Forums » Art & Creativity » Art Advice/Resources!

Discovered something cool while on your art adventures?

- Tutorials and references
- Free tools (legal!)
- Shortcuts and techniques
- General advice and motivation

Share it here! You might help someone out, and even learn something yourself!

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Index:

Programs and Tools

• Free art programs
• High quality image resizer
• Aseprite - animated sprite editor

Program Tutorials

• How to use the multiply tool
• How to use clipping layers in SAI
• Using multiple views while drawing digitally

Practice Tools

• Timed figure drawing practice, made by our lovely Kim!
• Another pose practice site, with lots of angles and detailed muscle studies

References

• Heimdall's Body-kun pose reference thread
• Terawell design doll - detailed poseable 3D model with musculature and editable proportions
• Huge art guide masterpost
• A ton of stock poses with various body types
• 'The Croquis Cafe' Live figure drawing videos
  (NSFW - contains tasteful nudity, do not click if you are under 18)
• Sketchfab - useful for visualising angles!

Technique Tips

• Useful trick for visualising perspective
• Colour blending technique
• Profile drawing technique
• Making pixel animations smoother

Inspiration

• Inspiration masterpost
• Prompt generators

Motivation

Gimme!

Misc

• Hand and arm stretches for warming up!

To start off, if you're considering trying out digital art or scanning and prettying up your traditional stuff, here's a list of free art programs. It's by no means exhaustive and I haven't tried some of these myself, so please let me know if you can add to this! I'm also not sure how many of these work for Mac computers.

https://krita.org/en/
http://gimp-win.sourceforge.net/
(has great font tools! uses your windows fonts so you can easily add more)
http://www.artrage.com/
(resolution and export format limited in free edition)
http://mypaint.intilinux.com/
http://inkscape.org/screenshots/index.php?lang=en
(good for vectoring)
http://serif-drawplus-starter-edition.software.informer.com/
(good for vectoring)
http://www.getpaint.net/
(not great for freehand, but easy image manipulation. similar to ms paint with more options)


And a tip! If you want to make your scanned traditional lines transparent so you can colour under them, keep an eye out for the Multiply layer setting, or Color to Alpha. With those, you can start colouring on a layer underneath! The Multiply option is available in most art programs and is usually found near the layers.

Hand and arm stretches. I've used these before and they feel great. They also aren't the sorts of stretches you'd think to do while just messing around (if that makes any sense), which is why it's a useful resource.

Starrify_everything's drawing masterpost on tumblr

http://starrify-everything.tumblr.com/post/93968724822/please-tell-me-if-any-of-the-links-arent

Just, so many. Not all of the guides are of equal quality, but it's still a handy ref if you need to find something quickly.

Easy 2-point perspective using an elastic string: http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2016/10/perspective-drawing-hack/

This thread is a blessing!

I also have a good source for practicing different poses, which also provides angles of said poses!
They also provide the muscles in each image.
posemaniacs

Colour Blending Technique
Profile Drawing Technique
Inspiration Masterpost

thank you so much for these! i've seen the elastic string trick around, it looks really useful!

i think one of the most convenient tools i've discovered so far is clipping layers, it saves so much time when colouring in lineart. i've whipped up a quick guide for SAI (but clipping is possible in most art programs!)

Guide here!

This thread is a godsend, Ratty, I love you~ The SAI tutorials are also heaven for me. ;w;

But for those who need references or are kinda lost on what kind of pose to draw, Senshi-Stock on dA is a great start! I love how they have multiple body types as well, so it's worth checking out for posing inspiration! I do believe they have tips and tutorials for drawing from reference as well! They also have an official site with a pose of the day feature for practice, but I haven't checked that out in full yet.

Senshi-Stock's References: DeviantArt Profile

awww shucks! i'm delighted to hear this thread has been useful, and thank you for adding to it!
if you ever need any SAI related advice feel free to poke me anytime and i'll see what i can do!

Oh, oh! Let's not forget the ever-lovely Line of Action https://line-of-action.com/ great reference for figure drawing and includes timed exercises and the like.

Oops, looks like it was already in the list!

bumping with a new tip!

being able to see your art zoomed out and/or flipped while you draw will help you spot errors earlier!

to do this in SAI: View (V) > New (N) then minimize and resize both windows to your liking
in Photoshop (i haven't tried this one): Window > Arrange > New Window for [Document]
in Manga Studio: Window > New Window then click the new tab and drag it beside your main view

Bumping for exposure. I know some people on my list that will really appreciate this thread. ☺️

Bumps thread and adds another useful tool!

Image Resizer which still remains quality!
Useful if you've drawn a thing but it's too small. This still has it's flaws, but I consider it quite useful!

Bumping with some prompt sites! Lemme know if you know any too!

http://artprompts.org/ - I love the creature prompts. Pig dragons, cyborg cats, octomaids!

Random animals - a great starting point for making fantasy critters! Pick as many as you want and smush them all together.

Fursona generator - good for adoptables!
Demon generator

Found a blog entry on making pixel art look smooth. The tip on shading is super clever. They also recommend Aseprite, which looks like a huge time saver and is pretty affordable too! :0

I'm not sure if this one counts but CroquisCafe is a youtube channel that I recently found and I've absolutely fallen in love with it.
For those of us unable to get out to an art class for real-life drawing, the channel provides real-time gesture drawing practices, and if nothing else, you can always pause the video for a reference if you really like a pose enough!

I'm not linking it because it is technically NSFW; The models are / are often nude, but as far as I'm aware, not lewd. It's educational, not inappropriate, so far as I've been able to tell. Still, thought I'd share.

I'm pretty sure it's fine to link 'tasteful' nudity like this as long as it's prefaced with a clear warning. This is a fantastic resource, thank you so much! Video references are gold mines.

Something else I've found useful in the past are sites like this: https://sketchfab.com/

The quality of models obviously varies but it can be good for visualising angles!

I just made my Bodykun pose reference thread public! Might be useful for someone

Oh wow, thank you for doing this!