Overview of some topics when it comes to drawing characters who are burn survivors.
DISCLAIMER. Please keep in mind that this is an introductory overview for drawing some burn scars and has a lot of generalizations in it, so not every “X is Z” statement will be true for Actual People. I'm calling this introductory because I hope to get people to actually do their own research before drawing disabled & visibly different characters rather than just making stuff up. Think of it as a starting point and take it with a grain of salt (especially if you have a very different art style from mine).
Talking about research and learning... don't make your burn survivor characters evil. Burn survivors are normal people and don't deserve to be constantly portrayed in such a way.
edit: apparently tum "queerest place on the internet" blr hates disabled people so much that this post got automatically filtered. cool!
This is a really cool guide! Gonna add a bit more, as a scar haver myself-
A good thing to know is that generally, the darker your skin is, the worse your scarring will be. I don't know why that is, but i was told by several doctors that i'm lucky i'm so white, and also seen it on other burnt people- dark skin scar harder. FYI.
Scars take time to set! It takes somewhere betweem 1-4 years for them to heal, and until then, they can DRASTICALLY change shapes(i remember in the early months, my face would completely change in a week. Fun times for an insecure teenager). That's the time when compression garments come into play, and also the time the scars DO have the streotypical pink coloration(not fucking RED. Instead, it'll be a similar color to your blush). The most common time for this to end is 2 years. After the scars calm down, they pretty much set, and get a color that's close to your natural complection, the colors you see in the tutorial.*
*so if the scars are pink, your character should have a compression garment on them! Zuko was NOT listening to his doctors, let me tell you
Even when the scars are constant, there are STILL changes in colors. My scars get super white when I overtax myself physically- instead of going red in the face, I just loose all color. My hands regularly go purplish in the winter, like they loose circulation(they don't. But the color looks like that). Other weather conditions also come into consideration.
Also. In addition to not making us evil. Why the FUCK do fictional scars always come from abuse? Most people irl get their scars from hot water, hot oil, or house fires. ACCIDENTS. Burns are the accident-injury. Make more OCs that stumbled while making their coffee!























