#some doodles are obvious redraws & some aren't | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

hauntedtotem · 1 year

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Do you have any drawing tips?

•When it comes to digital art, if you struggle making lines clean or sharp enough, using a textured brush erases that struggle because the whole point is not being clean or sharp.

^left is obvious where mistakes were made and had to be erased, looks choppy and needs cleaned up. right does not need cleaned up much. saves time and energy!

•if a drawing looks a little too bland or unfinished, but you don't know what else to do about it, adding a texture overlay does a lot, especially for solid backgrounds

•For both traditional and digital artists, do👏art👏studies👏. No, this doesn't mean sign up for expensive art classes, it means spend a page in a sketchbook just practicing one thing. So instead of drawing say, a character portrait like usual, have a page that's just full of hands in different poses (use references! Very important for studies!)

2016 example, but you can tell which ones had references (hint: only 3 of them did,but they're way better than the rest)

the only recent example I had was an unfinished page of bird skulls :/

Which brings me toooo

Learning to draw realistic skeletons can also really help with anatomy, if your character looks wonky, think "could a skeleton fit in there?"

Thinking abt how their skeleton looks can help notice things like the eyes being too high up or the mouth being too low, or having no room for a brain

*this is not a dig at people with this style! It's okay to have more exaggerated features and you don't need to draw realism! The skeleton rule does not apply to cartoony characters obviously. Just some advice from someone that used to put the mouth too low all the time

•if you get stuck where you feel like you aren't improving, try different art styles out.

•If you have art block and don't know what to draw, try the 'dtiys' or 'draw this in your style' tags and pick something there, or do screenshot redraws from games or shows

•If you usually listen to music when you draw but it's just not doing it atm, switch to something like long YouTube commentary videos or documentaries, and vise versa. Sometimes the brain wants music, sometimes it wants information or gossip. When you get burned out from one go to the other

•this applies to traditional and digital art too! If you have art block on one medium, switch to another! If digital isn't working, grab a pencil or paintbrush, or play with some clay! Sometimes the brain isn't bored of art, it's just bored of the medium.

•If you're trying realism and struggling, break it down to simple rules.

And I don't mean the shape thing everyone suggests, I mean things like "the inner corner of the eye lines up with the mouth, the outer corner of the eyes lines up with the ears, your nose bridge leans into your eyebrows, feet are the same length as your elbow to your wrist, use the collar bone to guide the shoulder position, the armpit curves into the breast, etc.

*this doesn't apply to everyone or every expression! Remember the mouth moves around and comes in all shapes, it's a very loose "rule", and people's eyes aren't always the same distance or angle, just keep the ear around that general eye area

Glasses test: can your character wear glasses?

carlos passes glasses test- a better rule for mouths is to imagine smile lines, even if whoever youre drawing doesnt have wrinkles, theyre a good guide for mouth placement

•doing color palette challenges can help practice composition and shading with abnormal colors, and helps understand color theory

•for digital, you can overlay colors over a drawing to make the palette more uniform. Don't be shy abt messing around with it

•Watch speedpaints! Watch pencil animation clips! It helps

•don't be afraid to use your art supplies. Ik the struggle of "but I don't wanna waste it", but that paint will go bad if you keep it on a shelf for years! Use it already! Doodle in the "fancy" sketchbook! Yolo!!

•use cyan and magenta for mixing paint, not blue and red. The "primary colors" rule doesn't always apply to all mediums.

•keep your old art! Do not tear it up or throw it out just because you're not proud of it, it's cool to reflect or even redraw it years down the line (backup your digital art somewhere, even the ones not posted online because your computer could just die one day for no reason and take everything with it. It sucks)

•IF you sketch on paper and then digitalize it later, you can draw the pieces seperately and photoshop them together. So dont worry if you drew a really good hand but it's at the slightly wrong angle, or too far away from the body. You can put it where it needs to be without having to erase and redraw it

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