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by Meowmere

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An Exercise in Subtlety - Link in Description

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I am absolutely not infallible. I still struggle with this, more often than I would like to admit.

inb4 "But what if the far eye is partly closed, can I then make it shorter?"
Gotta learn the rules before you're allowed to break them.

Keywords

female 1,079,139, wolf 192,614, female/solo 69,035, anatomy 1,592, lesson 224, educational 76

Details

Type: Picture/Pinup

Published: 2 years, 1 month ago

Rating: General

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18 Comments on this Submission

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gnagger

2 years, 1 month ago

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this is genuinely helpful advice, saved

Meowmere

2 years, 1 month ago

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@ gnagger

Glad to help

Neill

2 years, 1 month ago

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You're way more skilful than I could ever hope to be.

Meowmere

2 years, 1 month ago

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@ Neill

I hope you're not using my (or anyone's) perceived skill as an excuse not to draw.
I spent ten years throwing garbage at a wall until it stuck.
If you're less stubborn than me and actually practice instead of just being mad that your drawings aren't immediately godlike, you can draw like this in a year or two. Talent isn't a factor. If you don't have talent, you'll develop discipline to compensate. Discipline beats out talent any day of the week.

Neill

2 years, 1 month ago

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@ Meowmere

Naw, man, I've tried for 38 years and it's just beyond my skill set. But I'm fine with it, I make it up elsewhere.

Meowmere

2 years, 1 month ago

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@ Neill

Even supposing all one can do is garbage, I still believe one shouldn't hesitate to produce something. Be it art or whatever.

dinksmallwood

2 years, 1 month ago

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Edited 2 years, 1 month ago by Owner

@ Meowmere

If all one can produce is 'garbage', then they should try to produce the best garbage that they can. My advice for those that feel they lack innate talent (myself included), is to simplify their style, and omit extraneous details. Mike Mignola is a great example, in the way that he utilized flat colors and heavy emphasis on shadows, with a crisp, straight-forward design for his characters that was well suited for energetic action oriented compositions.

Meowmere

2 years, 1 month ago

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@ dinksmallwood

Realizing that details are secondary to linework is absolutely not compromising on the idea that you have talent. That's simply reaching one of the golden standards of art by suffering through the frustrations of producing it. Most "talented" people couldn't tell you this, because they never had to learn. They simply did.

dinksmallwood

2 years, 1 month ago

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@ Meowmere

I agree with that. Form, structure, and rhythm are part of a foundation that everyone should study, although to some these things come more natural...just as others may be more mathmatically inclined. I also believe that anyone can learn and evolve in art, if they have the patience and motivation. I found that isolating all the individual parts of something, learning to draw those first, then thinking about how they relate to each other, can really help. The eyes, of course, are the most difficult to get right, because we always notice those first, and they convey a lot of information very quickly. So your little tutorial here is great, especially since this is a tricky, but very common angle.

Meowmere

2 years, 1 month ago

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Edited 2 years, 1 month ago by Owner

@ dinksmallwood

I am 100 % guilty of leaping into full-fledged art and getting frustrated that it didn't immediately "work", before I tried to sit down and actually studdy the parts that make up the whole. I took the long way and grumbled over every sporadic little detail that I could eventually see I got wrong. Even now, I flick through a myriad of rules of thumb I have coded in regarding what poor habits I need to pull back on in every single body part.

I will always insist that I was born with no talent in visual art. I have some in writing, some in music, but I believe I was wholly on my own when it came to drawing.
I'd say that should be evidence that anyone *can* learn, if they are simply willing to try to take in new information. Even if you don't want to take lessons, don't want to draw a page full of anatomical sketches of hands (as I didn't), you can still learn by hating your product enough to ram your head into a wall until it works.

Eyes are the gate to the soul, they say. They are the hardest to do because the human mind is hard-coded to read expressions from them, making the margin of error very small. I can place the ears inches wrong on the far side of the head, and no one will notice, but if I angle the eye a pixel wrong, the character is bestowed with down syndrome.
This is also why people (as I did) misplace effort when doing them. They keep pouring in more detail, thinking that the reason it "looks wrong" is because the eyes are "crude". The result is only deepening the uncanny valley. In reality the outline of any eye is two lines. That's it. If you start by learning where to place these, and allow yourself to realize that those two lines are what makes it look *good*, then you can allow yourself to pour on detail.

dinksmallwood

2 years, 1 month ago

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@ Meowmere

You are correct in that many believe that more detail equates to a better representation of a subject and is more aesthetically pleasing and can be mastered right away, (especially when it comes to eyes)..however a prime example of why this is simply not so are those souless, 'doll' eyes in Polar Express and some early video games. In spite of the fact that they were fully rendered and textured/lighted with an attempt at 'photo-realism', compared to Disney or Pixar eyes, they just couldn't compare. We look at faces all the time, and instinctively know when something is 'off' in the 'T' zone (eyes, nose, mouth), whereas there is a lot more forgiveness in any other part of the body (except, perhaps, the hands, because those are also very expressionate and something that everyone pays close attention to). If you plan on doing any more tutorials (which would be great), the face/hands are an excellent place to start, concentrating on proportions, expressions, perspective, 'Do's and Dont's, etc.

Meowmere

2 years, 1 month ago

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Edited 2 years, 1 month ago by Owner

@ dinksmallwood

I have at least one or two more of these in me, regarding facial proportions. Don't know that I'm good enough at doing hands to act an expert on them.

Meowmere

2 years, 1 month ago

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@ Neill

And sorry, I didn't mean to dismiss the compliment. Thank you.

Neill

2 years, 1 month ago

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@ Meowmere

Anytime, man.

dinksmallwood

2 years, 1 month ago

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Edited 2 years, 1 month ago by Owner

The 'incorrect' version looks drunk or something. This is great advice. Can't recall how many times I've seen improperly foreshortened (or rather, not foreshortened whatsoever) in 3/4 and profile views...even professional animators and artists (mostly anime) get it wrong a lot of times. Style is one thing, but just plain disregarding perspective is something else entirely (unless someone is intentionally going for some kind of 'Picasso' vibe). Another tip is that the iris is concave, meaning the pupil doesn't 'bulge out' on the surface of the eye, but is set further back when viewed at an angle.

Meowmere

2 years, 1 month ago

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@ dinksmallwood

Oh, I fuck this up all the time. Looking even a few months back in my own gallery, I cringe, thinking "come on, you know this, how did you not get that part right".

You're absolutely right, "style" is rarely an excuse. When it is, it only works when you can clearly see the artist intended to do it wrong. We must all keep evolving.

Loneseeker

2 years, 1 month ago

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We need more of this right here. This helps others understand things they be getting stuck on and are not sure to ask/explain what it is they are trying to do or need help with.

Meowmere

2 years, 1 month ago

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@ Loneseeker

There is indeed a lot of small tricks that one can be utter blind to until it's mentioned, where it's suddenly obvious. I'll try to think of other bite sized bits of wisdom. Trouble is, most of it boils down to "observe and replicate", which can be hard to impart without being either too superficial or too dense. I'll probably do one about symmetry and aligning nose, eyes, and chin, in a more frontal view.

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