how did you learn to draw in the DP art style so well? i've been trying lately and it is NAWWWT coming out right 😔
Hey there anon, I'm so glad you asked because I love to talk art.
Now to be fair, I am formally/traditionally trained in fine arts/animation and have been making art for years, so replicating art styles comes easily to me, but what's always worked best for me was observational study.
The good news is you can learn this too! This is a fundamental skill anyone can build even without schooling, it only takes practice and patience. The best way to train your observational eye is to draw from life, still-life and live figure drawings are the way to go. Yes it's a grind and can be frustrating at first but once you get more comfortable looking at something three-dimensional and replicating it as close to life as possible then you'll be able to replicate any stylized art. A lot of online advice says to trace to learn, but I can't stress this enough, this will not take your growth as far as you think. Building up strong free-hand foundations and hand-eye coordination is more important than making perfect looking art. Instead, draw from life. Draw your friends, family, pets, yourself in a mirror, or whoever catches your eye. Draw boxes/furniture, items in front of you, put together silly still-life set ups that don't make sense to help you learn how to draw angles and shape-forms correctly. If you challenge your brain and your eye then you will strengthen your skills. Don't be afraid to work quickly, giving yourself less time to draw something will teach you how to see the whole shape of a gesture/object instead of only focusing on every little detail looking "right". Don't be too precious with your studies, it's okay if some fail, you can always try again. A big part of drawing is understanding the overall form of what you're replicating as well as learning to see the negative space objects and poses create. A fun trick that never fails for observational drawing is any time I'm not sure which direction an angle goes, I line my pencil up with it to see which tilt is the correct angle, because no matter how hard you look at something sometimes your eye still might not translate it right without measuring. (also limit drawing from photos when possible, photos are good for harder to find references/things you can't physically have in front of you, but be aware that camera lenses distort three-dimensional space/lighting and you will miss some fundamentals if you only ever use photographs.)
If you're comfortable working like this, or already know how, then learning the DP style should come easier. A major trick to nailing DP's style is utilizing negative space, a lot of the proportions of the character shapes rely heavily on the outside of the overall form (sharp distinct angles that slope into rounded shapes, triangles and rectangles forming between the negative space for legs/arms/hair) I learned to draw DP 1:1 by studying screenshots and redrawing them (no tracing, use only your eye) Once I did that a few times my eye and hand "understood" the shapes and now I can rotate them any which way I want, though I have taken to stylizing slightly away from 1:1 canon because I have some design preferences for the characters (mostly I think they look better/more teenagery a bit more stretched in the torso/legs with blockier feet)
Remember that everyone works at their own pace and there's no rush to get to where you're going, just keep on trucking and you'll get there. So that's my advice, take it or leave it, but always have fun and never stop drawing!
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