Tumgik
sakurasketches · 5 years
Photo
Tumblr media Tumblr media
yum
4K notes · View notes
sakurasketches · 5 years
Text
Tumblr media
guess who’s gay
1 note · View note
sakurasketches · 5 years
Note
Artistic question: what are some advices that helped you improve your art beside the obvious "keep practicing"?
Honest and long answer ahead:
Get your head out of your own assYou may not realise when you are in your own ass, but trust me it happens. research different styles, artists, films… whatever. There are more things in life worth drawing than anime characters (talking to past me here)
Draw from life more oftenDrawing from imagination is nice and fine, but things often don’t look as what you think they look. Constantly observe how light behaves, how people move, but stay unbiased. Don’t let your expectations get in the way of observation. However drawing from life can be very difficult at first, it’s ok to start with photographs to practice.
Drawing without contours can force you to practice your shading and renderingOften times when we draw we rely too heavily on outline to differentiate objects from each other. while I don’t necessarily think contours are bad, we can definitely use them as a crutch. forcing yourself not to use any outlines can improve your edgework.
What’s an edgework?Basically it’s how you render the edges of shapes, shades and objects. There are three basic types of edges: Hard edge - when one shade or object meets another, abruptly and without gradient. Like the edge of a white mug over a dark background.Soft edge - commonly seen in the shades on round objects, with some kind of gradientNo edge - a trick answer! Sometimes there isn’t an edge even when you think there is! often when the dark part of an object meets the background or vice versa. Think hard, is there really such a distinct edge here? or can I still understand the object without it?In this image I marked over a drawing by Stan Prokopenko the different types of edges (also follow proko on youtube)
Tumblr media
5. Finish what you started (oops, change in formatting)
Sometimes it really is better to let go of a drawing that doesn’t work. But ask yourself, do you really need to move on from this, or do you just not want to deal with the rendering? Be honest with yourself. We’ve all sinned in laziness before, sketching is great and useful, but you have to do the rendering sometimes in order to improve your 3d vision.
6. Consider the whole format when planning your composition!!!
The composition is one of the most significant things that can make or break your drawing. I’d argue it’s even more important than your technique. Think of all the illustrators you know who draw in a purposefully simplistic style, their art would never be the same without their composition! If you don’t want to draw on the entire paper (as you sometimes would in a sketchbook) draw a frame within it your drawing will take up. All of my recent blue forest sketches were done this way. Think, where do you want the eye to be drawn to? Is the drawing balanced or unbalanced? Are there large areas of empty space which distract from the subject? Learning how to create good composition can be one of the hardest things to learn in drawing, the only hard rule of it is “if it works, it works”. Which is an extremely frustrating answer because it barely gives you any basis to work with. Try studying the compositions of illustrations you love, what about them works? How do they achieve that effect?
7. Shamelessly copy others
Master studies is one of the oldest and most common method of learning to draw. By copying artists better than you you can learn a lot about their methods and their composition. When you copy someone else has already done all of the annoying legwork for you, so you can focus on solely your skill na dignore anything else like expression, story, or style. (traditionally you would copy one of the great masters, but I won’t judge you if you cheat a little. But make sure you pick artists that are very advanced in their craft. despite my respect for them, the average fan artist on tumblr just won’t cut it)
8. Be aware of your weaknesses 
For me for the longest time it was perspective. For a very long time I could barely create convincing perspective the moment it was more complicated than a straight railroad in the desert (or if I was feeling fancy, with an additional row of trees~!). So for the longest time I wouldn’t draw any environments for fear they would be unconvincing. But after studying more seriously for a while now I draw buildings and forests for fun. By being aware of your weaknesses you can work on them more thoroughly and they just might become your favourite thing to draw.
9. List of useful youtube channels
Of course the ideal is to take a class in person to get some personal one on one tutoring, but it’s not always an option. So here are a few channels I follow that can help instead:
Istebrak - drawing fundamentals, rendering, and occasionally characterisation.
Mateusz Ubanowicz (polish names are hard) - More illustrative work, drawing architecture and working with watercolours.
Proko (whose drawing I used in the example) - Drawing fundamentals and anatomy. Often has guest artists and interviews as well.
Aaron Blaise - Former disney animator, probably worked on several of your favourite 2d disney films. Drawing mostly animals, and animal characters.
Mattias Pilhede - Offers a unique perspective as someone who decided to learn to draw at a later age than most.
Well that was quite the wall of text I just gave you. I think this is a very good question that often gets a one line unsatisfactory answer. Of course you can only get better by practicing, but it’s not an automatic recipe for success. If you don’t practice smart you can find that your art still stagnates at the same level.
I wish you the best of luck, and I hope I was helpful!
3K notes · View notes
sakurasketches · 5 years
Photo
Tumblr media Tumblr media
note that it works best with thin lineart (I used SAI2 for this, but I think you can use any art program  with a overlay layer mode)
38K notes · View notes
sakurasketches · 5 years
Photo
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
Code: https://pastebin.com/Y1fvsZ46 Preview: Base code | My character page (an example of how it can be customised!)
—-
In light of charahub shutting down its servers in march, I decided to rewrite & release the code for my character page!
It’s key feature is that it uses the isotope script to allow you to sort through and filter which characters display on screen.
You can also set a default filter to be displayed on page load (I use it to hide my older characters by default on my oc blog, & display characters from the current chapter of my webcomic, for a couple examples!)
And, if you click on a character’s portrait, a box will appear with more information!
Font awesome icons are also included - you can see me using them for the element icons, & to mark which characters belong to my friends on my character page!
I’ve done my best to make it easy to customise - but unless you completely rewrite the css & html please don’t redistribute it as your own! Isotope is open source though so you’re welcome to make your own page like this with the same jquery :^)
In anycase I hope the code is useful to you 💕
4K notes · View notes
sakurasketches · 5 years
Text
art cheats
hello i am here today to not lose track of the art cheats i have discovered over the years. what i call art cheat is actually a cool filter/coloring style/way to shade/etc. that singlehandedly makes art like 20 times better
80’s anime style
glitch effect
glow effects
adding colors to grayscale paintings
foreshortening ( coil )
foreshortening ( perspective )
clipping group (lines)
clipping group (colors)
dramatic lighting ( GOOD )
shading metal
lighting faces
that is all for today, do stay tuned as i am always hunting for cool shit like this
316K notes · View notes
sakurasketches · 5 years
Text
OC Drawing Prompts!
Reblog for others to send emojis to your ask box (or just draw what you want)!
✂️ Hair Swap - Draw an OC with the hairstyle of another character
📕 Books - Draw an OC reading their favorite book in their favorite spot
🌧 Rainy Day - Draw your OC out in the rain, with or without an umbrella
❤️ Love - Draw your OC with their romantic partner(s)
💔 Heartbreak - Draw your OC experiencing heartbreak
🌈 Pride - Draw any LGBT+ OC celebrating pride of their identity
💧 Tears - Draw your OC crying, either lightly or heavy sobs
🌸 Flower - Draw your OC in a flower crown
⭐️ Divinity - Draw your OC as a deity, in godlike clothing
👑 Royalty - Draw your OC as royalty with a crown that fits their personality
👩‍👩‍👧‍👦 Family - Draw your OC with one or more members of their immediate family
👕 Outfit Swap - Draw your OC in the clothes of another OC
🌙 Bedtime - Draw your OC in their pajamas
🗡 Adventure - Draw your OC as if they were a fantasy adventurer
🔮 Magic - Draw your OC as a magic being/using magic
💊 Medic - Draw your OC having wounds patched up
🌎 Culture - Draw your OC in clothes and/or doing actions that represent their culture
🕷 Spooky - Draw your OC terrified/facing their biggest fear
😡 Rage - Draw your OC the maddest they’ve ever been
✏️ School - Draw your OC in a school uniform, either as when they were a child or as an adult
🎩 Dapper - Draw your OC in fancy dinner party clothes
🏖 Beach Day - Draw your OC in their swimsuit, or whatever they would typically wear to the beach
❄️ Arctic - Draw your OC in heavy winter clothing
🐻 Species Swap - Draw a human OC as an animal, or an animal oc as a human
⚰️ Death - Draw your OC as a ghost
🍭 Candy - Draw your OC in candy clothes
💫 Galaxy - Draw your OC with a space/galaxy aesthetic
🤖 Robot - Draw your OC as a robot (or draw your robot OC as a human)
📜 Old Times - Draw your OC in old-fashioned
🔧 Job Swap - Draw your OC wearing the uniform and doing the job of another OC
🎥 Star - Draw your OC as a moviestar
🛏 Sleep - Draw your OC napping, in their bed or in an inconvenient or strange location
🍎 Food - Draw your OC enjoying their favorite food
25K notes · View notes
sakurasketches · 5 years
Text
a quick grass tutorial
I’ve never really wrote a tutorial before so apologies if this is bad
1. okay first thing I do is pick three colors, a mid, dark, and light. I like to check the colors in greyscale to make sure there’s enough contrast between each one.
I then plop down a blob of whatever my middle tone color is.
Tumblr media
2. next, I take my dark color and just sort of randomly place it around. I try to make sure there’s a good amount of both the mid and dark tones spread throughout. I personally like to keep it kinda messy. I also have pen pressure on for both brush size and opacity, so I can have some blending action going on.
Tumblr media
3. for the next step I do the exact same thing as before, except with the light color.
Tumblr media
4. aight this is where we start adding details. see how you just have a bunch of colors and edges where two colors meet? use the eyedropper and go to an area where two colors meet, eyedrop a color, and then use that color to draw in your grass blades. I do this at every point where colors meet. should note I personally like to use a square brush, but you can really just use anything.
Tumblr media
5. you can technically stop at the last step if you’re going for a more simple look, but to add more details I go to the “empty” areas of solid color and just draw in random strokes using a color nearby. it’s just a way to fill up the empty space.
Tumblr media
6. basically more of the same idea of eyedropping and drawing. for more variety so things look interesting, I like to add random plant shapes.
Tumblr media
7. and so the grass doesn’t look too plain, I add random dots of color and pretend it’s flowers and stuff.
Tumblr media
and there you have it, this is how I approach drawing grass.
120K notes · View notes
sakurasketches · 5 years
Text
Some Photoshop Tips
I’ve been getting quite a few asks about the process for the patterns in my stylized artworks, so I decided to put together a couple of tips regarding them. 
Firstly, what you need are
—  CUSTOM BRUSHES  —
Most of the patterns I use are custom brushes I made, such as those:
Tumblr media
For the longest time I was convinced making brushes must be super extra complicated. I was super extra wrong. All you need to start is a transparent canvas (2500px x 2500px max):
Tumblr media
This will be your brush tip. When you’re satisfied how it looks, click Ctrl+A to select the whole canvas and go to ‘define brush preset’ under the edit menu
Tumblr media
You will be asked to name your new glorious creation. Choose something that describes it well, so you can easily find it between all the ‘asfsfgdgd’ brushes you’ve created to be only used once
Tumblr media
This is it. Look at it, you have just created a photoshop brush. First time i did I felt like I was cheated my whole life. IT’S SO EASY WHY HASN’T ANYONE TOLD ME 
Tumblr media
Time to edit the Good Boi to be more random, so it can be used as a Cool Fancy Pattern. Go into brush settings and change whatever you’d like. Here’s a list of what I do for patterns:
- under Shape Dynamics, I increase Size Jitter and Angle jitter by 5%-15% 
- under Brush Tip Shape, I increase spacing by a shitload. Sometimes it’s like 150%, the point is to get the initial brush tip we painted to be visible.
- If I want it to look random and noisy, I enable the Dual Brush option, which acts like another brush was put on top of the one we’ve created. You can adjust all of the Dual Brush options (Size, Spacing, Scatter, Count) as you wish to get a very nice random brush to smear on your  backgrounds
Tumblr media
The result is as above. You can follow the same steps to create whatever brush you need: evenly spaced dots that look like you painted them by hand, geometric pattern to fill the background, a line of perfectly drawn XDs and so on. 
BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE
—  PATHS  —
But what if you want to get lots of circles made of tiny dots? Or you need rows of triangles for your cool background? Photoshop can do all of that for you, thanks to the magic of paths.
Typically, paths window can be found right next to Layers:
Tumblr media Tumblr media
Draw whatever path you want, the Shape Tool has quite a bit of options. Remember, paths are completely different from brush strokes and they won’t show up in the navigator. To move a path around, click A to enable path selection tool. You can use Ctrl+T to transform it, and if you move a path while pressing Alt it will be duplicated.
Tumblr media
Now, pick a brush you wish really was in place of that path you’ve drawn and go to layers, then choose the layer you want it to be drawn on. Then, click this tiny circle under the Paths window:
Tumblr media
Then witness the magic of photoshop doing the drawing for you while you wonder how tf have you managed to forget about this option for the past 2 years 
Tumblr media
You can combine special brushes and paths for all sorts of cool effects. I mostly use them in backgrounds for my cards, but you can do whatever you want with them.
Tumblr media
I hope that answers the questions for all of the people who were sending me inquires about the patterns. If you have any questions regarding this or any other Photoshop matter feel free to message me, I’m always up for complaining about how great and terrible Photoshop is C’:
93K notes · View notes
sakurasketches · 5 years
Note
Do you have any tips for making a portfolio ?
YES! 
I’m talking as a 2D animator/cartoonist who looks for studio work+applies to zines and projects in illustration+animation, so all of this may/may not apply to you if you’re in a different field or work in freelance or whatever. LOOK AT WHAT PEOPLE IN THE SAME FIELD AS YOU ARE ARE DOING!!!! hopefully this will help a bit though
please imagine i put “imo” at the start of each tip ok thank you
✨✨✨a few random tips in no particular order to make a good website/portfolio (it’s pretty long so this goes under the cut)✨✨✨
Keep reading
1K notes · View notes
sakurasketches · 5 years
Text
Black By Popular Demand
Tumblr media Tumblr media
As heavily (really heavily) requested, I now bring to you all a tutorial on drawing kinky coily curly beautiful hair. I personally don’t think there is any one way to draw natural hair, but for the tutorial below I use a custom made brush pack. Any square pastel brush will work wonders for you though! Unlike the last tutorial there won’t be do’s and don’ts but I will again start off with this warning. 
If you have a character who is canonically black and wears wears their hair unprocessed and you choose to only draw them with straight hair instead thats #wrong. Let black hair be represented unstraightened.
OK NOW LETS GET INTO IT
First thing is first. You have to understand the basic shape of all curly hair. 
Tumblr media
Curly hair has a corkscrew shape called a Helix.  What changes the look and overall denseness of the hair is how tight the helix shape of the hair is. The looser the curls the longer and more more S shaped the hair will be.The tighter the curls the shorter and coarser the hair will be in appearance. This is why black people with tighter curls appear to have shorter hair before they stretch out their coils. This is called shrinkage. 
Tumblr media
The hair types can be kind of tricky to navigate if you don’t know what exactly you’re looking for. They range from 1-4 depending on who you ask. For this tutorial we’re only going to be paying attention to these six as they are the predominant hair types in the black community. The further down the scale you go the less S shaped the hair will be when stretched. 
Tumblr media
3A hair is the loosest of the curly bunch.  It comes in a few variations and can even look like straight up ringlets depending on the person.  Ringlets are sometimes most apparent at the end of the hair. 3A hair has a really noticeable S shape and spiral pattern. This hair isn’t really textured it’s quite smooth in comparison but I love texture so :/
Tumblr media
3B and 3C can sometimes overlap on the same head. It all depends on the person and other factors like whether or not they styled their hair. 3B hair is looser than 3C with the curls being around the size of a thin marker. This hair is very springy,voluminous,and dense. 3C hair is also called coily curly because of how tight the curls are. This is the densest and coarsest of the 3 category but it also has the most volume. 
To draw this hair use square pastel brushes or any square textured brush you may already have. Use a hard round brush to really define the ends and to draw fly aways. 
Even though this curly hair is so tightly packed it doesn’t hang straight down from the head. The curls push each other outwards and thats what gives the hair a big appearance. This leaves a lot of room for extra shadows and pockets of space you don’t  see with straight hair. So jot that down
Tumblr media
Now we are getting into the coily and kinky hair types. This hair is very fine and is sometimes composed of multiple thin strands curling around each other to form one coil. It’s also dense! 4A hair is distinguishable from 4B because of its distinct S shape. 4B hair has a unique angled zig zag pattern. Both these hair types can be wiry and are less defined than other curl patterns. (Styling makes these curls pop severely tho)
Tumblr media
4C is kinda new, but old to everyone who has this hair type. What’s fun and gorgeous about this hair type is that it can be wiry, coarse, dense, soft, fine or thin. Like 4B hair this hair type is very packed and less defined. Like all the other hair types this hair can be stretched and straightened. The amount of heat and method of styling will vary the results but a gentle styling of the hair will still leave it fluffy and textured. (But v much stretched.)  
For this kind of hair I love using really rough edged round brushes on a medium opacity. This gives the hair a soft finished look. 
Fun fact: the afro textures are so dense they hold shapes easily. This makes for some real interesting styling potential wink wonk
Tumblr media
So the most fun part is coloring everything in. My favorite way to color is shown here and will be explained more in a Youtube video! 
1. ) Block in the shape of the hair with a solid color. Start off with your shadows first and keep them close to the face. 
2.Add your mid-tone second. Leave the edges and tops of the hair free for your lightest colors. 
3. Depending on the hair type you are drawing you can go in with a lighter color to add the highlights of curls. This will really make them pop but this isn’t necessary. If you are like me you really just focus on how the outline of the hair looks. 
4. On the outer edges of the hair I use the lowest opacity and lightest colors. For me this helps create a wispy and coiled look at the ends which is what I personally like on afros the most. Feel free to not do that. If you are not doing an Afro you can use a hard round brush to draw in defined s curls and coils at the ends. 
Remember fly aways are your friends. Not all black people just walk around rocking afros so learn to draw other natural styles. The hairline is usually solid for 4 type textures but you can add baby hairs if the hair is styled.
Tumblr media
If you’d like to purchase my custom brush pack for only $1 you can DM me (preferred) for details or fill out the order form on my commissions page. Be sure to add your email. Don’t want neat brushes? Support my Ko-Fi instead. 
7K notes · View notes
sakurasketches · 5 years
Photo
Tumblr media
❤️💛💚💙
I’ve always really liked expression challenges like these, so I decided to make my own in time for Valentines Day! Give it a shot!
💌🌈📬
20K notes · View notes
sakurasketches · 5 years
Photo
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
Some drawing tips previously posted on twitter. More drawing tips on my patreon. Hope some of these can be helpful.
81K notes · View notes
sakurasketches · 5 years
Text
“Maybe I’ll do Inktober this year”
Tumblr media
52K notes · View notes
sakurasketches · 5 years
Photo
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
SenshiStock’s gallery consists of millions of pictures that are free to use as reference.
General Drawing Poses Sit and Kneel Dramatic and Reaching Drawing Poses Magic and Hogwarts Drawing Poses Staff Weapon Pose Reference Hammer, Axe and Bat Pose Reference Sword Weapon Drawing Reference Small Bladed Weapon Pose Reference Gun Weapon Pose Reference Bow and Arrow Archery Stock Foreshortening and Perspective Poses Dynamic Flying Falling Action Poses Deafeated or Laying Drawing Poses Magic Crystal Magical Girl Wand Weapon Transformations and Dance Cards Back Pose Reference Pin Up Inspired Poses for Drawing Performances Poses Life in General Poses Fights and Fighting Pose Reference Leaning Poses Classic Sailor Senshi Poses Wings Sailor Moon Villains Pairs Romance or Couples Pose Reference All the Male Stock Hanging Stock Drawing Reference Three or More Groups Instruments Mirrors Whip  Technobabble  
438K notes · View notes
sakurasketches · 5 years
Text
How TV Cartoons Are Made - A (Mostly) Simplified Guide
When I was in school and wanted to work in animation, there was very little information about how cartoons are actually made. Even my professors at college knew very little about the industry as it is today. I’m sure it would’ve been better to study somewhere in California (like CalArts) to be better informed about this stuff, but I didn’t have that opportunity.
Nowadays, many kids in school have a dream career that they don’t really know much about. There’s a lot of missing bits of information and a lot of straight up lies that get circulated as fact as people try to scramble to put the pieces together on how cartoons for television are actually made.
I’ve been storyboarding for television for a while now, and there still aren’t clear resources for those wanting to get into the industry. I wanted to make the basics available to everyone, so here’s a quick rundown through the TV pipeline. Please note: all studios and productions are different. Even cartoons made within the same studio could have wildly different production guidelines. This is not a concrete explanation of how every cartoon is made; this is simply a generalized look at the “typical” television pipeline.
**DISCLAIMER** All images in this post have been sourced from blogs, twitters, scribd and flickr pages are publicly available, and no internal studio materials have been used that have not been already published publicly online. This post is influenced heavily by my own individual experience, as well as friends’. 
With that said, this might be a lengthy read, so let’s go!
Keep reading
19K notes · View notes
sakurasketches · 5 years
Photo
Tumblr media Tumblr media
Some small shoe tutorial.
Shoes are great!! Don’t be afraid! Have fun!
11K notes · View notes