Beginner
I See The Differences Between The Reference Images Of How I Want To And Don’t Want To Draw, But Not With My Own Drawings. What Am I Doing Wrong?
It feels weird for some reason. The images of how I do wanna draw don't feel weird. But my drawings feel weird. I don't know why. Please be super specific and don't hold back any advice. My feelings won't be hurt.
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Have you done studies? The best way to internalise a drawing you like is to simply draw it yourself. Try to make exact copies of the pictures you like. You will learn the techniques eventually. Just takes a lot of practice.
So, observation is great for training your eye. Looking at reference and really studying the proportions and shapes is important, and I think your studies there are great! Keep doing those, forever and always!
But with art, you also have to train your hands. The golden rule of thumb is, if you like your art, it's time to train your eyes. If you don't like your art, it's time to train your hands.
Some specific advice, since it looks like you're going for a cute (but not chibi) anime style... Work on making finer (thinner) lineart. Really practice trying to make incredibly thin lines, and then practice giving them lineweight variation. I think that might be one of the biggest things throwing you off right now. Chonky lines can make overall proportions feel off.
You should do observations of body proportions similar to how you've done the faces. For example, your head is about a third of character's total height. Typically, in anime, you get closer to human proportions (anime child characters would be about 5 heads y'all, and adults more like 7).
Another example, the shoulders are typically the widest part of the body (unless you're a literal baby). Even in anime, this is -usually- true. The way you've got your proportions, in comparison, makes her very top heavy. Her body is very slender and get head is very big. She looks like she could topple over.
And these can be stylistic choices! If you saw these things and were aware that they weren't accurate to humans, then that's perfectly fine. I'm just looking at your references and then your art and pointing out the things that immediately struck me as different.
No no, flip both the reference and your art horizontally so it's less familiar looking and you can view it more objectively. Looking at your art in a mirror is an old illustration trick mean to enhance your vision of your own work.
The reason you art doesnt look like the refs is because youre still learning, and those refs were drawn by people with years and years of experience.
Honestly the best thing you can do at the moment is just fill sketchbooks, just keep drawing and then youll look back on them in a months or a few months time and see how much you have improved
Okay so if you’re trying to only get the face the main thing I notice is that you don’t match the skull shape very well. In the first picture the facial features are all over the place because you don’t really have a definitive skull shape or if you do the face is oriented differently than the skull. In the second it’s more obvious that you’re lacking skull shape as well.
You kinda have the eyes down though yours come across more cartoony because you don’t taper the eye lashes enough.
Okay so if yours is the first on the left most of the eyes from these references have eyes between numbers 2 and 3. They also vary wildly between art styles so narrowing down a few references will help you better figure out what you’re going for.
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