How do you draw hands so perfectly? It's been a big struggle for me as a person learning to draw.
I feel like I still struggle with hands a lot, but I decided to try breaking it down as best I could for you ^^
The #1 first and most important advice is just to draw a lot. Struggling to draw hands? Fill an entire page with hands. Now another one. Any time you feel stuck on something, draw a bunch of that thing. You can't get better at drawing something if you avoid drawing it.
Hands are confusing because beginner artists especially have trouble with complex three dimensional objects. The best way to think about hands is to break them down into simple shapes.
The palm becomes a square, and fingers should start out as a general shape before being broken down into individual fingers.
Try not to jump into detailing hands right away and try to get the general shapes down first.
If you're struggling to learn the shapes of the hand still, try drawing Mickey Mouse hands! Seriously. I'm not joking. Mickey hands are the perfect simplified hands- all shapes, but still very expressive. Drawing real hands can easily look too stiff- cartoon hands will help you learn to be expressive while making it simple to understand!
This isn't super in-depth or anything, but I hope it helps some! ^^;
Because one (1) person asked, here’s a tutorial on every. single. piece. of my Four Swords costumes, from what I thrifted, to what I made, to wigs, elf ears, and contacts, etc. Continued under the cut :)
I did this tutorial for someone on instagram and thought I should share it here too! Maybe it’ll help someone out, I get asked about my lineart a lot. ^^
I hope you don't mind enlightening us on shading and lighting 👀 I love how you shade (especially with all the fancy double light sources you do--)
Absolutely!
When it comes to shading and lighting- I could blab all day about colors and color theory, but in the end, a lot of it comes down to understanding 3D forms.
If you’re struggling with shading something and can’t tell if it’s turning out right, I would suggest turning it to greyscale to see if it’s working or not. Even practicing shading in greyscale can be immensely helpful.
I’d practice shading different light sources on the same face to get a feel for how a face works in 3D. (The far left drawing has lighting directly in front of the face, the middle one has light coming from below, and the far right one has light coming from the side.)
I tried to do a mesh drawing on top to show you how you want to think of things as 3D, not 2D, but I’m not sure if it worked well haha.
Anyway. Moving on. I don’t have a strict method of coloring things, but this is generally how I go about it. I start with flat colors, and then choose where I want my light source to be by adding in shadows. (Shadows naturally tend to be cooler in color, and highlights tend to be warmer, but it’s fun to experiment with different lighting conditions!)
On top of that, I add highlights, and then add a little more depth to the shadows by adding a few darker spots where I think it needs it.
Then I tell myself “Stop adding double light sources to literally every drawing you do” and then I promptly ignore myself and add a double light source :D (+ here’s what it looks like when I convert it to greyscale to check it)
Adding a second light source can really make a drawing pop. I typically add it on the opposite side of my main light source.
This specific secondary light is referred to as a “rim light” because it’s just barely touching the outline of the figure. It’s totally possible to have two light sources that are the same strength though!
Like in this Red drawing I did, I focused on only adding highlights from the two light sources as opposed to shading. I only added some shadows afterward in places that needed it.
I hope that helps! Lmk if you have other questions!
hello! i see that you are very skilled with coloring and blending (its really good! you should be proud of yourself!) I dont have a lot of experience with coloring, traditional or otherwise. Would you mind giving a few tips??
First off: thank you!
This topic is really broad, but I tried to think of some basic things that I know beginners struggle with, so I hope some of these tips help? If anyone wants something more specific please let me know!
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Okay let’s just get this one out of the way: it mostly applies to digital art only, but really try to avoid super saturated colors unless you’re specifically going for “eye strain” art (and even then, there’s nuance to what works).
This is an over exaggeration, but when beginners look at the color wheel it can be difficult to figure out how to use the “muddy” colors in the center and they default to the brighter side. Don’t be afraid of the muddy colors!! Those are going to be your best friend!! Bright colors are fine, but don’t shy away from using desaturated colors too (else you might end up with something like this).
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Another tip I have (for both digital and traditional) is to never shade with pure black or white OR exactly the same color you used as a base, but darker. This makes a drawing look pretty flat. It’s better to use a color that’s darker, but also a slightly different color than your base color.
For example: instead of shading his yellow hair with a darker yellow (adding black), I used a darker orange color. Same for his skin, and while the difference on the green tunic isn’t as noticeable, I shaded that with a slightly bluer tone.
(Even eyes and teeth are not pure white. You can use pure white and black in drawings but for beginners I would try to avoid it.)
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However I think the MOST important thing I would stress when regarding color is that COLOR IS RELATIVE. If you want to paint someone with a red shirt underwater, that red shirt is probably going to be colored dark purple instead- but because we can see the blue around it and the context clues, our brains will register it as red.
For example, even though this is a night scene, you can still tell what the colors are supposed to be.
However, if I take away that background and replace it with a stark white background, you can see how dark and different the colors are.
If I want to establish an atmosphere or have any sort of background, I always make sure to do the background first. It’s much easier to match your character to the background than the other way around.
Also, I tend to avoid coloring the character first because that can lead to more average looking pieces. In this, I colored the character the way I normally would on a white background, and then added the same background from above- it still works, but it also looks more average and doesn’t set an atmosphere as well.
Here are two more examples I did really quick. Not the best, but hopefully it gets the point across.
I hope this helps some??? Let me know if there’s anything more specific I can help with!
Any tips on drawing in perspective? Like someone reaching out towards you through a picture, something like that, I'm having a bit of trouble with perspective in general and nothing I try seems to work... You seem good at it so...
What about a tutorial on bodies? I've been struggling to draw bodies for a while and wanted some help with it...
Anatomy and drawing bodies is such a vast topic to study- there’s a lot to learn and honestly, there’s no better way to improve than just getting out there and drawing from life, or at least drawing from photographs and medical drawings.
At any rate, I tried to give a very simplified, general anatomy rundown. I hope it helps! If anyone has something they’d like me to explain further or go into more detail on, shoot me an ask. It’s hard to cover broad topics like this in a single tutorial.
Hey, I know it's been awhile since you made that FS cosplay tutorial, but I was wondering if you could explain how you made the sword template? It's super useful but I want to translate it to other things too
Sure thing! :D I’ll use the Four Sword as an example again, but all of this applies to whatever you want to make. ^^
Gather as many references as you possibly can. It helps a lot if you can find a photo of it straight-on, but seeing it at different angles is important too. In the case of the Four Sword, there’s really only two official pieces of art for it, but I was making the manga version anyway, so I looked there for references.
The next step is a little different depending on if you’re doing this on paper or digitally.
On paper-Looking at your references, draw on a big piece of paper (or lots of small pieces of paper taped together) about how big you want the sword to be. For the most part... I just eyeball it, trying to draw it out as exactly as I possibly can. Using a ruler helps with any straight edges.
If the sword is symmetrical, try folding the paper in half and drawing only one half of it. That way, when you cut it out, it unfolds to be exactly the same on both sides.
Digitally-You basically do the same thing as above, but with an extra step. You can use any drawing software you want, and using a digital software to make a template is often easier since you can make straight lines easily, as well as trace your reference (if you have one that’s good enough.)
The extra step comes with printing- how do you print it at the right size? ...There’s probably a right way to do this but honestly I just stick the template into microsoft word and guess. I go back and adjust the size as needed.
(the horizontal lines were just added so I’d know where to line them up)
This can be applied to other things as well! I made these shields by using this method. I drew up my template, printed it out, cut out the foamboard and glued it all together.
(Two layers of foamboard for thickness + one layer for the chrome rim. Add straps on the back and ta-da! You have a shield.)
I hope that answers all of your questions! If not, just shoot me another ask. If time allows, I’m going to try to make the Master Sword using this method, and I’ll try to document it as I go.
I started this tutorial based on realistic eyes and then realized that you probably meant cartoony or anime eyes, so... I tried to give advice that applies to both? Continued under the cut
Ack, this is one of the few things I’m not sure how to explain xD
For the most part, just study your hands. If you’re having trouble, one day sit yourself down and draw your own hands a bunch. You’ll slowly start to understand them, even if it’s no fun.
Something else I like to do is look at pages like this, where Disney and other cartoon animators studied the way their characters hands are supposed to work- in a way, this is much harder than drawing realistic hands. You still have to understand the realistic anatomy of the hand, yet also make them caricatured as well as make them expressive.
Another thing that helped me was, surprisingly, learning how to draw cartoony “Mickey” hands when I was in my Bendy and the Ink Machine phase. It breaks hands down in a highly simplified way- if you can start to understand how these simplified hands work, it’s not much harder to learn more detailed hands.
I hope that helps? :’D You called me out on one of the things that I just do intuitively and can’t explain very well, sorry about that
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