@cdlum / cdlum.tumblr.com

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Community Label: Mature

mannequin

Community Label: Mature

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I just wanted to say I think your art style is awesome! I was wondering if you had any tutorials on how you draw anatomy in your style (hips and legs especially)? Sorry if there's already one posted and I just didn't see it 🥲. Happy New Year :>

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thanks for the kind words. i tend to draw people pretty stylized and then some so a good bit of artistic licence gets used. these tips are just what i use so feel free to take them with a grain of salt. with anatomy in particular you can kind of talk in circles because human/animal bodies are that complex so ill just zone in on the points you specified. here's a little image with a bunch of pointers:

the above image condenses a lot of the points I'd make, but basically the key parts are to start with the bare essentials and build up that complexity. using a line of action is a good way to get a quick, rough start. you draw a line out in the general direction of the pose and do your best to adhere to it to give the pose a sense of flow.

you can also draw smaller, thumbnail versions that throw a lot of caution to the wind but capture the basic energy of what you're going for. even having a tiny little stick figure version of your idea can make for a good guideline of where to take it forward.

when it comes to actual limbs, you wanna consider how they integrate and work together, kind of like how chains do. you can see on some of the parts of pear i've drawn out these wireframes to kind of portray how the mass of her legs works in a three dimensional space. for aspects like the waist/hips, i use that X technique i highlight above a lot, particularly for the lower torso. a lot of the times, even when drawing a character totally naked, imagining them wearing things like skintight underwear can help a lot to guide you in the right direction.

its also a good idea to consider things like gravity and weight to a degree. humans are essentially big meat sacks and gravity is always pulling down on that, but theres all kinds of aspects that effect that, such as character build or clothing. pear technically isn't naked in this, but i've tried to imagine her as such and take that into account.

if you are drawing digitally, don't be afraid to take advantage of the convenience you get with that workflow. you can retry and iterate on things a lot faster that pen and paper, and do things that aren't really feasible at all when it comes to editing and modifying your existing work. things like resizing certain bodyparts, instantly flipping the canvas, or using selection tools to completely adjust the positions of parts of your drawing. to give you an example heres a timelapse with all the little edits i made just to this demo drawing:

you don't have to use these techniques linearly, either. sometimes ill have a really solid idea for a piece in my head, and go back to basics with certain elements if they’re not coming out right or i just want to brush them up a bit more. some of the tutorial-y parts i added in i didn't actually use during the drawing but often do use so they're there just for demonstration. not every drawing i do starts as building blocks or a really basic version, often ill just start with a face and build it out from there.

i always encourage liberally using references (this can include yourself) and trying out stuff like life drawing or looking at things like existing photographs of real people/places/things if you can, the more you use learning material the better you'll draw up a mental inventory in your head that you can rely on more and more. some of these tips are things i've learned from other artists over the years (the chin one especially i remember seeing a tutorial about lol), so this is a lot of knowledge i've amassed from other sources over time myself. there are plenty of times ill use all sorts of reference material and its all in service of arriving at the final destination as smoothly as possible. learn by doing, as they say. hope this helps!

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