The high-functioning sociopath

That fandom drawing thing #1

medacris:

Lighting can be tricky- reblogging a few tutorials for reference.

(via you-got-cumberbatched)

Just toying with a new style~

euclase:

some tips for achieving photorealism because someone asked (bearing in mind that practice—and also paying attention to whatever it is that you’re drawing—are the best tips i could ever give)…

1. keep your color palette narrow and subtle. choose a base color (a medium tone, usually best found in foreheads) and base your other colors from that. every color should be a derivation of your base color.
2. trust what you see, not what you know. just because a person has blue eyes doesn’t mean their eyes should look blue in your drawing. very rarely do a person’s eyes appear pure blue. instead, they may appear “bluer” compared to the colors around them, but their actual color will be brownish or grayish.
3. the illusion of details is more important than actual details. you don’t need to draw every pore, for example, as long as you suggest they are there. none of the above drawings, when you really look at them, are exhaustively detailed. they merely hint at detail, especially in the places people tend to look first—the eyes and mouth. you will probably never need to draw individual eyelashes.
4. human skin is translucent. it’s also reflective and oily. that means it can (and should) contain any of the colors: green, blue, purple, red, gray, orange, and yellow depending on lighting. these colors won’t actually be pure—they’ll be derivations of the base skin color. they will be “bluer” or “pinker” or “greener,” but they will definitely be there. there are no easy rules about how to color skin except that skin is not one color.
5. colors are usually more saturated near light (or at the edges of shadows) and less saturated in shadow. the underside of someone’s jaw, for example, may look grayer, while the bit of color just near the nostril might look red. the shadows in hair also tend to have less vivid colors.
6. there’s blood under your skin. don’t forget that. where skin is thinner, blood shows through. ears, lips, eyelids, and nostrils are all delicate, and the skin may appear more red in these areas.
7. in photorealism, color and lighting go hand in hand with accuracy. the more photorealistic the color and lighting, the more people will notice inaccuracies if they exist.
8. we call it ‘hair’ because we think of it as one thing, and it is—hair is a shape. so worry about the shape first, then worry about the individual hairs.
9. all of the information you will ever need is in the subject or photo you’re drawing. don’t make arbitrary decisions; draw what you see, not what you think you know. i you can’t see it, don’t draw it.
10. remember: no matter what it looks like in real life, because you’re drawing it, it’s the most beautiful thing in existence. every single bit of it matters.

(via robynium)