A Brief Preface by the Author:

artist: felicia chiao

gladiator (gladiatrix????) girlfriends,,,,,,,, thinking thoughts,,,,,,,,

Trying to learn how to paint things in motion, fabric, backgrounds in perspective, and sharp light.

Care for a drink?

some original art inspired by the flammarion engraving☀️

“Live by the sun, love by the moon” ☀🌕 Art by Thiago Correa

des hommes elias-royaume

they say it wasn't humans who found the lost dutchman's gold

(another set of traffic box illustrations!!)

I neko atsume'd the new boop cats

Happy spooky season from your friendly neighborhood fire-lizard :D

hey y'all. i was morosely flipping through a sketchbook and found my magnum opus tucked in the back. this is 100% the best thing ive ever made and i gotta share it. behold: baby isopod. may it brighten your day as it did mine.

edit: yeah you can get a tattoo of this or print it out or whatever just dont sell it without asking first please ^_^ also im gonna upload a scan of it + some similar arts . eventually.

"I wanted to draw a fat person in this, but I just didn't know how to draw them, so I made all of the characters thin. Drawing fat people is hard."

So you were born out of the womb knowing how to draw thin people and hands and detailed machinery and animals and everything else that you draw? You never had to learn how to draw something and practice it?

-Mod Worthy

Also, can I say, as a fat artist, another very similar excuse people put out for this sort of thing is "I'm sorry, it's just my art style :("

When no, that's not how that works. A lot of people who say that don't even know what an "art style" is. None of these people seem to realize that art style isn't /what/ you draw, how /how/ you draw it.

Literally ANY art style can do fat people, and black people, and disabled people. These folks just REFUUUSE to learn cause they simply just,,, hate those types of people and find them intrinsically unappealing.

I would love to hear someone say "Sorry, I don't draw animals or buildings. It's just not my art style," because that is equivalent to claiming not drawing fat people is an artistic choice. "Sorry, I don't draw grass. It's my art style."

-Mod Worthy

Some people have been responding to this post saying that there are indeed artists who don't draw animals or buildings, so I need to explain that artists who choose to not draw animals or buildings are not doing so because of an art style. They do so because they choose not to learn how to draw them or even try to. As already stated before, an art style is how you draw something, not what you draw. THAT is why the artists who claim not drawing fat people is part of their art style are ridiculous. Fat people can be included in every single art style out there.

The sole reason an artist doesn't draw fat people is because they choose not to, whether that be because they don't value fat people enough to learn how to draw us or because they hate how fat bodies look. There is not a single reason to not even just attempt to draw fat characters. Not even "There are no fat art references!" There are fat positive blogs with thousands upon thousands of photos of fat people that can be used as a starting point for learning how to draw fat bodies. I have seen multiple times on this website posts that link to a popular guide on how to draw fat rolls and skin folds. There are people who make reference photos of poses with fat bodies if you look. It's not as readily available as thin references, but it is not impossible to learn how to draw fat people. If it was, then there would not be thousands of drawings of fat people on this very blog.

Here is the popular guide on drawing fat and skin folds that is often passed around. The post has a link to free scans of the art guide.

Utilize fat positive blogs for references as well. Some popular artists who regularly draw fat people have given tips before on things that have helped them. I don't currently have a link to a specific post by her, but I know that @mayakern has posted in the past about drawing fat people and also has uploaded many speedpaints that show her process of drawing fat bodies.

Another known resource for fat body references is Fat Photo Ref. The website is password protected in order to help lessen the chances of the fat people featured on the website being sent or used for hate. The website includes a link to a Google form to request access to the photos.

AdorkaStock has many pose references for fat people as well, most of which are viewable without a password or payment as they are posted straight to their DeviantART gallery.

There is no legitimate excuse to not TRY to draw fat people. There is no valid reason to thin-ify canon fat characters, especially since most of the time those fat characters already exist in a visual medium, so they inherently are references for how to draw them! Fat people are not being annoying or whining by asking to not be erased from human culture, art, and society. I should not have had to see a post this week defending thin-ified art of Steven Universe characters on my dashboard in what is now two weeks before 2023. If people could make art of fat bodies 30,000 years ago without resources like the internet, books, and film, then anyone can.

If you do not draw fat people, that is a choice you are making. Eliminating body diversity is not an art style and it never will be.

-Mod Worthy

i think my tutorials should be under my “art tips” tag but if not i also have a “tutorial” tag

but yeah i very much agree with this post. i rarely, if ever, draw backgrounds or machinery and that is very much a choice (because i don’t want to). and even me, a fat person and an artist, had to consciously teach myself how to draw fat bodies.

when i was young i ONLY drew skinny bodies because i was imitating the art i idolized (mostly anime/manga).

but when i got to college i started to be more conscious of my biases and also that not seeing bodies like mine in art was harmful to me. i started out just drawing myself and from there i just kept pushing and learning and teaching myself and i did that because i thought it was meaningful and worthwhile.

and even tho it felt revolutionary to me at the time, the things i was doing/making in college were bare minimum. but they were a first step and first steps are important. from there, i continued to teach myself slowly and steadily.

when i look back on this art now i’m like “wow these bodies are not even that fat and this felt so revolutionary to me??” but i guess seeing art of me + my wife helps to show off the difference

anyway one of the biggest shifts happened for me in 2018 when i got really frustrated with the limits of fat representation in my own work and i decided to push myself more. it wasn’t an easy or elegant process but it was worthwhile

i knew i wasn’t doing enough and i needed to do more. i wanted to draw double chins, stomachs, to draw softness and fat on thinner bodies too, to really put that human aspect of bodies in my work

even now i still have room to learn and grow. i know this is a lot but my point is that learning to draw anything takes time, effort, and a willingness to try. drawing fat bodies is as much about honing your skill as it is unlearning your antifat biases.

I really wanted to draw at least something for Swordtember hehe, ladies with swords are always fun to draw c:.