Weird question, I’ve always been interested in drawing body horror but uhhhh, idk where to start. Any advice? :0
One of the best things about body horror is that it’s pretty hard to go wrong. There are parts that should be recognizable, of course, and a little bit of knowledge on anatomy to make arms and legs and the such look somewhat feasible is needed, but there’s way more freedom. If you mess up a face slightly everyone will notice it. If you do so with a shambling mound of eyes, it’s hard to tell!
It also depends a lot on whether you wanna go for fully eldritch abstract creatures or more humanoid ones with a sidedish of body horror. First ones follow way less rules, but it’s hard to escape certain patrons, as there’s only so many ways you can draw tentacles and eyes. Second ones are slightly trickier, but again, anatomy does not need to be perfect. In fact, any sort of slight alteration to the rule (longer arms, lack of neck, backward feet or such) makes body horror way more impactful, as it trigger the uncanny valley. It’s close enough to recognizable stuff, but something is wrong.
For me, gathering references also helps a lot. The “monster-and-creatures” channel we have in my art discord is the one I fill more often with references and such. That’s a rather generic advice, but body horror can come in many shapes, and that’s one way to keep track of stuff you may want to experiment in. I have some specific interests -holes in chest, or impaled weapons- for which I pretty much have gathered dozens of pictures of just to be able to make them as nice as possible.
Also, as a last point, try to think about the creature you’re drawing. Give it some context. It may inspire certain ideas. Is it a creature that tries to appear benevolent? Going for something more celestial-shaped, yet with some odd stuff (too many arms, too perfect, eyes in places where they don’t belong, strange halos orbiting them) may be a good bet. Is it an undead of sorts? Maybe being undead made it mutate, or maybe it’s undead because some form of corruption, or maybe it’s just a regularly rotten-with-guts-hanging-out sort of undead.
Watchers, those crystal monsters I draw, follow a few guidelines given the context. They can hover and most are slightly awkward with their bodies, so most of them don’t have legs, or have stuff that definitely doesn’t serve to walk, as they won’t use it. Being made out of crystal gives them almost always a spiky appareance, and stuff like guts and more organic things are out of the picture. Instead, their body horror relies mostly in an excess of arms, strange heads, holes, or geometrical growths in certain parts. And of course, eyes. Because eyes are a simple yet effective way to make things really bodyhorrorish in a pitch.
I’m in no way an expert in body horror and for me it’s something I do incidentally (a bit more of late), but these are the few basic things I found about over time. To not leave this just as a wall of text, here’s a freaky creature in the works I used in DnD:
I hope this was of help!!
