but are we fighting dreamers?

Zo. I drink and I draw things. Instagram & Twitter: zoetdraws

[zoedraws-blog1]

OC Sera and her daughter Zeph for Mother's Day. • Had a conversation with my mom the other day. Me: I gotta buy a new pillow, mine's too flat. Mom: We have pillows at home. #peakmom #happymothersday #originalcharacters #illustration #characterdesign #postapocalyptic #bluehair #artistsoninstagram #artlife #digitalart #digitalpainting #sideshavedhair https://www.instagram.com/p/BxYoHGkHWnj/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=8bznl5yux1oc

[zoedraws-blog1]

Finally figured out how to post the whole image without cropping. This is very inconvenient instagram why. • #hardcovercontest #pinkhair #pinupgirl #bunny #digitalart #illustration #characterdesign #originalcharacter #easter #artistsoninstagram #digitalpainting #bluehair #photoshop #rampantrabbit https://www.instagram.com/p/Bw29FVAhwcq/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=18hdihc70fhr5

[zoedraws-blog1]

I was v tired and posted this to the wrong account fml. My entry for the #hardcovercontest ......there's a vibrator joke in there somewhere. • #pinkhair #pinupgirl #bunny #digitalart #illustration #characterdesign #originalcharacter #easter #artistsoninstagram #digitalpainting #bluehair #photoshop #rampantrabbit https://www.instagram.com/p/Bw1iYEkncwJ/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=c1iide28j4p7

[zoedraws-blog1]

Fave oc. Help me name her y'all. #characterdesign #art #oc #originalcharacter #greenhair https://www.instagram.com/p/BwjJwxxnbsO/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=jxuk2hi2l4v8

[zoedraws-blog1]

It's a spring awakening, give her a minute. #california #superbloom #spring #butterflymigration #artistsoninstagram #iloveyoucalifornia #bear #illustration #photoshop (at Rancho Cucamonga, California) https://www.instagram.com/p/BvYUv0_Hz9a/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1efseix0zmzg5

[laughingsloth]

[zoedraws-blog1]

Sometimes art is better if you'd just stop rendering. #artlife #art #charcoal #stilllife #mannequin #nosleep #sleepisfortheweak #imweak #goodnight (at California State University, Fullerton) https://www.instagram.com/p/BrOsYlOnEpg/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1oy91zr82ia31

[zoedraws-blog1]

The babes. @bonbonsaway #katiestamm @femurlemur and #evelynshieh https://www.instagram.com/p/BqsbBqtnvf_/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=3jsgx6udgi89

[zoedraws-blog1]

Current mood: big tired. #artimitateslife #wired #bear #yawn #artlife #designercon2018 (at Anaheim Convention Center - Hall D) https://www.instagram.com/p/BqQv0T8Hrvy/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1vzf7emgg839b

[graveweaverold]

Followup from the value mapping tutorial. Hope this helps ~

[foxville-deactivated20210128]

The Art Corner is a bi-monthly podcast hosted by me, Anoosha Syed and Vicki Tsai, aka @vickisigh 

We’re here to talk about everything we never learnt in art-school, as well as interview established artists in the industry. We explore the world of comics, illustration and animation and want to try to help young artists survive in the Real World; covering topics like conquering social media, pricing your work, and whether art school is actually worth it.

Artists we’ve interviewed in the past include Paulina Ganucheau, Syd Weiler, Lois Van Baarle and Pablo Leon, and we have tons more signed up in the future!

You can listen to the podcast on iTunes, Youtube, or any other podcast hosting app. 

You can also follow us on Twitter and Instagram (both usernames are @theartcornerpod) for updates and art tutorials.

Hope you guys enjoy!

[pain-art]

[kuurakuu-deactivated20220426]

Do you have any tips on improving my drawing abilities and posting online? Like drawing programs, techniques, growing your blog etc? I love your art and I really look up to you as an artist :)

I gathered some tips that I pay attention to when working! these may not be much but I hope they are at least a bit of use!

________________________

・Make a separate blog/account for your art, its easier for people to find your stuff when all of your art is in the same place. (I obviously haven’t done this cause managing multiple blogs is a pain and so all my art on this blog gets soon swallowed by other shit so uuuhh I’m not the best example here)

・Tumblr is not the best platform for art, especially not original art. I’ve found Instagram a lot more easier place to get my art out there. Putting your art on multiple platforms also means more people have a chance to find your art.

・Tag your art with all the characters, ships, shows that’s on it. Tumblr has a maximum of five tags that makes the post actually show when searching those tags.

・I don’t have much knowledge in drawing softwares, but I use Clip Studio Paint and Photoshop CC myself. Clip Studio is great for more comic styled illustrations, and Photoshop is better suited for realistic ones in my experience.

・Do some speed sketching. Open up a whole bunch of pose references and spend 3~5 minutes sketching one pose, then move to the next one. No need to pay attention to details. Just let the lines flow! don’t stop to think!

・Do studies. Like, fill a whole sketchbook page with just shoes. Get your friends to pose for you. Pay attention to the details, like how the shoelaces go over each other. I don’t do this much anymore but I have whole bunch of sketches likethese from school.

・There is no need for the lineart to be black or even dark. Play with the colors!

・For shadows, navy blue with the layer style set to multiply works for pretty much anything, but it doesn’t really create mood and doesn’t always look the best. Try using different colors for the shadows and try out different layer styles! The mood of the picture can change dramatically with just changing the style of the layer.

・colored filters can also make the mood of the picture. pic a color and try out different layer styles. “soft light” layer style is a great friend, but again, a different layer style changes the mood differently, even if the color of the filter stays the same.

・When creating poses, draw lines for the position of the shoulders and hips. It makes figuring out the pose a lot faster!

・When sketching a pose, whether you’re using a reference or not, start with sketching out the overall size and the proportions of the character. Draw a sketch on top of a sketch on different layers. Rinse and repeat as many times as necessary! Sketch the rest of the pose first, and leave the face for last. Starting your sketch from the face quickly leads to bad angles and proportions. 

・Use different brush sizes for different parts of the picture. Thicker lines for outlines, thinner lines for details. Thicker lines for things in the foreground of the picture, thin lines for things farther away.

・Things in the foreground are more detailed than things further away. Things close to the horizon usually only require a silhouette and some minimal shading.

・When shading, don’t only pick a color that’s lighter or darker than the original color. For highlights, turn the color wheel slightly closer to yellow, and for shadows, turn it slightly closer to blue. For example, if you’re shading red, picka highlight thats lighter and than the original color and turn the wheel a bit closer to orange, and for the shadow pick a color thats darker and turn the wheel towards purple.

・You don’t have to turn the wheel a lot. Even just a bit can make a big difference.

For the end a few reminders:・if it doesn’t work out at first, take a break, and try again.

・there is no need to stick to a consistent art style. Tryout a lot of different things! You’ll find a style that’s themost ‘you’ and then you can start to improve on it.

・Art doesn’t have to be detailed or complicated to begood and interesting. You don’t have to force yourself tomake detailed art if you don’t find it enjoyable.

[jeinu]

what’s up i never posted this over here ………………………………… and i’m too lazy to reexport the steps version with my tumblr username so you’re stuck with my instagram watermark oops

this is how i approach “full render” order types and my general process of breaking everything down into manageable bits!! 

[jbohn]

I don’t want to hide these very useful apps from you. I have been using Proko’s skelly app (left in the row) for quite a while now, where you can position a skeleton the way you need it to have a reference. You can also light the model and use a mannequin figure, but you don’t have muscles or realistic surfaces. It’s a perfect way to understand how the underlying anatomy behaves in 3D space. It works fine on the iPad, not so much on the old smart phone I used before, and costs 6.99 dollars.

The second one is called ArtPose, the third ArtPose FE. They’re basically the same app – one male, one female – with the same functions. You can choose from different body types, hair styles, hand poses, set your pose, light and camera. Priceless! For 2.99 dollars each.

PS I don’t own the rights for these pictures, but as I consider this to be free advertising for them, I guess the creators might be fine with it. And no, nobody pays me for sharing them ;)

[vlada-artblog]

Some tips on painting from B&W to color

As promised! Using this last painting.

1. Tweak your levels

You do not want your darkest darks to be too low on the value scale: you will be colorizing shadows, and likely glazing over them to darken them. To avoid a muddy mess, make sure that the darkest darks on your HSV/HSB (hue-saturation-value) color sliders are at MOST a 9. Photoshop has a Levels feature that lets you do that quickly.

2. Start with a colored base

Sometimes I use a gradient map (which can color lights/mid values/shadows at once), but the idea is the same – you want to color on top of a picture that has NO grey in it. Pick a neutral color that’s closest to your shadows – for example, here I wanted to have a warmer skintone, so I made the shadows cool.

3. Glaze CAREFULLY

Here is an example of what not to do – do not pile adjustments layers on top of one another in hopes that some of them will give you a good result. Lower your opacity and learn what layer modes do! Overlay will hit your lights, Multiply will hit your shadows, and Hard Light (my favourite) will show up exactly like a colored light source would.

Slow down. This is kind of like glazing an oil painting. Pull down your saturation and leave the Jersey Shore orange for the last steps of a painting.

4. Turn on hue jitter

Real skin is transluscent and highly reactive to the environment it is in. If you look at any realist painting, you will see glazes and glazes and glazes of color packed into a single square inch of canvas. You can imitate this by playing with your brush’s HUE JITTER setting, which will make the color you pick jump around the color wheel a little. This is especially helpful when glazing shadows.

5. Use neutrals to unify your painting

Greys are great. Greys are AMAZING when you want skin to pop, and this is why the majority of classical portraiture sports a neutral background. I just went over the whole piece and punched a bit of grey-green into the background and shadows to “kill” the oversaturated color. The painting immediately started to come together.

6. Remember that this is not a coloring book

The great thing about digital painting is that your CANVAS is your palette – and this method allows you to build one. It helps establish major structures so you can focus on color and light, but chances are you will end up repainting large parts of it anyway. Don’t be afraid to!

[tofuthebold]

Back muscles!

SKELETAL LANDMARKS 

shoulder blades: most of the upper back muscles attach to them directly, placement is affected by the arms. They can get obscured on very muscular backs, but most people these are the most dominant features!

7th cervical vertebra: neck bone that sticks out in most people, it sits in the center of that diamond shaped tendon in the middle of the trapezius

Also, obviously always keep the general shape of the ribcage and spine in mind, it was too much of a pain to draw them all in lol.

BACK MUSCLES

Erector Spinae: make the column-like structures around the spine, they extend all the way up to the neck, but you really only see the bottom part.

Latissimus Dorsi: are very thin, so most of the time you only see the structures underneath (such as the erector spinae). But when flexed, (for example, when climbing), you can see here on Jimmy Webb’s back that swooping curve it makes under the armpits.

The lats are also responsible for most of a person’s upper body strength and are the “V” shaped part of the back. For example, it’s how Bruce Lee was so strong despite being a small guy. Just look at those wings, man.

Infraspinatus, Teres Minor, and Teres Major: sit on the shoulder blade itself, and connects it to the top of the arm bone. These are responsible for a lot of the crazy shapes you see in bodybuilders’ backs.

Underneath them is the serratus anterior, which technically isn’t a back muscle but sits on the side of the ribs. These form that zig-zag pattern on the ribs that makes people look super ripped when visible with the external obliques, both wrapping around the sides of the torso. They’re not technically back muscles but fill out the silhouette, so it’s good to keep them in mind.

the glutes/butt muscles… they go farther up the back than one might assume and they, along with the pelvis, do affect the surface appearance of the lower back.

Rhomboid: simple shape, attaches from the inner edge of the shoulder blades to the middle of the spine at the 7th cervical vetebra to about the 4th or 5th thoracic vetebra. It does not overlap with the latissimus dorsi

Trapezius: divided roughly in the top, middle, and bottom sections. The top is quite thick and cylindrical and makes the sloping shape from the neck to the shoulders.

The bottom part is very thin; like the latissimus dorsi, the forms underneath it are visible when relaxed, making the rhomboid visible if it is flexed and the traps are not. Also not where the bottom part’s tendons attach to the shoulder blades; it outlines the curve of the shoulder blades even in people who are covered in brains muscles.

When fully flexed, it doesn’t taper into a point, but makes a small “w” shape at the bottom.

The 7th cervical vertebra sits at the center of the diamond-shaped tendons between the first and second sections of the trapezius. This part appears recessed in very muscular people.

Deltoid: not really a back muscle, but they overlap with the Infraspinatus and insert into the upper ridge of the shoulder blades, so it’s good to see how they interact with the others.

Ah, now for an example, featuring Thor himself. Note the curve where the traps meet the shoulder blades, the diamond-shaped tendon, and the rough “w” shaped contour of the lower back. Also note the two dimples, which is formed by the pelvis bones. They tend to be more prominent in women, although they are found in both men and women.

Try to find the back muscles on other people yourself, and then GET DRAWING

(PS, Generally it’s best to be able to simplify the forms instead of trying to render straight away - that’s how you know you really internalized the anatomy! I… honestly still don’t understand the back enough to do that yet, hence the lack of examples, unlike with the forearms post. But nonetheless, I hope that this is still useful as a general reference. I know it’s helped me at least remember what the different parts are, even if I don’t yet have a grasp of how they interact in motion!)