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Lorenzo!
noise dept.
2025 on Tumblr: Trends That Defined the Year
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Interview Vampire Daily

if i look back, i am lost
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@justanotherfreakingartrefblog
SIMPLIFYING the TORSO! To get the FREE MONTHLY How to THINK When You Draw digital MAGAZINE (including NEW tutorials, a YEAR before they appear online!) just GO HERE!
Lorenzo!
I was talking shop with an artist in the studio today and I shared this page from Andrew Loomis, which might be the single most valuable page I've ever encountered in a how-to-draw book. I can't BEGIN to say how many hours this "hanging figures on the horizon" technique has saved me.
(EDIT: Over on another site, someone said they didn’t understand how to read this pic, so maybe adding a second pic and some explanation will help?)
Let’s say I want to draw “Joe” standing further back. I need to know where to place him so he looks like he's the same height, even though he's further away. If I get it wrong, he’ll look giant or tiny.
I can do that by making sure that the horizon cuts thru Joe AT THE SAME HEIGHT, no matter how close or far away he is. In the original picture, it cuts thru the original Joe at the waist.
So let’s look at three different Joes.
A: Wrong. Horizon goes thru his knees. In this context, he’s a giant.
B: Correct. Horizon goes thru his waist, just like the original Joe!
C: Wrong. Horizon goes thru his head. In this context, he’s tiny.
Reblogging because it's been 75 years and Loomis is still right.
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
“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
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
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 :)
thanks this is super helpful! /gen
If you'd like 2 Print books that I absolutely reccomend to every visual artist regardless of Media, Color and Light and Imaginative Realism by James Gurney are basically religious texts for artists, even the 3-D people because his understanding and explanation of how light and form work is that damn good.
If you're wondering about Mr. Gurney's chops:
James Gurney is the Dinotopia Guy (that link includes his Dinotopia books, prints and online classes too)
Reblogging to check this out later
Can't afford art school?
After seeing post like this 👇
And this gem 👇
As well as countless of others from the AI generator community. Just talking about how "inaccessible art" is, I decided why not show how wrong these guys are while also helping anyone who actually wants to learn.
Here is the first one ART TEACHERS! There are plenty online and in places like youtube.
📺Here is my list:
Proko (Free, mostly teaches anatomy and how to draw people. But does have art talks and teaches the basics.)
Marc Brunet (Free but he does have other classes for a cheap price. Use to work for Blizzard and teaches you everything)
Aaron Rutten (free, tips about art, talks about art programs and the best products for digital art)
BoroCG (free, teaches a verity of art mediums from 3D modeling to digital painting. As well as some tips that can be used across styles)
Jesse J. Jones (free, talks about animating)
Jesus Conde (free, teaches digital painting and has classes in Spanish)
Mohammed Agbadi (free, he gives some advice in some videos and talks about art)
Ross Draws (free, he does have other classes for a good price. Mostly teaching character designs and simple backgrounds.)
SamDoesArts (free, gives good advice and critiques)
Drawfee Show (free, they do give some good advice and great inspiration)
The Art of Aaron Blaise ( useful tips for digital art and animation. Was an animator for Disney. Mostly nature art)
Bobby Chiu ( useful tips and interviews with artist who are in the industry or making a living as artist)
Sinix Design (has some tips on drawing people)
Winged canvas (art school for free on a verity of mediums)
Bob Ross (just a good time, learn how to paint, as well as how too relax when doing art. "there are no mistakes only happy accidents", this channel also provides tips from another artist)
Scott Christian Sava (Inspiration and provides tips and advice)
Pikat (art advice and critiques)
Drawbox (a suggested cheap online art school, made of a community of artist)
Skillshare (A cheap learning site that has art classes ranging from traditional to digital. As well as Animation and tutorials on art programs. All under one price, in the USA it's around $34 a month)
Human anatomy for artist (not a video or teacher but the site is full of awesome refs to practice and get better at anatomy)
Second part BOOKS, I have collected some books that have helped me and might help others.
📚Here is my list:
The "how to draw manga" series produced by Graphic-sha. These are for manga artist but they give great advice and information.
"Creating characters with personality" by Tom Bancroft. A great book that can help not just people who draw cartoons but also realistic ones. As it helps you with facial ques and how to make a character interesting.
"Albinus on anatomy" by Robert Beverly Hale and Terence Coyle. Great book to help someone learn basic anatomy.
"Artistic Anatomy" by Dr. Paul Richer and Robert Beverly Hale. A good book if you want to go further in-depth with anatomy.
"Directing the story" by Francis Glebas. A good book if you want to Story board or make comics.
"Animal Anatomy for Artists" by Eliot Goldfinger. A good book for if you want to draw animals or creatures.
"Constructive Anatomy: with almost 500 illustrations" by George B. Bridgman. A great book to help you block out shadows in your figures and see them in a more 3 diamantine way.
"Dynamic Anatomy: Revised and expand" by Burne Hogarth. A book that shows how to block out shapes and easily understand what you are looking out. When it comes to human subjects.
"An Atlas of animal anatomy for artist" by W. Ellenberger and H. Dittrich and H. Baum. This is another good one for people who want to draw animals or creatures.
Etherington Brothers, they make books and have a free blog with art tips.
📝As for Supplies, I recommend starting out cheap, buying Pencils and art paper at dollar tree or 5 below. If you want to go fancy Michaels is always a good place for traditional supplies. They also get in some good sales and discounts. For digital art, I recommend not starting with a screen art drawing tablet as they are usually more expensive.
For the Best art Tablet I recommend either Xp-pen, Bamboo or Huion. Some can range from about 40$ to the thousands.
💻As for art programs here is a list of Free to pay.
Clip Studio paint ( you can choose to pay once or sub and get updates. Galaxy, Windows, macOS, iPad, iPhone, Android, or Chromebook device. )
Procreate ( pay once for $9.99 usd, IPAD & IPHONE ONLY)
Blender (for 3D modules/sculpting, animation and more. Free)
PaintTool SAI (pay but has a 31 day free trail)
Krita (Free)
mypaint (free)
FireAlpaca (free)
Aseprite ($19.99 usd but has a free trail, for pixel art Windows & macOS)
Drawpile (free and for if you want to draw with others)
IbisPaint (free, phone app ONLY)
Medibang (free, IPAD, Android and PC)
NOTE: Some of these can work on almost any computer like Clip and Sai but others will require a bit stronger computer like Blender. Please check their sites for if your computer is compatible.
So do with this information as you will but as you can tell there are ways to learn how to become an artist, without breaking the bank. The only thing that might be stopping YOU from using any of these things, is YOU.
I have made time to learn to draw and many artist have too. Either in-between working two jobs or taking care of your family and a job or regular school and chores. YOU just have to take the time or use some time management, it really doesn't take long to practice for like an hour or less. YOU also don't have to do it every day, just once or three times a week is fine.
Hope this was helpful and have a great day.
"also apologies for any spelling or grammar errors, I have Dyslexia and it makes my brain go XP when it comes to speech or writing"
Boosting this in case any of the programs and books suggested are useful.
All the photos on this tumblr ad the animal photo reference site I run is another resource available for artists to use!
As long as you’re not using AI to create your art, you can reference / trace / draw / recombine / make any sort of art you want, with any of the photos, for free.
There's also MORPHO, a really good book series on anatomy by Michel Lauricella, with very clear explanations and sketches!
And for pose references, there's @adorkastock who shares a ton of them for free, with different models and props, and her website is amazing <3 you can also buy pose packs from her.
Boosting as these free resources are how i learnt to draw. My GCSE art teacher told me i had no future in art and to stop 'wasting his time' with my imagination, which killed my passion for drawing for close to decade! I have NO art training, only what i have learnt from other artists online.
If i can learn you can too!
lHey friends!
Meg here for TUTOR TUESDAY! Today has been hectic so I apologize for it’s lateness. But let’s look at male bodies and body types. I cannot stress enough that this is meant to be provide a few base body types that can then be compounded on as there are a MILLION body types out there. I’ve made anatomy tutorials and muscle/fat distribution tutorials that may help understand this one. This was recommended by @flowerlion-today , send in your recs here or my personal! Keep practicing, have fun, and I’ll see you next week!
Looking for Something? (Mobile)
Anatomy:
Arms
Breasts
Body Types
Feet
Female
Hands
Heads -Ears -Expressions -Eyes -Facial -Hair -Mouths and Lips -Noses -Tears
Humans
Legs
Male
Muscles
Pelvis
Proportions
Shoulders
Torso
Animals:
Anatomy
Antlers
Beaks
Behaviour
Ears
Facial
Feathers
Fur
Hooves
Horns
Insects
Legs
Paws
Talons
Teeth
Wings
Backgrounds:
Cityscape
Indoors
Organic
Perspective
Quick BGs
Simplistic
Brushes:
Photoshop
Paint tool SAI
Design:
Buildings
Character Design
Clothing
Environments
Folds
Heights
Maps
Names
Sketching
Skin Tones
Drawing and Colouring:
Canvas Size
Colour Palettes
Colour Theory
Comics
Composition
Lighting
Lineart
Painting
Quick Tricks
Shading
Traditional
Fantasy:
Armor
Archery
Horns
Mythical Animals
Mythology
Power Ups
Weapons
Wings
For the Artist:
Copyright
File Types
Exercises
Portfolio
Reminders
Tablets
Tips and Advice
Tools
Languages:
ASL
Ancient
French
German
Grammar
Italian
Japanese
Korean
Morse
Spanish
Misc:
Animation
Commissions
Cosplay
Crafts
Life
Master Lists
Psychological
Resources
School
Writing
Nature:
Blood
Clouds
Fire
Flowers
Grass
Landscapes
Lightning
Metal
Plants
Rocks
Space
Trees
Water
Wood
Poses:
Angles
Animals
Draw Your X
Humans
Movement
Multiple Persons
Programs:
Clip Studio Paint
Krita
Paint Tool SAI
Photoshop
Etc
World Building:
Buildings
Culture
History
Historical Clothing
Video
Links
Found it!
you cant just say you have a hack for drawing pinstripes and not tell us jude cmon
@thinktanks
Please excuse my shitty handwriting, I didn’t feel like waiting for photoshop to boot up so here’s how I do all my plant shit!!! Hope this helps!!!
How I Did the Mosaic Effect
You asked for it, so here it is- a shoddily composed but nonetheless candid and hopefully useful tutorial on the Mosaic Effect I used in the Mollymauk portrait. Those of a stout and courageous spirit, read on.
Keep reading
literally most things that people write off as just ‘textures’ to use in graphics are stolen & unsourced material created by artists or photographers NOT meant to be used as elements in projects without royalty payments. you can say ‘it’s just random tumblr posts they don’t care’ but you wouldn’t want someone to take your work and edit into their work so they can be praised for their beautiful style and creativity even if they just post it on social media w/o profit, would you?? so maybe if you browse pinterest or google images for pictures without finding the original source, you’re using images that you’re not allowed to use without realizing it.
you see it on here a lot especially in (i won’t link anything but i’m sure you know what i mean) those album track ‘aesthetics’ posts, au ‘aesthetic’ posts (you see these less in kpop, but where people use non-royalty free images to kinda craft a visual au), and even just rather typical graphics that have a lot of ‘texture’ elements. and texture packs too!! that’s often where the problem starts; people just collect images (often literal art), compile them in a folder w/o sources, then insist no one can repost those images w/o crediting the person who compiled them. what???
SO may i suggest some of my fave places you can get FREE, ROYALTY-FREE elements that are totally legal to use
creativemarket has 6 free high-quality resources (textures, brushes, fonts, etc), different every week! wow awesome i check it every week
search ‘freebie’ on behance. awesome stuff!!! lots of v nice templates textures and fonts
mockup zone freebies
unsplash: tons of very nice free photographs, not shitty stock photos
pexels: same idea. + they have an adobe plugin so you can get photos without closing your editor damn nice
pixelsquid is a super cool free program (again w a ps plugin that i love) with lottts of super cool hq 3d elements!
as to not make this too long: spoongraphics, lostandtaken (textures galore), pixeden, freebiesbug.
I’m gonna add a few more:
Morguefile is my favorite free stock photo site
Texturemate is full of excellent free textures, brushes, and patterns.
Transparent Textures actually lets you combine colors and patterns to build your own texture right there in the browser.
Love to see it!
ROLLED SLEEVES! To get the FREE MONTHLY How to THINK When You Draw digital MAGAZINE (including NEW tutorials, a YEAR before they appear online!) just GO HERE!
Lorenzo!
HEY THIS IS IMPORTANT whats your favorite place to find drawing references?
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!
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.
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As someone who draws a lot of faeries, Faestock is godlike.
A wonderful addition to the list!
Are there any good tricks for learning how to add "tension" to a pose? I try to draw very high energy and aggressive scenes but my characters always seem too relaxed? Like someone swinging a sword shouldn't look as if it's about to fly out of their hands. Same when trying to do "yelling/roaring", it's hard to show how much force is supposed to be behind it.
Hello! I don’t have a lot of simple one-step tricks, but I do have some pointers to help with the overall feel of a piece!
Usually I find this problem occurs when the artist doesn’t take into account the other parts of the body that aren’t directly doing the action (i.e. with swinging a sword, the grounding of the feet and the counterbalance of the center of gravity matters a lot!)
My final note is to study study study! If you really want something down-pat, you should get to know it on a technical level. This doesn’t mean you have to go out and take sword-fighting lessons to know how to draw sword-fighting, but watching some youtube tutorials on how stance and posture work (and how bad posture can affect the movement) will give you a broader sense of how this pose is supposed to work!
As artists, we are emulating life! We are actors! So testing the pose out yourself to feel which parts need tension is a good practice as well.
-Mod Future (ko-fi)
How to Make Your Art Look Nice: Flow and Rhythm
PROBLEMS WITH STIFF DRAWINGS/FIGURES?? Maybe keeping the concepts of rhythm and flow in mind will help! (maybe)
_________
Thumbnailing | Mindsets | Reference and Style | Color Harmony | Contrast
You may get asked this a lot, so please excuse my ignorance - but how do you go about constructing character expressions and body language and such? Thanks!
Besides The Basics (construction of heads and skulls and muscles and skeletons and how they move), I’ll go over some things I’ve been trying to work on myself lately:
1. Treat expressions as a single gesture of the face/head, as opposed to a head and then individual features dumped on a plate and arranged into an expression.
First, just get down the big shapes of your expression, just like you would for a pose.
So say I wanna do a low angle angry pose. I know the features are gonna be all mashed down at the bottom because of perspective.
Scribble it down
start to put on features
fix stuff
put on more stuff
fix stuff again
erasing and flipping and stuff a whole bunch until you are happy with it or stop caring
Whole head is a gesture!
2. Just like a facial expression, jot down where the important parts of an entire pose goes first. You can force the rest of the body to fit the pose.
So here I knew I wanted the shoulders tilted a certain direction, and te hand to be in that particular position in front of her face.
That’s the simplest explanation I got. Don’t be afraid to push and pull faces and bodies around! Worry about being “on model” last!
A helpful list of models for anatomy and other drawing references (x)
Key: (nsfw) Nudity | (£) Not Free
Female Models
MariaAmanda - Fantasy and fairy themed stock, mostly full body
Faestock - Expressions, portraits and poses, many with dresses
RobynRose - 360 angle lighting and pose sets, including expressions
Mirish - Futuristic and action inspired poses, all full body
MiraNox - Gothic inspired model including pin-up poses
ImperialStarlet - Poses with props including weapons
PrincessRowena (£) - Various poses with a fuller figured model
Liancar-art - Fantasy and medieval inspired poses
Male Models
BODYSTOCKS (nsfw) - Basic semi-nude athletic torso references
BirdsistersStock - Various everyday poses and portraits
Mousiestock - A small collection of back anatomy references
Justmeina (nsfw) - Nude anatomy reference portraits
Null-Entity - Different poses based on scenarios
Anyman82 - Military and vintage themed stock
Both/Other Models
SenshiStock - Huge collection of various action and everyday poses
Pyjamacake - Standard poses good for character bases
PhelanDavison - Futuristic and high-tech gear with action poses
Mjranum-stock (nsfw) - Classical nude portraits, and also action poses
Auroradreams - Many poses with dresses, and others such as children
MajesticStock - A large amount of poses with different body types
Animals
HOTNStock - Mammals including large felines and canines
LuDa-Stock - Equestrian and domestic animals
FurLined - Large and domestic felines
EternalOcean - Mostly wolves along with other various animals
Landkeks - All kinds of animals from a zoo
EdgedFeather - Close-ups of a wide range of birds
Other
Burtn - Natural landscapes and scenery
ProREF (£) - Urban and rural places such as abandoned buildings
Clz - Skulls and other bones
Please remember to follow the stock owners rules, happy drawing!