A pitfall a lot of people fall into when drawing afro-textured Black hair is that they draw the curls as if they were loose, using sharp shapes that imply a very different flow than you'd find with 4c-adjacent coils.
See below:
While all three are hair textures people can have, larger shapes and sharper points show an increased loss of texture. Ideally, you should be using small, fairly uniform shapes if you aren't familiar enough with Black hair to experiment with how you show texture.
There are a lot of ways to use sharpness and small detail when designing Black hairstyles that don't necessitate looser curls! Shaping/styling can really take you almost anywhere.
And don't just listen to me! Check out Ice @creatingblackcharacters for beautiful Black-made art and her incredibly detailed syllabus. The more you pay Black people their due attention, the better you'll get.
Razz's Rough Guide to Selecting Good Reference Photos for Darker Skin (and how to color pick without being Racist about it)
Say you're an artist, and you want to learn how to draw/paint and render darker skin. If you just type in 'dark skin reference' into your search engine, you're likely to get a range of photos that range from mid-toned skintones to some darker skintones, but notably a lot of the photos of those darker skinned individuals will... not exactly be the best photos in the world.
It's not as simple as just color-picking skin in a photograph and calling it a day. You need to do so with intention. And you need to be selective in what you gather for your reference materials, because color picking from a bad photo versus a good photo will make a world of difference.
Racism, Colorism, and Anti-Blackness are a big component to this discussion. Here's a quick example of good vs bad ref photo using the same model - Khoudia Diop.
The good reference photo (left): balanced neutral lighting, good exposure, good range of values across the model's face, nothing is overly washed out or under-exposed, the variance of undertones are visible, and the highlights don't overtake the rest of her skin.
The bad reference photo (right): the white balance is shifted to focus on her white outfit, and so her face is under-exposed. This flattens her face so that it appears muddied and de-saturated. Her face blends together into a flat dark blob (aside from the teeth shining as bright as the white outfit). This photo does this Black model a disservice, as the photographer and/or editor did not take the time and effort to re-balance the values.
If you want other resources that give tips and info about rendering and lighting on dark skin and how to avoid whitewashing and caricatures, I recommend looking at some of these various links to resources here. More under the read more.
Racism and Colorism are ingrained in everything, including art-forms like painting and photography. Photography has a history of colorism and anti-blackness. If you're interested in the history, there are a few articles and some videos I recommend as a taste tester about it. Here is a short video by Vox about the subject in regards to Kodak color film.
Even though technology has advanced to better accommodate varying skintones in photography, that doesn't mean that the long-standing racial bias has disappeared. The bias towards whiteness is deep, and often unconsciously perpetuated, so that even programs such as facial recognition software will struggle to identify a darker skinned person versus a lighter skinned person.
Modern day photography can still replicate the biased conditions of old film photography if the photographer is not mindful of their subject.
When looking for reference material, you will encounter both good and bad photos. Even if a photo by white standards has good lighting and technique, if the photographer or editor don't adjust the parameters to accommodate for darker skin, they can fall into many pitfalls.
The model's skin can be underexposed, flat, over-exposed, or washed out and gray. The photographer could over-emphasize the contrast so that the skin has overly bright reflections and shadows that swallow the rest of their face. They could be flattened so that only one or two hues of their skintone show through, while the rest disappear. They could be de-saturated so that all the richness and depth of their undertones are lost, and the model's skin becomes charcoal-like and ashy.
Often photographers will do grayscale photos of darker skinned subjects, as if to avoid having to deal with the problem of color adjustment in the first place. Sure, the grayscale can better capture the values of their skin, but it can still fall into the pitfalls of underexposure or washing them out.
So, given this knowledge that photography is susceptible to racial bias and can be done badly, how do we determine 'good' photos versus 'bad' photos of a darker skinned person (at least when it comes to looking for photo references)? What makes a good and bad photo is subjective, but these are my takes.
I'll take an example of a dark skinned model - in this case Khoudia Diop - and present some examples of what a 'bad' photograph of her can look like. These would be the types of photos to avoid using as reference for what darker skin actually looks like.
The first example ie the top left image of her is balanced to show the white detail of her outfit, but not at all balanced to show the detail of her face and skintone, and so her face and skin and hair are totally underexposed and flattened. The reflection of light on her face overly pops out like a bright light in a sea of under-exposed dark muddied features that blend into each other.
The second example in the top row completely de-saturates her face, giving her a gray-ish ashy charcoal-like tone to her skin, completely obscuring whatever undertones she may have. It looks deliberate, in contrast to the noticeable yellowed tone of her light colored outfit.
The third example in the top row places her in a white patterned outfit in front of a stark white background, that completely flattens her features into one or two hues, while the highlights and whites of her teeth stand out starkly as if in a void of under-detailed flattened brown.
The fourth example uses contrast to its detriment, leading to the shadows becoming too dark so that her features blend into the shadows; the corners of her mouth just fade into the darkness with hard to see boundaries. The highlights and reflections of light on her face give an almost ashy appearance.
The fifth example has her standing in a bikini, and while the lighting is not bad, the white lighting and editing drains away the variance of depth in her skin, making it all look like the same undertone almost as if painted on, when in reality bodies can greatly vary in undertone and depth of richness from one part of the body to another.
The sixth and last example of a 'bad' photo has her in a stark white outfit in front of black background, and whatever the hell is going on with the lighting on her face makes her look washed out and ashy.
Okay, so those are all examples of 'bad' photos. So what does a 'good' photo for photo reference look like?
Here are some examples I picked, of the same model, that I would consider 'good' photos to use as reference when you're trying to effectively depict darker skintones.
All four of these photos are nicely exposed and balanced so that none of her features are overly flattened or washed out. The undertone and depth of her skintone is on display in multiple locations, and the whites of her eyes and highlights of her skin are not so stark as to overtake the rest of her face. The reflectiveness of her skin is used to emphasize her facial structure without completely washing out the rest of her skintone. The white lighting used utilizes the reflective nature of her skin without overly coloring it reflect the environment.
These are good photos to use as photo reference. They have the model in neutral lighting, so that the skintone is not distorted by vibrant colors reflecting off the skin. Vibrant lighting can be useful, but if you want a more objective view of skintone, it is best to use neutral lighting.
Okay, so we have a metric of what a decent reference photo can look like, now how do we use the reference photo to color pick a skintone?
There are good ways to do it, and bad ways to do it. The bad ways are often done maliciously by people who want to whitewash on purpose. Let's start with the bad.
Say this image below is our photo reference. Pretty decent, right? The lighting is neutral white, nothing is over or under-exposed, the variance of her undertones are on display, and the reflections of the lighting on her face isn't too glaring. How could someone possibly muck up using this for reference?
I shall show you some of the ways someone may take an ostensibly good reference photo, and color pick ignorantly or maliciously from it.
So if those are the ways you SHOULDN'T color pick for a dark skinned ref image, how SHOULD you do it instead? Here's how!
If you put all these tips into practice, you'll likely have a much better time picking good reference material and color picking from aforementioned reference material.
But what if the artwork you're doing has dramatic lighting? How would that affect darker skin? I'm glad you asked!
Dark skin is reflective! Light bounces off dark skin in beautiful ways! Check out how vibrant lighting bounces off the skin of these models from the Afro Hair Index!
Whatever tones and hues the skin usually has will get tinted to reflect whatever lighting hits that skin. If you shine a blue light, all the highlights will be blue.
When it comes to studying how light interacts with skin, photos like these are great! They are not exactly good metrics for determining the base skin color outside of that dramatic lighting, however. If you want to render skin that's not affected by tinted lighting, it is best to use reference photos in neutral/white lighting.
I encourage anyone that wants to get better at rendering skin to do some studies of good photos, figure out how that light interacts with the skin, how the shadows and highlights bounce around the image, how different lighting and exposure affects the flatness or variance of values of the skin. It's a great way to level up your understanding as an artist!
It is up to our discernment and personal tastes what we decide as 'good' or 'bad' reference photos, but ultimately I hope this can help people find better material to work with instead of settling for the first image they find even if it's less than ideal.
(Thank you to my friends who helped me as I made this guide! Much love to @pleasantvoidphantom especially)
You said you approved my method of using colored pencils, and so i thought id try to explain my process in case its helpful to any else. (I think i saw someone struggling with vampires specifically do i tried to do that too).
Thank you for the help! For all the people who ever ask me how to work with colored pencils, I'm gonna link this!
I've recently re-found my own colored pencils, and have been digging around for references while I practice using them again (on top of other artsy things I've learned since I last used them), so I've got a few extra tips on working with colored pencils!
Some of the resources I've found:
This site has a TON of info about colored pencils, but this links specifically to a list of the tutorials and such (in particular, the "How to Blend Colored Pencils" and "Beginner Shading Techniques" should be useful to start with, but "How to Color Skin (with Markers)" also has a few useful tips, even though they used markers): https://sarahrenaeclark.com/resources/#resources
These two links are by someone who has and uses a big set of colored pencils, and a very realistic style. But you can utilize the concepts with fewer colors, using things like a lighter highlight/tone-matching color during layering (or white, mindfully, 'cause it might look great for pale skin or pastel clothes but will make dark skin look ashy like they did for the last example swatch), or just leaving the paper more visible for highlighted areas. This first one has more written guided info throughout, for testing out colors to see what will work best for a given person/character: https://web.archive.org/web/20250208115047/https://emmykalia.com/blog/mixing-colors-to-create-skintones
And this one mostly just has some info at the start, then a bunch of color lists for each sphere-shaped example, to get a better idea of how it can look working from highlight to shadow (with basic lighting) for different skin tones (though I think the darkest one they did could've had a better undertone, or used a different/additional highlight color): https://web.archive.org/web/20250811074254/https://emmykalia.com/blog/blending-and-layering-skin-tones
Not colored pencil specific, but if you do work on highlighting and shading, remember to look at references and refer back to CBC's lighting lesson! And all the links she collected there (I am personally particularly fond of Nilah Magruder's two-part essay, when it comes to a beautifully detailed breakdown of understanding how lighting looks on darker skin, and how to work with that in different art styles): https://www.tumblr.com/creatingblackcharacters/748394162559352832/the-same-place-as-the-music-lighting-color
Also not colored pencils, but since it's relevant and an incredible reference, a video by nickkbrownie doing gothic makeup that uses a blue undertone to look less lively: https://www.tumblr.com/creatingblackcharacters/810001815507779584
Adding a readmore for my specific notes on your example, @aworldofhealers, because I rambled a bunch and the post is already long:
To expand on what CBC said in her reply to your other ask, (assuming you only did one layer of each color) I suggest working with even lighter pressure, and alternate doing more layers of each color. (Like LB, then B, LB again, then B again, etc.) Not just to save your wrist, but also because it lets the colors blend better, and gives you more control over how light or dark an area is by doing more or less layers. (Like if the undertone is getting too strong, you can do more layers of B. Or if the undertone is getting lost, you can do more LB.) You can increase pressure as you do more layers, but "build up many lighter layers, instead of one/a few heavy ones" is generally The Tip I've seen for colored pencils. (The first site I linked has a couple tutorials that go over this concept. I personally prefer written tutorials, but the videos for the ones I pointed out have more step-by-step visuals, so they might be easier to follow and understand.)
This pairs well with another tip you got in a reply to that post, about finishing by glossing (which I have generally seen referred to as "burnishing"). Once you've got your colors looking about how you want, you can use one of the colors at heavy pressure as a (typically) final layer, pressing harder to fill in the texture of the paper and blend the existing colors even further. Play around with swatches like you have here, using different pencils to burnish with, to see which one you want to use for any given thing before you do it on a final piece. Note, though, that once you burnish, you'll have flattened out the paper texture, so there's less space for the colored pencils to fill in. You can still go over with other colors to make some small color adjustments, but it won't be as effective as doing so before burnishing.
(For this color combo, I believe you'll generally want to use B to burnish with in most areas. But if you did, say, a portrait that used these colors and had some strong highlighting, you might potentially want to instead use either LB, a lighter brown if you have one, or whatever the lighting color is, to burnish the highlights on the face. Colored pencils are semi-transparent, so using a lighter color to burnish will lighten the colors below it some, but not a whole lot. On the other hand, using a dark color to burnish will have a stronger darkening effect on light areas, and might end up covering/"erasing" the highlights you did. It'll also be influenced by how much color is already on the paper, since more color present means less space for the burnishing color to fill in. Exactly how, and how much, the burnishing color you use will have an effect on the existing ones might not be obvious, so it's best to test first!)
Doing a handful of lighter layers will also allow you to blend in more colors during the layering process...for example, if you wanted to do something like dramatic lighting, or be able to add some blush (for a living person, at least, if your vampires can't). Like (I think, can't be sure without testing), you could do LB, then B; then a light layer of your dramatic lighting color wherever there's highlights, with LB (or a shadow color) wherever there isn't; then a light layer of B over everything again to get the colors to blend and harmonize (maybe leaving the brightest highlight areas as-is); then keep light-to-medium layering with each color in their respective spots until it looks good; and lastly (if you want to) burnish with the lighting color where it's brightest, using B for the rest, and blending the two with medium-to-heavy pressure where they meet.
Another thing you can do is move the pencil in different ways as you color, to help make the directional strokes less obvious, or use them to your advantage. (Working with lighter pressure also helps with this, since the strokes can blend a bit better.) There's a bunch of different ways to approach this, such as:
Moving the pencil in different directions for each layer so they blend and obscure each other a bit (as demonstrated in a tutorial from the first site I linked).
Taking advantage of the fact that the stroke direction is visible, and moving the pencil so it follows the 3d curve of something to make it subtly look more Shaped (like moving it in slight arches that follow the curves of a cylinder in perspective, which arms and legs generally are; or following the slight curves of the forehead, cheeks, etc. to enhance the planes of the face).
Or moving the pencil in small circles instead of long strokes (which can be more natural-looking, and is perfect for afro texture if the strokes are visible, but also excellent for skin if the pattern is subtler).
Hopefully some of this was helpful! If you have any questions, let me know and I'll see if I can help (or find more tutorials if I can't).
It's not perfect- Strawpage's design tools are... not great- but I did my best to bring you all a Tumblr-free transcription of all my lessons. This is probably the most labor-intensive thing I've done for this page (next to the character polls). Four months of blood, sweat, and tears... and now, she LIVES!!!!
Some Notes:
I created it with the intent of Desktop use, so Mobile might have some issues. If it's not working on your phone, try desktop.
Out of the multiple browsers tested (Firefox, Google, Edge, Brave, Safari), Firefox had some issues sporadically.
I'm still going to post lessons on here, first. This page is priority to me, and the website is more of an archive.
The fonts are normal past this opening page.
I will be adding a portion to send funds soon, if'n you are feeling kind and generous.
Thank you all for your patience while I worked on this. It was a labor of love and I hope that it shows. šš¾ Happy scrolling!
I've made some slow but solid progress on the colored pencil brushes I've been making for Rebelle 7 and 8, and have gotten to the stage of checking how they work "in practice" (instead of just quick theoretical tests). It's proven to have been wise thus far, because some actual use (plus a few general questions folks had on the forums) has shown me there's a couple extra brushes that would be good to have, which I hadn't considered before. (In R7 so far, at least. One might be less necessary in R8, but we'll see when I get there.)
I do have a new piece I wanna try them out on, but with low spoons, it's...stuck in the "almost done with lineart" stage. So I pivoted to test out recoloring a drawing of sweetling Andy I did a little while ago, since the lineart's already good to go! It's also got some bonuses like being bigger than I usually work (so I can make sure these brushes function for print size, not just digital)...and large enough that I can split it vertically, with enough space to get thorough tests in R7 on one side and R8 on the other!
(The brush engine was remade for R8, so there's some distinct differences in brush behavior. Especially regarding how paper texture and blending interact, which is a pretty big aspect of my colored pencil brushes.)
I'm also doing this recolor test with the Prismacolor palette I pared down (to only include the ones I physically have), so I can eventually double-check brush behavior, and see if the colors blend decently accurately.
(I know that, like, black raspberry blends different physically, just because the pigment used for it looks way more bright and saturated when it's more spread out. Not much to be done about a unique material like that digitally. But besides that, gotta make sure the brushes set to darken mode don't cause too many incorrect hue shifts.)
The wild thing is that, despite using a totally different set of colors and blending methods? Thus far the skin, silver, Lumie blue, and (tiny bit of) matte "black" have been like. Identical. I mean, I aimed to get close, but I did NOT anticipate anything would be essentially indistinguishable.
The original used a Copic-based color palette and brushes in the Inks category, which have a built-in multiply-type effect when layering (which is why the shadows are super saturated), with one color per section. This time, I'm doing the Prismacolor-based palette with brushes in the Pencils category (which do not have the built-in multiply), manually blending 2-3+ colors to get something I only expected to be "close enough." And yet HERE WE ARE
(The pink is very different, but I could probably get near-identical if I used a pair of colors from the full Prismacolor set. I just don't have the physical pencils that are the right saturation/hue. The shiny black-purple leather and such is also more saturated, because I don't have a grey-purple, but like. It looks nice, and I can dull it later if it stands out more than I want, once I get more of the matte black arranged for comparison.)
In the preview below, everything to the right of the green line is the old ink coloring, while everything on the left has been done with my new colored pencil brushes:
Hey yāall I have an announcement! My web app that Iāve been working on, Afro Index, is now live! Itās a visual reference library of Black hairstyles, for artist, animators, writers, and anyone who wants to learn more about them!
Check it out at afroindex.org! šāØ
A reference library for Black hairstyles with accurate naming,
structured filtering, and curated reference images.
With Black redesigns, do you have opinions on interpreting crazy spiky anime hair (like Dragon Ball or Yu Gi Oh) as styled/shaped afros? I can't remember seeing it done that much, but recently there's been a few posts going around by donutsbagels that show all kinds of more elaborate hairstyles, including spiky ones that really reminded me of those anime styles! I think i really like the idea of the hair's silhouette being carried over on some redesigns, especially when it's particularly distinctive. But are there still some things to keep in mind? Like how to still make the hairstyle read as Black hair?
Go for it šš¾ @phoenix-before-the-flame has a short instructional on how to reconsider design during Black edits, if you want to refer to that!
I went looking to check whether I'd already seen the post that @creatingblackcharacters mentioned (I had), and while searching for it remembered a whole bunch of other resources that might be useful for you, Anon. So!
First, the short instructional that CBC was directing you to.
While I was looking for that, I also saw another question that they answered specifically about hair when doing redesigns!
Also, as CBC has said before, it's good to look at examples of how Black people draw themselves, to get an idea of how to stylize art without being disrespectful. (It usually comes up when folks ask about Black coding and/or furries, but it applies here, too. Especially with how racist anime can be sometimes.) So in that vein, here's two compilation posts from @phoenix-before-the-flame of some redesigns they've done.
Plus another compilation post I've seen before by @kenmaiii, of different ways they've drawn multiple types of hairstyles.
(Both of them have pinned posts for commissions by the way! Go check them out if you can!!)
For an even broader range of art styles, CBC often shares posts by Black artists on here, so you can check out that tag for more!
(For this link, I'll note that not everyone who has participated in these has been Black, but) the Draw This in Your Style events that CBC has been running are also full of good examples of how to adjust a character's design, focused on one specific character every couple weeks. And before that, she ran the Melanin Beam Challenge, which was a sort of free-for-all where folks submitted whatever character(s) they chose to do!
Going beyond just what CBC has directly shared and/or done as specific challenges, you can also search the "Black edit" tag on here. A lot of folks have been editing or redrawing a whole bunch of characters (anime and otherwise) to be Black for a long while!
If you have an easier time learning from guided tutorials, CBC recently got an ask sharing a book you can get that is specifically How to Draw Diverse Manga! My copy hasn't arrived, so I don't have detailed feedback yet, but you can check reviews on different sites to see whether that might be something you want to check out.
If you like or prefer videos, @naylissah (who has made some amazing picrews!!) has some excellent tutorials over on her youtube, both for specific hairstyles as well as broader character design thoughts!
Also also, Anon, your last question was partly answered (for styles you choose to do as a shaped afro, rather than as locs/braids/etc.) in the last image for Part 3 of the @donutsbagels series of posts you mentioned, if you've not seen all four of them yet! (The bottom of each posts links to the next in the series, if you've not clicked through all of those.) There are other ways to handle it depending on your art style, but it boils down to learning how to draw Black hair texture (and other features).
Expanding on that, you can do some research on natural hair sculpting to get an idea of what various cool hair silhouettes might look like in the real world. She's a Solar Being is very popular and incredibly creative with the hair sculpts she's done (and sometimes makes or shares 2d and 3d art that she's inspired folks to make), but you can also just search around the internet to find other examples!
Finally, whether you're new here or have been around a while, don't forget to (re-)check out CBC's syllabus! She's got several lessons about hair and drawing (and writing and thinking). They contain links to even more tutorials, plus resources and info about some basic types of hairstyles. Knowing what they're called will help make it easier for you to do your own further research, and find even more inspiration!
Absolutely wonderful reply with resources & information i highly agree with! Just wanted to add a little bit as well as someone that's done a decent amount of Black edits/Redraws/Re-imagines over the years also. ^-^
For me, the main thing i consider when trying to translate what would work is considering the original style itself (of course) then figuring out:-
-how can i more-or-less make the same shape/silhouette for the character and carry that over? (which is good that it's something that's being kept in mind already!)
-what style might be fitting and/or functional for the character themselves in that universe or setting (and you dont necessarily need to follow 'realistic' rules too closely obviously. i feel like a lot can be done with our hair regardless in a lot of awesome rule defying ways)
*even just freeballin it and being like 'i think they would look good with this' even if it doesnt necessarily match the silhouette is fine too, i think the most important part is Would They Rock This Style
-what texture might that be, since of course that can come in many different variations
The first time I attempted doing this with Sampo i wanted to follow the swoops in his hair as best as possible. Then i realized locs weren't particularly working for me and i switched it up to twists!
It mostly still follows the same hair flow and I feel it works better! plus its just very fun to render.
Another example is when I wanted to draw Choso. The first thing to come to mind was two puffs. I mean... cmon. This doesnt mean that other styles wouldn't work, but it's still good to think about what would be emulated onto the character. Everyone's gonna have different ideas even if we can agree on some!
š¬ 0Ā Ā š 211Ā Ā ā¤ļø 539Ā Ā·Ā i come bearing a choso >.>ā¦
Among many other examples:-
I dont have much anthro/furry experience but having drawn ponies there's really... not that big of a hurdle to hop in drawing Black or afro-textured hair there either. Same rules apply tbh. The subject is just Slightly different.
Though when pony-fying characters I have to consider the skintone, potential hair additions like the tail type/texture, cutiemark (or none), horns/wings, and what theyd be. In the MLPverse there are also dragons, griffons, changelings and other sorts of hooved animals; so to speak.
Human-wise, I put that kind of consideration into how a character might fix their hair, or what may skintone work nicely with their palette (while being mindful of harmful stereotypes). Ideally, it's just thinking about 'Would this work/what fits This character'
You cant go wrong with looking through the Black furry/Black Anthro artist tag for more examples. Or anywhere outside of Tumblr tbh.
Though some artists and furs I like (Black+POC) who can tackle this, for example, are:
@/satellitedusterart
@/cupiidzbow
@/ratycaks
@/tainted-sweet-meats
@/michaels-reality
@/marleemutt
@/toorurii
@/skunkes to name some.
š¬ 0Ā Ā š 42Ā Ā ā¤ļø 77Ā Ā·Ā the artist at work šØ
[ + the rough sketch :P]
Introducing my fucking FURSONAAAAA
I've been wanting to have a fursona I could draw myself as for so long and I finally settled on one :3 an
š¬ 3Ā Ā š 96Ā Ā ā¤ļø 364Ā Ā·Ā dawg they really just let anybody in this damn series
I also highly recommend @ligerbombz as a guide. i've seen some of the absolute best most creative renditions of these characters hairstyles being translated and I nod my head every single time. They also actually made a guide on afro-fying hair for anime styles.
š¬ 0Ā Ā š 75Ā Ā ā¤ļø 460Ā Ā·Ā Well when u get a question enough times it means that u finally have to make an attempt at a tutorialĀ šš
Thank you @magm
[the piece above can be found here.]
Unironically threads like this where people are like "Styles I Think [Fandom Here] Characters would have if they were Black" Or "Black Hairstyles i think [_] characters would have"; can be good direct visuals of hair being translated to fit a characters design. Even just browsing through posts/threads like these for a little while can get one thinking about how to approach it as well.
š¬ 3Ā Ā š 148Ā Ā ā¤ļø 462Ā Ā·Ā oshiankozuki @ twt made a wonderful thread of OP characters with black hairstyles
Here are a few more thread links for example:
MHA Characters | KNY Characters | Jojo's | JJK | Haikyuu etc etc just to share a lil sumn sumn.
Additionally, other artists that instantly come to mind that I like who are good at this are @/pcktknife (Kae) and @/ackee (Mani, formerly @/cinnimani ). Mani isn't much of a fandom artist anymore and more-so OC orientated, but I still highly rec you support her for that too! But a good example that comes to mind was her Undertale humanizations!
š¬ 3Ā Ā š 278Ā Ā ā¤ļø 1172Ā Ā·Ā FINALLY.. AFTER A WHOLE ENTIRE YEAR I WAS ABLE TO FINISH THIS LINEUP...! i've been wanting to redraw my lineup from 20
references and a lil bit of creativity are your friends when it all comes down to it. i think Pinterest or observing other artists approaches for later application en mass is always the best for that. (Not direct copying or tracing! But personal study and amalgamation that then becomes your own!)
If you find at least one Black Artist it is very easy to find more, whether they're also in the replies/tags/reblogs supporting each other or in the search bar. You just need to take the time to look!
All-in-all just remember to be mindful with your depictions and have fun. go wild truly :]
With Black redesigns, do you have opinions on interpreting crazy spiky anime hair (like Dragon Ball or Yu Gi Oh) as styled/shaped afros? I can't remember seeing it done that much, but recently there's been a few posts going around by donutsbagels that show all kinds of more elaborate hairstyles, including spiky ones that really reminded me of those anime styles! I think i really like the idea of the hair's silhouette being carried over on some redesigns, especially when it's particularly distinctive. But are there still some things to keep in mind? Like how to still make the hairstyle read as Black hair?
Go for it šš¾ @phoenix-before-the-flame has a short instructional on how to reconsider design during Black edits, if you want to refer to that!
I went looking to check whether I'd already seen the post that @creatingblackcharacters mentioned (I had), and while searching for it remembered a whole bunch of other resources that might be useful for you, Anon. So!
First, the short instructional that CBC was directing you to.
While I was looking for that, I also saw another question that they answered specifically about hair when doing redesigns!
Also, as CBC has said before, it's good to look at examples of how Black people draw themselves, to get an idea of how to stylize art without being disrespectful. (It usually comes up when folks ask about Black coding and/or furries, but it applies here, too. Especially with how racist anime can be sometimes.) So in that vein, here's two compilation posts from @phoenix-before-the-flame of some redesigns they've done.
Plus another compilation post I've seen before by @kenmaiii, of different ways they've drawn multiple types of hairstyles.
(Both of them have pinned posts for commissions by the way! Go check them out if you can!!)
For an even broader range of art styles, CBC often shares posts by Black artists on here, so you can check out that tag for more!
(For this link, I'll note that not everyone who has participated in these has been Black, but) the Draw This in Your Style events that CBC has been running are also full of good examples of how to adjust a character's design, focused on one specific character every couple weeks. And before that, she ran the Melanin Beam Challenge, which was a sort of free-for-all where folks submitted whatever character(s) they chose to do!
Going beyond just what CBC has directly shared and/or done as specific challenges, you can also search the "Black edit" tag on here. A lot of folks have been editing or redrawing a whole bunch of characters (anime and otherwise) to be Black for a long while!
If you have an easier time learning from guided tutorials, CBC recently got an ask sharing a book you can get that is specifically How to Draw Diverse Manga! My copy hasn't arrived, so I don't have detailed feedback yet, but you can check reviews on different sites to see whether that might be something you want to check out.
If you like or prefer videos, @naylissah (who has made some amazing picrews!!) has some excellent tutorials over on her youtube, both for specific hairstyles as well as broader character design thoughts!
Also also, Anon, your last question was partly answered (for styles you choose to do as a shaped afro, rather than as locs/braids/etc.) in the last image for Part 3 of the @donutsbagels series of posts you mentioned, if you've not seen all four of them yet! (The bottom of each posts links to the next in the series, if you've not clicked through all of those.) There are other ways to handle it depending on your art style, but it boils down to learning how to draw Black hair texture (and other features).
Expanding on that, you can do some research on natural hair sculpting to get an idea of what various cool hair silhouettes might look like in the real world. She's a Solar Being is very popular and incredibly creative with the hair sculpts she's done (and sometimes makes or shares 2d and 3d art that she's inspired folks to make), but you can also just search around the internet to find other examples!
Finally, whether you're new here or have been around a while, don't forget to (re-)check out CBC's syllabus! She's got several lessons about hair and drawing (and writing and thinking). They contain links to even more tutorials, plus resources and info about some basic types of hairstyles. Knowing what they're called will help make it easier for you to do your own further research, and find even more inspiration!
Since a lot of asks you've shared are around how to portray Black characters in visual art, I wanted to share a book I found!
It's called "How to Draw Diverse Manga", and it's written by Black manga artists with an emphasis on how to draw hairstyles, facial features, and other characteristics with respect and intention.
I'm trying to learn to illustrate right now, and it the first book I started using. I've really enjoyed learning from the book.
Anyway, I hope you have a fantastic day! Here's a link to the book:
It looks like the Thriftbooks and Book Outlet links on that page have some listings of the physical book available cheaper than most/all of the ebook options! So for folks on a budget, if one of the library-type options isn't available, those might be affordable alternatives! (At least if you're in the US/Canada, for their relatively cheap shipping.)
Okay I JUST realized I never posted these on hereā- BUT BASICALLY, about a year and a half ago I started doing these experimental black hairstyle posts that were threads long on Twitter, to give artists a source of inspo for their black ocs whose hair they wanted to try something new with! Thereās more to black hair than just the selected styles portrayed in media, and I thought it would be fun to show people how much texture, shape, fades, length, and style can be combined when drawing black hairā-cause itās a kind of manipulation our hair can do irl! The OG thread from when I made these a year ago were lost with the hacking of my original Twitter account (@/bagels_donuts) but Iāve since reuploaded the whole thread to my new Twitter (@/ItsDonutsFR)! I hope artists on tumblr find these useful, sorry it took me so long to post them hereššš¾ Iāll upload them all in parts!
Part 1: Long masc hairstyles + playing with fades
š¬ 2Ā Ā š 715Ā Ā ā¤ļø 1008Ā Ā·Ā Part 2: shape, style, and length with femme styles!
Boring tired disclaimer: Keep in mind that this is an introductory "drawing" "tutorial" and has some generalizations in it, so not every āX is Zā statement will be true for Actual People. Which happens to be true for everything in general. Links below so that you can research and do a nuance. Ones that were directly mentioned are bolded.
Writing a blind character 101
What to avoid etc
Video on types of white canes
Video on types of cane tips
Some more explanation on white canes + tips + other stuff
Guide animals
Video on working with a guide dog
ā if you're doing a non-dog non-horse animal please still perceive those two links. A guide animal is not a GPS that tells you "left" or "right" (in fact, you're the one telling it which direction you want to go). So before giving them something weird check if it actually makes sense. You can make a fantasy animal that still makes sense I promise š¦®š
But why are Magical White Eyes a problem
Same as above
Going blind from an accident
Video on conformers
World's most basic "what do you call someone with albinism"
The blindfold thing. No people don't wear these.
This mostly stupid trope of covering a blind character's eyes because lord forbid someone sees a disabled body part
This just stupid trope of giving a blind character some bs superpower to "see"
The echolocation thing that every other blind oc does for some reason
Just give them a cane good lord if you want a character that can see perfectly then maybe don't make them blind
Bonus: if your character has a bunch of scars or whatever else then congrats! You made a character with a facial difference. Which is also something you should research.
