HEP SORRY I DONT KNOW IF IM. BEING UPSETTING BUT YOU CAN SWITCH ACCOUNTS BY MESSAGING VIA LIKE
once ur there u just kinda pick the blog u want to use and then
press that type in the name of the blog u wanna message BADA BING BADA BOOM. YOU FUCKIN GOT THIS
holy shit earthmover please dont kill me or my family
today is my birthday : D
Everyone says NEVER TRACE!! THAT'S ART THEFT! Ok but we can do a little crime in the name of Learning.
Trace to learn, not to earn.
I like to take my own photos, but you can study whatever you want. Link back to original photos, and don't post copied artwork unless the artist is dead, cool with it, or both.
As always with learning, start every sketch with the intent to throw it away (trash for paper, quitting without saving for digital) This takes the pressure off and lets you make Bad Art, which is very important.
Start with a photo of your subject in a nice/neutral pose with all four feet visible. (so not like me)
Freehand copy it. Try not to stylize, focusing instead of matching proportions and pose. Don't get too detailed!
It's ok if your art looks terrible and has broken legs. I've drawn LOTS of deer so I have a leg up. Everyone's art sucks in their own eyes and here's where mine went wrong:
Either lasso-distort (recommended for beginners) or redraw a copy of your first sketch with your reference behind it (scaled to match the main body of your sketch)
Put the original and modified sketches together and compare the differences. Write it down if you want. This shows you where your eyes saw things the wrong size, so you can correct for that next time.
After learning about both deer and yourself, try freehand copying again.
Marvel at your newfound knowledge and skill!
but there's always room for improvement
You can stop here and move on to your real drawing, Or do another freehand-fix-compare cycle. I actually overcorrected my "draws heads too big" and veered into "heads too small."
Another note on tracing: Learning HOW to trace is more important than anything you could learn By tracing. Draw the Anatomy, not the outline. In real life, things don't have outlines, they have bones.
These are from the same shoot which is extra useful for consistency. The lines are minimal and follow where the animals joints are, and only important parts are drawn.
You won't know what Important Parts means right off the bat, which is where in-depth study comes in. You need to do learn the hard parts to do the easy parts right.
Next up: how to study bones and muscles.
"Study the anatomy study the anatomy" but they never tell you HOW. It's not "read a book," It's more like flailing around wildly and crashing your browser from too many tabs.
This is going to be about How to Make a bones and muscle chart. Because even if your art sucks, you learn so much more by doing than by seeing.
Get Set up. Get a photo, like above, but it doesn't have to be the same photo. And now... gather reference.
We'll start with bones. Search up "[animal] skeleton" and get photos or super scientific illustration. Add in things like "top view" to spice it up.
Next, search "[animal] skeleton sketchfab." This pulls up 3D models that you can rotate in your browser. Remember that these are art and the anatomy is only as good as the artist, so pick a good one.
Time for bone!
The spine is the most important, and in a lot of animals it will surprise you. Draw it in over your photo and then add spikes because skeletons are punk. These are not scientific and I didn't count them because their number doesn't matter to art. So you better be referencing from scientists and not me!
The rest of the bones and some notes. These are my notes to myself about things I want to remember. My personal discoveries in anatomy that made my art better. You can make the same notes but also make sure you have your own thoughts on there as well. that's how you help yourself the best. Be as detailed or vague as you want.
Same deal with muscle. Here are my personal notes to myself. Label stuff that is important to you. I actually grouped a bunch of muscles together based on what is visible from the outside. Muscles are way more complicated than this, but Baby's First Anatomy Chart gets to be simple.
This is good enough for me because I have intimate knowledge of the other muscles working under and over these ones. Feel free to add as many or as few muscles as you like. You chart your own course.
This is very VERY much not an anatomical chart. I'm sure there's nerds out there pulling their hair out looking at this. But listen, it works for art!
And you know the wildest part about this?
I don't need to look at it to use it. The act of making your own anatomy chart puts that knowledge in your brain. Like how you can make "cheat sheets" even for tests that don't allow them - the act of making the sheet helps you remember what you struggle with most.
And after all that complexity? Your simplification will be based on Real Knowledge and you'll put those random circles in the right spots.
Look at all this hard work you've done. Eventually this will be second nature to you.
Show me what you make! I'd love to see what creatures yall make anatomy charts of.
Photo Reference Packs
I put together some photo packs and uploaded them to my gumroad. You can use them and this guide to study! So far there's only a Doe and a Fawn pack, but if I get sales I will put in the effort to do more for deer, horses, cats, birds, and anything else I can point my camera at.
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Never related to anything more
This is all because all of you didn't buy the $80 custom blog themes from the tumblr store
dont tell anyone because its top secret but i just got the next tumblr update early and notes become like a currency that you can use to buy different outfits for your posts
i eat 15 apples for breakfast then drive myself to the hospital just to watch the doctors get blasted backward into the drywall bc they cant withstand my aura
I am so serious when I say if you want to learn about light, you NEED to at least look at modeseven’s tutorials. even if you’re not pursuing a painterly style, this is all essential theory that can be easily adapted to different coloring styles. notice how none of these ever say ‘light with these colors and shade with these colors’? notice how this is teaching how light works on a mechanical level, and reminding the audience to adjust the actual colors they choose by context? THAT is good advice.
(if you’re thinking ‘wow I want to study more of this persons art!’ I encourage you to do so, but proceed with the knowledge that modeseven draws pretty much exclusively weird as hell kink art. sometimes wisdom comes from horny places)
.... i have never felt so seen
It occurs to me that most neurotypicals don’t seem to actually know what a special interest is.
“regular interest, but More” doesn’t fully express it for me. I like to refer to special interests as “substrate” because they’re often a foundation for interacting with and processing the world and for making the inner environment of my brain comfy and consistent. Having a special interest usually means that’s what you “default” to when you’re not thinking about anything in particular. Special interests are a way to seek comfort when things are overwhelming. They’re a way to impose structure on your life and your thoughts; they’re reliable and building up a body of facts about the thing you like is comforting. They’re also a way of connecting with others and making conversation; facts about your special interest are easier than “freestyling” your way through a conversation, essentially making it up as you go. Special interests also bring autistic people joy and happiness...it’s essentially emotional regulation.
Special interests serve a function. They aren’t just like...a quirk of being autistic, they’re a way of dealing with the world and your own brain as an autistic person.
For me, I can broadly divide my life into “eras” based on the special interest I had at the time. It was a lot of my identity. For an autistic person your current special interest is often a really, really fundamental part of you at the time.
This means that, at least from my point of view, it’s weird and contradictory to say “special interests are valid! support autistic people!” and then talk about how adults shouldn’t need fictional things to process real world problems and how cringy it is for adults to make some fandom theyre in into a “personality trait” like...yeah, people shouldn’t talk about fandoms on posts about real world tragedies, but I can’t escape the fact that what you’re specifically calling weird and immature is kind of what a special interest is. You can’t separate special interests from “processing the world through your interests” and “making your interests a fundamental part of your identity.” Those things are often part of what makes a special interest a special interest.
Been a while since I made one of these, but here’s a quick thing about glow. Counterintuitively, you don’t have to make the image super bright to convey that something is glowing.
Are you familiar with a book called The Dragons of Babel? Your mecha beasties are always what I think of reading about the fighter dragons. I'm really happy to see you on tumblr again, your work is awesome!
Dragons of Babel...sounds vaguely familiar but I don’t think I read those ever! Way back in the day I read a lot of Dragonriders of Pern, the dragons are described as being a bit alien-like in it which was cool, and also, the Dragon Champion series, which I really loved because the stories were told from the dragons’ perspective!
Type in 0 to download for free, tips are very much appreciated but not required! Hope you all enjoy these brushes! Please share them with friends if you like them!
[Mario coin noises]
Mario: [italian american New York Brooklyn accent] HERE’SA MY BROTHA LUIGI NOW TA TELL YA A WHOLE HEAP AND A SPAGHETTI PILE OF INFORMASCIONI.
Luigi: [inhale] [normal person voice] Hello Mario.
this is from mario sex ed
FROM WHAT?
Healthcare PSA
Tiktok removed this, so keep it moving!
very useful info! especially for anyone who goes in-and-out of hospital! boost this!
Oh hey! I have actually used this before. When I was a freshman in college I had to get a CT scan to make sure my spleen wasn’t enlarged, and my insurance refused to cover it because they deemed it unnecessary.
My mom and I looked into the financial assistance program at the hospital, and applied for it. They ended up covering the full $1600 cost of the test. Real stuff!
