The tutorial I have today I came up with spontaneously while working on a picture of a tribal character I’m working on. He’s from the prehistory Phillipines, an area that I’ve never heard of a story being written about. Such a fascinating area.

That picture up there shows Snake Island in the Philippines. The completely naturally formed landbridge connecting two islands is shaped like a snake. Click the thumbnail to see how beautiful and clear the water looks. Anyway, I can’t get myself to draw the main protagonist as I see him in my mind.

Anyway, as I was working on trying to draw him a few nights ago, I realized that a lot of people draw the majority of their characters the same way. They’re always standing forward or to the side with their legs straight or slightly bend. But in real life there is a whole range of positions and motions that an individual can do. So I decided that my newest tutorial would be on how to draw a character sitting.

There’s a ton of ways that characters sit, so covering them all in one tutorial would be crazy. So instead, I’m going to focus on how to draw characters sitting in chairs. The way a character looks when sitting in a chair varies depending on how the body is shaped and what the character is wearing, but there is a general shape that the legs take when in a sitting position.

(Click the picture to make it larger).

Side Profile

Start by  drawing a slight vertical line that curves outwards to the right (or left). This will be the character’s butt.

At the bottom of the line you just drew, continue with a very slightly curving line that curves downwards and to the right. This line is part of the character’s butt and thigh.

Continue the line as it travels more and more horizontally, becoming less and less curved. This forms more of the thigh.

Draw a line that attaches to the last line you drew. This line will be drawn vertically and curve slightly outwards. The bottom end of the line will travel to the left (or right).

Here I switched the line I just drew to the line of a pair of pants, but you can keep the original line if you want. Draw a horizontal line that travels to the left and slants slowly upwards. Then have the line curve dramatically upward and to the right, forming the toe of the foot. This will form the bottom and front part of the foot or shoe.

There should be a point where the thigh and the calf intersect. At this point, draw a curving line that travels downwards and to the left. The line will also curve outwards and to the right.

Have the line that you just drew curve outwards to the left (or right). Have this line travel downwards, forming the back part of the other leg.

Continue with the line you just drew, drawing a small bump where the heel should be. From this point, draw a curving line that curves slightly upwards and travels to the left. This line curves slightly upwards because it is forming the arch of the foot.

Draw a line that travels upwards and to the right, curving upwards and to the left. This will form the top part of the other shoe or foot.

Now, switch over to the other foot, drawing the curving horizontal line that makes up the shoe or foot for that part of the body. Have the line curve slightly upward and travel to the right.

Draw a line that curves horizontally and slightly upward. This will form the top part of the other thigh.

Continue this line by drawing a line that travels vertically, curving to the left until the line reaches the ankle, where it then curves to the right. The line finally curves to the left again to meet the lower foot.

Make adjustments to the leg.

That concludes part one of the sitting tutorials. I’ll be covering different positions and different sitting styles. I’ll keep covering this until I’ve run out of sitting styles or until someone emails me at sketchinghouse@gmail.com with a different topic. Just no dirty or degrading requests. I really want to cover how to draw every topic under the sun, but if this bores you to tears, send me an email and I’ll teach other things.

Best wishes,

Alex

Paint.net

Pros

I think Paint.net is the best starter program for those just learning how to do digital art. Paint.net lacks a lot of bells and whistles. The program runs a little faster than Photoshop and much faster than GIMP. In fact, I still use Paint.net for really simple edits because it runs faster. Also, their filters rock almost as much as Photoshop’s and you can download free plugins in order to expand your arsenal.

Cons

Paint.net is kinda skimpy on its features and their brushes really suck. The only brush that’s useful at all is the basic brush, unless you’re creating simplistic designs.Paint.net also doesn’t have a lot of the features that I’ve grown to love and rely on when using Photoshop. They have the lasso tool, which allows you to select specific parts of an image you’re working on. But they lack the polygonal lasso, which is great for artists who don’t have steady hands. They lack the pen tool, which makes it difficult to select very specific sections of the art and also makes it difficult to create complex polygons with curves (though they do have the curves tool). But for me, the most unforgivable sin for Paint.net is that they lack a blur and smudge tool. Without those tools, a lot harder to blend different parts of your image together. They do have the blur filter, which can replace the blur tool if you select certain portions with the lasso tool and you have a really steady hand.

GIMP

Pros

GIMP has most of the really important features on Photoshop. They have the coveted pen tool. They also have the essential blur and smudge tool. I can’t remember if they have the polygonal lasso or not. But that tool can be replaced by the pen tool easily. They have some good filters and plenty of plugins. This is a good program for those who want most of the features of Photoshop but never want to pay for the Photoshop program.

Cons

Oddly enough, the size of GIMP’s brushes are limited. This is a strange feature, since it can’t be that hard to increase the size of the brushes. GIMP also has the slowest running time. When using GIMP, I was met with frequent crashes. Also, for some reason, the lines that I created using the pen tool weren’t always perfectly smooth.

The Moral

Adobe is a little absurd charging nearly $1,000 for their Photoshop programs. Yeah, Photoshop is seen as the absolute best graphics program out there for most digital artists. But how do they expect starving artists to ever afford that much money?

Download GIMP http://downloads.sourceforge.net/gimp-win/gimp-2.6.4-i686-setup.exe

Download Paint.net http://www.dotpdn.com/files/Paint.NET.3.36.zip

Alex

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Hi, everybody! Marisol here. Alex offered some ideas for free programs, but if you are heavy into digital art and you enjoy doing it, there are programs that are under $100 available. Yes, they’re not as fancy as any of the Photoshop CS programs, but they are just as good. Alex mentioned that there is Photoshop Elements and Corel Painter, both of which have their pros and cons. I own both and I was fortunate enough to receive them free with my Wacom Intuos Tablet. However, both programs are well worth the money if you’re willing to spend it, especially if you’re really in to digital art.

Photoshop Elements

I happen to like Elements more than CS. Sure, Elements is what the title implies: the elements–your really basic digital tools. As Alex mentioned, Elements doesn’t have a pen tool, but everything else about it is great. You have your blur and burn tools, which are essential in digital art creation, but you also have the option of creating brushes and downloading brushes like its nobody’s business! Photoshop Elements has fantastic calligrapher brushes which make up for the lack of pen tool. However, I never really understood why the pen tool was so important. Basically, if you use the right pressure and you go along in small strokes, any brush can dublicate the pen tool look, but that is my opinion. I’ve never had a pen tool and when I did use it, I found it difficult to handle.

Photoshop Elements is basically the same as PSCS, just without the bells and whistles. A lot of the features are the same and the program is easy to use. Personally, I love Elements because of some of the cool effects you can create with it. There is a photo fram feature and a feature where you can create Andy Warhol-esque images. Very cool. Photoshop Elements is the best bang for your buck.

Corel Painter

Personally, I am not a fan of Corel Painter mainly because I find it difficult to use. Sure, the features are great, but I find the program to be glitchy and lacks that special oomph that makes it a great program. The drawing feature on Corel Painter is hit and miss because sometimes the lines pick up, others times they don’t, no matter what the pen pressure is. I find it to be very lax on features, however, it’s a great beginner’s tool. If you are a beginning artist, practice with Corel Painter, but I highly recommend you download the free trial. However, a lot of hardcore artists do use Corel Painter and love it, so maybe I have had bad luck.

Marisol

Assorted Brush #1

This brush is made up of small circles that are strung together. When drawing in a line, this brush creates what looks like a slinky, cord or some type of microbe. If you scribble the lines together, it forms a black splotch with little renegade circles all around it. If you use the mouse to make single clicks, this brush will create tiny circles. This can serve as an alternative to using the ellipses tool. All you have to do is resize the brush using “[“ or “]” in order to get the right sized circle. However, the lines will be blurry. This might not work if you are searching for more fine lines.

Assorted Brush #2

Assorted brush #2 is just like brush one except that this circle has two circles instead of one with one circle contained within the other circle like a bulls-eye. The result is a darker line and little individual circles that look like tiny bulls-eyes. Like the other brush, as you increase the size of this brush the lines get blurry.

Assorted Brush #3

This brush is made up of a bunch of X’s stringed together. This brush has all sorts of uses ranging from texturizing a picture to creating something that looks like a metal fence. Individually, this brush can really create interesting texture when the brush is scribbled in one location, though scribbling too much will only create a black blotch. Making singular clicks of the mouse will create little X’s that could be used for stars. If you enlarge the X, the X becomes more blurry and the X appears as if its made out of blotches that start off larger in the middle and get smaller towards the tips of the X’s.

Assorted Brush #4

This brush is a diagonal pound symbol. But when used for drawing lines, it creates a line that has a rough edge and a thick black line in the middle. This creates nice little edges on the lines that are great for texture. I like how the text looked when I wrote it. When the brush is drawn over itself, it creates very thickly black blotches with rough edges, which reminds me of some paint mediums. Placed individually, this brush creates a sharp that gets progressively more blurry the more you increase the size.

Assorted Brush #5

I like this brush a lot. The lines created by this brush have very scratchy edges that look manmade at the same time because they are so uniform. This might be a useful brush for drawing the silhouette of an animal such as a caterpillar. The edges of the brush are reminiscent of fur. If clicked individually with a mouse, this brush leaves nice little gridlines that can have different applications.

Assorted Brush #6

Do you want a lizard, a fuzz ball, or a spiral? This really awesome brush creates the illusion of scales with drawn in a straight line and creates what looks like a ball of fur when the brush is draw over itself. When clicked individually, this brush creates a little spiral. Let your imagination run wild with this brush.

Assorted Brush #7

Made from diamonds. Not sure if a diamond is an artist’s best friend. This brush can create lines that look like they have bad quality. This brush might be useful in some way, but I can’t really think of any uses right now.

Assorted Brush #8

Looking to create lace? This brush brush is for you. This brush allows you to draw lines that look like laces. A very fun brush to use, but I cannot think of any applications beyond creating lacy material. But that’s good enough to make it useful.

Assorted Brush #9

I guess this is a cool brush. At a smaller size, this brush creates lines with really interesting edges. Make the lines larger and they start to remind me of centipedes. The symbol used to create this brush is kinda strange. I don’t really find the blotch in the middle really interesting.

Assorted Brush #10

I like this brush overall, though I don’t like the blurriness of it when you create larger sized strokes. This brush gets thicker as you travel horizontally and thinner as you travel vertically. The brush creates a 3D look that reminds me of the ribbon brush. The splotch is kinda boring and the individual mouse clicks created little marks that could be flames in the right picture.

Assorted Brush #11

Even though the shape of this brush is way different, this brush is like the opposite of brush #10 in effect. Lines get thicker as you travel vertically and thinner as you travel horizontally. The brush is kinda shaped like a genie lamp. I like how the left side of the brush seems to fade.

Assorted Brush #12

This is a cool brush but I’m not sure what it would be useful for except for really neat font. The lines sorta make me think of the edge of a rock, but that might just be my eyes playing tricks on me.

Assorted Brush #13

I almost skipped this one. This brush might be useful for texture, but it mostly only creates what looks like railroad tracks. But it’s a little too much on the blurry side.

That’s it for the first half. There’s a bunch more brushes in the assorted brush section like the star brush and the black widow brush. I’ll hit those tomorrow.

Alex

Arm #1

This arm is hanging straight at the character’s side in such a way that the palm of the character’s hand would be facing the character. This is an important arm to learn how to draw, since characters commonly hold their arms this way.

Draw a slightly curving line that travels downwards.

Draw another long curving line parallel to the first line you drew. Make this arm less curvy than the other line and have the line travel farther downward than the other line.

From the bottom of the shorter line, draw a more curving line that slants more towards the other line as it travels downwards.

Arm #2

This arm has the palm facing away from the point of view. This is often the way the arm looks when a character is holding on to an object that is between the character’s body and arm.

Draw a curving line that starts off traveling horizontally and starts to curve until it suddenly travels downwards sharply, very far downwards.

In whatever direction that the previous line curved, on the opposite side draw a line that curves in the opposite direction. This line is not as long as the other line.

At the end of the line that you just drew, draw a second similar curving line. This line is the same only longer than the previous line.

Draw a second line that is similar to the line you just drew but which curves in a different direction.

Arm #3

This arm is similar to the arm above, but the hand is swung more towards the center of the character. Otherwise, this isn’t a much more difficult arm to learn how to draw.

Draw a curving line that travels horizontally and then curves suddenly downwards, traveling vertically and slightly curving outwards.

On the other side of the line you just drew, draw a line that curves outwards slightly, mostly traveling vertically.

From where this line ends, draw another curving line that bulges at first and then tapers off gradually.

From where the opposite line ended, draw a line that curves very slightly and then travels somewhat towards the other line that you just drew.

Arm #4

This is the arm of a character who is swinging her arm, raising it, or stretching her arm out to grab someone’s hand. Her arm looks somewhat curved, like a banana. This is a lightly tricker arm to learn how to draw.

Draw one curving line.

Then draw another. Both of these lines will curve in the same way, curving in a somewhat downward and Eastern or Western direction (depending on which arm you’re drawing).

With the line farther away from the character’s body, draw a smaller line that curves in the opposite direction.

Where the last line left off, draw another line that curves in the opposite direction.

Go to the line opposite of the lines you’ve been working on drawing. Draw another curving line that is similar to the first curving line, but have that line curve more towards the other line.

Arm #5

This is the arm of someone who has his elbow by his waist and is raising his forearm without moving his elbow from its position. This arm might be easier to learn how to draw if you look at your arm in the mirror and experiment with different arm positions.

Draw a curve that looks like a hook. Draw a really small curving line that will represent the shoulder. As the line travels downwards, the line will become almost perfectly vertical with a slight curve to it.

Closer to the human body, draw a line that slants slightly upwards towards the body.

Back to the first line you drew. Draw a line that curves sharply upwards and outwards.

Draw a fourth line that curves in the same way as the third line, but tapers and draws closer to the third line.

Arm #6

This is the arm of someone who is holding her skirt, curtsying. This will be last type of straight arm that I can think of that an artist would want to learn how to draw.

Draw a curving line that travels diagonally across the page.

Draw a second line that curves in an opposite direction and is not as curvy as the first line.

Continue the second line, curving it out slightly a second time.

Continue the first line by drawing a really big bulge that tapers off gradually and travels closer and closer to the other line.

Woo! Next arm tutorial, I’ll be hitting bent arms. I dunno if I’ll do that in the next art tutorial, since writing about the same things all the time gets kinda dull. I’ve spent a lot of time working on drawing the human figure, which is really important. But I’m up for a change. Please email art tutorial requests and specifically drawing tutorial requests if there’s anything specific that you want to have an art tutorial on.

Alex

Elderly men do not dominate manga and cartoons, but you can sometimes still find them playing a few important roles. These characters are given extra lines on the face to emphasize wrinkling and the sagging of a face. The elderly face usually has some features that are drawn out more than you would with a younger face. It seems like the older a character is, the more realistic the features are drawn, while the younger the face, the more details you omit. For instance, some young children do not even have mouths drawn. The elderly face can be really complex and the extra angles can end up requiring some really innovative shading. For this drawing tutorial, a more simplistic face is going to be drawn.

Draw a line that curves upwards. This will be a tiny line that represents the corner of the eye. Then draw a second line that travels outwards, curving slightly. Finish with a long, curving line that represents the bottom of the eye. These will be the eyelids.

Draw two curving lines in between the two eyelids. These will represent the irises. Notice how the entire eye isn’t completely shown. Instead, the top and bottom parts of the irises are covered by the eyelids.

Create a duplicate but reversed version of the eye you just drew.

Draw a line that slants downwards and to the left. This line will be beneath the eyes in the middle of the face. Yep, this is the nose. This line will then suddenly travel downwards and to the right, forming a right angle. The corner of this right angle will be rounded.

Draw a broad line that curves only slightly downwards to show a slight smile. This character is meant to be somewhat older, so I put slanting lines in the corners of his mouth that slant downwards.

Between the nose and the mouth, draw two lines that start somewhat near the nose that curve outwards and travel down towards the mouth.

Draw some curving lines beneath the eyes.

Draw two curving lines somewhat beneath the mouth that are small and very curved. Start drawing the jaw. The jaw will be less pointy than usual on this guy, since sagging skin will make his jaw seem wider.

Draw the rest of the head. Have the lines that make up the head slant outwards as they travel upwards. When you’re ready to draw the top of the head, draw a curving line that connects both slanting lines.

Draw the folk’s ears. Draw a curving line that starts at the edge of the head, curves and then travels downwards a long way becoming more straight with a slight curve. Have the line curve at the bottom until it touches the side of the head. As for the inside of the ear, you will probably need a human model
. No matter what, the ear is always drawn with curving lines near the edge of the ear within the ear. What’s tricky to draw is the opening of the ear canal near the ear lobe.

Draw the hair however you’d like, though it’s a bad idea to draw every individual strand.

Alex

Start by drawing a curving line that slants towards the head.

On the part of the ear that’s farther away from the head, draw the line as a curve that suddenly goes into a slant that moves towards the head.

Draw a line that starts near the bottom middle near the edge of the ear. This line will travel along the outer edge of the ear until you reach the top corner closest to the head. Then the line will curve downwards and away from the head until it stops.

Where the last line you drew ends, place your drawing tool slightly above the end and draw a curving line that travels downwards. Continue until you draw a half circle.

The next part looks sorta like an upside down S that is a little more elongated and attached to the half circle you drew.

At this point, draw another S that is right-side up and attaches at the bottom to the line that you just drew.

Now locate the inner curving line and draw two curving lines that travel downwards and attach at the tip like a triangle or a strand of hair.

Finish by drawing a line that travels near the inner line that you just drew on the outer side on the inner side of the ear (good thing there’s pictures, this is confusing). At the bottom of the ear, draw a small curving line that curves upwards.

Next, let’s try another type of ear (woo!). Start off by drawing a curving line that looks like a hook. The line will be curving towards wherever the head is supposed to be.

Wherever you want the bottom of your ear to be, draw a line that curves downwards.

On the side of the ear that is away from the head, draw a slightly curving line that connects both of the other lines.

Draw a curving line within the hook part of the line and have that line travel along the outside part of your line until you stop somewhere near the top.

Where the last line ended, move up a little and draw a line that travels downwards and curves, attaching to the outer part of the ear. This line will travel down, slant downwards and to the left and then slant more steeply until it touches the outer part of the ear.

Now head over to the other part of the ear and draw two lines, one that curves upwards and one that curves downwards. These lines will be curving away from each other. The bottom line will slant downwards more and father out than the upper curve.

From where you left off, draw a line that travels downwards and curves towards the character’s head.

From this point, draw a similar curving line that sorta forms a small M but stops early and slants more towards the head.

The next part’s incredibly difficult to describe. Yeah, the ear is kinda tricky. Luckily, most people aren’t experts in what an ear looks like and most people won’t notice if there are minor errors in the ear. Of course, if you’re trying to get the ear really right, you’ll need to draw from an art model.

Now, let’s draw the ear that’s really difficult to see. The ear that is drawn from the back. Start by drawing a slightly curving line.

Draw a second line that makes a pass at the first line. This line travels more downwards and is even less curved.

At the bottom of the last line that you drew, draw a second line that curves in the other direction.

At the bottom of this line, draw a small curving line that travels away from where the ear connects to the side of the head and curves downwards. Then draw a line that travels directly upwards.

Where you left off at the straight line, draw a second line that curves upwards and away from the ear.

Draw a slightly curving line that connects the two lines that are traveling somewhat vertically up. Draw a line that hangs freely to the left of the ear. Find the bottom of the ear and draw a line that curves away from the ear and upwards.

Where was I? Working, school and being lazy. I’m sorry! I know, it’s been awhile. Marisol and I were trying to get an apartment but we ended up working so hard that everything started to suffer. From now on I’m going to stick with contributing to our tutorial art gallery.

Anyway, here’s another art drawing tutorial on nothing specific in particular. This tutorial focuses on drawing face art, rather than body art, giving explanations on how to draw out each part. I added advanced sections, even though they’re not really that much more advanced. They’re really just extra things you can look out for when you’re trying to go the extra mile with your art lessons.

Outline of the head

Make light strokes in a slightly curling motion when drawing the line art for the head. Stare at the edge of your reference photo and try to visualize the shape of the outline of the head. Advanced: pay extra attention to special details like whether or not the face is round or sunken. If you can capture each indentation of the face, capture it.

Mouth

Mouths can be an incredibly simple part of line drawing. With the mouth, draw a very simple curving line. The way I drew the mouth gave the character a slight smirk. Now, to draw the lips or not to draw them. Advanced: The mouth is drawn sorta like a small m. There is a dip in the middle, though the dip varies from person to person. Some dips are tiny, while others take up a little more space. Since the lips are not directly facing the camera but are faced slightly to the left, make the left side of the lips more rounded while making the right side more slanted in order to create that illusion.

Why draw the lips? A lot of don’t include the lips, which can create a very cute picture. Some artists even avoid drawing the mouth in order to emphasize the character’s youth. Plus, lips often look somewhat strange on drawn character, though they don’t have to be. Much of the beauty of lips comes from the right shading and highlights, which will be in another tutorial. For now, you can stick with drawing simplistic lips, which work well with ethnic characters.

Eyes

A lot of artists start with the eyes because the eyes often determine whether or not the rest of the picture will end up working. But where you start really does not matter. For these eyes, take the reference picture and try to capture the outline of the eyes. For cartooning, this does not have to be exact and be sure to draw somewhat larger than what is in the real life picture. Draw the bottom part of the eye with a bulge in the middle bulging downward. The outer edges of the eyes can be drawn slanting up or down. Usually they are slanting downwards.

The top part of the eyes curve sharply upward from the outer corners of the eyes and form a gentle round curve. I removed the inner corners of the eyes because they did not look attractive. I then enlarged the eyes because I was worried that the eyes would be too hard to see. Advanced: start cleaning up the eyes. Use an eraser or white coloring to color over the parts of the lines you want to erase. Always erase in a way that will increase the roundness of the eyes.

Choose a color that you would like to use for your eyes. Fill in circles that fill up the entire eye lid. Draw a nice black line around your irises that is somewhat faint. Then switch to white and draw in a glare that is on the same spot for both eyes. This will be a small white circle that represents the light reflecting off of the eye. Advanced: Add a faint white line at the bottom of the irises.

Eyebrows

Add the eyebrows. Much of the individuality and emotion of the character comes from how the eyebrows are drawn. The combination of eyebrows and mouth form a large percentage of the emotions depicted through drawing. Also, since eyebrows vary, you can be somewhat creative with them. For these eyebrows, put a lot of weight on the inner part of the eyebrows in order to make them look thick. As you slant upwards and curve to the outer part of the eyebrow, make the line progressively fainter and thinner.

Hair

Draw the bangs as curving triangles. You can start by drawing the outline of the hair or add the bangs first. Bangs can be drawn in all sorts of ways. The types of bangs I drew were the ones that curve inward and are triangular. With these bangs, the messiness or neatness of your character can be emphasized by whether or not you have the bangs all going in one direction or not.

Coloring

Coloring, one of the most awesome parts of creating an image. This is especially awesome when you are using a Photoshop program. Not only can you choose among a seemingly infinite array of colors, but you can also place different colors on different layers and then alter these colors using hue/saturation.

Regardless of what you use, make sure that you color very carefully by going along the edges without going over them. If you’re drawing traditionally, it is recommended that you go over your artwork lines using and then finish coloring with high-quality markers. Alternatively, you can draw everything using your tablet or mouse and then create new layers for each color. Then, be sure to set each layer to multiply in order to avoid coloring over the lines that you worked so hard to draw.

That’s all it takes to construct a typical face (at least in the anime world). It really all comes down to personal taste. Draw a little here and see if you like it. Erase something there when you realize that it looks really dumb. Slowly clean up every stray pixel or smudge until everything starts to look polished.

I’m suppose to be studying for a Linguistics quiz right now, but I’m very far behind on things. I have six articles I need to write for Demand Studios, two blogs for Divine Carol/Country Living, help Alex with some of his blogs (if he would ever sign online and let me know where he needs help at) and I need to come up with a ten page paper for my other job. Yes, for my tutoring job, we need to write papers to be reviewed. We also need community service. What is that? That place is ticking me off something horrible and I’m terribly close to quitting. If it wasn’t for the fact that I like working with the International students, I would leave. But, I guess I should be grateful for the fact that I have a job, that I’m not amongst the unemployed. But everything is looking desperate anymore. C’est la vie. However, yesterday, Alex and I developed a plan that would fix the economy for awhile… now if we could run for joint presidency…

On Valentine’s Day, the best possible thing happened. *Jumps around excitedly.* Pitchers and catchers reported for spring training! YES! The baseball season is right around the corner (Go Yankees! Go Cubs!)! Woohoo! And today is the Daytona 500! I hope my beloved Denny Hamlin wins! He’s my Sunday boyfriend, unless he races in the Nationwide Series on Saturday, then he’s my Saturday and Sunday boyfriend. All my boys of summer are back. Feel the speed, smell the green! Boogity, boogity, boogity! Let’s go racin’ boys! Play ball!

As mentioned, yesterday was Valentine’s Day. Alex and I went out to breakfast, went to the mall, took a long walk, had smoothies, went for dessert, went to Borders, and watched a movie called Towelhead (if you haven’t seen this movie or read the book, I recommend you do). It was a simple day, overall. I like simple, but I guess there’s a part of me that yearns for more romance. I guess I’m just a hopeless romantic at heart: always hoping for more.  I guess the romantic side of me is the side that wishes for “the next step,” even though it scares me at the same time. I’m very afraid of that “next step” because of the drama it will cause. I’m tired of drama, fearful of monster in-laws, and all the meddling. Thinking of that “next step” makes me anxious–good and bad. I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t want a whole big shabang, instead, eloping sounds nice. Think of the money we’d save! But, taking that step is just a distant and frightening thought. I’m not going to bother with it any longer. But, I’d give up my heart for him, since he already owns it.

So what kind of tutorial shall we do today? I’m not exactly sure what I have to offer today. Since I haven’t had time to draw in awhile, I’m going to have to use a tutorial I did over the summer for another website. Let me see… how about how to draw elf ears? I promised an ear tutorial a long time ago, so I guess this counts.

Start by creating your basic ear shape. The basic ear shape can be described as C-shapes–one facing the correct way, the other facing the opposite direction. Inside, place a curvy C-shape inside and connect to a loosely drawn wavy E-shape.

Add details to the ear you just drawn. Create the ear ear canal entry and all the curves (what I like to call peaks and valleys) inside the ear. Look at pictures of ears in order to see the structure. All ears look different, so practice with a lot of different ear styles until you reach the desired look.

Create a dotted line that stems from the ear you just drew. This dotted line will indicate how large you want the ear to be, as well as the shape and width.

Trace over the dotted line and create a secondary line inside this now extended ear. This secondary line should be about a quarter of an inch away from the new ear line. Erase the outside rim of the old ear shape. Add three curved lines to the inside.

Next, shade the ear. Start with the dark tones and lead into the mid and light-tones. If necessary, create shading guidelines for this task. Once shading is complete, your ear is finished. Hopefully, you have a character for this ear (as well as another ear) in order to have a finished drawing.

So there it is: an ear. Did you find this tutorial useful? I hope so. Any questions? Comments? Well, we do love feedback. Comment below or shoot us an email at sketchinghouseonline@gmail.com! I’m off to go cry in my coffee. Dale Earnhardt Jr. caused a major crash during the Daytona 500, knocking my beloved Denny Hamlin into the grass. Denny had a chance to win the race, but no! Fate was not on his side. Rain in Daytona shortened the race to 151 laps; Matt Kenseth won. Now I am sad.

Until next time,

Mari

I’m sitting at work today, bored as hell. Why? No sessions (THANK YOU LORD!). This is good, since I can now write a post. When I signed on the computer today, I saw a lovely email from someone who ordered something from me on Ebay. Her item didn’t arrive yet and I shipped it over a week ago. Her solution? Send her another DVD. Pardon? I was only selling one to begin with, so how can I send another if I only had one? Once the item is shipped, it is out of my hands and I cannot predict what happens from that point on. I am an innocent victim to a horrendous mail crime, I tell ya!

On Monday and Tuesday, I watched the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, and I gotta say, I was happy that the Sussex Spaniel won Best in Show. Being a spaniel person–my 16 year old Cocker Spaniel passed away almost three years ago–I am happy to see when the those floppy eared, soulful-eyed, and sweet puppies win something. Stump was a cute dog and an old man–70 years old in dog years– and he kicked all the young dogs’ butts! How do you like that? Never underestimate the power of the elderly.

In honor of the dog show, I’m going to show you to create dog fur. I probably should show you how to draw the dog first, but this is me and I like to do things backwards. Fur is an easy thing to draw because all it is is a bunch of lines that are packed together, much like hair. Hair was fun to draw, right folks? I hope so. So shall we begin with drawing the fur? Let’s go!

WHAT YOU NEED: Pencils (colored or otherwise), tortillions, Kleenex

Let’s say you have the outline of your animal–dog, cat, raccoon, Koala– but you want to add fur. What do you do? Fur is actually quite simple to draw. First, let’s start at the face. With the face, you’re going to create the fur on the muzzle. The fur on the muzzle consists of very short lines going every-which-way. Vary the pressure of the strokes in order to create depth. The best way to create the muzzle fur is to draw the strokes quickly.

Now you’re going to draw the fur on the head. For this, you’re going to make longer strokes that go up and out. Again, vary your strokes in order to create light, mid, and dark tones. Cross over the lines in order to create depth. Around the eyes, start the fur from where you created the muzzle fur and draw the fur out, but not up (left and right).

Repeat the first and second steps for the rest of the muzzle and face, except these strokes will be going down and out. Feel free to shade the nose and features. On the muzzle, keep using small strokes, and on the face, keep using long strokes.

Now create fur on the ears. I turned my dog into a strange Papillon hybrid. Use extra-long strokes of the ears and create downward strokes. Again, switch the pressure on your strokes in order to create your tones. Next, take your eraser and create a light source on the fur if necessary. After this is done, take your Kleeneex or tortillions and soften the edges. Tada! Your fur is complete!

I hope you enjoyed that tutorial, because I did. Until next time,

Love always!

Marisol