#// these aren't gonna be done in any particular order tbh

[dreamingpartone]

Do you have any tips for working on sketches and proportions?

ooh! that's a good and tricky question, anon…. I’m not sure how helpful I can be without a bit more specific direction (especially sketching; there are all sorts of ways to sketch all sorts of things) but I've tried to come up with some general tips! just let me know if you were wondering about anything else in particular!

*usual disclaimer that I’m not an expert and different art strokes work for different folks*

SKETCHES:

✦ Very basic, but start light and loose with sketching — the first thing you want to get down is just gesture/shapes/positioning, then worry about refining and adding detail afterwards

Purely for personal ease, I often use a light pencil (2H) to start my sketches, and then go over it with a mechanical pencil (B). On the other hand: thicker, softer pencils (like 3B+) are really fun to work with for rougher, more gestural sketches or studies!!

(You can replicate this digitally too, by changing brush size and opacity)

✦ Try working small? I’ve never been great at drawing large-scale, but I also think keeping sketches on the smaller side helps me think about what the most important features to capture are

✦ If we’re talking figures, try sketching things in different orders to find what suits you; obviously a lot of people start with the head (including me 90% of the time), but I also like drawing in the angle for shoulders or blocking in the torso first sometimes, so feel free to experiment!

✦ Probably the most important thing: don’t worry about making mistakes in sketches, and especially don’t worry about how nice they look! Unless you have to or want to share them, sketches are just for you, and they’re not meant to be masterpieces. As long as you get what you need from them (whether that’s jotting down a quick idea for later, getting the base ready for a big piece, or practicing drawing xyz) then that’s their job done!

PROPORTIONS:

✦ I'm gonna guess you probably mean the human anatomy kind of proportions? (In which case, I am going to skip over the standard “look at and draw a lot of people” because that is obvious and not-particularly-motivating advice in my experience :’))

✦ Again, make sure to start with simple shapes, and know that it’s okay to use easy references! You're not gonna love working on proportions if you jump immediately to a really complex pose or angle and then get frustrated when you can't get it right

✦ Doing studies is great, but make them suit you. I've never been that diligent about studying anatomy and proportions; I enjoy doing quick pose sketches every now and then, but tbh I mostly took the long road of improving proportions by sketching a crap load of fanart over the years, and therefore using references that I have more of an investment in than just “random man #5 posing”

(e.g. I’m pretty sure just absorbing 45 volumes of Haikyuu gave me a little art boost because Furudate is so good at it  — but it also meant I started using actual volleyball photos for sketches and art references, which was great fun! I have also used cricket, classical sculptures, various tv screencaps, meme-y kpop pics, etc, as studies in the past, because they make me actually want to sit down and draw, which is the important first step!)

(ALSO: taking photos of yourself as a reference is 👌 very quick and useful. I have many random photos of myself posing on my phone)

✦ There are some very general but handy proportion guides that I've absorbed over the years, like: a person’s thumb is about the length of their nose, their foot is about the length of their forearm, when arms are relaxed at the sides elbows reach to the navel and fingertips reach about mid-thigh, from the front nipples are in line with the ears, eyes line up at the edge of nostrils, ears are placed between the top of the eye and bottom of the nose (actually ear placement is super handy for getting head angles to look good), etc etc !

(Obviously though, these aren't accurate for every single real life person and can be broken for interesting character design anyway)

✦ Also the Measuring In Heads trick — a classic and pretty common guide for (standing) proportions, once again not 100% foolproof, but measuring your figure in heads can get you a good basis for overall proportion. The “rule” is that a person is generally 7.5 heads tall, so in my art I usually go between 7-8 heads, with the waist at about 3 heads from the top

(I only bother with/remember those two points, but from a quick google apparently you can also measure where the nipples (2 heads) and pelvis (4 heads) are with this one!)

#anon sorry this got long dhdjdjd i went into it going ''i think i have like three tips'' and then suddenly i wrote all that #this is ur warning that there's a bunch of text behind that readmore #is any of it useful? who knows. i hope so :') <3 #anonymous #ask #art asks #and as i said feel free to send another ask if there were any specifics you wanted!! #these art questions really always make me go ''hmm. how DO i draw actually?'' #it's all habit at this point and i'm never certain if they're good ones lmaoo

[hyyrulicn]

// list of things I gotta do bc whOOO I am notoriously horrible at keeping my workload light jfhfkdshfkdsjhf

Finish making all of Pico’s icons

Make more icons for Warriors

make icons of Prism’s new fc

make ww Link icons/ finish reviewing all of his stuff

finish researching Cadence of Hyrule/ make icons from the alttp/ooa manga

figure tf out if I wanna go though with another new muse impulse on top of all this-

Edit bc I forgot some:

make icons for Proxi

resize/clean up Wild’s icons

get more icons for Shadow’s other forms (specifically Twi, maybe Time, and alttp)

#[ooc] the digital witch #// this is kinda just to put things in perspective for myself #// these aren't gonna be done in any particular order tbh #// knowing me i'll do like pieces of 2-3 of these at the same time #// in summary: need more icons of existing muses #// and WW/PH link + Cadence of Hyrule Link are going to be added eventually #// plus a *possible* albw/tfh Link- idk depends if the inspiration for him sticks around