(non-black artists please reblog)
Please reblog regardless of your race/ethnicity.
heres a chart I made for myself showing diffrent undertones and how that affects the skin if anyone’s intrested
I'm a little confused. If it's racist to depict characters with noticeable epicanthal folds, then doesn't that imply that the epicanthal fold is considered an ugly feature by the person making the criticism? Seeing as it's a normal feature that many asians have...I can understand not wanting it to be exaggerated into a racist caricature, but leaving it out entirely? That doesn't rub you as being a little "Look, I left the East Asian features out so they'd be pretty!"? Which is racist in itself?
i’m assuming you’re referring to my we bare bears example. first of all, drop the ‘gasp you’re actually being racist against yourself??’ tone. i’m fine with dialogue but i have asian perspective and experience. be respectful.
no one said it’s racist to draw epicanthal folds. if your art is more realistic and detail-focused, it makes sense to include different kinds of eye folds. but in a cartoon, non-epicanthal folds aren’t translated. it’s not like you see little lines above a white person’s eyes. they’re just the typical round style. so it makes sense that the element of eye folds are left out entirely when it comes to all depicted races.
i used we bare bears as a good example because it’s the rare time asian characters’ eyes actually fit in with the style. they don’t need to squint, or be abnormally small, because no one else’s eyes do that. i don’t care that chloe has big eyes, because she’s a kid and everyone else, regardless of race, is similar. it matters more to me that her heritage is shown and celebrated rather than her having token asian traits.
sometimes cartoons can give asian eyes a lil difference and that’s fine too! candy from gravity falls has wider eyes, but they’re still round and cartoony. it’s a noticeable aberration from the style but it’s a small and harmless detail.
total drama, while not the uh, best example for a lot of things, has a great angular style. a lot of characters (gwen, izzy, duncan) have smaller eyes while not being asian. so it makes sense that heather, a polynesian character, has a bit of a half-circle shape to her eyes. it shows a diversity of eye shapes and sizes without focusing on racial stereotypes.
but ‘everyone has big eyes except the squinty asians’ happens. a lot. take trixie from the fairly odd parents. everyone’s eyes are round and big. hers are half circles, like 40% the average size. if her eyes are ‘accurately’ shaped, why does everyone else get identical cartoonish circles?
disclaimer: i grew up idolizing any representation i found, and i liked trixie a lot. and for children, it’s not the end of the world if exclusively asian characters are given small eyes. but it’s clear that she was designed by non-asian people, and there is always room for improvement.
onto more realistic art! when it comes to stereotypically limiting asian design vs. respectfully showing asian diversity, _ket2 put it best.
in conclusion, if you’re going to draw asian characters, don’t make them all have the same ridiculously small eyes compared to everyone else. asian people, especially artists, have been saying this forever.unlearn limiting racial preconceptions. learn from references and how diverse people look in real life.
For a story I'm planning I really want to design/make my own cultural clothing. Would it be okay to use hints/references from other cultures or should it be 100% original?
I think clothing will always end up referenced from somewhere, because there are only so many ways that clothing can work. I’m not really an expert on things like cultural appropriation, but I think one of the big issues that comes from referential clothing is when it’s totally distanced from its true culture or when it’s used as a way to code certain things. People have talked a lot about how Star Wars in particular used Mongolian- and Chinese-inspired clothing to make Padme seem “exotic”, and used clothing and other such coding to dehumanize different races and religions, along with other things.
I don’t think pulling from different cultural influences in clothing is bad, particularly because we tend to default to Western European/American clothing if we don’t actively pull from other cultures, and we should try to get away from the Western=normal/standard mentality. What you do need to be mindful of is 1) what the cultural significance of the things you’re pulling from is and 2) what geographic/climate significance is. Hot places will have different clothing features than cold places, deserts will have different features than rain forests, and places with animals that produce wool will have different clothing than places with animals that are good for leather will have different clothing than places with animals with fur, etc. You can also see what is common across multiple societies, and consider why that is true.
There are a few things I would consider:
You can also make up as much of your clothing as you want. Don’t feel tied to what people have done in real life, particularly if your society would have access to different sets of materials than in real life.
Hey, guys! I’ve noticed that there are a lot of artists who struggle with “same face syndrome,” or the tendency to draw all their characters with the same face. To help you combat this, I’ve created two different challenges!
The first (pink) one is mainly geared towards artists who are struggling with same face syndrome and want to start branching out. It covers topics that a lot of artists struggle with when drawing faces, such as age, weight, and face shapes. It’s not super specific, so you still have some wiggle room.
The second (yellow) one is a bit harder and is mainly geared towards artists who want to really challenge themselves to diversify their faces. Personally, I think this one’s the most fun to work with despite it being more difficult. Chances are with this one, you’re not going to be drawing a whole bunch of beautiful people. You don’t have to roll for every option on this one either. A certain combination of rolls from 10/13 of the options may give you a great character idea, and that’s great!
I hope you guys enjoy these! I’d love for you to send me your drawings if you do one (or both) of them.
@curdalert, asked me a few weeks ago, “How do you approach figure drawing?” While this isn’t really figure drawing in the traditional sense. This is just me trying to show how I see the human form, how I simplify things for myself to understand it enough to move past all the bullshit and difficulty of drawing. I’m by no means an expert on anatomy. I don’t know all the ins and outs of every damn bone, ligament or muscle. It’s all too much. A lot of this I learned from sifting through tutorials and browsing the internet. But figure drawing itself in the traditional sense is more about capturing the form. The force and flow of a pose. But I do keep a lot what I’m showing here in mind when I’m drawing from memory. I should however be doing a lot more life drawing, which is like zero at the moment. What I’m showing here can help de-mystify the human form a bit. So basically, this little tutorial I threw together is really about these 3 SHAPES and how everything is a mix of those 3 shapes. No magic. No abiding by rules of how many heads fit into a body. It’s all just shapes. Hope this helps. If there’s anything else you’d like to know, please send me more questions and I’ll do my best to answer them :)
Hi there! I'm not sure if you accept art-related questions, if not I apologize but I just wanted to get your take. I'm wanting to make hand-inked comics in black and white with no in-between shades of grey. I'm wondering how I should depict the black and other dark-skinned characters. If I make their skin white I could risk white washing, whearas if I make it black, I possibly risk harmful stereotypes and losing detail in the faces. This dumb artist would appreciate the help.
You’re going to be relying heavily on features, in this case— I would most certainly avoid having all-black skin because of the level of detail it would obscure.
When it comes to features, checking out @misselaney masterposts, posts on black features such as this one, and another blogger’s post specifically on noses.
You don’t mention Asian, but posts such as this are useful to know, since a diverse cast isn’t just black and white.
Features do differ across ethnicities. While you have to be careful not to stereotype, it’s 100% possible to identify a Black character based on clues such as hair, nose, and lip shape in a lineart format (just don’t exaggerate it, and use references).
~ Mod Lesya
i didn’t mean to make this so long but i wanted to both analyze my own style and give other people a look into it! I hope someone can find some use for it!
i didn’t mean to make this so long but i wanted to both analyze my own style and give other people a look into it! I hope someone can find some use for it!
A compilation of stuff I know about drawing Asian faces and Asian culture! I feel like many “How-To-Draw” tutorials often default to European faces and are not really helpful when drawing people of other races. So I thought I’d put this together in case anyone is interested! Feel free to share this guide and shoot me questions if you have any! I’m by no means an expert, I just know a few things from drawing experience and from my own cultural background.
My take on the Little Red Riding Hood.
It also occurs to me that some of my Shardbound concepts didn’t even make it over here– Here are just a few peeks at some of the characters I’ve been working on with Spiritwalk Games over the past year!
space wig
Check out this great behind-the-scenes featurette about the making of June, featuring interviews with director John Kahrs, Chromosphere creative director Kevin Dart, Lyft creative director Ricardo Viramontes, and musician Sir the Baptist (who wrote and performed the song for the montage!). There’s also some more production artwork and a few peeks at our LA studio space in the video!
Here’s me and some other people talking about the making of June! Also lots of really nice footage of the Chicago locations that inspired our backgrounds.
I have a fat character I want to draw but she ends up looking weird no matter how hard I try... :
I can totally understand your frustration. We’re taught to draw thin bodies a lot more often and thoroughly than we’re taught to draw fat ones, so learning how to draw larger bodies can definitely be a struggle, even for fat artists. But I’ve rustled up some links that should hopefully prove useful to you and other artists dealing with the same problem.
Fat Drawing Tutorial:
(One of the sadder parts of finding these was sifting through different tutorials and finding ones that were teaching how to draw really inaccurate or over-simplified fat anatomy, or included really fatphobic language or commentary in the tutorial =.=)
Fat Reference Photos:
Other Reference:
Otherwise, if you want to search for fat reference on tumblr, I’d suggest looking through tags and blogs that often contain selfies/photos of fat people, since when you’re trying to learn how fat actually looks, nothing is more accurate reference for it than the real thing.
HOWEVER, you must be respectful in your use of these tags or blogs for reference!!!! As in DO NOT draw people straight out of any photos you find and post your work unless you get permission from the subjects you’ve drawn and/or their photographers. If you do draw random people you see in the tag, then treat your drawings as practice/study and confine whatever you make to your sketchbook for your own eyes.
But I do wholly advocate looking at all sorts of images of fat people and really paying attention to all the different ways their fat manifests itself and looks, and then practicing drawing figures inspired by what you’ve observed.
(please note that some of these tags and blogs listed below may contain nudity/nsfw content:)
Tags containing fat selfies/photography: #fatshion, #fatspo, #fatspiration
Blogs containing fat selfies/photography: The Adipositivity Project, Fat Selfiesteem, Fat Grrrrl Selfies, Chubby Fatshion, Fuck Yeah Chubby Fashion, Chubby Bunnies, Chubby Guy Swag, Big Guy Flyy, Gorgeous Plus Lolita
Blogs containing art of fat or at least “not thin” people: Fat People Art, Fat Art
(If you see your blog linked to above and would rather it not be pointed to as a place to find reference of fat bodies, just let me know and I’ll take it off right away.)
Anyways, hope this helps! And if you know of, find, or make any more tutorials, references sources, etc., please do message me with the links to be added onto this post!!! I’ll update this as I find/receive more stuff to add.
(Updated: 5/31/15 with 8 new additions to the fat drawing tutorial and fat reference photo sections)
I’m not crazy, y’all. Dragonball Supers animation is bad on a basic level.
Not sure if the Animation Director or the story-artist is more at fault but regardless, the product is bad and someone should have known better.
(scans from the book “Character Mentor” by Tom Bancroft)
This is something I need to work on as well, so it was good practice for me! I hope this helps some of you that also struggle with same-face-syndrome!
TLDR: Just look at Jim Flora’s artwork and study from that ;)
