Helpful tutorials

Here you will find some good tutorial for your drawing like: how to draw hands, hair, body, animals and so on! =3

[kibbi]

WEEEEELLLL…THIS IS A LITTLE AWKWARD BUT I TOTALLY FORGOT MY TUMBLR FOR….7 MONTHS HAHAHA! sorryyyyyy <3

I’ll back to spam some of my Patreon’s studies! All of this stuff is free! they are just the previews and you can find them on Facebook  Patreon and Deviantart !

You can use my work even to draw commissions! But please don’t them and IF U CAN put the credits, ok? 

After this… ENJOY THEM! XD

[artmagine]

Top 12 alternatives to Photoshop for digital painters and illustrators

Hello there!

Yes, we haven’t done this in a while… but our inbox and chat are swamped with questions on the subject, so this article was very much needed.

it’s a simple list of art apps, but we know you love those :D

Enough with the intro, here it is, a list of twelve art apps you may want to check out.

ArtRage is an art program for beginners and professionals. With its minimal interface, it’s easy to keep the essential tools at hand without stealing space from the canvas. Panels can be moved around and tools can be customised. We all know how important it is for digital artists to be able to modify brushes!

Pros: easy to use; friendly interface; essential tools from professional apps available; available for iOS, Android, Windows and Mac

Cons: it may get sluggish with big files and when using big brushes, but performances also depend on the running machine; limited selection of editing tools if compared to Photoshop - ArtRage is more of a painting program rather than an editing one.

Paid

ArtRage Lite is a different version at a cheaper price, mostly for beginners, but also for professionals if they need the essential.

Now free, Sketchbook is the famous app created by Autodesk for various platforms.

Pros: clean, friendly interface; easy to use; professional features

Cons: lack of official tutorials; doesn’t offer as many tools as other apps (it’s down to the essential); paid subscription in Adobe style for the pro version

Free and paid

Black Ink is a powerful little program few actually know, but there’s a reason: this isn’t your classing drawing app. What’s cool about it is the vast selection of special brushes, completely non-realistic, and definitely able to boost your creativity.

Pros: vast selection of customisable brushes; excellent performance

Cons: not very easy to use; non-intuitive interface

Paid

This is probably the most complete software for painting, drawing and animation. It was originally known as Manga Studio, but with its updates and addition of features, it became Clip Studio Paint. 

This doesn’t say much about the quality of the features themselves considering the affordable price (if you haven’t used the app yet, that is), but among graphic apps, this one is the top seller.

Pros: professional features for illustrators; layout tools for comic/manga artists; 3D reference models; customisable tools; various sales with special prices

Cons: the interface may not appear intuitive at first; the program may lag (again, performance also depends on the running machine)

Paid

GIMP is the famous open source image editor originally created for GNU/Linux and available for OS X and Windows. 

Best known as Photoshop’s main competition, this is a manipulation program for both beginners and professionals who love design.

It offers many professional features, making the program a powerful tool.

Pros: professional editing tools; supports different formats; supported by different platforms; active community

Cons: in spite of the simple design, many options are hidden and it takes time to discover all the features; slow startup

Free

Krita is an open source painting app created by artists for artists.

Pros: easy to use; intuitive interface; great brush workflow; brush stabilizer; customisable brushes; general good performance; very enthusiastic, although small, community

Cons: it may be slow or even crash depending on the running computer and the app’s version; very few editing tools compared to Photoshop

Free

MediBang Paint is a free and light app for drawing and painting, perfect for manga and comic creation.

Pros: vast selection of brushes; cloud sharing; friendly, minimal interface (non-desktop app); also available for iPad, iPhone and Android

Cons: requires an account to use all features; non-intuitive interface (desktop version)

Free

Mischief is a sketching app with essential tools, useful for brainstorming and ideation.

Pros: infinite drawing canvas; friendly interface; easy to use; cheap pro version

Cons: few updates; offers only the essential (but that’s the point); no editing/adjustment tools

Free and paid

Corel’s jewel, Painter is the most famous software that offers digital tools able to give a traditional feel to brushes and canvas.

Pros: different selection of media; many professional features; PS-friendly

Cons: certain brushes may work slow; not easy to use at first; the software may crash (this is the most common report); pricey

Paid

Paintstorm Studio is a professional software for digital painting. It’s focused on the use of brushes and blending, which makes the software a little gem in the digital painting field.

Pros: good brush workflow; brush stabilizer; “close gap” feature; customisable interface and tools; professional features; affordable price

Cons: non-intuitive interface (desktop version)

Paid

Procreate is the powerful drawing app for iOS. 

With the very sensitive Apple Pencil, Procreate is so easy to use that many artists chose the iPad over the most famous graphic tablets.

Pros: friendly interface; makes it easy to organise files; excellent brush workflow; customisable brushes; video recording; affordable price

Cons: hidden features; only available for iPad

Paid

SAI is a simple app for artists who want to focus on painting and drawing. 

It’s well known for its good pressure support and its essential tools for manga artists, but SAI can be used by any kind of artist who wants to paint.

Pros: easy to use; friendly interface; light software; customisable brushes; tons of (non-official) tutorials

Cons: limited selection of tools, even basic ones; limited canvas sizes and uses; it might crash from intensive work, especially with big canvases and brushes; supports only RGB colour mode; lack of support

Paid

We hope you’ll find this list useful. 

If you think there are other apps that should have made this list, don’t hesitate to let us know!

Thank you and peace out,

G&M

Buy us a coffee ❤

Other articles:

10 inspiring and helpful YouTube channels for digital artists

6 inspiring Art Podcasts for digital artists

7 amazing Photoshop extensions and tools for digital artists

[drawingden]

How to paint gold - tutorial by LenamoArt

Support the artist on Patreon!

[trisketched]

Feeling that your drawings can look a little bit more fun? Do your character designs seem a little bit static or generic? Maybe they need a small push to their proportions!

_________

The “How to Make Your Art Look Nice” Series

Developing Style | Lighting | Flow and Rhythm | Thumbnailing | Mindsets | Reference and Style | Color Harmony | Contrast

Consider supporting this series on my Patreon!

[thekao]

Sketching Tips

[art-res]

Wonderful tips on sketching.

Helps you avoid some of the common pitfalls.

[taijuey]

How I BS plants when sketching on photoshop

Layer effects set to Stroke at 3 pixels

[madidrawsthings]

It’s taken me forever to answer this and I’m so sorry but here’s a quickly garbled nonsense post about expressions!!

Although to start here’s a couple of links to far more helpful tutorials here and here.

There was also this awesome chart that I’m having a hard time trying to find. I thought I had tagged it, but apparently I can’t remember the correct tags for it so I’m just gonna rehash what it was essentially about separating the features and adding them with each other to get the emotion you want?? god I wish I could find the original thing but um here’s my quick version

I feel like there’s so much I’m skimping on but I guess I should point out that the reason why I’m pointing out the entire expression is because each of the features of the expression helps contribute to the eyes feeling more expressive.

Just the slightest adjustments can really affect the overall attitude and effect of an expression. I highly recommend studying how other people draw expressions AS WELL as drawing from your own face. 

Have fun with it and play around as much as possible! <33

[vanessagillings]

I’m reblogging this for two reasons: 1. @madidrawsthings is amazing and her work should be seen by all. 2. I was asked forever ago to do a tutorial on how I draw facial expressions and I totally never made one, though I meant to, because when I sat down to create one I realized how complicated it was - but she made it super clear! Not only that, she has a VERY similar approach to mine, especially her focus in these drawings on the stretch and compression of the face over all. Seriously, I love this! So I hope looking at her awesome stuff helps anyone who’s curious how I draw facial expressions.

[saltmalkin]

A tutorial I made about lighting per request of twitter, but I figured that y’all would like it too

[stringbing-deactivated20210318]

animation run cycle notes for my upcoming 2D animation video course package

[art-and-drawing-prompts]

Sooooo…. I know its still a month away but the Inktober prompts for this year are up and I’ve not seen a post going around with them yet. I think this would be something you guys are interested in :P

Inktober Information

Inktober is a yearly art challenge intended to encourage artists to practice and improve their skills. 

The ‘rules’ are simple: Draw something each day, using whatever medium you like, then post it with the tags #inktober and #inktober2018

Don’t like the official prompts?

Don’t worry! You can draw whatever you want for each day, but if you want some prompts there are plenty of alternative prompt lists out there. 

Also, here on @art-and-drawing-prompts I post a new art prompt every single day, in October and through the rest of the year too!

[tutorials-to-save-your-drawings]

This is a good opportunity to practice and exercise skills that you've never tried before! Even for amateurs or professionals, it's cool to see yourself improving each day with a new drawing ^^

[drawingden]

Hands photo reference by Sellenin

Support the artist on Patreon!

[kasiaslupecka]

My opinion about Burne Hogarth’s ‘Dynamic figure drawing’

Some sketches and notes.

If you are artist that wants to learn anatomy or beginner artist and you are confused which resources to use to learn human figure you might find post helpful. 

This is my take on the book and I want to share some thoughts after reading the book and practicing the topics. There are good things and thing I didn’t like and wouldn’t recommend. Just to give you answer to the question if I liked the book. Yes I liked it. But I want to give you honest opinion on good and not so good things so you as a student or always learning artist can decide if you want to use this book to learn. Let’s start with things I liked. It’s a book that covers unique topic: drawing figure in deep space and drawing without reference. I also liked that it doesn’t represent academic approach. Author rather helps people who had academic background and still have problems with drawing figure that isn’t standing straight like soldier. This book can help you fight stiffness in poses and helps generate ideas for dynamic poses. It teaches you how to draw figure in deep space, meaning : helps you create illusion of depth. Approach to drawing human body is also interesting. Hogarth recommend starting from torso and then adds secondary forms : limbs. This books helps you understand body curves so you don’t need to know anatomy. Actually this is something I like and at the same time I am not sure about. It’s good to know anatomy first before you get into this book. I would say that perfect audience for this book is student who has academic background but can only draw people standing straight like soldiers. Hogarth’s books will help you to invent interesting forms and positions. Although you can’t take his anatomy literally. He has very characteristic style, that isn’t realistic but is believable. “Dynamic figure drawing” many covers male body and there’s very little about female body. It’s because female body just doesn’t look good. It’s like female’s version of male bodies. Doesn’t look very organic and remind me of ancient greek statues. Just to give you example : breasts looks like they are balls attached to the chest. Definitely look for some other source about female body. Overall you can find some great tips and topics that are not covered in other books. This book is for already experienced artists who wish to learn techniques that will expand their academic knowledge. For anatomy look at Bridgman and Loomis 😃 I tried to keep this review as short as I could. Let me know how do you like these kind of reviews and if you would like to see more post like this one in the future.

[onimille]

The big texturing tutorial

1. Definition

Texturing is a technique that involves adding local shading and details on surfaces to better represent the material of an object. This technique is of course closely linked to shading in general. This is usually applied after defining a global shading.

From left to right :

Lineart

Global shading

Completed sprite

One of the big differences between global and local shading is homogeneity. The very principle of global shading is to give a sufficiently contrasting effect between the shaded and lit areas to bring out volume and depth. Conversely, a texture must be as homogeneous as possible. It must be able to be applied on large, uniform surfaces, without making it look bad.

2. Applying a texture

A texture being homogeneous in terms of its luminosity/contrast, if it is applied to an object without taking into account the global shading, we will lose any effect of volume and depth.

A texture applied to a sphere without shading. Only the deformation of the texture can give us a clue on the shape of the object, but it is still difficult to discern. Homogeneous contrast When applying a texture to an object, shadows must also be taken into account. It is therefore important to maintain a uniform contrast between colours. A dark line separating a light zone from a dark zone should not keep the same colour between these two zones.

The color of the line will be lighter on the lighter side and darker on the darker side to preserve its contrast with the background. In the same way it is possible to apply a texture or pattern on a shaded object, by proceeding to a simple color shifting in our palette.

Combination of a texture (left) and an object that is not textured but shaded (middle).

3. Local shading

Since shading is used to highlight the bumps, there are generally two possible cases:

A groove

A bump

Each of these cases can be more or less accentuated by playing on the colors, the intensity of shadows and lights.

On the upper line, troughs ranging from the weakest to the strongest bumps. On the second line, these are bumps that stand out. The mastery of these light bumps is very important, it is the basis of the textures, and will make it possible to manage all the simple cases, such as wood or matte plastic. Example of application on a simple object:

4. Reflections

The application of a reflection is done in a simple way, by applying diagonal strips of light of varying thicknesses, and following a few rules.

A trough or bump will create an offset at the reflection level (proportional to the height change). As for the shadows, there is no absolute, depending on the palette or the material represented, it is possible to lighten or not the area at the reflection level. It is also important not to have parallel light bands on faces that are not oriented in the same direction, as on this cube:

Concrete example of the application of a gold texture on our drawers:

Or, added reflections on our previous crate:

5. Dithering and granularity

Dithering consists in creating a new false color from a checkerboard or other regular pattern of two colors close enough to give an illusion of mixing. The closer the colours are, the stronger the illusion will be. The more the colours are contrasted, the stronger the granularity effect will be.

Dithering is basically used to obtain fake intermediate shades on limited palettes, but it is also very useful for making complex and rough textures.

Example of complex dithering separating 3 colors over a wide area.

The nature of the pattern totally changes the roughness aspect. Example of the application of a sandy rock on our drawers:

Or add grain to our crate:

6. The art of destruction

The more complex a texture is, the more it will combine fundamental techniques such as bumpiness, reflections or granularity. However, some materials need to go further, by cutting, slash or breaking the base support.

Cuts It works much like bump, but on a much finer surface. We are subject to the same rules, of which here is a summary image:

From the finest to the most pronounced, on the first line of the cuts, and on the second of the bumps. A concrete example on our crate:

Exercises

Since nothing beats practice to learn, here is a series of examples from the simplest to the most complicated.

For each exercise resolved, post your results.

Mastering tools

Add a strong bump on the text of this image, except the ‘x’ which must be a groove (the center must be dug more strongly than the rest of the ‘x’):

Palette:

Add reflections on the image obtained between the two red lines shown below:

Now cut and break the letter ‘e’ as well as possible.

Add grain to the letter ‘l’.

Finalize a sprite

Texturize/colorize this sprite:

Palette:

Add reflections on the inside of the doors to give the impression that there are windows.

Add damage (cuts etc) on the right side of the wardrobe.

Make a variant of this cabinet by redoing it in gold using the palette of the gold drawers example in the tutorial. Palette:

Do the same with the sandy rock. Palette:

Sample solutions

Here are some solutions by a talented friend :

Gif process

The end.

[anatoref]

Vanishing Point Tutorials by Bruce Consolazio

[drawingden]

How to Draw Bird Feet and Legs by SPARROUU

[vesperkore]

[anatoref]

A Simple Course in Human Muscle Proportions.