- Instead of thinking of where to put shadows think about where the light is hitting. This sounds less helpful typed out than i planned but it’s an easier way to think of it imo.
- Keep your shadows big and simple. You can add some detail to them but overall the shadows should make sense as a whole. I drew a quick little guy to show you what i mean:

- zoom way out of your drawing every now and then to see if your drawing makes sense.
- Remember that even though cartoons are flat and 2D they’re still based on real life 3D things.
As for how I learned I don’t really have an answer other than years and years of practice.;; Going off the last point, draw from life, do figure drawings, practice learning to see the shadows on real life people/objects. A fun exercise is to draw something with a pen or pencil and then take a big marker or watercolor brush and block in the shadows. Just keep at it!
I do both! It depends on the picture, if i’m unsure of what colors i want to use or i’m doing something outside of my comfort zone it helps a lot to pick out a palette in advance, but a lot of times i just go for it.
As far as tips:
This post is pretty long and that’s all i can think of right now. Obviously this isn’t everything there is to know about color and it applies mostly to digital art. But i hope it helped a little.
I don’t really feel like my lineart is that clean? I work on really big canvases tho, like 8000px across and when you scale it down it makes everything look much cleaner haha
I also try to do most of my lines in one big motion instead of lots of making lots of shorter marks. But actually, what helped me figure out how to do lineart was to stop worrying about how you’re supposed to do lineart and do what’s comfortable. You’re allowed to use lots of short sketchy marks and redraw parts and erase parts if that’s what feels natural to you.
This is always a really tough question to answer because i’m never sure what sort of art advice you’re looking for. There’s a lot of aspects to art and i don’t even know if you want advice about technical stuff or motivational stuff… But I think the best thing is just to draw what you wanna draw and what’s fun and enjoyable to you. The only way to get better is to practice and it’s easier to practice when you’re drawing something you enjoy instead of making yourself draw 600 boxes in perspective or something (unless that’s fun for you.) Draw a ton of fanart or your OCs making out or whatever makes you happy. And try not to worry about not already having the skills to draw the thing you want. Draw the thing. It might be wonky on the first attempt but you have to start somewhere before you can get better. idk i hope this was at least a little helpful.
if anyone ever draws anything for me please send me a link. Nothing ever shows up in my tag or in the search. ;;
I ship most of the ships haha
It feels similar to reposting to me and just generally makes me uncomfortable so I’d prefer that people didn’t do it -shrugs-
This seems to come up a lot so…
Things I am okay with people doing with my art:
Things I AM NOT okay with people doing with my art:
(thank you!!)
tbh anon, i never know what to say in regards to general drawing advice. I might be able to help you out more if there’s some specific aspect of drawing you’d like advice on but as far as general advice all I can say is to keep practicing.
thank you! I try to draw everyday for at least a little while, but depending on my schedule it can be anything from 20 minutes to 8 hours a day. Usually somewhere in between. -shrugs-
It’s just a weird alternate spelling of Aya. It’s pronounced the same way.
So, I set up a twitter account.
I’ll be posting art over there, but it’s not going to be a “professional” account and will probably end up mostly being me talking about life and cartoons and stuff.
I hope you don’t mind me publishing this.
First, no I don’t have a commission page right now. I plan on making an “official” post sometime in the future but I just haven’t gotten around to it yet.
Second, I’ve actually been pretty busy with commissions lately, and I’m going to stop taking on anything new for at least a month so I can finish up the last one I have and draw some other things I’ve been meaning to do. :)
Does anyone have any blog recommendations for good men’s fashion? Specifically more casual/everyday stuff? Not formal/fantasy stuff.
Thank you!
It’s not a stupid question! I’ll try to explain the best I can.
What it means when a brush says it’s 100 px is that that’s it’s default size. When you select it, that’s how big it will be. Any brush can be scaled up or down in PS from 1px to 2500px from there. You can save brushes at different sizes as separate defaults too, if you like to sketch with a 30px brush and line with a 20px brush you can just make it more convenient for yourself that way.
As far as file size for drawing, 100px is actually very small. (for reference, a post on tumblr is 550px across) Artists making pixel art might work that small but most people will work much bigger. My default canvas size is 6000px x 9000px.