book covers, magazines, posters, etc.), on your website, blog, or other digital mediums, and on merchandise as long as the picture itself is not the merchandise.

[chiptunecreature]

As someone who draws a lot of faeries, Faestock is godlike.

[uselessarttips]

A wonderful addition to the list!

[sepdet]

Unsplash. Another whopping huge free images site like pixabay: free for commercial and noncommercial use and remixing; just don’t sell the photos unmodified or add them to other photo-sharing sites.

Morguefile. Big old free photo archive from the dawn of the web. “We are a community-based free photo site, and all photos found in the Morguefile archive are free for you to download and re-use in your work, be it commercial or not. The photos have been contributed by a wide range of creatives from around the world, ranging from amateur photo hobbyists to professionals.”

Open Access at the Met. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York: “Whether you’re an artist or a designer, an educator or a student, a professional or a hobbyist, you now have more than 406,000 images of artworks from The Met collection to use, share, and remix—without restriction.”

Smithsonian Open Access. Download, share, and reuse millions of the Smithsonian’s images […] from across the Smithsonian’s 19 museums, nine research centers, libraries, archives, and the National Zoo.

Limited use, if you’re doing a Science and need control panels/rockets/futuristic an image search with qualifier site: nasa.gov You have to double-check a photo’s caption it’s really a NASA photo, but photos which were taken by NASA spacecraft and astronauts are public domain, since they’re funded by taxpayer dollars. (This also goes for images of animals archived at the USFWS Digital Library, i.e the US Fish and Wildlife Service, or rocks and landscapes on USGS websites.

[soft-lily]

Okay updating and consolidating lots of info here; as well as adding links for ease of access. Adding a brief description for some too; as is the case that not all of them have descriptions above. (Warning that some of these links contain nude refs, I will try to mark where possible which ones have more prominent ones.)

Posing Sites and Apps:

Adorkastock. Stock photos for pose refs. DeviantArt gallery started in 2007.

FreePhotoMuscle.com. (translated page link click here) Japanese stock photo pose site that includes buff people, but in funny poses and costumes.

CroquoisCafe. (NSFW, nude model poses warning) A stock photo pose site. You should be aware this org has been linked as pro-Trump. I leave it to y’all to decide if you want to use the resources or not. I highly encourage not financially supporting them and trying to support the individual models if you can.

Line of Action. Fantastic site that includes posing refs, community discussions from other artists, figure study, anatomy, etc. So much stuff in here.

PoseSpace. Extensive library of poses. Some free resources others are paid. I’ve not fully evaluated both, but you should be able to use this all mostly free and get great use out of it.

SketchDaily. This one is one of the better ones out there. You can time yourself, search by pose, clothing options, body type, perspective, etc. All real models.

JustSketch.me. A pose app for any device. Has apps for most devices and a webapp. Customize and pose models/props/scenes.

Quickposes. Pose site that gives you timed challenges to become more proficient at poses.

POSEMANIACS. Ref site with anatomical poses. All the ref pics are of 3D models with only the bones and muscles. Can be helpful for seeing how muscles behave in certain poses. limited to two body types tho.

MagicPoser. A wonderful app that’s great on mobile. Lets you choose size of models, number of them, style, etc. Significant features are use of snap point with the physics engine, adjustable lighting, multiple perspective, 360 angle, articulated hand posing.

Clip Studio Paint Modeler. Free 3d tool that works with Clip Studio Paint. You can import your own data or other models you find online. Not quite an alternative to Blender, but the integration with CSP is very nice.

Egg a Zyoutatsu Atarichan Drawer. (requires enabling flash player or downloading and using standalone flashplayer) Drawing tool for pose practice. The developer is working on an html5 version.

DesignDoll. One of the best pose tool apps out there. You can customize so many things. They also have an extensive collection of ready made poses here. You can use the free or pay once for life and have the poses integrated into the client as well as the ability to export your obj to other programs like blender or smt.

Stock Photo Sites:

Unsplash. Giant free stock image site.

freeimages.com. Another stock photo site, less features than some others.

StockSnap.io. Stock photos with a creative commons CC0 license, which essentially means you can use the photos however you want and don’t have to attribute to them. (though its nice if you do attribute)

Burst.Shopify. Tons of royalty free high quality images. Similar licensing to StockSnap.

pixabay. I feel like most people know about this one, but it features entirely free CC0 licensed Photos, Videos, and Music. No attribution required, but still nice to support a giant site with all this content.

Viintage. Big collection of public domain vintage photos.

Gratisography. For commercial or personal use. They specialize in odd, quirky, wild stock photos.

pexels. Great free stock photos and videos. Only a few stipulations of what they don’t allow, but their license info can be found here.

Faestock. An artist and model with a huge amount of fantasy and fae and other types of photos available. Their terms for use are here.

MorgueFile. Old stock photo archive that’s been around a long time.

Museum and Institution Open Access sites:

USA National Gallery of Art. Over 50k works available for download.

New York Metropolitan Museum open access. 490k works to browse. Even codes for Animal Crossing New Horizons patterns.

The Smithsonian Institution open access. Probably one of the largest open access collections available online. Around 3.9 million items available to view.

Many More. This article from Apollo magazine has an extensive list of open access museums and institutions from around the world. A brief list of places includes: Art Institute of Chicago,  Belvedere, Vienna ,  Birmingham Museums Trust , Cleveland Art Museum , Harvard Art Museums , J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles , Kunstmuseum Basel , Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.,  Los Angeles County Museum of Art , Mauritshuis, The Hague , Minneapolis Institute of Art , Munch Museet, Norway , Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington , Národní galerie Praha , Nationalmuseet Danmark , Nationalmuseum, Stockholm  , New York Public Library , Paris Musées ,  Pinakotheken, Munich,  Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam,  Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich,  Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen ,  Wellcome Collection, London ,  Yale University .

[kiwi]

wow its been a while since ive seen this post, im so glad more useful info has been added!

[paroxsysdraw]

tutorial under cut!!

@greyedworlds​

///

Keep reading

[visualc--x32redistributable]

two (2) people asked how i did the matchbook thing so take this

this is just a simple idea but if you spend some more time you can get real krazy with it:

making fake prints is so fun please do it immediately free resources under cut xoxo

Paper Textures Kit

Wouldn't it be nice to have the hi-res paper textures just like in real life? Hot-press, watercolor, recycled, sketchbook paper — we've trie

Free Grunge photoshop brushes Kit

In this small kit you’ll get 1 brush file (.abr), which includes these 5 photoshop brushes. All of these textures were handmade, digitalise

Get 9 free samples of our most popular products to try out including free brushes, textures, fonts, and more. Includes products for Procreat

retrosupply my love

9 Free High Resolution Grain Textures in JPG & PNG Format

I hope everyone’s 2016 is off to a great start so far. I thought I’d treat my readers and make this year’s first post a new free design reso

[hamletthedane]

Want to learn something new in 2022??

Absolute beginner adult ballet series (fabulous beginning teacher)

40 piano lessons for beginners (some of the best explanations for piano I’ve ever seen)

Excellent basic crochet video series

Basic knitting (probably the best how to knit video out there)

Pre-Free Figure Skate Levels A-D guides and practice activities (each video builds up with exercises to the actual moves!)

How to draw character faces video (very funny, surprisingly instructive?)

Another drawing character faces video

Literally my favorite art pose hack

Tutorial of how to make a whole ass Stardew Valley esque farming game in Gamemaker Studios 2??

Introduction to flying small aircrafts

French/Dutch/Fishtail braiding

Playing the guitar for beginners (well paced and excellent instructor)

Playing the violin for beginners (really good practical tips mixed in)

Color theory in digital art (not of the children’s hospital variety)

Retake classes you hated but now there’s zero stakes:

Calculus 1 (full semester class)

Learn basic statistics (free textbook)

Introduction to college physics (free textbook)

Introduction to accounting (free textbook)

Learn a language:

Ancient Greek

Latin

Spanish

German

Japanese (grammar guide) (for dummies)

French

Russian (pretty good cyrillic guide!)

[headspace-hotel]

"But NORMAL People's Bodies Didn't Look Like That!" ...right?

Some of you may have seen my post about Baroque artists and their realistic depictions of human bodies as having skin and fat.

I've had a lot of negative and frankly fatphobic comments on that post, calling the people in the paintings "fat" and "obese," mostly along the lines of this:

"It's because the artists are depicting rich people, who were fat and lazy. Normal people didn't look like that!"

The idea, of course, is that these artists wouldn't have ever drawn bodies that looked like those in the Baroque paintings, if they weren't painting super-rich people that stuffed themselves with food all day.

Supposedly. We'll see how well that holds up.

Today I was in the library looking at a collection of drawings by Albrecht Dürer, and learned that in the early 1500's, Dürer tried to put together essentially a "how-to-draw" book, showing how to draw people. His work was controversial, because of his technique of "constructing" figures using rules about proportions. (A quick and easy method of inventing realistically proportioned bodies out of thin air? Cheating!!)

However, in his "constructed" drawings, Dürer had to figure out how to handle the range of variety in bodies, and ended up breaking down how to create a variety of body types in correct proportions.

I'm showing the women, to contrast with the post on Baroque paintings. Here are some of his drawings that I thought y'all should take a look at.

These are a couple of his more "average" women—the one on the left is from his drawing book, and the one on the right is one of his drawings.

Here's a "strong woman" and "A very strong, stout woman"

This is what he refers to as a "stout woman."

Here's where it gets interesting: this is what Albrecht Dürer refers to as a "peasant-type" woman

^That. That's what a "peasant" body type looks like.

He labeled this one "A peasant woman of 7 head lengths"

in case you missed it: this figure drawing by a guy in the 1500's is literally labeled as being of a peasant woman! this is what a "peasant woman" body type looks like!

He did draw similar amounts of thinner figures, but they're not particularly emphasized over the "Strong" and "Stout" figures. Nor is there exactly a "default" figure. He's just...going over the range of variations that there are?

Here's another "stout woman," covered in notes on how to draw the proportions:

now that's too technical for me to make any sense of but

this was in the 16th century!! This body type was apparently not incredibly rare in the 16th century. This body type was important enough for you to be able to draw, as an artist, in the 16th century to be handled in detail in a 16th century artist's drawing advice

In conclusion: yes this is just what people look like, yes it's important to know how to draw fat bodies, even this dude from the early 1500's is telling you so, Die Mad About It

all of this is from "The complete drawings of Albrecht Dürer" by Walter L. Strauss

[gingercatsneeze]

1. Ah Fai was a chief animator for McDull’s animated features. He’s super cool. Ultimate senpai. 

2. Previous post on breakdowns right here 

Some thoughts on acceleration and force

I presented this in the order of how I slowly understood the trick of delivering force - first an abstract concept of impact taught by Ah Fai, then a more complicated discovery on the acceleration pattern, last back to a more abstract concept of breakdowns. 

Like I’ve previously stressed, 2D animation is everything but one single approach. There’s no one rule that rules them all, but interchangeable ideas with math, or physics, or music, etc. There’s no “perfect” animation either, but what is perceived as organic and dynamic. E.g., using the Fibonacci numbers to animate didn’t bring me a perfect animation! On the other hand, a tiny change in the pattern could already make the feeling of force so much more powerful. 

Not so much of a tutorial than a personal experience. I hope you find this interesting hahaha 

[tanuki-kimono]

[Evolution of furisode fashion from the 1950′s to 2020′s], handy charts by shop KomonoHana. Please note that the trends shown and describe here are the most notable evolutions - that doesn’t mean everybody was following those trends to the T ;)

1950-1970′s - Showa style

After wwii, a new era began for kimono, trying to recover from harships of wartime. Prototype of modern Seijin no hi was held for the first time in 1946. The economic miracle made possible for ordinary households to own or at least rent furisode outfits, which were in the past mostly only affordable for wealthy families.

Style favored bold embroidery with gold foil etc, and vivid oranges and emerald greens were very popular colors.

New methods and rules for kitsuke/dressing appeared as many people didn’t have the knowledge/means to dress in traditional furisode attire as before: => Expensive and heavy maru obi fell out of fashion, and fukuro obi became the norm (only patterned on one side, they are cheaper and easier to produce).  => Costly and cumbersome layered kimono called kasane also disappeared, replaced by decorative collar called date eri mimicing layers.

1980-1990′s - Bubble style

The economic bubble from that decade saw a big demand for consumer products. Same went for kimono items.

Demand for embroidery and gold foil decreased, but glossy rinzu (raised ground patterned fabric) was super popular. Small scattered patterns were a staple of the period.

Fukuro obi also became longer, making elaborated novelty belt knots possible (before that era, bunko, or fukura suzume for example were the norm).  

1990-2000′s - Antique kimono boom

When the economic bubble finally burst, the amount of money spent for Seijin no hi furisode dramatically decreased.

Little by little, antique kimono became fashionable. One reason, beside obvious cost, might have been the huge popularity of Akina Nakamori’s music video [DESIRE - Jônetsu]. In any case, antique/vintage kimono shops opened everywhere.

That decade liked deep, crisp ground colors. Because of the second hand popularity, patterns were often old fashioned, antique ones.

Ready to wear kimono -sometimes designed by Stars of the era- started to become available, with often the promised of being easily washable - something difficult to do with silk kimono.

2000-2010′s - In your face! Ageha’s kimono

In reaction against to “old fashion” feeling of the past decade, style became more youthful and extravagant.

Gyaru magazine [Koakuma Ageha] made the hight ponytail fashionable, and that hairdo became a staple of that style, often embelished with large floral ornaments.

Contrasting colors like white, black, and purple were very popular. More is more was everywhere, with use of glitters, rhinestones, lace, frills, fur, pearls…

The “oiran” style also saw a trend, with furisode worn sexily off shoulder with obi belt knotted up front.

2010′s-2020′s - Between classic and modern

Furisode crazed fashion trends of the past decade became a bit more quiet, and offer diversified.

“Retro modern” furisode appeared, mixing reinterpreted traditional motifs and graphic/geometrical patterns. Colors tended to be really “pop”, not afraid to mix turquoise and bright pink for example. 

On the other side of the spectrum, pastel colors were also in high demand.

Hairstyles returned to more classic buns, with notable fact that braids popularity rose.

2020′s~ - Chic and Romantic

Reiwa era is still pretty young, but new trends are emerging nonetheless.

Light, natural colors are fashionable atm, such as light greys or beiges.

Busy patterns are also losing ground, as quiet, or even plain mujifurisode are becoming easier and easier to find.

Cute frilly accessories make a return, with lace, pearl, etc. It can be as headress, or for undershirt, or even gloves.

Western shoes are more and more considered acceptable.

Hairstyle are light and romantic, with loose buns sometimes decorated with dried flowers for example.

[headspace-hotel]

thinking again about TvTropes and how it’s genuinely such an amazing resource for learning the mechanics of storytelling, honestly more so than a lot of formally taught literature classes

reasons for this:

basically TvTropes breaks down stories mechanically, using a perspective that’s not…ABOUT mechanics. Another way I like to put it, is that it’s an inductive, instead of deductive, approach to analyzing storytelling.

like in a literature or writing class you’re learning the elements that are part of the basic functioning of a story, so, character, plot, setting, et cetera. You’re learning the things that make a story a story, and why. Like, you learn what setting is, what defines it, and work from there to what makes it effective, and the range of ways it can be effective.

here’s the thing, though: everyone has some intuitive understanding of how stories work. if we didn’t, we couldn’t…understand stories.

TvTropes’s approach is bottom-up instead of top-down: instead of trying to exhaustively explore the broad, general elements of story, it identifies very small, specific elements, and explores the absolute shit out of how they fit, what they do, where they go, how they work.

Every TvTropes article is basically, “Here is a piece of a story that is part of many different stories. You have probably seen it before, but if not, here is a list of stories that use it, where it is, and what it’s doing in those stories. Here are some things it does. Here is why it is functionally different than other, similar story pieces. Here is some background on its origins and how audiences respond to it.”

all of this is BRILLIANT for a lot of reasons. one of the major ones is that the site has long lists of media that utilizes any given trope, ranging from classic literature to cartoons to video games to advertisements. the Iliad and Adventure Time ARE different things, but they are MADE OF the same stuff. And being able to study dozens of examples of a trope in action teaches you to see the common thread in what the trope does and why its specific characteristics let it do that

I love TvTropes because a great, renowned work of literature and a shitty, derivative YA novel will appear on the same list, because they’re Made Of The Same Stuff. And breaking down that mental barrier between them is good on its own for developing a mechanical understanding of storytelling.

But also? I think one of the biggest blessings of TvTropes’s commitment to cataloguing examples of tropes regardless of their “merit” or literary value or whatever…is that we get to see the full range of effectiveness or ineffectiveness of storytelling tools. Like, this is how you see what makes one book good and another book crappy. Tropes are Tools, and when you observe how a master craftsman uses a tool vs. a novice, you can break down not only what the tool is most effective for but how it is best used.

In fact? There are trope pages devoted to what happens when storytelling tools just unilaterally fail. e.g. Narm is when creators intend something to be frightening, but audiences find it hilarious instead.

On that note, TvTropes is also great in that its analysis of stories is very grounded in authors, audiences, and culture; it’s not solely focused on in-story elements. A lot of the trope pages are categories for audience responses to tropes, or for real-world occurrences that affected the storytelling, or just the human failings that creep into storytelling and affect it, like Early Installment Weirdness. There are categories for censorship-driven storytelling decisions. There are “lineages” of tropes that show how storytelling has changed over time, and how audience responses change as culture changes. Tropes like Draco in Leather Pants or Narm are catalogued because the audience reaction to a story is as much a part of that story—the story of that story?—as the “canon.”

like, storytelling is inextricable from context. it’s inextricable from how big the writers’ budget was, and how accepting of homophobia the audience was, and what was acceptable to be shown on film at the time. Tropes beget other tropes, one trope is exchanged for another, they are all linked. A Dead Horse Trope becomes an Undead Horse Trope, and sometimes it was a Dead Unicorn Trope all along. What was this work responding to? And all works are responding to something, whether they know it or not

[headspace-hotel]

An incomplete list of really useful or interesting reads from TvTropes.

please note that yes many of these are concepts that exist elsewhere and a few are even taught in fiction writing classes but TvTropes just does an amazing job at displaying the range of things that can be done with them

legitimately so much of the terminology I use to talk about storytelling, and even think about it in my own head, i learned about from TvTropes

Willing Suspension of Disbelief

Watsonian vs. Doylist

Trope Tropes, for all the ways tropes are used, deconstructed, subverted, and played with.

The Oldest Ones in the Book, which is basically my favorite thing on the entire Internet

Punk Punk, for -punk subgenres

Sliding Scale of Silliness vs. Seriousness, Sliding Scale of Idealism vs. Cynicism

The Weird Al Effect is a fun one

Chekhov’s Gun, Chekhov’s Boomerang, Chekhov’s Skill, and further variations

Law of Conservation of Detail

Law of Conservation of Normality

Anthropic Principle

Word of God, Death of the Author

Sliding Scale of Fourth Wall Hardness

Mohs Scale of Science Fiction Hardness

Genre Savvy

Flashbacks and Chronology breaks down all the ways you can handle chronology in storytelling

Show, Don’t Tell is a very good breakdown of what is showing, what is telling, and how both can be used effectively.

Lampshade Hanging

Noodle Incident is just fun imo

Genre Title Grab Bag

Fridge Horror

Rule of Cool, and also Cool of Rule

The Smurfette Principle

The Hays Code - not a trope but a very good breakdown of how the Hays Code affected storytelling in film

this is just a really short list of examples I encourage people who write or otherwise create stories to browse around on this site it’s so useful

[headspace-hotel]

"But NORMAL People's Bodies Didn't Look Like That!" ...right?

Some of you may have seen my post about Baroque artists and their realistic depictions of human bodies as having skin and fat.

I've had a lot of negative and frankly fatphobic comments on that post, calling the people in the paintings "fat" and "obese," mostly along the lines of this:

"It's because the artists are depicting rich people, who were fat and lazy. Normal people didn't look like that!"

The idea, of course, is that these artists wouldn't have ever drawn bodies that looked like those in the Baroque paintings, if they weren't painting super-rich people that stuffed themselves with food all day.

Supposedly. We'll see how well that holds up.

Today I was in the library looking at a collection of drawings by Albrecht Dürer, and learned that in the early 1500's, Dürer tried to put together essentially a "how-to-draw" book, showing how to draw people. His work was controversial, because of his technique of "constructing" figures using rules about proportions. (A quick and easy method of inventing realistically proportioned bodies out of thin air? Cheating!!)

However, in his "constructed" drawings, Dürer had to figure out how to handle the range of variety in bodies, and ended up breaking down how to create a variety of body types in correct proportions.

I'm showing the women, to contrast with the post on Baroque paintings. Here are some of his drawings that I thought y'all should take a look at.

These are a couple of his more "average" women—the one on the left is from his drawing book, and the one on the right is one of his drawings.

Here's a "strong woman" and "A very strong, stout woman"

This is what he refers to as a "stout woman."

Here's where it gets interesting: this is what Albrecht Dürer refers to as a "peasant-type" woman

^That. That's what a "peasant" body type looks like.

He labeled this one "A peasant woman of 7 head lengths"

in case you missed it: this figure drawing by a guy in the 1500's is literally labeled as being of a peasant woman! this is what a "peasant woman" body type looks like!

He did draw similar amounts of thinner figures, but they're not particularly emphasized over the "Strong" and "Stout" figures. Nor is there exactly a "default" figure. He's just...going over the range of variations that there are?

Here's another "stout woman," covered in notes on how to draw the proportions:

now that's too technical for me to make any sense of but

this was in the 16th century!! This body type was apparently not incredibly rare in the 16th century. This body type was important enough for you to be able to draw, as an artist, in the 16th century to be handled in detail in a 16th century artist's drawing advice

In conclusion: yes this is just what people look like, yes it's important to know how to draw fat bodies, even this dude from the early 1500's is telling you so, Die Mad About It

all of this is from "The complete drawings of Albrecht Dürer" by Walter L. Strauss

[swagpaws]

fat bodies, fat anatomy, and how body fat tends to work should be taught as standardly as skinny anatomy and how muscles work in art courses. fat bodies are not an outlier. fat bodies are not a minority and theyre not abnormal or wrong. fat bodies are normal and they belong in art teaching spaces as commonly as other anatomy, because fat bodies ARE normal anatomy. people have diverse bodies and there will never be a single body type that encompasses the "normal body type"

tldr; fat anatomy should be taught as a staple in art courses just like any other anatomy. this is fact <3

[swagpaws]

ive gathered various links to refs so that people who see this can actually access helpful info on how to draw fat people. first and foremost though, using references will always be the biggest help :)

Scans of Morpho: Fat and Folds by Michel Lauricella

Links for obtaining Morpho: Fat and Folds yourself

How to draw fat bodies by @strawberrylind

Tips on drawing big people by @gubbins-turtledove

Fat bodies tutorial by @wxrmandfxzzies (deactivated)

Dropbox link of fat body refs

(please reblog this version instead)