Red-learning

Hello! This blog is intended to help learning artists to grow by offering friendly and (hopefully!) helpful critique in the form of redlines. I am a freelancing artist who loves to help others in this area of interest! You may call me Robin! I'm joined by my best friend, Cardinal. We've been doing art together for over a year now! Please go to red-learning.tumblr.com/submit to show me your stuff, or you could click on that 'let me see what you've got' link below!

[red-learning]

Someone please tell her the hands are backwards…;;

That is a little bit of an oops, but I’ve made the same mistake in my time.  Just a reminder that this is a self-help blog. This is not intended to shame other artists. 

- Robin 

[red-learning]

is it alright to submit traditional art if it's in good lighting?

Definitely! :) Go right ahead, thank you so much!-Robin

[red-learning]

any chance we can see the admins' work? c: you guys seem super gooddd

I have this file saved as “hot.png”. In all seriousness, our issue with sharing a piece is that we don’t want it generally known who we are! We intended to start this blog as an act of service to the community and to help growing artists out, not really to gain any praise ourselves (though we really really appreciate your sweet words! I hope that makes sense!). However, I would be willing to share my art blog name with you or anyone who wants to come off anon! I’d just prefer it not be very widespread knowledge, if that’s all right c”: Cardinal doesn’t want to share his blog right now.-Robin

[red-learning]

Oh my goodness! 30+ followers, where did you guys come from? Thank you all so much for joining us! Cardinal and i are out of new material to redline! Does anyone have anything they'd like to submit? And hey, i just thought id put out there that if anyone would like it, we'd totally do more than redline too. We can help with color and greyscale adjustments, composition ideas, etc! :) just let us know in your submission. Thank you so much! -Robin

[red-learning]

Hi!

I’m working on this picture for a competition over at the Cubebrush forums: I’ve been correcting it and correcting it but the pose doesn’t seem quite right. I’m suspecting I should raise the hips - she’s supposed to be propelling herself out of the cube. I get the impression I’m really messing up her mid section, but I’ve yet to find out how to fix it.

This is not the first image of this kind I attempt, but I always end up unhappy with them - I’d like to be able to draw bodies in unconventional poses - while I did look at various photos for reference, nothing was quite what I needed, so I think I’d prefer to also strengthen my ability in drawing foreshortened bodies!

Thanks in advance for any advice!

Hello there! Thank you so much for the submission! :)

First and foremost, very interesting piece! I very much like how dynamic it feels. She definitely looks ready to spring into action, and according to your description, that might not be what you are looking to portray? She seems as if she is prepared to leap, not necessarily having already leapt forth from the cube. Cardinal had some good suggestions on alternative poses you might be interested in, but I just went ahead and tried to redline what you had so far!

Only a couple of things needed a little bit of help in this one, the shoulders and the neck being the most prominent. It’s difficult to express too much with the torso in this pose because from this perspective we see so little of it, but here are a few things that would help!

Widen the shoulders slightly. They are rather narrow in the original image, and in females an average shoulder set is typically half of a horizontal head distance away (so like, from nose to cheek/ear), and that’s considered the minimal. 

Even if it’s also minimal, consider possibly adding some portion of the neck. In your original piece, it’s difficult to tell exactly where her head connects with her body. Even in this pose you should see just a touch of where her head might connect to her back, clavicle, and sternum.  

In the above photo, the pictured woman is looking up in a fashions similar to your character (not the same view obviously, but the same action). You can see that this causes her sternocleidomastoids (those two muscles that connect from the base of the skull by the ear and then wrap forward into the sternum) to project forward because they are flexed when the head looks upward. You’d likely be able to view them to some degree in your piece, and just as well the trapezius muscle (connects behind the back of the neck to the shoulders and further down the back) would likely be visable (see below).

With all of this said, I would also consider a change in composition. The character’s left arm being extended creates a leading line for the viewer, and while that can be a good thing many times, it is very good to know when to use them! In this instance, the leading line is leading the viewer to the edge of the piece because her fingers are directing our line of sight there. You don’t want the viewer to leave without fully appreciating your work! I would definitely consider the possibility of altering her arms and fingers so that they keep the viewer contained. Perhaps Cardinal’s suggestions could be of use in this area as well! He’s currently asleep, but I’ll ask him for his portion of this critique when he wakes up :)

Though the torso is minimal in this image, it’s important to make sure that you show the segments of it! From her pose, you could likely see three different sections that’ll help us translate her anatomy: her chest, abdomen (the blocked in section), and then pelvic area. 

Thanks so much for the submission, and I hope this helped you out at all! -Robin

[red-learning]

Are you still accepting submissions? c:

Absolutely! We’re dealing with some life stuff at the moment and I’m going to be on vay-cay for a couple days, but we are always excited to get more material. Thank you oh so much!-Robin

[red-learning]

Hi! This is fanart for tumblr user leftboob-enthusiast’s character, Saynte.

I worked on it for a couple of hours yesterday and was overall pretty satisfied with the result, but a i’ve been looking at it for a while now and there seems to be something a bit off??? idk 

It’d be cool if you guys could give me a few pointers :) 

Robin says: Hey there, thanks so much for the submission! :)

I took some time to redline this evening for you! I know Cardinal was working as well so we’ll see if he adds to this within the next few days. There are a couple little things I think you could adjust to take the drawing to where you want it! 

Adjusting the facial structure! The eyes are a touch too big, the ear too low, and the general skull structure is a little large. Similarly, double check yourself in the future by drawing the midpoint of the facial features to make sure they line up. We can see the midline of the lips, but not of the nose, so the nose needs to be turned more towards us or the lips turned further to our left. 

I’m not as confident on the hair as I would like, but I believe that because the hair facing us is shaved that less would be able to reach her left shoulder. Additionally, unless her hair was really really wild, it would obey gravity around the structure of the head (the distance from the head would be determined by the hair’s thickness). 

The shirt has some inconsistent properties! By her arm we can see that it is low cut and hanging loose, and it bunches around the bottom. In contrast, the fabric is tight around her chest, even appearing suctioned on in some areas. I went ahead and loosened it on her chest as opposed to tightening it elsewhere, as she doesn’t appear busty enough to cause the shirt to be tight just around her chest.

I adjusted some of the muscles in the arm, wrapped her scars so that they follow the form that is created, and shortened the arm altogether. You had the endpoint for her fingers at about the right spot (about 5 heads down the body), but that is taking extended fingers into account, and it appears that her fingers are relaxed. 

Her bellybutton is either too low or her elbow too high, as in a standing position the two are about level.

This largely depends on the current pose and direction the character is travelling, but in comparison to the direction her shoulders are pointing towards, her right leg appears to be traveling behind her left leg, creating a feeling of unbalance. I tried to move it over and show less of it to create some more depth.

Thank you so much, I truly hope that this helped! :) -Robin

[red-learning]

Hello! I hope you don’t mind the size. For some reason Sai won’t let me save the smaller versions -_-“. When drawing male characters, I always have trouble drawing the lower body. The pelvic area always ends up looking way too feminine.

Hey there, thanks so much for the submission! :) Cardinal and I took a look at this piece this evening and came up with a few ideas for you! Here’s my (Robin) redline:

The first thing I suggest would be to look up a reference of whatever it is you’re attempting to convey with your artwork. In this piece, I’m not exactly positive as to the intention with the placement of the legs. I’m guessing that he’s walking forward, but the perspective on the feet suggests he’s moving downhill (because the front-most foot’s toes are pointing away - to the bottom left - while the character’s shoulders are head on). I went ahead and found a couple references on google of a man walking (please feel free to take a look yourself!) and offered this new setup. His feet are now directed toward the camera, sharing an orientation with his shoulders. Additionally, watch to make sure that the feet don’t cross in front of one another when you draw them, unless the character is moving this way intentionally. It’s important to show balance! I also went ahead and moved his belt up, as it was a little low and close to his crotch. Additionally, to suggest that his left leg is moving forward, you could include bunches of fabric where the thigh is elevating. The crease will follow the form, and because it is stretching the fabric out the right leg will have no crease. Cardinal’s contribution is this piece is shown below!:

We agreed that something else that could be added to push the masculinity in the character - despite his non-traditional thinner build - could be in the form of offering him a more powerful pose to exist in. Not necessarily this pose, but it is a good example of pushing the “power” feel in your character! More confidence in his arm placement and a more dramatic positioning of his legs will help the work and the character read as confident, powerful, and other typically masculine traits. -Robin

[red-learning]

New mod!

*Hey everyone! Please give a warm welcome to our latest mod addition, Cardinal. I’ll let him introduce himself! <3  -Robin

HI GUYS, I’M CARDINAL

Uh

>__>

<__<

S-sup...

Okay, for real though! Hey there, I’m Cardinal! I was found by Robin inside of a rutabaga in the Appalachian Mountains, where I was evicted from my home by the Miami Heat. I now reside inside of Robin’s pocket, occasionally assisting in making redlines. If there’s one thing you must know about me, it is that I am absolutely serious at all times, and I take absolutely nothing lightly. Eveeeer.

~Cardinal

[red-learning]

So, what’s happening is the guy grabbed the girl by the neck and pushed her against the wall. I think the main problem is I have a hard time putting figures into perspective. Also, I think the hand around her neck is too tight?

Thank you so much for the submission! :) I really like how dynamic and interesting this scene is, a very tense moment and it makes me rather curious as to what’s going on. Perspective can definitely be a tricky devil (... accidental jokes). Do you have one of those wooden art dolls? If not, I recommend getting one, they can be very handy for situations like this. 

Because the pose is a bit more complex, I’m just going to focus on some of the anatomy and perspective for this one. Hope that’s okay! I broke it down into steps to talk about each of my choices.

Let’s begin!

I broke the female’s body down into basic segments and tried to match your original pose best I could. The trick with perspective is making the stuff towards the viewer bigger than the stuff further back - this can make measuring things with head lengths difficult, but it’s manageable !  Now, I’m not sure how far back that table goes; in the original image it appears that just her head is vertical while her body is mostly flat, so I kept that (as opposed to propping her torso up as well).

Here I attached her arms. Now, I’m not sure of her age, but in the original image her short little arms could make her look quite childlike. If you raise your own arm above your head, you can determine that your elbow goes past the top of your head, and since your elbow is about halfway through your arm, the rest of the arm can be determined from that. Remember that the elbow falls right in line with the bellybutton, so the “arc” of the elbow away from its resting position should make sense! Now, her left arm is a bit more tricky. You can get away with pretty much anything when things are in perspective, so I just lengthened the arm a little and made the hands a touch bigger. The length of your hands is the same as that of your chin to just above your eyebrows typically (at least with the middle finger), so you can use that to measure her hand, and then enlarge it slightly to keep with perspective.

Now for the legs. Feet can be a pain in the butt to deal with, I know. The main tip I have for you is to think of how the feet would be pointed with the legs  - in your image, her left knee is pointing outwards, and her foot straight on to the viewer. That would be very painful! To keep in line with perspective, I also enlarged her foot and lengthened her legs. It’s up to you to determine how big/wide her foot is as per her character. 

Now onto the male figure! I wasn’t sure if you wanted him actively running into the scene from the left or not, but seeing as how you did a pretty good job of it in your original, I went ahead and offered an alternative. I gave his face some strategic “bulge” to signify the brow and cheek; little changes like this can go a long way in helping to express your character’s form in space! I updated his extended arm to reach to the female’s lengthened wrist, and changed his right arm to signify a little more power in his grip. Yes, you were very correct, the hand on her neck was a little too tight! For most choke-hold grips, the fingers aren’t able to wrap all of the way around unless the hand is particularly big or the fingers particularly long. I didn’t put too much detail into the hands, just the general idea so that you can work with her hair/clothes/whatnot in that area. One last little tid-bit, but at this angle one of the horns might need reworking. The one on our right seems to be facing away from the character (to his right) and the one to our left seems more forward facing!

And here are the two redlines together, with the additional female lines removed. 

I truly hope this helps you, and thank you so much again for the submission! :) - Robin

[red-learning]

like I am currently studying illustration at university and I feel like all of my work is stale and lacks. i don't know, motion? movement? I feel like I'm in a funk and I don't know where to go - I ultimately want to be a freelance illustrator myself and I wondered if you had any advice? like i just draw the same poses and junk and I don't know how to breach out. I try and do life drawing from youtube links etc. this is where my stuff is at drawsconstantly under the my-art tag

Hey there, thanks so much for the ask!I have seen a lot of people struggle with this, as I myself have very recently! Especially in the field you want to enter, it takes a lot of hard work to feel like you’re at the top of your game and are some true competition. I want to enter a similar field myself, and I know seeing a lot of other artists around that I feel do my job way better than me can get to do really discouraging. I’m not sure if that’s the case with you personally, but I figure someone else reading might be able to relate. In my personal experience, seeing other artists do what I love better than I can can be a real downer. Why even bother? I don’t feel as if I’ve branched out, grown, moved around, etc in a long while, so I’m in the same boat as you. I’d first off take a look at your inspirations (and if you don’t have any, search around for some) and study their art. Being an artist usually implies that we’re visual learners, so hopefully you’ll be able to pick up a few tidbits of growth just by giving a few of their pieces a study, and picking out a few things that they do that you like. When you next work, keep those things in mind, perhaps try to introduce them in your piece (even with your own twist). Take that further by picking areas of their art out that you can openly accept that they do better than you. Anatomy, color, composition? Take those areas one at a time and dedicate study time to them. What I am going to start doing on my main art blog is take a topic I am uncomfortable with and dedicate a week to studying it, very intentionally pushing myself from my comfort zone. That’s the thing with comfort zones; if we’re not struggling, we’re not really learning much. It has to be a very intentional process. I suggest you compile a list of things you want to improve on, gather resources on how you might go about that, and dedicate your own time to growing in those areas. If you want to work with color, check out some photos you like, research some good books on color and light, etc. It will take some hard work, but we’d better get used to that if we’re going to be successful in our fields! :) As a side note, I went and took a look at your art. Nice gestures! You have a good eye for capturing weight in the figure especially, I really enjoy that.Best of luck to you, and thank you for the question! I hope I helped at all. -Robin

[red-learning]

(Original: http://squidubious.tumblr.com/post/119152370713/hey-im-in-kind-of-an-art-block-mostly-with-my ) Hey there! I was in the redline tag and noticed you asked for some help with your drawing here. Just wanted to first start off with the fact that you have a nice base going on here, I had a hard time finding things to change :) The main things I would look to alter would be some of the muscle placements (I went a little further with the definition, depending on your style you can totally keep or remove whichever ones you prefer), bringing the legs closer toward the middle of the body, defining the chest a little more, and shortening the back legs a little. Because your dragon looks like they’d be capable of doing some running around on land, I went and looked up two different references when working on this that I highly recommend you give a glance at! 

Mixing the komodo dragon anatomy to capture that lizard-y feel with the anatomy of a canine to bring in that land-running touch might help you out in the future! I’d also check out some bat wing images to keep your anatomy skills going strong, though to me it’s rather obvious that you know what you’re up to. But ya’ know, I’ve gotta’ keep the reference point going strong! I really hope I helped!  <3, Robin

[red-learning]

Hi, can I get a little help with this please. I’m struggling with the bodies, I’m useless at drawing but I really want to draw a picture for my friend. ^-^

Hello there! Thank you so much for being my first submission! <3 I want to go ahead and apologize for the wait. I had some really troubling issues in my life, but everything is better for the time being! In fact, the character on the left has been done for a while, hence the slightly different style and go at anatomy (esp the arms) on the right. I think what you had so far was really nice, and the fact that you’re drawing for your friend is super sweet. You have a very nice, solid sketching style that shows the basic building blocks of your drawing off very well. Please don’t say that you’re useless at drawing, as you quite plainly have talent!

Let’s take a look at the left-most character! I want this to be a lesson for you and everyone who is (and always will be!) still trying to get drawing down - reference!! reference your heart out! For this redline, I went and found a few side-view shots of human females to base the body off of. The main things that would be helpful to remember when you draw side views like this again are the lengths of the arm, the size of the hand, and the location of the foot when the leg is folded up. Again, I can tell you have a good bit of talent with drawing, so please don’t feel discouraged! I’m so proud that you came seeking assistance as you have!

I’m not quite sure just how ‘realistic’ you were looking to have the cat look, but I did adjust the face to reflect the angles of a snout of a cat, and the size/location of the ears. I realize now that I may have pushed the stomach too far forward, taking away from the slim look of the character. If it is too much for you, simply adjusting the angle toward the breasts will make her look thinner! Additionally, the bones in an animal’s tail will stem directly from their spine. With that in mind, there will always be some kind of nice little transition between body and tail.

Overall, this is really great, and I really hope you get this finished (if you haven’t already, with my slow-butt return time, oops!)! I bet your friend will love it!

-Robin

[red-learning]

Hey everybody! Redlines! Yah!!

Hello everyone! I hope you are all doing wonderful today.

As this is intended to be a submission-based blog, I'm going to start off by making this introductory post... (and tag a lot of redline-related things to get out there!)... so hi, everybody, I'm Robin, I've been playing around with art since I was very little. I've always loved it, but I think I've only just recently become more 'serious' in my endeavors within it. I'm hoping that by allowing me to redline your work, I can both help you, and you can help me by allowing me to research and share whatever subject we're working on. We're all winners here! If you'd like to help me kick this blog off - (which I would love you very long time for) - please send me any art you'd like to see redlined here at red-learning.tumblr.com/submit . I would really appreciate it, and hopefully I can help you learn! n_n Normally I would share an example of my previous redlines here, but as I wish to keep this 'me' and the regular art 'me' separate for the time being, I'm going to avoid that. Thank you everyone!  <3,

Robin