I, a very white and somewhat privileged person, am absolutely terrified to draw colored people. Because I donāt know if Iād cross the thin line of tasteful and authentic or racist and stereotypicalā¦
Lol for starters don't refer to us as coloured people. This ain't 1955. Secondly my best advice to you is to use references of actual people of color. I would highly recommend staying away from those white men art station youtuber type artists for tutorials because they get a majority of their techniques and style from main stream video games and comic books, which to put it nicely don't have the best reputation for representing women and poc. tangent over, so yeah references. real life photographs of brown and black people.
pinterest is a site that a lot of current, especially younger artists like to use, but in all honesty it's not a very good source for someone trying to learn the fundamentals. it'll mainly show you 20 something year old ig and twitter models which is okay if you wanna just draw pretty people; but not the best if you wanna like I said learn fundamentals + have a portfolio that's varied. also it's rife with ai shit and stolen art, so yeah would only recommend that as an initial starting point/using it to make your own personal board for your saved images.
stock photo sites are my go to for refs. getty images, istock, alamy, etc. a simple right click save image or screenshot will work to get the images you want for free. of course there will be the watermarks, but they're honestly a very small issue to bypass. as long as they're not opaque and nearly covering the entire subject; you're good. a nice thing about stock photo sites is they usually give you the option to filter the image search results. say for instance you want to draw an elderly asian woman cooking or a young black man painting a picture or an indigenous child playing with dolls. you can look up certain terms you want in the search bar & specify gender, age and ethnicity to narrow down your search to what you want.
another awesome place for references i discovered during college is posespace.com
like with getty images, it gives you the option to filter your searches. they also have their models in clothed or nude shoots in the event that you want to practice some bare bones anatomy.
also also, get your info from artists of color. there's a decent amount of tutorials ive found over the years on here and youtube on coloring skintones, drawing certain hair types, how to avoid caricatures and stereotyping, different facial features, cultural hairstyles. the list goes on. don't be afraid to depict people outside of your race. literally just go about drawing us the same way you would a white person. don't be scared, as long as you remain respectful and make an honest effort to learn; you'll do fine.
resource links by and from artists of color:
'how i draw south + southeast asian people'
an example of what to avoid when stylizing east asian characters
'drawing asian people, source: i'm asian'
'lessons from drawing I: what is asian anyways?'
'How I draw skin Part 2: DONāT DRAW NATIVE PEOPLE WITH RED SKIN!!!! A tutorial' (the link to the first part of this tutorial is broken sorry)
How to Draw Native People: a Tutorial/Reference Guide
How to Draw Black People by peachdeluxe
tips for drawing black people by rosheruu
drawing east asian faces by chuwenjie
how to draw black people series by Artistik Freedom (youtube)
āļøHow I draw black hairstyles (simple) š± by Likelihood Art (youtube)
there's also a bunch of black and brown artists on twitter and tiktok, so checking those sites for tutorials would be a good additional resource
good luck on your illustrating melanin endeavors šš¾
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