i get a lot of compliments on my rabbit furries bc ,, , , some people do them very weird, so i doodled up a rly quick tut last night for some friends! thought id share this scribbly mess (i wouldnt mind doing a better/clearer version if it’d help ppl!)
But really, I look up plenty or references. Google is your friend when it comes to this. I also have a hand model thing, you know like those wooden people you can bend and move? Yeah, I have a hand on of those.
I still suck at hands.
The only time I pay attention to them is if the are a really big focus in the art.
I’ll use my current drawing as an example. Note, I’m no expert at tears yet.
so I’ve got my eyes.
next I’ll lightly draw in tears, no over lapping lines, just outlines.
when I’ve got a shape I like, I erase just a bit of the eyes on the inside of the tears that overlap.
I’ll colour normally after that.
Then, on a new layer ABOVE everything else, I’ll paint white for tears.
I play with the opacity after that to something I like
Then after THAT, I add on different layers white bits for shine, and light blue for depth, changing the opacity to what I like. Also changed the tears lineart to be softer colour.
Try not to make it look too flat. Hair has many layers and styles, so showing those will help. Getting a shape first helps.
TO FLAT LAYERS
Same with shadows too. Make sure not to make them flat. Even if you don’t draw it all, there are hundreds of strands on your head. You can show that through shadows.
TOO BLOCKY LONG, THIN AND MANY SHADOW STRANDS
And when you draw wind blown hair, remember one thing:
HAIR IS FUCKING CRAZY AND GOES WHERE EVER THE SHIT IT WANTS.
That shit cray.
I usually get the idea of where it goes.
Then when drawing it, I don’t let it all go to a tip. It separates and ends in different areas. Even get some gaps in there that rejoin.
Get some more crazy bits in there. They don’t care for the rules, you might get hair starting at the base of the neck, but ends higher up than that. Don’t be afraid to draw hair going in front of your person too.
Ever gone out and the wind blows your hair in front of you instead of behind. Yeah. Like that.
You don’t always have to draw hair in blocks. See that fringe I did? See that it ‘merges’ in with the hair? Yep, hair does that too. It finds a friend and hugs it.
Heck, even through some loose strands in there too.
I’ve seen a couple of posts in the last little while that deal with either accusations made against artists for whitewashing OCs, or dealing with colour theory and its application to painting skin. It’s true that skintones are incredibly difficult to nail properly, especially if you only have one or two reference pictures to work with. Most artists don’t whitewash intentionally, but if it happens to your commission, it’s a difficult conversation to have regardless. Canon characters aside, what I’m proposing is that if you are commissioning an artist to draw your OC, it might be helpful to use an established makeup shade to indicate the base colour of your OC.
The only reason I’m suggesting makeup specifically is that it’s easier to find a model wearing that makeup shade than it would be to use a colour code to indicate what skintone you would prefer. If you find a model wearing that shade, then you can send the artist a swatch or guide of the makeup to use as a base colour, and avoid miscommunication via reference pictures with varying lighting.
Model skintone reference (example):
Swatch/guide reference (example):
(These are both from Fenty, which is well-regarded as having an actually wide and accurate colour range, but correct me if I’m wrong)
Notice how the colour of the makeup that the model is wearing sometimes seems slightly darker than the model’s face as a result of the reflected light/highlights? I think that is one source of error that can arise from colour picking from a face. That being said, this doesn’t take into account different lighting, but it can help serve as a base to work around. It’s also important for artists to double check skintones with the client as they make progress.
As an example, I did this when I commissioned @hansaera for this piece - I told her Eli’s skintone is around a MAC NC35, and the piece came out perfectly.
ALT
