- 5/15/2018 So I Had Only Doodled 4 Faces When I Went To Bed At Like 2am... Doodling Is Really Fun When

This is mesmerizing to watch.

- 2/07/2018

- 4/18/2018 While it looks like I didn’t do much yesterday I’m actually working on a colored version of this

- 4/28/2018

Ive finally decided I need to come to terms with the fact that if I want to do good colored art, I need to do line art and probably a black and white version too…

- 6/05/2018

Even attempting to figure out what an oc looks like is hard (i have no idea what I’m doing)

goombella123 asked: how 2 force myself to study so i can get better at anatomy and posing

pearbuddy asked:  developing a steady practice? i know the best advice to getting better is to just draw, but i know a lot of people (myself included) struggle with actually making ourselves do it.

cuccosneverdie asked: what kind of practice you did to get good at anatomy? i’m really struggling getting anatomy to look even slightly correct

whereislaurita asked about: Anatomy; ;

elinmeat asked about: FACES. .…. FACES. … .

With regards to anatomy, my favourite book is Figure Drawing: Design & Invention by michael hampton, and lots of tutorials and references in my anatomy tag: http://helpfulharrie.tumblr.com/tagged/anatomy !

Which is all well and good… but how do you actually practice these things? 

“Just draw a whole bunch” is only about 15% of the story. In order to self study, you need to:

Identify what you are struggling with. Reflect on what it is about your art you do not like so you can improve upon it!

Figure out what direction it is you want to take your art in. How do you want your art to look? You can find a post I wrote about art direction a couple years ago here: http://helpfulharrie.tumblr.com/post/120523296471/alrighty-then-friends-lets-talk-about-art-styles

Once you identify what you are unsatisfied with, you can figure out what knowledge you are lacking and study it. Read tutorials, books, ask other artists and friends for guidance and critique, etc.!

Then you want to start applying what you have learnt to your art! You can only get so far by reading something, to truly understand it you have to put it into practice and get a feel for what you have learnt.

So lets say, for example, you want to study faces.

You’ll want to seek out some resources that will help you understand the subject, a good place to start would be my faces tag: http://helpfulharrie.tumblr.com/tagged/faces

But I’ll get you started with two resources that helped me the most!

One: Stan Prokopenko’s series on drawing the head at any angle:

It’s a great breakdown of the Loomis Method, a series of guidelines for the face and head created by andrew loomis.

Two: The book I mentioned earlier! It covers the whole figure and I recommend getting it if you can, I do believe there are pdfs out there if you can’t get the book.

But! You can see two of the pages on drawing the head here: http://helpfulharrie.tumblr.com/post/105040269221/from-figure-drawing-design-and-invention

Now you’ve learnt some New Stuff, and you need to put it into practice so you can process what you’ve been told.

So start finding some references! For faces/hands/feet/the human figure, I recommend visiting https://line-of-action.com/, it’s full of photos you can use.

With your references in and, start by tracing the guidelines over the image. This will help you understand what they represent, and why they’re there.

This is a good exercise for understanding anatomy in general, let’s say you instead wanted to study giraffes and have no idea how to draw them.

Look for the large, consistent shapes, and those will become your construction guidelines!

Once you’ve gotten a feel for your guidelines, try them out! Do a bunch of sketches from imagination.

And when you’re confident with them, try them out by drawing from references.

And finally, go back to your art from before you started these studies, I’m going to use something I drew in 2013

And redraw it using what you’ve learnt!

While you’re doing this, pay attention to the areas you got wrong. Make a note of this, so you don’t repeat it in the future.

Ah, much better!

Now repeat the process of: Identify problem, research problem, study problem, apply what you learnt, and you’ll improve for sure. It’ll take time, but the more you learn the closer your art will get to the image you want it to be!

In this post I focused on anatomy studies, but you can do the same thing with anything.

Like for example: colour studies, in that case you would:

read about colour theory

find some references full of colours you like, and colour pick out the palette

analyse the relationships btwn the colours based on what you read. What kind of colour scheme is this? how are these colours influencing the mood? etc.

then take an old piece and redo the colour scheme, making note of why you were dissatisfied with the old colours.

The most important part of this is that you experiment with what you’re reading about and being taught, and then going back and seeing where it was lacking in your work before so you can apply it to your work in the future!

Best of luck everyone! I hope that helps nwn

You can always ask me for pointers if you need, and remember! Take pride in what you create, everything you do is a work of art.

It’s easy to get caught up in the cycle of improve, improve, improve - but don’t forget to appreciate how far you’ve come.

Lastly, if this was helpful to you, you can support me on Patreon, Liberapay, or Ko-Fi so I can keep writing these posts! Thank you 💕

reblog for easter

Lol, today is an important day for the monarchy, the anniversary of Bowsette being crowned

- 1/03/2018 So after a while of drawing these I got tired of it and thought the only thing that improved was the eye brow placement. But after staring at it vs some older doodles it turns out I've really improved the stableness of all facial features

I don’t think healthy people every really get chronic illness.

I have a friend I know from when we were both 6. She is the only person living nearby and so she saw me go from walking through limping to wheelchair on a daily basis. I keep her updated on my health even tho we rarely hang out anymore. She was gonna come over yesterday and I had to cancel. She asked if I can’t hang out later that day. When I said i won’t feel better later, that if I feel that bad in the morning later will only get worse she got annoyed and “joked” that I’m just finding excuses. And I was surprised, she knows all about me being disabled after all? So, a bit taken aback, I told her it’s a normal thing for me.

“But you got the diagnosis now, aren’t you better?? I thought you’ll get better now”

She was honestly surprised and it made me realize a thing. They don’t get it. They don’t get that getting diagnosed only equals benefits like welfare or parking spot for us, and sometimes better pain meds but that is just like pushing luck. That it’s a forever thing. That that one day we felt good a week ago was just a bright spot and doesn’t mean we won’t need our aids anymore, cause chronic illness is not linear and will make a great comeback in next four hours, and the next good day is planned on when we’re 70. Cause when abled people are sick, they get better. And our illness is just an excuse for them. And when we say we will never get better they think we’re being dramatic and pessimistic. And I don’t think they’ll ever get it, cause to get it you need to live it. And I want my friends to stay healthy and not go through hell.