An Art Ref Resource

Reference reblogs! Photos and tutorials for artists

[dagrand39]

SPARKLE TEXT GENERATOR RELEASE!

Generate custom sparkle text!

I've been spending the past 2 months working on my latest project, my sparkle text generator! You have lots of features to play with, such as:

You can upload any font file from your computer!

Up to 7 different colours!

Please have a go! Thanks for having a look!

Consider signing my guestbook! https://dagrand39.atabook.org/

Neocities

Create and surf awesome websites for free.

[geoledgy]

I wrote a tutorial on how to set up a deviantArt-like art gallery on a neocities (or other static site) come check it out:

It was a lot of work to put my art gallery together and get it working, but because I didn't see literally anything on creating such a gallery (other than ready-made templates) I decided to write up a tutorial hoping it will help others who want to code a more robust art gallery that goes beyond just using a simple slideshow/lightbox. Each image is its own post, like how deviantArt works.

This is a draft of the page where I copied my existing posts just to fill up the gallery and see how it fits:

and this is what my individual post looks like:

[cookietastic]

We need to bring back the athletics body type post

[cookietastic]

This one

[cookietastic]

Tumblr has 10+ image limit had to add these on too

[areasontobreathe]

I will probably never NOT share these photos.

These are *peak athletes*. All of them.

Literally. These are Olympic athletes.

Seeing the variety of body types that are honed for a specific purpose just makes me so happy and does so much for my mental health. ❤️

[canyouhearthelight]

Due to my recent post about the Olympics, this popped back on my dash and I need to share it.

Literally peak performance. Human bodies at peak performance. Love it.

I want to add that both women's gymnastics and women's track have gotten far more muscular since these photos were taken. And if you want to say that decreases performance, I DEFY you to watch Simone Biles or Sha'carri Richardson perform.

They literally only compete with themselves. They are on that level.

Or watch Ilona Maher absolutely dominate at rugby. Again, peak performance.

And I. Love. It.

[headspace-hotel]

this illustrates what I was saying about how eugenics makes no sense because theres no such thing as "best" traits. It depends on the situation

[tutorialdrawix]

RESOURCES FOR POSES

Line of Action

JustSketch.Me

PoseManiacs

Human-Anatomy-For-Artist.com

MagicPoser

MIXAMO

Pose Archives

Bodies in Motion

Posemy.art

ReferenceAngle

CroquisCafe

[celestial-fang]

Did an art style analysis of Reverse:1999 which has some of the best character portraits, hope it’s helpful to others

[teomodo]

art books on the internet archive for you

morpho books

figure drawing for all it's worth (+ creative illustration)

framed ink

will eisner comics and sequential art

will eisner graphic storytelling and visual narrative

understanding comics (+ making comics)

folder of various animation production art

burne hogarth drawing dynamic hands

perspective for comic book artists

michael mattesi force drawing

the animator's survival kit

color and light james gurney

be free

[melodevee]

Go watch my boyfriends tutorial video on perspective!!

[marat]

i know we joke about cis artists having the weirdest sense of anatomy, but also even when the anatomy is fine, no one seems to want to draw women doing normal things

[marat]

Drawing challenge: draw your favorite male characters like this

[thatdemonbish]

this is exactly why i’m a huge fan of posemaniacs!

you get 3d model pose references with the option of having a male or female anatomy for each pose

they have a WIDE VARIETY of poses that you can search for using a TAG SYSTEM

(as you can see by the scroll bar in the second image there is Even More Tags)

you can select a pose you like for larger viewing and the convenience doesn’t stop!!!

you have full 360 viewing range of the pose plus zooming in and out

and what’s that? a TOOLBAR?? MENU?? THING??

Correct!

the eye button hold a very fun menu

negative space blacks out the background and fills the pose with a solid white silhouette

the “texture” refers to the skin situation of the model with the “color” and “grey” shown below

(i usually use color personally)

then there’s the option of different sized drawing grids(4 and 16 below)

idk wtf bounding box is about but it looks like this if it matters to you

“floor” toggles all shadows on the floor, “floor grid” you guessed it puts a like perspective guide grid on the floor that goes to forever, and “shadow” toggles ALL shading. there is NO lighting happening if you turn that off. NONE.

NEXT ITEM! that box thing with the line through it? flips the pose horizontally.

the little person symbol? lets you switch anatomies

camera icon? you can choose from a selection of preset camera angles PLUS an option for … idk what to call it but you can do this!

less flat right!! i’m sure there’s a word i just don’t know but this is maximum *that* so there is less *that* if you want it

the lightbulb gives you a menu like the camera one but it offers a selection of lighting styles with variable intensity

CHARMING!

and that’s not even everything this site provides!!!!!!! they have tutorials, instructional videos, lessons, all sorts of shit!!! (although they are vast majority if not all in japanese just a heads up)

AND ITS ALL FREE

DONT EVEN NEED TO SET UP AN ACCOUNT OR APPROVE OF COOKIES JUST GET IN DO YOUR THING GET OUT NO STRINGS ATTACHED

and if you don’t have ad blocker or are on mobile(like me) NOT TO WORRY

the ads are few and far between! ZERO video ads, NONE take over your screen or glitch you at all, they are of no concern i forget they’re there!

(this is not at all sponsored btw i’m just a genuine fan of this site and i’m happy to spread the good word unprompted)

[necronatural]

Compiled some basic information I know about drawing fat characters for beginners since I've been seeing more talk about absence of really basic traits in a lot of art lately.

Morpho Fat and Skin Folds on Archive.org (for free!)

[scribbly-blue-hearts]

Blue’s Feathers and Wings Compendium: Standard Wing Shapes

Wings Part 1 [Standard ]| Wings Part 2 [Atypical] | Feather Markings | Tail Feathers [Part 1] | Tail Feathers [Part2]

I have expanded the traditional 4 types; Highspeed, Elliptical, Low Aspect and High Aspect ratio, because they were very narrow and vague categories for the most part, adding High Energy, Thermal Soaring, Night Glider, and Passerine wings. I feel that these extra types make it easier to understand and visualize the differences and similarities between wing shapes.

I’ve renamed Low Aspect to Powered Soaring, and High Aspect to Dynamic Soaring for the purposes of the fact that names made it hard to understand purpose and were easily confusable. 

A lot of these wing types are also affected by tailfeather shape and size, and that will change their agility and energy expenditure as the tail also generates lift.

Disclaimer: This is in no way intended to be an academic dissertation or proposal, do not treat it as such. It is purely for art and writing references for others, to aid description and inspiration.

[therobotmonster]

Color Like a Classic Comic Book

I'm doing some tinkering on Fauxstalgia stuff, and since I believe in sharing resources, here's an RGB PNG version of the official DC pantone guide, with the swatches re-sampled from current pantone standards. This set is from 1982, but should be generally believable for most stuff post-WWII.

The versions floating around online (two of which are under the fold) are scans of prints and are not accurate for color-picking.

Now, these colors would also be altered by the printing process, but for clean, pre-print versions, here's some authenticity.

[iraprince]

gonna show u guys a little opalescent highlight hack i threw together today

rainbow gradient above your main figure (i usually have all my main figure folders/layers in one big folder, so i can clip gradient maps + adjustments to it!). liquify tool to push the colors around a bit. STAY WITH ME I KNOW IT LOOKS STUPID RN I'M GOING SOMEWHERE WITH THIS

THEN: set it to add/glow (or the equivalent in ur drawing program), lower the opacity a bit, and apply a layer mask. then u can edit the mask with whatever tools you like to create rainbow highlights!!

in this case i'm mostly using the lasso fill tool to chip out little facets, but i've also done some soft airbrushing to bring in larger rainbow swirls in some areas. it's pretty subtle here, but you can see it better when i remove the gradient map that's above everything, since below i'm working in greyscale:

more granular rambling beneath the cut!

u could also just do this with a brush that has color jitter, but what i like about using layer masks for highlight/shading layers is how simple and reversible it makes everything. i can use whatever brushes i want, and erasing/redoing things is super low stakes, which is great when i often approach this stuff with a super trial-and-error approach.

example: have u ever thrown a gradient w multiple colors over an entire piece, set it to multiply etc, and then tried to erase it away to carve out shadows/highlights? it's super frustrating, bc it looks really good, but if u erase something and then change ur mind later, u basically would have to like. recreate the gradient in the area u want to cover up again. that's how i used to do things before figuring out layer masks!! but masking basically creates a version of this with INFINITE undo bc u can erase/re-place the base layer whenever u want.

anyway, back to rambling about this specific method:

i actually have TWO of these layers on this piece (one with the liquified swirls shown above, and another that's just a normal concentric circle gradient with much broader stripes) so i can vary the highlights easily as needed.

since i've basically hidden the rainbow pattern from myself, the colors in each brushstroke i make will kind of be a surprise, which isn't always great -- but easily fixable! for example, if i carve out a highlight and it turns out the rainbow pattern in that area is way too stripey, i can just switch from editing the mask to editing the main layer and blur that spot a bit.

also, this isn't a full explanation of the overall transparency effect in these screencaps! there's other layer stuff happening below the rainbow highlights, but the short version is i have all this character's body parts in different folders, each with their own lineart and background fill, and then the fill opacity is lowered and there's multiply layers clipped to that -- blah blah it's a whole thing. maybe i'll have a whole rundown on this on patreon later. uhhh i think that's it tho! i hope u get something useful out of this extremely specific thing i did lmao

[gayvampyr]

i hate that every time i look for color studies and tips to improve my art and make it more dynamic and interesting all that comes up are rudimentary explanations of the color wheel that explain it to me like im in 1st grade and just now discovering my primary colors

[gayvampyr]

“red and green are opposites 🥰” cool now how do i paint a tree with pinks and blues without it looking like a child’s finger painting or incongruous blobs of rainbow vomit

[gayvampyr]

ok i can’t explain it very well but im looking for tips and techniques for rendering art like

with specifically the highlights and colors being hues that compliment each other, don’t distract from the scene, and make it more interesting/visually appealing

is it too much to ask

[moreclaypigeons]

gonna drop some sources I have saved on Pinterest! I don't know if these all link back to the original sources so apologies for that

cohesive but still contrasting

This kind of talks about color and composition

This is a bit about landscape specifically

Values & composition

Contrast in composition

Balance in colors & values

This one's more for palette building but I think it's useful and can be applied to the other ones

Cohesion within compositions/lighting

"Chromatic fringe" - I also see people using this with shading, they bring in a transition color that is a different hue than the base color or shadow, it makes it so that less vibrancy is lost and it doesn't get muddy!

This one specifically has a lot of process behind the style of painting you're looking for!

Also one of my favorite artists who makes bright and colorful art like this is Not Sorry Art on TikTok & YouTube, her website is here and it's<3 my fav. She has some videos where you can see her process

With the oranges painting you put as an example, I noticed they painted the lighter values more toward yellow - they also exaggerated the hues of the undertones of the photo, so I'm guessing they either did it in their head or bumped the saturation up to get a closer look! I really love these paintings you shared and I definitely share your desire to paint/draw like that :)

[gayvampyr]

thanks this is super helpful! /gen

[smiggles]

A compilation of tips ive made per request of others

[the-pigeon-queen]

Hey there, art advice anon again! Your tips have been very helpful, especially the idea that you just have to keep trying until you find the right combination of lines. Thank you!

Do you have any advice on drawing facial expressions?? I’m autistic and I have a really hard time with them.

Howdy again, and sorry for the delay! Not sure how well some of this advice would translate into different styles, this is just what works for me.

Expressions are hard! There's a lot of nuisance and subtle differences between them, and a lot of different expressions share similar features. Ya just have to play around with them.

There are a lot more things that can all help convey emotion, that aren't just limited to the face, like posing and angling, but I focused solely on expressions, here.

Anyway, I hope this helps at least a little :0!

[monsteravariegata]

Do you like vintage scientific illustrations?

Do you like not spending huge amounts of money on them?

This website has a huge collection of high quality vintage illustrations that you can download FOR FREE

They got pretty much everything!! Vintage maps, mushrooms, flowers, trees, bugs, birds, corals, fish, palm trees, feathers, tropical fruits, you name it!!

They even got some works of my dude Ernst Haeckel on there!!!!

I could go on and on but I suggest you check it out yourself. Personally, I will be covering my entire apartment with these once copyshops are open again. But even if you don’t want to do that, just browsing all these beautiful illustrations is a great way to spend your time. 

Have fun and stay save!

[fruityshirts]

Neat! I’m currently printing holiday cards with the circular poinsettia cuts from this set!

[hometoursandotherstuff]

We visited the little wine windows of Italy, and now it’s time to pay a visit to the “Klek” (kneeling) boutiques of Bulgaria. 

These little below-eye-level shops are common in Sofia, Bulgaria. 

You’ve got to literally be on your knees to shop here. The concept arrived after the fall of the Berlin Wall when Bulgaria moved away from communism and legalized private ownership.

Bulgarians could now own their own businesses, but due to the high costs of rent many people were unable to afford their own place.

So, using their initiative and creativity they started setting up shops that operated out of the basement of old buildings and soon klek shops were spotted along the sidewalks of Sofia.

Most of the shops sell snacks, drinks, alcohol and cigarettes although you can also find shoe repair shops, or service businesses such as laundry shops.

All the goods on offer are kept safely behind glass-covered shelves that surround the window,

Customers choose their items, crouch down, and pay the owner. 

While their big boom was back in the 90s, many shops are still maintaining their businesses around busy roads and walkways. You’ll find most of them strategically placed beside bus stops.

Most shops are open late or 24 hours, making the klek synonymous with after-hours nightlife– a convenient local amenity for party-goers on their way home in need of a quick bite, hair of the dog or a nicotine reboot.

https://gudsol.wordpress.com/2017/10/29/the-knee-shops-in-sofia-bulgarian-underground-shops/