Hi everyone! Here’s a how to draw tutorial on mesomorph and ectomophic body types, focusing on arms in particular. These body types go along with the endomorphic body type covered in the last how to draw tutorial. The mesomorphic body type is generally associated with more muscular characters, though mesomorphs do not necessarily have to be muscular. Their bodies are compact and curvy, with muscle hanging well on their bodies. When learning how to draw the male version of these types of characters, imagine the football players and boxers of the world. For female characters, they are very curvy. When they become emaciated, you can still see the muscles stubbornly clinging on to the bones, which can be difficult to learn how to draw. When they are more chubby, their bodies are a synthesis of muscle and fat.

The other body type to learn how to draw is the ectomorph, which is most commonly defined as a tall and frail individual. These characters are typically all skin and bones. As these characters become more emaciated, the bones can actually start to seem visible. If the character attempts to put weight on, they typically end up with larger guts while the rest of the body continues to appear slim. These characters have a difficulty developing a lot of muscle and often appear more toned than muscular. These characters would be great on the basketball team if they are tall enough.

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Tags: arms, draw, lines

Hi everyone. Sorry I’ve been gone so long. The evil finals are finally gone, so I’m back, hopefully for good. I hit a little burnout last week, but now I think I’m finally ready to go.

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. Click to read more …

Tags: Anatomy, character, characters, draw, drawing, Drawings, drew, How to Draw, Life, lines, Night, Perspective, picture, poses, profile, proportions, real, Returning, side, Travel, Tutorial, Tutorials, Work

Digital art is art created using a computer. Back when I was around 7 or so, I remember first learning how to draw using Microsoft Paint. The free program takes forever to draw anything and is extremely limited with its features. In contrast, programs like Photoshop CS4 can create nearly perfect lines, blend together pixels realistically, fade several images together and distort an image in thousands of different ways. However, programs like Photoshop CS4 come at a price that almost reaches four digits. You can also use less expensive programs like Corel Paint and Photoshop Elements, which are just as useful but lack many of the nice features found in Photoshop CS4. But luckily, some really nice programmers have taken it upon themselves to create free versions of the expensive Photoshop programs. Both these programs I used for years before I finally broke down and bought Photoshop. Also, these programs are 100% spyware free (as long as you download them from the links I provide).

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Tags: Alex, Art, artist, Artists, brush, brushes, computers, digital, digitally, draw, drawing, Drawings, edit, Expensive, features, gimp, image, lines, links, Love, Money, paint, Painting, Paintings, Photoshop, photoshopped, realistic, tools, Work

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

Arms can be some of the most pain-in-the butt parts that you can ever learn how to draw. The way the arm flexes, twists, stretches and raises can really drive an artist crazy. There are so many ways that an arm can position itself that I’d be insane to try to cover all arm positions in one tutorial. So in this drawing tutorial, I’m hitting arms that are mostly straight and downwards. Whew, here goes. Click to read more …

Tags: Alex, Art, artist, Artists, character, characters, draw, drawing, Drawings, drew, face, figure, lines, side, Travel, Tutorial, Tutorials, view, Work, write, Writing

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

Ears can be wildly complicated to draw, since the ear is a bunch of folds that seem kinda asymmetrical. Luckily, you don’t have to always draw every aspect of the ear when you’re doing cartoon drawing. However, if you want to learn how to draw people realistically, you’ll have your work cut out for you. Hopefully this drawing tutorial will help.

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Tags: Art, cartoon, cartooning, character, characters, circles, do, draw, drawing, Drawings, drew, Father, hair, lines, picture, realistic, side, strands, tips, tools, Travel, Tutorial, Tutorials

When you finally learn to draw arms, a large part of your quest to learn how to draw body art is a quarter of the way through. Whether you draw manga or fine art, arms are often the most dynamic parts of the body because they can be moved in all sorts of directions and action poses. Arms can be easy or hard to draw depending on how detailed and muscular you want your character’s arms to look.

Start off by drawing a head. Theoretically, you could just draw the arm. But arms are hard to draw if you aren’t seeing them in proportion to the rest of the body and you might as well get more practice with figure drawing. So draw a circle. Click to read more …

Tags: Art, cartoon, circles, draw, lines, manga, proportion, realistic, Tutorial

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 …

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Thanks Sami from Flickr!

Snow is falling, acting as prelude to the bitter cold that is arriving in a few days. I’m tired of cold weather, and sometimes, I’m tired of the snow even though it’s so pretty. I’m not a fan of winter; it’s depressing and drags on too long. All the bleakness makes it hard for me to feel fervent, which, if you think about it, fervent sounds the opposite of what it truly means. Anymore, I just feel so down and hopeless and it’s hard to find that silver lining or little glimmer of joy. Click to read more …

Tags: anger, Birds, Boyfriend, clothes, clothing, Depression, Disney, do, Dreams, Dying, expression, expressions, Family, Flickr, Food, Freem, game, Graduate School, guy, hope, Issues, Japan, Kyoto, lines, Love, Lyrics, Married, Night, personality, reading, real, relationship, Relationships, Santa, school, side, sky, Snow, song, Star, Tala, teaching, Travel, University, view, Weather, wing, winged, wings, Work, write, Writing