Escher Girls

So, it’s about that time that Escher Girls is going to have another contest!  (Complete with an art prize!)

But I was wondering, did people want to do the usual caption contest (where I post a picture and people caption what they think is going on/what the character is saying) or something a little different, where I put a picture and people can graphically alter it, adding a word bubble, or changing the background, etc, but not altering the main characters’ poses or facial expressions, to create the context of what they think is going on?

That would be a little more involved and interesting, but also take more work and not be as easily accessible to everybody (but be more interesting for an audience to look at, maybe.)

What do people think?  Which would be more fun for you, and what would you like to do?  Are there any other ideas people might have for a similar kind of contest?

soozarts:

karenhealey:

bisexual candycorn: thoughts on skintones

princessneeshydoomcuddles:

mulattafury:

people ask me a lot about drawing poc, more specifically “how” to do it. my kneejerk reaction is to get frustrated by it, because the answer is “just like you’d draw anything else.” it’s like the main excuse artists and writers use to not include poc in their art and in their worlds — they “don’t know how,” implying that we somehow operate by a separate set of rules, that while white characters don’t require a special set of considerations to be varied and textured and interesting, non-white characters are just an elusive series of step-by-step instructions that most creators just can’t be assed to learn or to include

i still feel that way

but

i guess i can understand that most instructive media focuses specifically on white aesthetics, proportions, skintones, and features, so there really is a need for more instructive material that is more inclusive

i can dig it

that said, there is a lot that i don’t know and am not good at and i don’t really feel comfortable trying to instruct other artists, but i’m fine with taking you through my thought processes a little

SO here’s some stuff about skintones. it’s not perfect, and there will never be a better teacher than the world around you for showing you what things look like and how to express them

first off, if you’ve ever seen me stream you know i don’t usually block in my shading with hard lines like this. i like to paint and sample colors as i go, but i’m trying to communicate my ideas about color a little better

but i’ve always used the same basic process for coloring skintones, any skintones, forever and always:

this is going to change up a little bit with directional lighting, colored lighting, environmental lighting, shit like that, but this is your basic procedure. the biggest mistake i think artists make is using skintone+black for shadows and skintone + white for highlights, and that results in pretty dull looking skintones

in the former image, i only varied the value of the main skin color, but in the latter i also varied the hue and saturation. doing so gives you more of an opportunity to add warmth and depth to your colors, as well as bring in environmental colors if you need to

you want to sample around the palette, use reds and purples and oranges, don’t just stay within the range of your base tone!

this applies for all colors, not just skin, but especially skin! you want skin to look alive, not plastic and dull

these same rules apply for most skintones

though it’s always going to be incredibly helpful to just look at references of the skintone you’re trying to draw, for little details like (for example), very dark skin, because there is a more extreme light/dark variation, will often look much more reflective than very light skin under the same lighting conditions

like so

because of this, you’ll want to work on using light more than shadow to describe form on dark skin

again, this is true of all colors, but especially skin, because you don’t want skin to look flat and lifeless!

the same rules can apply to fantasy skin tones. start with a base tone, then use warm, saturated colors to add light and shadow. sampling around the palette becomes really important for fantasy skintones if you are trying to make them look realistic/believable

this is especially true if, for whatever reason, you wanted to make a character with grey skin that looks alive and believable

OKAY THAT’S THE END OF OUR SHOW

LOOK AT THIS GOOD ASS RESOURCE MOTHERFUCKERS

Another helpful note is that darker skin tends to be shinier, which is especially easy to see on the super-dark people in the pics above. My rule of thumb is to use larger swaths of highlights on light skin, and more focused, smaller ones on darker skin.

(Though this is no more a hard-and-fast rule than anything else in art, but it’s a decent shortcut.)

Sharing another drawing tutorial for any interested. :)

Hello! And congratulations on your blog, I’ve been a fan for a long time and I’ve always wanted to submit something. It happens I had an idea, so here it is.

I’m French, and where Americans have superhero comics and Japanese people have manga as their main source of Escher Girls and ridiculous outfits, here we have heroic fantasy comics from Soleil. One of the classics is Cixi from the Lanfeust series, pictured here on the left (sorry I couldn’t find a bigger picture that showed her whole outfit)

She was obviously designed to be Ms Fanservice to the main tween boy demographic - a scantily clad, sexually aggressive young woman who very much enjoys flaunting her assets at the guys. But when I first read the comic as a 14-year-old girl, I didn’t mind that, because she was funny and brave and mostly smart and beautiful, and therefore my favourite character in the comic. However, I was very much chagrined by the impractical and nonsensical war bikini thing she wore, and also her wearing high-heeled shoes and nothing else to cover her legs when she spent months traipsing around the wild countryside in a world where there are things that’ll literally eat your legs off if you come close.

So, thinking back about her and teenage me, I decided to give her a redesign. Here it is:

I kept her clothes short and sexy because that’s who she is and her sexuality is a big part of her character; I just tried to make them a bit more practical to go adventuring and running after bad guys. I thought a short skirt would be fine, after all, ancient Greeks went to war wearing them… But the high-heeled pumps had to go. I hope you like it!

Love, Alda (alda-rana.deviantart.com)

I like your re-design and trying to capture the spirit of a character that really inspired you as a kid. :)  I think you did a good job of making a fan-servicey but adventuring character, and I like the decorative belt at the top because it matches the look and makes the outfit more interesting.  Incorporating the cross pattern of her strappy heels into her boots was also an inspired choice.

I also like the expression on her face, sorta coy and confident. :)

It’s clear the character means a lot to you, and you wanted to keep the overall “feeling” and style elements, and her personality and sexuality, while changing up the costume to be more adventurer-ish, and I really like what you came up with. :]