DAY DIDNT START OFF SO GOOD… 😔😔😔😔

Ah fck this.,, art is so hard.,,, it’s so frustrating :’ like I wanted to create some fanart for my ship and it was sooo hard……… I can’t even…,. There’s so much in realising I have to learn ahahah….. (sob) oh man. This shit is so hard n annoying. The frustration I felt while attempting too…. :’ I wanted to give up so badly aahahha.

you know for this one im not even gonna say anything. it was one hell of a trip to madness though. that I will say. my gosh. I freakin hate you angel boy…..

I don’t even want to say anything. but funny how I was like oh I wanna see if I remember how to still draw him. tried to draw him. goes “hehehe I still remember” decides to check the trace and compare and ah: here’s where the madness starts. at at point I realize there’s no point to this. who the fck cares, also looking at the series, I don’t think he’s drawn the same constantly but kinda changed but I think it’s the sense of colouring and similarity that carries over. whatever. I just give up.

Even when I tried to draw another character it didn’t go well. im just. throwing in flag. but I. Guess I do want to at least study his hair in a bit. man just looking at this makes me want to punch something. I cannot.

back to poses…<3

😐 man… a lot of recent art is highlighting on my weakness and there are Many. such as legs. mainly legs,.. side view…… profile face angle…. neck..,, arms…. arms again..,. (mainly drawing in arms.)….. for leg it’s really everything :/ man. and the problem is that I can’t be bothereddd to learn legs :/ I did do a more in depth study learning of muscles and shit …. and I think it deepened some level of understanding but not deep enough tbh…..

I want to draw so badly!!!! But no!!!! forcing my self into this break.

The big post of things about hands!!! I don’t consider myself qualified to teach art at this point in my life, but I don’t see any harm in sharing observations I have made. In learning to draw hands over the past few months I’ve tried to take a lot of notes, with the end goal of hopefully creating a video tutorial one day. I personally learn better from videos than written or illustrated instructions, but I’ve never found any one video that really demystifies drawing hands. I believe that in order to tackle such a difficult subject it is important to understand what makes it difficult, and this is not often addressed. If you understand the problems you can systematically solve them…

Drawing the hand is almost like drawing a whole person. Similar number of “major masses” and a big range of motion.

Because the hand is so versatile, it’s hard to pick a pose when practicing. Most individual body parts are drawn from different angles, whereas the hand must be drawn from different angles and in different poses.

Hands have a lot of moving parts and from any given angle many of these will be partially or wholly obscured by other parts. Drawing “through the form” results in confusing construction lines that are difficult to interpret.

Hands are expressive and give big clues as to what a character is doing. Odd or unnatural hand poses detract heavily from your overall piece. Most people avoid drawing hands because of this.

The thumb flexes along a different plane than the four fingers and sits on its own deviant metacarpal. Drawing the hand in perspective is hard enough, but adding the thumb in relation to the rest of the hand at a convincing angle? Forget about it!

Hands are typically simplified into box and cylinder forms, but almost every part of the hand is a combination of angles and curves. No one simplified form really describes these parts.

Hands interact with other objects, like all the time. They’re tricky enough to draw on their own… this isn’t helping anyone.

Hands have a lot of bony landmarks, veins, and tendons, all visible at the surface level. These are obstacles when trying to render them realistically.

Hands are asymmetrical from every angle. Every part, every time.

I think that about covers the major issues we face when trying to draw hands. Now here are some observations and facts that you can use to fight back!

The width of the first three fingers (index, middle and ring) is the same as the width of the wrist. The pinky and thumb both emanate from the parts of the palm that overhang this line.

The palm of the hand is more of a pentagon than a rectangle (Thanks, Jim Lee!).

The length of the middle finger is approximately the same as the length and width of the palm.

The length of the phalanxes (finger bones in this case) diminishes in size as they get further from the palm. The second (middle) phalanx is 2/3 the length of the first (proximal), and the third (distal) is 2/3 the length of the second. You don’t really notice this since the first knuckle is “inside” the palm and we tend to think of the fingers as starting at the “finger crotch”.

The thumb has no middle phalanx, only a proximal and a distal one.

The thumb is rotated 90 degrees from the angle of the four fingers. So the fingernails point “up” and the thumbnail points “to the side”. This obviously changes depending on the pose, but the thumbnail never really points “up” with the other fingernails unless it is bent backwards, as in poses when all five fingers are pressed against a flat surface. It never really points “down” unless the hand is clamping or pinching… or operating a sock puppet.

The thumb has to sit lower than the palm so that it can flex underneath the hand. The first knuckle of the thumb is almost as far below the index finger as the pinky is far away from the index finger.

The “webbing” of the thumb connects exactly half way up the palm.

Hands are asymmetrical from every angle. Every part, every time.

That is all the knowledge I have so far, and now you have it too! I don’t think any tutorial, video or otherwise, can ever teach you as much as the thousand observations you will make from drawing a thousand hands. There is no substitute for practice. So practice by looking at your hand from the normal vantage point, and from a mirror. Practice from 3D reference like the Handy Art Tool. Practice by copying other artists and animators whose hands appeal to you. Most of all, practice from imagination. PRACTICE! Below is every reference that I can remember that I’ve personally used while practicing hands:

http://www.handyarttool.com/

http://youtu.be/BAQb-5VKxmg

http://nk-chan.deviantart.com/art/mini-hand-tutorial-68320552

http://kibbitzer.deviantart.com/art/Hands-Reference-321600866

http://kibbitzer.deviantart.com/art/Hands-Reference-2-322546252

http://kibbitzer.deviantart.com/art/Hands-Reference-3-330102275

http://kibbitzer.deviantart.com/art/Hands-reference-4-428109721

http://characterdesignnotes.blogspot.com/2010/09/hand-reference.html

http://characterdesignnotes.blogspot.com/2010/09/hand-reference-part-two.html

http://characterdesignnotes.blogspot.com/2010/11/hand-reference-part-three.html

Do me a favor and share this around, will you? We could all use more light shed on this subject. -Aaron

today’s art:

—okay so I just did really VIDEOS!!!! and then went to through this rabbit hole and found.. well I guess first I should start with. I really needed to learn how arm connects to the shoulder asince I think I just forgot????and my gosh I found this super good comprehensive video that did demonstration and everything. it was really good

—honestly after that I went through rabbit hole of seeing his other videos and then well… I found this super long skull video and was watching and then it started to do a draw with me sides of skull and I did want to follow through so I just decided to do that later when I could draw with… and well then.. I just went off to do other stuff

—i don’t plan on drawing today and if i was, probs just general studies but ahaha i was on x and it really inspired to draw my otp and SO I PLANNED TO. but then it turned into redraw of someone else’s art and then into prac ahahah.

—the first one wasn’t great at all… and I just wanted to focus on the pose instead!!! and see what I was doing wrong etc. One of videos I watched made me think about that. Talking about focusing on analytic and like looking at what you drew and finding out what you did wrong and etc. And I do think that was good thing to be aware off and so I did that… and well even if I don’t think the last one turned out amazing or anything I do think it made me realise stuff. like how in the pose it was the arm that was stretching out to the knee…

—and so since I liked doing this n thought was fun/nice I did another pose study! And oh man the hands were HARD tin this one I still have no idea on how to fix it and just gave up in the end lolllllllll. Arms. Arms were hard. Why do I keep saying hands when im talking about arm lollll

—but one think I did realise that I was doing wrong was when drawing lower part, in trying to get the legs right, I forgot about the butt that was actually sitting down. and cut it off since the crouch wouldn’t be visible… and so it was helpful in remembering stuff like that. and trying to visual posing better: like it made next time to remember to think of whole pose and how it interactions with whatever it’s doing and even bits that can’t be seen. like being aware of stuff like that is really important.

—and well after that wasn’t feeling like doing any more pose studies and well… I SKETCHED IN THE IDEA FOR THE COMIC I HAD???? very happy about that

—okay lol I did think of doing some kind of script but cba to and was keeping in mind this comic tips/tutorial I came by that stuck with me yesterday. for first panel I very obviously can’t draw backgrounds and just couldn’t be bothered to look up refs and just scribbled in general idea I had for it. and for the next one I tried hard to make sure my figure was reading well (to me) like the general idea I wanted for it and later in did feel in general idea of background which im happy about.

—the initial idea that started this was the next two panels. ahaha I really just wanted to draw him being tied. can’t believe they did that. I mean I can but still lololol. and I do like the close up in next panel from diff angle. also this made me concious of how expressions ain’t my strong suit lmaoooo.

—and well after that is where things started to fall apart. like I had general idea in my head of what I wanted but I feel like the pacing n etc wasn’t great at all but I think it was good to get the general idea and everything tdown… so im happy that I actually sketched in the idea for comic. soooo happy. ^^

—and welllll remember juv art from yesterday. I realised after a bit that she doesn’t like she was sitting at all lololol despite that being intention. cuz I feel like I was so focused on getting the length of leg correct that I forgot that she was sitting so her knee would be higher. and well. I just wanted to fix that.

—added a bench because why not. and honestly im…..not sure that I did fix it completely. It still seems off…? but ehhhh i got her to look like she was sitting so that’s a win.

—I wasn’t planning to draw anymore but while taking screenshot for this post…I ended up just drawing some figure pracs and ahahah these didn’t go well at all. it was alright. But like mabnnnn even while keeping in mind what the video said (the dots around the arm meaning to represent scapula so just to keep in mind while drawing the arm) but ehhjhhhb I feel like like my arms isn’t at alll good. like I feel like I just forgot everything. so I think it’s best to watch videos of people drawing …. that always helps.

—and well but I didn’t want to end it there and wanted to draw something nice……to finish the the day with… something that would feel nice about. and yeah no that didn’t happen. 😔😔😔

—I thought while it’s been a while since I drew my lil srda too<3 I should do it but yeah no. it went horribly. well that’s kind of an exaggeration. more like I just…? don’t like….? I think it might have to do with the brush and how out of prac I man with drawing her hair… cuz man I have def drawn better srdas in my time. I feel like it might be her expression so. I changed it but it wasn’t. So I did an overdraw just because but it wasnt lollll. and I do think it’s funny how her expression gets more sadder. like the way I felt (more disappointed) when drawing it LMAO

I actually like the first one drew the most…… 😔😔😔

and then his boyfriend provides him with blood? :) (please say yes i need this in my life so bad)

whats the point of it all if he doesnt

lolll I went to sleep and then well. after that I just really couldn’t bothered… like I wasn’t in the mood for the plan…..

but at least I got in more figure pracs fjfkfkkf

— I did want to focus more on character interaction figures but lol I figured it’s best to just figure doodle… since the blergh feelings was still there and I didn’t like any of the stuff I sketched but at a certain point^^ (23.34) the one I scribbled next to… I started to feel great about them!!!! like lol even if they didn’t look good…

—at a certain point I got bored and did some line practices and then some arm pracs too… since lol when I scribble my figures, I just do straight lines for arms.,. And I think today I just totally forgot how to block in arms at all… they looked worse than normal so I decided to do some arm pracs… just to get some feel for it… first two or three were refs and then I did none with refs…

—did a face study and then lol went back to figure immediately since I was still scarred from this morning n yesterday lmwooooo… I think I learned my lesson. doing face studies n figure studies side by side lollll. also lmao looking at these my legs/hips are atrocious 😂😂 I should really do a proper study but at the same time I can’t be bothered and plus I don’t really like to do isolated studies for the limbs….. like look at my feet fjfjfjfjjf. also wow im thinking that I forgot how to draw the shoulders I need to practise those closely

—I reallyyyy did want to character drawings or even continue those wips but ahhhhhhh I never get to doing them… I think it’s cuz I know they’re gonna be Effort that I just don’t want to….. 😔😔😔😔 it’s soooo annoying. COMON ME. DRAW SHIT!!!!

back to poses…<3

oh jeez. here’s comes the highlight of the day n the biggest/crazy part. okay well it’s not really crazy but feels like TO ME.

THE GAA PIECE!!!!! REMMEBER HOW I WANTED TO WORK ON IT!!!!! I FINALLY DID!!!!!’ WHOOOOP WHOOOOPP. how fitting it is that I do it, one day before the d-day ahaha ♥️

—I had like general idea of focusing on the guy with him bending like to get some kind of present and bending poses are like. the bane of my existence ngl. so I had to find refs and ha……..as I knew that refs didn’t exist. like I mean I couldn’t find it. where hell is my “bending slightly” ref pose?! none that’s where. so I just had to start it without it.

—so. the pose. 😐 I tried many attempts (it was two/three) and while while it looks kinda bending over. it felt too much or just — was off. but THEN…. OMG… I don’t even know where it came from (wait I think it was from general idea of robo/bean method I saw on proko vid) I just used two circles that are overalapping and made sure that one was more bending over and that fixed it???! I GOT IT IT???????? im freaking awesome that’s what. ahahah

—yeah yeah as you can see from my notes the pose wasn’t perfect felt off and stuff but anyways. yeah intially I had the idea of him actually bending to receive the present and it would be maybeee ambiguous who it is or maybe it’s the son. and like had floating ideas of sibs being there. but when I got to drawing the going to recieve the present, I was like hmmm. maybe it’s best that he’s already received it and has it in hand kind of scene? and I decided to just go with the son being in foreground (large) who is the one whl gave it.

—here is (above) my rough first sketch of the idea where I redraw the pose (using heh new method to do bending pose….!!! <333) and this time he’s like holding the present or whatever and did scribble of the son in then foreground. I couldn’t be bothered for actual trying to draw in son in foreground like that. like no.

—after that I went over to drawing over and doing the clothes and more finalised sketch and I was really liking it!!! it was coming along VERY nicely. but well. yeah there was a lot to do and focus as I did the notes there. but that was for future me….. sigh I think I knew on some level that this wasn’t just gonna work out. but well it doesn’t hurt to try you know.

—I came back after a bit, procrastinating really cuz I did NOT wanna draw this guy in foreground…! I knew how it’s gonna be like. but yeah I did get around to doing it. practice n shit first. well it’s not really practice lol.

—it was just trying to get an overall feel for how things should be placed/be like and it was just blocks that I was working with to help figure stuff out and yeah I don’t think I knew what I was doing but thought I gist of it (yeah. No. I didn’t 😔)

—yeah and then I drew pose for the son so I can get a feel for how the pose would be like and lololol it did feel… for the gesture… so stiff… I think it might have to do with how there’s no diff angles. I guess. and hey… you know what. looking at this now. it’s not actually bad…….? I think maybe there should be a more an overlap but not bad and I do think lol gaa is looking super awkward with his posing. looking at the sketch of the pose I can see it might have to do with how weirdly out the pelvis is…? when it feels like he’s not really bending over in this one hmmm. but anyways im happy to know that I can still came back to this one.

—anyways I did do a draw over the son pose and my GOSH was it hard to even try to find 💀💀💀💀 ref… I don’t know how to draw the stupid back of his or his clothes. and well. I guess that he would be wearing more casual clothes anyways but well. whatever.

—yeah after doing this I realised. yeah no sadly this is Was not going to work out 💀💀💀💀💀 (but like I said looking at this now from the future it’s the not bad??? I think may haps be too much distance between them butttt??? Also yeah the son’s pose looks weirdly stiff but yeah.)

—I was initially going to for a similar thing (going to reach for presents/holding presents) but well. I did try to doodle something after that but I was like. maybe I need to step back and think properly and stuff……

and so came the second idea….!!!!!!