Jasper draws @ventandref - Tumblr Blog

Here are 543 images (1.5GB) of items at the Philadelphia Museum of Art arms and armor exhibit You're free to use them for anything, even c

the-ocean-is-trans

casual reminder that this museum has their entire collection digitized and available free for public use: https://art.thewalters.org/ and they have armor/weapons there

animalphotorefs

New Species Added: Mexican Wolves!

This is the next priority species for the site, chosen by our Patreon supporters.

One of these wolves has three legs, so there's a bunch of photos of her adaptive run / walk cycles in this photoset.

As always, more photos on the Repository page:

Artists creating derivative or transformative works (without AI) have blanket permission to use these and all photos in the repository as references, including works that will/may be sold.

The Animal Photo Reference Repository is an independent, permanently open-access project and funded entirely by donations

**Patreon** -- **Ko-Fi**

chamxmxle

Do you have any tips and tricks for writing?

I wrote a whole reply and it got completely eaten! No draft or anything! Nightmare.

I'm skimming the basics you already know (read more, write more, stop waiting for inspiration, skimp on speech tags and use said as often as possible when you have to, spend as much time editing as writing) to give you an abridged version of advice I'm obsessed with that I call Total the Car. (I didn't coin this idea, but I may be the only one who ever talks about it. Forgive me if you've heard this lecture before.)

This advice references Ryan North's excellent Tumblr blog, BttF, on which he did a page by page reading of the novelization of Back to the Future. Ryan North is a very funny guy, and so it's an entertaining read, but it is also educational. Back to the Future is one of the tightest screenplays ever written, and the novel is a strange, meandering mess, made more so by the idiosyncrasies of its author and the likely fact that it was based on an earlier draft of the a screenplay. This allows us to compare and contrast the two works.

Early on in the story, Biff Tannen wrecks George's car. In the novelization, Gipe calls the car "nearly totaled," which causes Ryan to melt down; why nearly total the car? What value does the car have not being utterly totaled? The state of the car is mostly irrelevant. "Total the car!" Ryan says, on his blog. "You're the writer! You have the power! Total the car!"

I love this advice. I think writers often get bogged down in details like this; we're married to realism, or some research we did, or we think that going that far will be "too much," and so we rob our scenes of their own power. The phrase "nearly totaled" is not only weaker - it lacks the emotional gut punch - but it also raises questions where there should be none.

I think, when making a choice like this in writing, you should always err on the side of totaling the car. Kill the survivors. Burn the house to the ground. Make it harder on yourself. On your characters.

Stories don't happen in the almosts. They exist in the things that happen, the things that can't be undone. I love forcing people to go through a piece and circle every "almost" and "nearly" and "started to," and force them to write the piece that would have happened if there had been less restraint.

Go crazy! Total the car!

ryannorth

TOTAL THE CAR

midwinterhunt

hot artists don't gatekeep

I've been resource gathering for YEARS so now I am going to share my dragons hoard

Floorplanner. Design and furnish a house for you to use for having a consistent background in your comic or anything! Free, you need an account, easy to use, and you can save multiple houses.

Comparing Heights. Input the heights of characters to see what the different is between them. Great for keeping consistency. Free.

Magma. Draw online with friends in real time. Great for practice or hanging out. Free, paid plan available, account preferred.

Smithsonian Open Access. Loads of free images. Free.

SketchDaily. Lots of pose references, massive library, is set on a timer so you can practice quick figure drawing. Free.

SculptGL. A sculpting tool which I am yet to master, but you should be able to make whatever 3d object you like with it. free.

Pexels. Free stock images. And the search engine is actually pretty good at pulling up what you want.

Figurosity. Great pose references, diverse body types, lots of "how to draw" videos directly on the site, the models are 3d and you can rotate the angle, but you can't make custom poses or edit body proportions. Free, account option, paid plans available.

Line of Action. More drawing references, this one also has a focus on expressions, hands/feet, animals, landscapes. Free.

Animal Photo. You pose a 3d skull model and select an animal species, and they give you a bunch of photo references for that animal at that angle. Super handy. Free.

Height Weight Chart. You ever see an OC listed as having a certain weight but then they look Wildly different than the number suggests? Well here's a site to avoid that! It shows real people at different weights and heights to give you a better idea of what these abstract numbers all look like. Free to use.

butchlinkle

really helpful technique ^ once you know how to divide by halves and thirds it makes drawing evenly spaced things in perspective waaay easier:

girl-under-pressure

I too dyscalculic for this type of shit 😭😭

butchlinkle

it's honestly a lot simpler than it looks, you're just connecting corners and drawing lines where they intersect. I really recommend you just grab a scrap piece of paper and try it and i'm certain it'll click! It's one of those things that makes more sense when you try it yourself.

The perspective examples I showed above look complicated, but the underlying technique is very simple. You just keep splitting the rectangle until it's divided up evenly as many times as you need it to be.

The stairs were split in half multiple times to divide it into 8, the cell door was divided into thirds and then those thirds were split in half to give 6 lines.

viv-psd

For drawing references

[@/ALEXbutalsoK on Twitter]

carmahnart

Hey y’all I have an announcement! My web app that I’ve been working on, Afro Index, is now live! It’s a visual reference library of Black hairstyles, for artist, animators, writers, and anyone who wants to learn more about them!

Check it out at afroindex.org! 💛✨

A reference library for Black hairstyles with accurate naming, structured filtering, and curated reference images.

etheringtonbrothers

BEANIES and WINTER HATS! To get the FREE MONTHLY How to THINK When You Draw digital MAGAZINE (including NEW tutorials, a YEAR before they appear online!) just GO HERE!

PLUS! How to THINK When You Draw BOOKS coming to KICKSTARTER VERY VERY VERY SOOOOOON!!!

Lorenzo!

backfliips

A lot of people on twitter wanted me to explain how I draw expressions, so here you go

Unless you're drawing explicit realism, in my opinion, expressions should be exaggerated to some degree. If you aren't doing a 1:1 recreation, the point is to get the FEELING across. Try making the expression you want to draw and feeling how your face pinches and stretches.

Skin doesn't just "disappear" when your face moves it around --- that's where wrinkles come from! Pay attention to where your skin creases when you emote, and use it to your benefit. It's a fine line between overdoing it and underdoing it -- find your own balance.

Ultimately, every expression has a little bit of push and pull, unless your face is completely neutral (and even then, there are still some wrinkles...). Learning to think of expressions as actions and reactions is VERY helpful in learning to draw them without needing a reference, and in learning how to stylize and push expressions based on references as well!

I think a lot of people end up with stiff or unexpressive emotions in their art because they're just trying to recreate a picture instead of understanding WHY and HOW the face is moving --- and it's a tough thing that takes a while to really pick up and learn. Hopefully is helpful in showing a way of thinking about it that can influence your process and approach to emotions!!!

Also, bonus: even without the lines, the planes alone still show a LOT of emotion.

rxttenfish

honestly we should really remake that whole "you're doing multiple rows of teeth Extremely Noticeably Wrong" post that we made once and got deleted (it was technically a reblog of someone else's post and it must've been deleted). it's still happening and it's still so prominent every time it happens.

rxttenfish

okay this has annoyed me enough that i'm making this full post again

so, basic physics.

if you are exerting force down onto an object, then it is spread out along the contacting surface area. this is how a knife or a sword works — you are putting force down onto a long, thin line, and thus, all that force is focused down onto that long, thin line. if you have something like, say, a bat or a club, then you are putting that force down along the rounder and wider edge of that object, making it a blunt force object, yeah?

the same applies if you have multiple edges. for instance, this is how a bed of nails works. sure, if you step on a single nail, then all of your weight is pushing down onto that point. but, if you lay on many nails, maybe even fairly close together, then each one takes your weight equally, and they don't have that same ability to puncture the skin. you're putting the same force down onto multiple points, but even though there's space between the surface of each point, that force is getting divided between all of them like it's all just one surface.

this is pretty bad if we're talking about weapons. for example, if you put too many nails into a spiked bat, then you may as well have basically added none. it might inflict some scrapes and surface wounds, but you won't do any more damage than the bat itself would do.

here's a pretty good video for a demonstration, and you can see how, by spreading out that force exerted, you can even restrict your own ability to pierce.

(behold, an image that looks like someone being injured, but, by definition, is someone showing how uninjured they are)

the same applies for teeth.

if you have multiple rows of teeth, and you exert force down onto them to bite, that force is being spread out and divided over every point of every tooth.

this is not a very good setup if, say, you are a macropredator trying to eat large prey. you require teeth that can shear into and cut flesh, even break bone, and adding additional rows means that you no longer have a cutting edge through which to push through flesh or bone, but instead, many objects forming one larger surface to push through flesh or bone together, something which requires exponentially more force for much worse results, and is likely to instead end up breaking your own teeth.

think about knives for a moment. the reason a knife is good at cutting is because that force is being exerted down onto a very thin edge, making it hard to resist. knives get dull when they lose this thin edge, and have to have the thinness of that edge restored in order to regain cutting ability.

adding multiple points is, effectively, intentionally dulling this edge. to add a point of comparison, seeing multiple tooth rows in designs intended to have high bite force or ability to cut through flesh, is a lot like seeing overdesigned anime swords. animals have one, shearing edge to their teeth for the same reason that, on the surface, all real swords tend to look the same (with similar vast differences in the details).

"but!" you may say, "sharks have multiple rows of teeth! and they bite hard!"

which is where i point to how white sharks' (and other, similar macropredatory sharks') dentition actually works.

this is the lower jaw of a white shark. you can see that they do have multiple rows of teeth — but only the frontmost row is actually being used. you might see doubles, like in the front, but they occur when the shark is actively in the process of replacing that tooth with another (the same reason that humans might appear to have a double tooth, when a baby tooth is being lost and the adult replacement is coming up underneath). the other rows are pressed flat towards the back of the mouth, like a switchblade, ready to spring up and replace that outermost tooth.

although these sharks might have multiple rows of teeth, only one row is actually being used at any given time.

you can also see how this functions in another known bone-crusher, the spotted hyena. the teeth are very thick and massive, but each individual tooth still comes up to a point after the previous tooth's point, forming a singular shearing edge, the carnassial, that pushes down on bone in a singular, cutting edge.

so, what good are multiple rows of teeth? why do animals have them?

well, one, because they can operate more like barbed wire.

caecilians are one group of animals with well-developed multiple rows of teeth, and this is because they are primarily insectivores. they are very good at gripping onto soft bodied prey, much like barbed wire or burrs catching onto exposed flesh, and shredding it. these teeth would not survive contact with plentiful resistance, so mostly, they don't.

this is also why other species of sharks, like sand tiger sharks (or ragged tooth sharks), do have multiple rows of teeth — they are much more useful for holding onto slippery prey, like fish or cephalopods, and shredding flesh. these teeth are much thinner, so that they can fit more into the mouth, and each one has a longer profile than the nearly square frame of a white shark's tooth. they might not be hunting marine mammals, but this is quite handy as a generalist in the ocean.

alternatively, if multiple teeth are spreading out that force anyways and working as blunt force weapons, then you could lean into it. you could make your teeth massive and thick, to sustain such forces, but flatten them, and turn them into a crushing battery like these stingrays, better for cracking apart hard-shelled animals like crustaceans and mollusks. in our metaphor, this might be closer to a nutcracker, or a hydraulic press. not very useful at cutting flesh, but good at getting through objects that no one else can.

so, yes. please consider this at least a little, before i start thinking your cool monster design has teeth that don't work.

a-book-of-creatures

Omg manticores are fish-eaters :o

doodlemancy

hello fellow artists. google has fallen. pinterest/duckduckgo AI filters don't work. do not despair; here is a list i made of places to find reference images without having to sift through piles of worthless garbage. (for future editing convenience i am just linking my blog post on dreamwidth.)

✨ good places to find art reference that are not full of AI trash 🌈

super-autism-death-ray

reblogging for personal use

theunsureartist

ART REFERENCE NOT FULL OF AI?! YESSS

fangirling-and-making-stuff

THANK YOU

pinnedwings

one of the most difficult things about deciding you want to write a fictional doctor (of the non-who variety) is writing actual medical scenes. we all know that medical dramas are notoriously cliched, and i for one fully understand how unimportant factual accuracy can be to the emotional importance of a scene. sometimes you don’t have to get it write for your story to work. i have a disclaimer on my blog that i myself am just a layman, but i like to at least know what i’m writing about! in the interest of being as accurate as i can, i would like to spread that love around. here’s a list of medical fiction/fantasy writing resources i’ve found!

surgeonsblog

article i found this from^ (w/even more resources)

redwoods medical edge

^article where i found that

this article is short/basic/doesn’t link anywhere else, but i found it very helpful anyway

supposed to be good but to me, seemed difficult to navigate. (dp lyle)

this on the otherhand, is the jackpot (novelmalpractice)

tumblr blog centered around this topic

this is more about the common pitfalls/anachronisms of medical fiction but still helpful

writing medical scenes: useful links by paul anthony shortt

the last one im going to include is an article by a doctor about common mistakes in popular medical shows, i liked this one

tagging who liked the interest check on this @hesjustcarter @prodigiumamare @frankengeeks

fragiledate

hayy. heres a random, spontaneous, niche art note compilation

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

bedupolker

I've recommended this one before, but for all the non-human vertebrate likers out there... the art of animal drawing

officialspec

spec. spec. spec youve changed the game. i never realized your pointer finger and your wrist artery are the same. holy shit. im going to draw hands thank you

aasdjsd its not really an artery but its a useful landmark to facilitate the Flow of a pose imo

usergif

I recently got an ask [x] on colouring for this set I did for solo levelling [x] and it got so long because I wanted to say so many things and I ended up going into colour theory so I gave up fighting with photoshop and did it on keynote instead 💀