PaintedRiver

A blog dedicated to my original artwork. I am a spoonie (CFS/ME) a sculptor, and a knitter, currently working on teaching myself wire wrapping and illustration. Due to the whole spoonie thing, my posting schedule is unpredictable. Such is life.

[juiche]

If you ever wondered where water lilies come from.. they're a magical fishlady's dandruff 🐟 Sometimes it just be like that.

[mel-lion-deactivated20201213]

So you might be saying: Lion why a guide on drawing black people? Well young blood it’s because a lot of people cant…seem…to draw…black people..Amazing I know. 

Racist (caricatures) portrayals of black people have been around forever, and to this day people can’t seem to draw black people like they are human. If your artwork resembles any of the above even remotely your artwork is racist and offensive. If you try to excuse that as a stylistic choice you’re not only a terrible artist, but racist too!!! Congrats.

Whitewashing is also a problem. A lot of people refuse to draw black features on canonly black characters. While this example isn’t colored, lightening the skin-tone of a character is also considered whitewashing. So lets start with features!

Now all black people have different noses thats a no-brainer, but black noses tend to have flatter bridges, and wider nostrils. Please stay from triangular anime noses and small button noses. Your drawings should not depict black people with abnormally large noses. (Especially if you do not draw other characters this way)

If you feel like the way you draw lips on black characters is offensive or resembles a caricature,it probably does and you should change it. ABSOLUTELY AVOID PLACING LIPS AT THE BOTTOM OF THE FACE. 

Hair is so diverse! Please get used to drawing braids, locs,kinks and coils! If you can learn to draw ringlets and long waves you can learn how to draw black hairstyles.

Add clips! Learn how to draw baby-hairs and never be afraid to add color Pinterest and Google are free my dudes! Also try using square brushes for blocking in coils.

OK THAT’S ALL YOU GUYS

P.S Take a screenshot of hate/ ignorance in the comments and dm it to me for 10% off a commission 

[paintedriver]

Dragon bottle #4 complete! Their name is Fireglow <3

This concludes the series of prototypes I made to work out the process. Next I’ll move on to a couple of custom commissioned dragon bottles, and then I’m thinking of offering the ones I make after that for sale.

[paintedriver]

at long last, progress is made on my latest dragon bottle! I figured out how to get the scale texture I wanted, and now I’m venturing into the exciting world of wings

[paintedriver]

Dragon bottle no. 4 continues to progress in fits and starts. As one of my experiments in technique, I did the base sculpt of the body in a softer grade of sculpey and pre-baked it. Then I'm going to add skin and texture over the top. Hopefully this will make it easier to use a stamped scale texture without worrying about messing up the form if I press too hard.

[starshinebeast]

Having troubles with facial angles in your drawing style?

Try a 3D sculpture of your art in your own style in a free program that is simple and very easy to use.

The program is called Sculptris and is a free off-shoot program from Zbrush, that program that you keep hearing about but either takes selling your kidneys or piracy to actually use. 

If you download it and sculpt out a facial model, you can have references for your own work for all of time. No more endlessly searching Google for reference materials or twisting/rotating/flipping a drawing to see if there are flaws. And you can easily edit it to create more facial types. This way, you can make character references for any and every face and facial angle that you can think of.

The program offers mirroring right from the start, so your faces will be perfectly symmetrical. You can turn off the symmetry for things like scars or otherwise. 

It takes a little time. For instance, I downloaded the program on Christmas and, in my spare time, this took a few days of getting familiar with the program (first day) and then sculpting for a few minutes each day, mostly due to my perfectionist nature. And this one isn’t even done. I still have to mold the mouth, ears, and other smaller aspects before I consider it done. However, I was so giddy over the possibilities that I wanted to share this with my fellow artists.

From now on, I have reference for a face in my own style and will be able to create things so much easier in the future.  I hope that this helps you guys and that you have fun with it. 

[cassiesart]

I absolutely recommend Sculptris!

[artkat]

UH

GUYS????

This really useful oh my goodness. It takes a little figuring out, but once you get the hang of it it’s actually pretty easy. Just watch a couple youtube videos. Seeing how other people do it helps you to make sense of it.

OH BOY LOOK AT THIS HANDSOME IDIOT do you know how hard his stupid face is to figure out at different angles? DO YOU??? Now I have a 3D ref!!! AAAHH!! so excite much 3d wow very angles wow

[animatorzee]

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: sculptris is an amazing 3D modeling tool for how small it is and is a great place to start whether you just want drawing references for your characters or you actually want to get into 3D modeling.

I highly recommend it.

[shinymega-gengar]

freAKIN’ WHOA

Hahaha crappy first attempt \o/

[genericspecies]

This might be helpful for someone, different angles can be really hard to get for less-common species and complex characters.

[paintedriver]

I made some lizards! These are molded off a dollarstore lizard boi, made of sculpey. They’re for my mom, who makes these awesome mosaic bowls and flowerpots, sometimes with garden patterns on them. I’m excited to see what she does with them!

May make a few in metal clay later, but our stock probably needs re hydrating first.

[paintedriver]

I’ve been teaching myself wire wrapping from a book, here are some of my practice projects. Stars are f-kn hard >:[  Since it took me so many tries to get half decent ones, I used the overflow to make this necklace. I kinda want to do a pair of earrings to match, but that means more stars -_-

[d-cookie-deactivated20210317]

I don't know who needs to hear this but...

Y'all are allow to use references. Like people out here are like using refs are cheating I...

Use references You're gonna look like a fool if you say this shit to someone who like...does this shit for a living

Please for the Love of God has references PLEASE

Anyone who says real artist don't use references don't know what they are talking about

I didn't spend most of my college career learning about art and history of for y'all to be saying this nonsense

[cipheramnesia]

Sorry, who is out there saying artists can’t use references? That’s like a huge chunk of the whole history of art?

[winter-lele]

It was a whole thing on devaintART in the early/mid 2000s. Like some people decided that using references was as bad as tracing. And there were so many young artists like “hey check out this work I did WITHOUT A REFERENCE because I’m not a TALENTLESS HACK who CHEATS to make my art c:”

It was a wild time lmao

[cipheramnesia]

That... that... they... Are they aware of like... every artist? In history?

[explorerrowan]

This is how you get comic book artists that don't know how anatomy works.

[d-cookie-deactivated20210317]

Damn you didn’t have to kill half the comic book industry like that

[fishbaby]

I also want to point out that tracing isn't actually bad. it's how a lot of people start. there are plenty of resources specifically for this, many largely aimed at children. it's not cool to make people feel bad for starting at the beginning. it's not ok to tell kids that the way they learn is bad

[paintedriver]

Finished a new code scarf! This one says ‘dance in the rain.’

These are scarves I design where the number of ridges in each horizontal stripe corresponds to a letter via a basic number-letter substitution (1=a, 2=b, etc) so the scarf has secret words knitted into it.

check out my other code scarves here and here

I am considering taking commissions for custom code scarves. Is there anyone out there who would be theoretically interested?

[paintedriver]

Finished and pre-baked the head for my current dragon bottle! I challeged myself to try and get a specific look, instead of letting it turn out however as long as it looked decent. It took me three tries to the get the face how I wanted it, but I’m pretty proud of the result. This is also my first experiment with making this kind of scale texture from scratch, and that wasn’t as I hard as it sounded.

[paintedriver]

Code Scarves

So I’ve started designing and making scarves with words coded into them. Like, not actual text knitted in, but a series of horizontal stripes. The number of ridges in each stripe corresponds to a letter based on a basic number-letter substitution (1=a, 2=b, etc.) 

this one is a birthday present for my niece. At her request, it’s rainbow ombre with a white background, and spells out ‘kitty.’

other code scarves here: https://paintedriver.tumblr.com/post/612909003185520640/code-scarves

[paintedriver]

Code Scarves

So I’ve started designing and making scarves with words coded into them. Like, not actual text knitted in, but a series of horizontal stripes. The number of ridges in each stripe corresponds to a letter based on a basic number-letter substitution (1=a, 2=b, etc.) I’ve made like four of them so far, pictures coming soon.

[paintedriver]

My first completed code scarf. The colored stripes, in an ombre of yarns from white to red, say ‘I love you.’

[paintedriver]

code scarf # 2, using black and a really fun ombre yarn. It says ‘fierce’ on both ends.

[paintedriver]

Code Scarves

So I’ve started designing and making scarves with words coded into them. Like, not actual text knitted in, but a series of horizontal stripes. The number of ridges in each stripe corresponds to a letter based on a basic number-letter substitution (1=a, 2=b, etc.) I’ve made like four of them so far, pictures coming soon.

[paintedriver]

My first completed code scarf. The colored stripes, in an ombre of yarns from white to red, say ‘I love you.’

[paintedriver]

DRAGON WINGS!!! XD

[paintedriver]

In process dragon armature. I figured out a much better way of doing the feet, by twisting each one out of one long piece of wire instead of trying to bind together a bunch of separate pieces. They’re stronger, more flexible, and look way better. So I ended up re-doing the whole armature based on that approach.

[paintedriver]

Summer roses

taken in my front garden. Model is Lila Acuña Pryor