thingsenjoyer

[thingsenjoyer]

my color tips pdf is now available ! i had a lot of fun with this, i hope you enjoy ^^

BUY HERE or HERE

#art resources

[thingsenjoyer]

Collection of Free Art Tutorials

I don't usually make text post on this blog, but a nice artist I know was asking for tutorials a while back and I forgot to send some to them while in school. So here's a post on it since it's easiest to grab and go this way. :)

This list focuses on the basics. I'm focusing on the foundations of art, so medium is generally irrelevant and you can use physical or digital with these. You'll have to google more specific tutorials on things like character design and such.

One of the biggest pieces of advice I can give to you is strangely, introduce things to yourself one at a time. In art class, we took whole topics week by week. For high school, we did a few exercises then spent a week drawing/painting and doing your piece(s). For basic art 1 & 2 in college, we did 1-2 exercises and then did 1-2 drawings, followed by HW (which we turned in next week) and sketchbook practice (which she'd check at midpoints). For basic art lessons with a tutor, we did practice then our own art. You can see the pattern here - the point is don't be distressed if you don't get everything at once, or the lesson in 2 weeks, or the lesson in 3 years - we practice and do a lot over time, and you'll pick up on things you need to improve naturally and through help with others. Take time to be proud of your art in mini steps too, even if it's not the best! You tried and attempting to climb an obstacle over and over again before finally leapfrogging it is still progress to it.

Overall tutorials:

DrawABox.com is a site that's dedicated to art exercises and practicing when you can. They talk about the basics of art as well as how practice is important. It can get tough at times and it's ok to stop and do a balance of say those practices and doodles if you choose to try and do all of it's stuff - but you don't have to either. It's just a nice basic education done by some art nerds who like going hard.

Ethering Brothers - these guys are famous for their 40billion tutorials. If you need help on a specific idea, search their gallery and you'll likely find something.

Thundercluck's Art Fundamentals - She did a good huge ass tutorials on how things work, and it's the least overwhelming of the 3 I got in this section, so I suggest it as one of the first to look at for digital stuff.

Art Instructions Blog - Another good & simpler website that goes great into fundamentals. They focus more on traditional art but if you're digital, you can replicate most of the techniques - art fundamentals and subjects cover all mediums. Very important

Drawsh - Particularly notes on Construction: construction is the basics of building an illusion of a 3D image on a page. Figuring out how to build shape gives depth to your work, and learning how to see in 3D lets you be able to draw an item then move it around in your head (sometimes, when you're good enough, don't be afraid to pull out a reference or use live subjects). Construction is how to figure out the foundation of your drawing, and good planning = better picture! This link starts at the back, hit newer post to go forward.

There's a lot on anatomy and other nitty gritty details for when you want to practice those as well.

Griz and Norm's Assorted tips - Long time artist talk about various tips and tricks they use in art and how to avoid certain pitfalls. It's eclectic but great to look through.

James Gurney's Blog - He's got a lot of thoughts, a lot of tips, and a lot of adventures he catalogues. It's the least organized out of these but fortunately he has plenty of tags and most post have something neat going on. He's fantastic!🥰

BEFORE ALL OTHER BASICS….

How to Make Your Art Look Nice: Mindset

There's a lot of artist with different perspectives on how to approach art and your mindset while doing it, but the general consensus is that it's a process and sometimes you have to remind yourself to enjoy art!

Line

How to draw straight lines without a ruler. …but for the love of all that's good do NOT feel bad about using one! This talks about how to hold your pencil and how to do some good freehand stuff, some good practice.

5 grips for holding a Pencil for Drawing - This goes for pencil, pen, tablet, etc.. Get comfortable and figure out what's right for you and your pictures. I'd like to note that paintbrush holding will overlap, but some will differ.

A few line drawing exercises that help with line confidence.

Types of line drawings & what they are.

Contour Line & exercises with Mrs. Cook - Contour lines are one of the first art exercises I do in all the drawing classes I've taken. The good news is that they're surprisingly fun & look neat, even the blind contours!

Good deep thoughts on lines and how to use them.

Line Weight Tutorial

Lineart Weight Tips!

How to show variation in your line art: part 1 & part 2.

Some teacher's Drawing 1 & 2 lessons put online.

Light, Shadow, & Value

An introduction to tonal values.

Why values are important. The main reasons are that they give depth to a piece, and values literally shape our world.

Tonal Values: Everything you need to know

How does light work & the basics on Light

Light & Shadow in Art - much more in depth of the above! Highly recommended if you have time to spare.

Understanding grayscale/monochrome art. Great for shading & planning.

A guide to Cross Hatching (and hatching in general) - As a side note, crosshatching is one of the early things taught as it marries Line + Value into a nice neat package and helps add form with just a pen.

Crosshatching for Comics

Learn more about coloring by working in grayscale

How to Make Your Art Look Nice - Contrast!

Using lighting to make your art look nice.

Some light & shadow classifications.

Edges - notes on how they work in shading.

Color

A side note - color theory doesn't differ much, but color MIXING will change between mediums. If you're doing traditional colored pencil, you're overlapping 2 or more pigments on top of each other. If you're doing traditional paint, you're mixing & creating a solution/emulsion (depends on the pigment and binding) of pigments with the particles reflecting light in different ways. In digital, overlapping colors & blending colors depend on how the program you use calculates it if you're not just putting 2 color side by side. This just means you have to adjust your mixing when you switch between them. :)

Slawek Fedorczuk's Light & Color Tips - also shows how to guide through a scene.

The Color Tutorial Part 1 & 2 by Sashas - A personal favorite.

Color Studies 1-6 by Sheri Doty Amazingly nice breakdown on how color works in simple terms.

Sarah Culture's Tips on Color

The value of underpainting

A few notes on reflective light.

Experimental color techniques with Alai Ganuza: first post, second, & third.

Color zones of the face charts

Composition

Good Tips on Composition

Here's an example of how you can search the Etherington Brothers' stuff and get like 10 tutorials and tips on one subject. Composition & Cover Design, Shadow Composition, Two Line Composition - plus more.

How to make your art look nice: Thumbnailing!

And don't be afraid to make silly thumbnails or sketches.

Composition Examples - charts like these are great when you can't think of something yourself. There's no shame in using them.

Flow and Rhythm

Formulas for landscape composition.

Perspective

Perspective Drawing Tutorial by Julie Duell

Linear & Atmospheric Perspective Guide

One Point Perspective City Tut by Swingerzetta

Niso Explains Perspective - these are great for drawing figures in perspective!

Putting characters into scenes and drawing backgrounds

Backgrounds that make your character stand out!

Using background detail to guide the eye.

Odds and Ends

I shit you not, probably 1/3rd of my color, value, & structure knowledge comes from pixel art since I've done so much of it and it is all about challenging yourself to do the most you can with limitations. Check out lospec's tutorial database for fun and see how it compares to art techniques you're doing - even if you never try a medium, it's always interesting to see how it works. :D

How to Make Your Art Look Nice: Reference Images & Style, Pushing Proportions, and developing style.

Foervraengd talks about how he expanded his comfort zone with concept art & landscape drawing.

Luna Art talks about what they're thinking when doing concept art.

Repeating visual motifs in character design looks cool.

Eric's Thoughts on Drawing Backgrounds and Props.

Show vs. Tell: Why Visual is Not Optional in comics.

The Lost Vocabulary of Visual Story Telling Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, & Day 4.

Traditional Animation's 2 Digital Library books, The Know-How of Cartooning by Ken Hultgren & Advanced Animation by Preston Blair are two books from the golden age of animation they have up on their site for free viewing!

Animation resources dot org has a lot of cool stuff. Here's Nat Falk's How to Make Animated Cartoons (part 1). Their pages on Instruction & Theory are a good start.

Books

Good news: the internet archive has a TON of resources. Make sure to check around and toggle filters, it's a bit weird with organization. For example, a book can be under art or drawing - techniques, depending on who catalogues it.

Andrew Loomis is someone artist tend to die-hard reccomend. His work is collected here & here on the internet archive (one is Andrew Loomis, the other is Loomis, Andrew - thanks). I own Figure Drawing for All It's Worth and I recommend checking all of his stuff out, especially if you're having trouble with bodies and hands.

The Animator's Survival Guide by Richard Williams is mandatory in animation classes for good reason - it's fantastic!

Perspective for Comic Book Artist by David Chelsea is great for any type of artist. So is Extreme Perspective & Perspective in Action.

Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics, Reinventing Comics, & Making Comics. The first one is on the internet archive, the second two are likely avaliable at your library or at a bookstore as they're pretty popular.

Speaking of comics, Drawing Comics the Marvel Way has been a favorite of comic artist for years no matter what comic book companies and artist you like, it's a good introduction.

Anything by or endorsed by James Gurney, Color and Light: A Guide for the Realistic Painter is one of my favorites (this is his official page but you can get them elsewhere for cheaper too).

Art resource blogs with good tagging systems: @artist-refs , @help-me-draw , @helpfulharrie , @art-res , @drawingden , & @how-to-art

Lastly, I suggest if you find something you like online for free, SAVE IT! Whether it is through the Wayback Machine, screenshotting a whole webpage, reblogging/retweeting something, or putting it on pinterest, digital media is fickle and tends to go up in smoke when you least expect it. I have a partially organized Pinterest board that helped me find most of the stuff I wanted to keep. Figure out what works for you and save what you can.

#art resources

[thingsenjoyer]

sometimes i just imagine foggy standing in front of matt holding his hand like , pretty worked up and defensive and all he says YES LOVE CAN BE HORRIFIC AND THE HORRIFIC CAN BE LOVE, and behind is just matt and he looks absolutely unhinged and creature-like, all his teeth are showing and he just pissed his pants and like yes, that is love right there

#then like omg they kissed!! they're holding each other #etc #this is my mattfoggy btw #no one else #d4tk

[thingsenjoyer]

dear ao3 writers how do you deal with having to write about atrocities done by the hands of mankind for the sake of character development?

#im conflicted #ao3 #d4tk #me mine #writing

[thingsenjoyer]

DIVINE for CREEM DREEM

[thingsenjoyer]

Couldn’t stop thinking about what would've happened if Matt actually answered the door when Karen and Foggy showed up at his place completely wasted. So I made a few excerpts

#friends when they r besties #marvel's daredevil

[thingsenjoyer]

does anyone know if i can like block sites from appearing in my google images searches??? i keep getting those awful ai generated things with a hand coming out of a man's neck and just straight up not what i was looking for, because this was in a search for "curly hair in medieval paintings". it happens every time i search for anything vaguely art-reference-like and it's so fucking annoying and it clutters my search results so much. i don't wanna add specific commands to the query every time too, what i need is like a browser extension or something

[thingsenjoyer]

be snobbish and thoughtful about all art indiscriminately

[thingsenjoyer]

I’m convinced if ppl on this site knew how crappy gifs look before you color them properly, they would appreciate editors more

#jesus christ #thank god i don't watch movies

[thingsenjoyer]

people NEED to stop gatekeeping making music like ohhhh i don’t have an instrument ohhhhh i don’t know music theory ohhhhh i’m not gonna pay for some program. SHUT UP. take my hand.

you need NONE of that shit!!!!! there’s a website called beepbox.co. literally all you have to do is press things until it sounds a modicum of nice. it’s easy it’s free and it works on anything which has a browser because it’s a website.

if even ONE person starts making music bc of this post it will be worth it.

making bad music is just as important and okay as it is to write badly or draw badly or sing badly. you AREN’T BEHOLDEN TO MAKE GOOD MUSIC. making music is not utilitarian HAVE FUN. HAVE FUN!!!!!!!!!

[thingsenjoyer]

The Doctor!

[thingsenjoyer]

do girls ever see spiderman and go oh that guy sure has a cool fuckass eyliner dude, wish i had the skills. bcs i do.

#hi #spider man #im always thimjing about this #like yasss girl thats a SERVE

[thingsenjoyer]

Writing Exercises for Stretching Your Style Muscles

There’s a lot of writing advice on the internet, and a lot of writing prompts, but something I see relatively little of is an idea of how to actually practice. 

The thing about learning a skill is that it requires practice – but practicing will only get you so far if you’re just doing the same thing over and over. you might get better at doing that specific thing, but it can seem really difficult to get over a specific hurdle to accomplish some new thing you’ve never tried. I think a really common frustration is wanting to do a thing, and knowing what your end goal looks like, but not knowing actually how to accomplish it. 

So that’s where practicing specific skills can really help you to feel more comfortable with your abilities. 

Here are some skills exercises I recommend experimenting with to gain proficiency and comfort in writing things. 

—–

Write the Same Scene from Multiple POVs 

Write a scene in 3rd person POV. Then go back and rewrite it from scratch in 1st person. Repeat for a 3rd person omniscient. Go deeper than just swapping out pronouns. Think: How does this scene change if I’m writing through the eyes of a single character vs over their shoulder? How does this scene change if I’m narrating the events through Character B instead of Character A? 

—-

Write a Scene in Present Tense

Present tense bumps up the immediacy level of whatever you’re writing. I think it also helps to break you from more passive sentence constructions. Try taking a scene you’ve written and rewrite it in present tense. Combine it with the above – try switching a 3rd person past to 1st person present, or even try writing in 2nd person. 

—–

Try Mimicking Another Writer’s Style 

Sit down with a piece of writing from an author you enjoy, and pay attention to the writing itself. Ignore the plot and characters and story elements – look at just the nuts and bolts of vocabulary choices and sentence construction. Try to pick it apart. Is there a specific way the author tends to use commas? Certain words, or types of words, that they use more often? Longer sentences or shorter ones? Longer paragraphs or short? How is white space handled? 

Study that and make yourself a little cheat sheet if that’s helpful to you. Then try writing a short piece – just a couple paragraphs, even – in their writing style. 

—-

Describe an Entire Scene Without Using Visual Description 

Imagine you’re writing a blind character, if it helps, or someone who’s been blindfolded. Describe a whole scene built entirely around the way things sound, smell, taste, feel. Try to make it clear what’s happening through description alone. 

—–

Eliminate All Words like “Thought” or “Felt” 

Write in deep-3rd or 1st person without any filter words. Make a character’s opinions and emotions obvious through the way things are being described without explicitly saying what they’re thinking or feeling. If you struggle with this, it might be easier to start in first person – write as a diary entry or even a Tumblr post from that person’s perspective – and then try it in 3rd person after you’ve had a bit of practice. 

——-

Set Yourself a Specific Goal, and Write a Drabble to Achieve it 

When I wrote “Happy Ending,” my entire goal was to write something that was highly descriptive in the most viscerally gross way possible. When I wrote “Mothman,” it was an exercise in writing something sexualized without explicitly being sexual, in the most disturbing way possible. 

This is an exercise in word choice. It’s an excuse to bust out your thesaurus, not to sound fancy, but to nail a specific meaning. It’s also an exercise in choosing what details to focus on and which to exclude. 

One way to approach this exercise is to describe something common and mundane that you’ve experienced, and write it in several different ways. Let’s say, eating a sandwich. How can you make eating a sandwich sound sexy? How can you make it sound disgusting? Which details do you focus on, and which do you omit? What words do you use to evoke the meaning you’re looking for? 

—————————————————————

I hope these writing exercises give you some inspiration on things to try out to flex your creative wings a bit! 

#writing #oh god it's been so long

[thingsenjoyer]

if you tag me in a chain post and i don't do it it's not because i hate you it's because i am very lazy. i love you thank you for tagging me.

[thingsenjoyer]

someone: hey I noticed this thing you did in your writing!

me, kicking my feet up flirtatiously: oh??? do you want to hear my thoughts on why I did that? do you want a play-by-play of the language choices in every related sentence? do you want an exhaustive breakdown of The Themes???

[thingsenjoyer]

[thingsenjoyer]

#who up imagining scenarios