If you haven’t read it, please take a look at part 1

Thanks for checking out my latest tutorial. Like promised, I will now be looking at the iris. The iris ended up taking up the entire guide because I didn’t take into consideration how very complex the iris can be.
Irises are where the eyes can get really fun and captivating. If you don’t believe me, just look at the iris of a friend. Irises have all sorts of colors within them with little lines of color. These lines exist because the iris actually has the ability to widen or close in order to get more light in dark areas. Eyes also have a shininess to them, making them even reflective under the right lighting conditions. Neat to look at, but tough to draw. That is, until you get used to it.
With cartoon eyes, you can completely skip the iris and just draw circles with dots in them. If you’re lazy, you can even just draw dots. These are great for simplistic cartoons and save enormous amounts of time. But artists who want to draw eyes that are prettier try to capture the enormous amounts of color found in the eyes. Blending a variety of shades and colors works fine for cartoon eyes, but to achieve the realistic look, much greater care must be taken.

Click to read more …

Tags: cartoon, circles, Color, eye, Eyes, highlight, iris, Photoshop, realistic, shading

Many artists, when first learning how to draw, use head to body radios in order to determine how tall they will be making their character be. The chibi style uses a ratio of 1:2, 1:3, or 1:4. That means that a character with a ratio of 1:3 will have a body that is three heads long. To determine how tall the character will be, all the artist has to do is determine the approximate size of the head and then create a circle, which should be duplicated and stacked, one on top of the other. Then you just have to figure out how to draw the rest.

For this how to draw guide, I will use the 1:5 ratio. This is not a good ratio for drawing chibi but rather for drawing an adolescent or short adult. The following character will be drawn.

After that, I’ll be covering how all the other different ratios can be used. Of course, she doesn’t exactly have a 1:5 ratio, but when I originally drew her with a perfect 1:5 ratio, she looked really weird.

Click to read more …

Tags: artist, cartoon, cartooning, chibi, circles, Eyes, face, features, forehead, hair, Nose, Noses, strands

Adobe Photoshop is loaded with brushes. Oftentimes, the quality of your lines and your artwork depends on the brush you use. Because of that, before you even get started drawing your first picture, you should experiment with brushes to find the brush that will be perfect for whatever you’re trying to draw. I’m going to go through each distinct brush type for each brush category, experimenting with the brushes and hopefully figuring out what each different brush can be used for.

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Tags: Alex, animal, anime, artist, Artists, brush, brushes, circles, draw, drawing, Drawings, eye, Eyes, figure, lines, paint, Painting, Paintings, Photoshop, photoshopped, picture, pound, side, Star, strokes, tips, tools, Travel, tricks, Work

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.

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Tags: cartoon, character, draw, drawing, Drawings, drew, eye, Eyes, face, features, guy, hair, lines, manga, Men, Nose, Noses, realistic, Tutorial, Tutorials

I’m back

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. Click to read more …

Tags: anime, Art, artist, Artists, bangs, cartoon, cartooning, coloring, colors, draw, drawing, Drawings, drew, emotions, eye, Eyes, face, hair, personality, tablet, Tutorial, Tutorials

I took a shot at drawing a character for a story I’ve been working on for awhile (months, years)? This isn’t really a tutorial but a record of the steps I took to draw her. This character is not done at all and she’s getting more folds and shading. I need to decide if I want to do cell shading again or try a harder type of shading.

I’m not even sure who this character will be but she’s temporarily named Angora. I might not even use her since I don’t hold on to characters unless they feel right. Maybe she needs some redesigning. Click to read more …

Tags: Alex, angle, artist, Artists, Blogs, blue, cartoon, cartooning, character, characters, clothes, clothing, Color, coloring, colors, dark, draw, drawing, drew, eye, Eyes, face, features, hair, lines, Lips, Love, manga, Marisol, Night, Nose, Noses, Plugs, proportion, proportions, real, Saw, school, shades, shading, side, sketch, sketching, Tutorial, Tutorials, Work, write, Writing

Ahhh! It’s so long! There’s one more part after this, and then, it’s over. XD I finished this picture last night, but I couldn’t help take a bit longer to finish, because I was oggling all my beautiful gifts I got from Mari and Alex. Mari got me this Japanese dagger, it’s soooo pretty, and she made me a little Kotou doll out of clay! That woman is a pure genious, it’s gorgeous! I’d want to expirament with clay sometime as well, but when I had before… everything came out looking like the bad end of a prune salad. *shivers* Besides, I was spending my time looking at my pretty pictures on the World of Warcraft Card game from the Burning Crusade series.  Ah but what was I talking about? Oh yes, back to the tutorial. This lesson, I’ll be pretty brief on how I do the clothes, and the jewelry for the cross.

Alright, so right now it’s pretty plain, and looks something like this 

Click to read more …

Tags: 3D, anime, bright, clothes, clothing, Color, colors, dark, draw, drawing, Eyes, guy, hair, how to, manga, Photoshop, realism, realistic, shades, shading, Tala, tips, tricks, Tutorial

Good morning, everyone, if you consider this a good morning. It is currently a balmy 18 degrees out with six inches of fresh powder covering my lawn. The Chicagoland area was inundated with snow last night, and even though it’s pretty, I don’t like it. I’m not a fan of snow; only on Christmas. Christmas snow is magical.

It’s currently really early for me, too. I could not sleep a wink last night for some reason, yet, I was very tired. Personally, it sucks. I’m very tired and I have that somewhat dizzy feeling I usually get when I’m very tired. It sucks more because, today, Alex and I are suppose to go back to Artist’s Square to do some antique shopping. I better get a lot of coffee in me, or else I’m not going to survive the day.

*Yawns*

I have an idea. How about instead of me rambling on about how tired I am, how about we do another tutorial? We’ve done hair–digital, long, short, and medium length–eyes, lips, but we haven’t structured a full face. I have three methods for structuring a face: anime style, unfeatured, and features first. Today, I’m going to use a style that I’m totally unaccustom to: unfeatured. This is going to be scary.

*Rubs eyes and yawns again*

Now, dearest Mari, what is an unfeatured face, you–our wonderful, yet mysterious viewers–may ask. The answer is simple, my friends. An unfeatured face is a face structure you draw BEFORE adding the eyes, nose, and mouth. I usually draw all my facial features before, THEN add the face around it, then a friend of mine–who is totally annoying me at the moment, but that’s a rant for another time–pointed out that, sometimes, my faces look goofy because I do things that way. Well, poo on him. To each their own, I suppose. But anyway, that is besides the point. So, I figured I’d try doing the face structure FIRST, then add the features. Now every character I draw kinda looks like Jennifer Aniston. Hopefully, this will not be the case for you!

Additionally, for this tutorial, I apologize for my shading looking very dark and askew. My family, for some reason, has an aversion to using lights in my house. I think it has to do with NIPSCO raising the electric bill 50% or something. Eep!

Now for the tutorial!

FACE STRUCTURE Click to read more …

Tags: Adobe Photoshop, anime, Art, Artists, Crown Point Indiana, Digital Art, drawing, Eyes, face, guidelines, Lips, midtones, Nose, Pencil Art, Pencil Drawing, Photoshop, photoshop elements, Photoshop Tutorial, shading, traditional Art, Tutorial, wings

I got my first A as a final grade in psychology! How exciting is that?! On the final exam, I got 105 out of 100 points: a perfect score plus the extra credit! And guess what, I barely studied! That’s nothing to be proud of; when in graduate school, you should ALWAYS study. That’s Marisol’s school lesson of the day! Now on to the tutorial…

Noses– most people have them and like lips and eyes, they are very useful. People can steal noses (hehehe, got your nose!), or get smacked in the nose every winter at least once. I get smacked in the nose at least once per winter because my boyfriend slips on the ice and I have to catch him, only to have him accidentally hit me in the nose and mouth. Ouch.

Some people have anxiety when it comes to drawing noses, but have no fear, noses are easy! In fact, noses are so easy that they can be drawn in four steps. This is going to be a short tutorial, folks. Click to read more …

Tags: drawing, Drawing the Face, Eyes, face, guidelines, light, Lips, Noses, Photoshop, sketching, Tutorial, wings

WOO! Freedom! Alex and I are FINALLY finished with our semester, which means we’ll be able to contribute more often.  In addition, there’s Tala, who will be contributing more often, as well. So, the gang’s all here! Woohoo!
Well, the day has finally come to do that tutorial. First off, I must apologize for my lack of posts; since class let out for the semester, I’ve had a major mental block for many things, including drawing.  But now I’m back. From what I can see, we haven’t had a tutorial for a few days, so why don’t we get down to business and do a tutorial right now? A few posts back, I mentioned that I was going to do a tutorial on realistic eyes.
Over the summer, I worked for someone creating tutorials, so until I find my ability to draw once more, I’m going to use drawings from an old tutorial. I’m so sorry; I still love you guys. So, are you ready to begin with our realistic eyes tutorial? I am, so let’s begin!!! Click to read more …

Tags: Eyes, Photoshop, shading, traditional drawing, Tutorial