Can't Cage this bird

Applying basic light theory to your art (aka “how to make ridiculously shiny stuff”)

foervraengd:

In this mini-guide, I’m going to more or less explain how the heck you apply basic light theory on your art. But with a bit more exaggerated effects.

I am going to start off by using a reference photo I took myself in a museum I visited the other day.

This is a piece of Pyrite (aka “Fool’s Gold”) which is very reflective, and is pretty cool.

I used this as a reference and eye-ball copied it. Since most of the colors are pretty saturated, it wasn’t that hard to guess the colors. (I did not color pick from the photo - unless you are colorblind, you should learn to pick color only by observation. It’s good for your artistic eye.)

Here’s my painting of the pyrite. It’s not as textured or detailed as the reference, but turned out good enough. The orange light comes from a piece of table/wood beneath the pyrite that is not visible from the photo.

The shape of the object is a nice variation from the regular “sphere” that you always see in light-theory.

Now let’s apply there light sources on a portrait - makin it shiny shiny!

But first we should look up another reference!

This picture was done by the AMAZING Virtual Lighting Tool where you can add several light sources, change the placement of the “lamps”, even add colors and all kind of nice gadgets. This screenshot contains more or less the same lightsources that we got from the Pyrite painting.

Now this time I did use the color picker - but not from the photograph, but from the painting I did earlier. This was a really fun experiment and a great way to practice shiny objects.

tobzsketch:

Golgothassterror: art post

mrpunchinello:

starborn-vagabond:

tutorialsforartists:

I just went back through over 900 liked posts and dug out all the art tutorials so i can keep track of them. I guess this might be helpful to some of you guys, so here you go.

Here we go then!

Freeware

Alchemy - this is a really fun program. You play around making abstract shapes until you start to see something in them, kind of like a Rorschach test. Then you use the shapes as a base to draw it from.
MyPaint - a pretty decent painting program that also has the benefit of working on Unix systems.
openCanvas 1.1 - I haven’t used openCanvas in years but it was a nice program with a pretty unique feel to it.
ArtRage - Only used this a couple of times donkey’s years ago just before I got oC, but I’ve heard good things about it.
The GIMP - In a similar vein to Photoshop, but free. I couldn’t get on with it when I tried it out a few years ago, but it’s pretty popular and is available on Unix systems and Macs.

Sketchbook copic: a bit different program

Not-free-ware

Photoshop - Standard painting fare. Probably the most flexible program (particularly the latest versions) but not designed to act in a “natural” way. If you’ve used it for painting versus something like Painter you know what I mean. Who the fuck pays for it though? Google “Photoshop tumblr masterpost” and take your pick.
Paint Tool Sai - Far more affordable and definitely worth paying for if you can. The brushes are very decent (especially when they’ve been tweaked a little), the gui is simple and intuitive, and I dare you to find a program with which making smooth lineart is easier.
Corel Painter - My program of choice for most things. More tools than you could ever possibly use and pretty cheap on a student license, providing that you can prove you’re a student! It’s got a few bugs but if you want realism or a more natural feel than PS or SAI this is the program for you.

Anatomy

heads from different angles

anatomy and rotation of the head

human anatomy for artists

speed drawing studies

nude references

hands

arm and wing movement

beer bellies

body types

noses

box and egg/run of the stroke

a trick for arm proportions

body diversity

anatomy of the waist

feet

hands and forearms

Expressions

emotions and facial expressions

expressions from different angles (love this site)

body language

Poses

figure drawing examples

posemaniacs

gesture drawing

flexiblity

hand poses

Skin tones

handy pallet

painting skin

paint some life into your skin tones

ethnic skintones

Colouring

gamut mask tool (very nice!)

colour does not have to suck

5 easy ways to improve your colouring

fucking gradients, how do they work

light and shadow

painting crystals

achieving a painterly look in SAI

painting forests

colour scheme designer

kuler (more colour schemes)

portrait lighting cheatsheet

Brushes

a very nice setting for the sai acrylic brush

photoshop fur brushes (and tutorial)

lots of photoshop brushes

Other peoples masterposts

handy art link megapost

art references

stock artists

cocks and how to draw them

love your fellow artist (anything from prompt generators to animation background here, very nice)

e-books

art e-books (mediafire download)

even more e-books (including human anatomy, animal anatomy, cartoons, animation, composition, design, scenery, perspective…)

Andrew Loomis’s books

the art of drawing

cutting edge anatomy

Tutorials

drawing 101

how to paint realistic hair

how to paint realistic eyes

conceptart.org tutorials

creature design

folds

glasses

a pretty extensive general art tutorial

tumblrs

fucking art, how does it work

wannabe animator

anatomical art

artist problems

criminallyincompetent (check out their #reference and #tutorial tags, they’re gold)

I am getting artrage and the copic sketchbook thing to see what i can do it them :D

Reblogging for my own ref, AWWW YEEAAAH

(Source: geromy-kyle)

a neat perspective trick that you should know

halleybutt:

say you drew a box and you want this box to become, I don’t know, a building:

and you want to divide the sides of the box in half, so you can know where to put the windows and doors and whatever! if you eyeball it, you’re probably going to miss the halfway point, and it will look stupid:

that is incorrect. if you want to bisect a side of a box in perspective, try doing this instead:

1. draw x’s connecting the corners of each side of the box

2.draw a line through the exact center of the x’s, running parallel to the edges of that side

3. that’s it. now you have perfectly bisected sides, so you know where to draw your doors or anything else that this box might have on it.

but that’s not all!

you can do the exact same thing to the new faces you created, if you want to divide the sides up further.

sploosh

keep going!

you can draw so many doors or windows or anything! I don’t care what you draw, it’s your box.

this is one of the best time-saving tips I’ve ever come across. do you need an entire perspective grid? the x method has you covered!

let’s make a simple one-point perspective grid:

draw a square, figure out where the center of vision will be (hint: for one point perspective, it’s always smack dab in the center of the side facing you).

draw a bigger square around that square.

connect the corners of these two squares, so it looks like an open box.

USE THAT X-METHOD

MORE SUBDIVISIONS

DRAW LINES THROUGH THE CENTER OF THE X’S TO GET YOUR VERTICAL AND HORIZONTAL GUIDES

NOW DRAW YOUR DIAGONAL GUIDES (the corresponding sides of your two squares must be divided equally, into an equal number of segments. connect these segments to get your diagonal guides).

baby you got a stew going!

the x-method might not be 100% correct in every case, but it’s great for just getting stuff done and making it look right. I made that entire one-point grid in under ten minutes. now if I want to draw a room, I have easy-to-follow guidelines and they only took a little bit of time to make.

the x-method comes from Perspective! for Comic Book Artists, which you should read because it is amazing. read the shit out of it.

how i draw things

boypart:

this is boring and not very insightful but all right

Read More

this is a really good tutorial and I am happy that you made one because I have envied your drawings for a while! UuU’ reblogging into reference tag