it's wip wednesday! time for a tutorial that nobody asked for.
i screenshotted this on a whim the other day, halfway through drawing the lovely @vicariouseater (who has kindly given me permission to share this behind-the-scenes look at how his 'fatter' drawing was made <3)
fair warning: i've never had a lesson and I'm not a professional artist, so I have no idea what the technical terms are for things, but here u go. i just know that i personally love watching/looking at random tutorials, so maybe someone else will enjoy it?
because i try to mimic how every individual's body stores fat, first i identify where the weight sits, and visualise how that might change with more weight. I then use my flawlessly-placed arrows and many years' experience of staring at fat bodies like a pervert to inform the 'fatter' outline:
(not pictured: me drawing and re-drawing the same lines 80 times to reach the final result, ft me constantly drawing on the wrong layer. we'll just all politely pretend i'm really efficient and knocked it out in one attempt)
(also not pictured: me filling in the outlines on a lower layer with a colour i think roughly matches the middle tones of the drawing, so I can see the highlights and shadows in the next step)
then it's time for my absolute favourite part: colouring in!!
at this point i just block everything out, following the lines of the body, drawing the values from the reference image to make sure the lighting and values roughly match, whilst also attempting to work out where light and shadow would fall on a body that's now wider and has deeper creases and folds.
optional extra for more seamless blending: go in with a brush on 50%-ish opacity and overlap the layers, so the graduation is softer
if you squint at this stage, it should look roughly how you want it to come out.
then it's time for some blending! i switch between a blurred brush and a textured blending brush, depending on whether things are looking too messy or too smooth:
from here i typically add a few more layers, working on tidying everything up and adding more details, since they tend to get blended away if you add them too soon
the final stage is, apparently, additional highlights to mimic glistening body oil, because i live for the drama. if my model has/has requested visible stretch marks, i also add those (usually on a soft light layer set to approx 50% opacity, so they match the values of light/dark on the skin a little better)
(there is also a secret final step, in which i stare at it for ages trying to work out if it's actually awful or whether i'm being too hard on myself, at which point i usually go and make a cup of tea. upon my return i can better tell whether or not something is actually seriously wrong or whether i've just been looking at it for too long)
if you made it this far, thanks for reading! please also feel free to send me a DM if you would like to be drawn fatter!
stormborns
prguitarman
discoholicmusic
gummygunk
tangentwithtanner
annaxmalina
theartofmadeline
