art technique development thread 🎨🖌

[xSuperMario64x]

I got the idea last night to make a thread where people can share tips on art, traditional or digital, and also ask for advice!

if you have any questions about how to draw or use other media, ask them here! and if you have any advice to give or want to share techniques that you use in your art, feel free to share those too!

I also want to say that there is no such thing as "bad" art; art is inherently human, and you don't have to be a professional to make art! this thread is a judgement-free zone, so don't worry about whether or not your art is "bad." we're just happy to see it!

I hope we can use this thread to help each other become better artists! 🖌

 

[Suguri]

I don't have any questions in mind at the moment but this is a great thread idea! I'll be back if I need help with anything. ^_^

Actually... I do have a question lol. Any tips on drawing cartoon/chibi/simple humans? I can replicate Dav Pilkey's style for them (see Chief from Dog Man, for example) but I want to diversify, and I've been flip-flopping around different art styles for humans.

 

[meloheart222]

I don't have any questions in mind at the moment but this is a great thread idea! I'll be back if I need help with anything. ^_^

Actually... I do have a question lol. Any tips on drawing cartoon/chibi/simple humans? I can replicate Dav Pilkey's style for them (see Chief from Dog Man, for example) but I want to diversify, and I've been flip-flopping around different art styles for humans.

I think it’s a pretty general tip, but when drawing anything it’s important to break it down to simple shapes as a starting point to help you better understand the proportions of what you want to draw! And chibis usually have large, exaggerated features like anime, so try making the eyes large and the mouth and nose smaller ^_^ hopefully this was a little helpful

 

[Croconaw]

I mainly have issues with proportions. My head ends up to big and the bodies seem small. I can never get that right, but it’s a little more challenging for me because I don’t have a tablet. I’m using my index finger and a phone.

 

[ZeldaCrossing64]

Mirroring what Suguri said, I think this is a wonderful idea for a thread! :D

I also have a question: Is there an efficient way to draw clothes? I find that when I do, the clothes look like they're "pasted" on the character's body when I want it to look like they're wearing the clothes, if that makes sense.

Also, any tips on how to draw hair would be great! It's something I struggle with but would like to improve on.

Spoiler: My art example, for reference

 

[meloheart222]

Mirroring what Suguri said, I think this is a wonderful idea for a thread! :D

I also have a question: Is there an efficient way to draw clothes? I find that when I do, the clothes look like they're "pasted" on the character's body when I want it to look like they're wearing the clothes, if that makes sense.

Also, any tips on how to draw hair would be great! It's something I struggle with but would like to improve on.

Spoiler: My art example, for reference

View attachment 619043

Hi! ^_^ I’m having fun replying to this thread so hopefully my answers can be a little helpful. When drawing clothes it’s important to think about the form that the clothes take when on the body, especially in relativity to the pose. For example, a loose tshirt would hang and have more gravity to it, and a tight shirt would conform to the figure. Adding folds to the clothing around where your characters joints bend can also help separate them more, like at the elbows. And like I mentioned in a previous reply, always break things down into shapes if you’re struggling. Most clothing has triangular folds so mapping that out can be good. Clothing can be tricky, but studying references of irl images is a great place to start.
In terms of hair, the best tip I can give is to try thinking of hair as one form rather than individual strands, as hair kind of clumps together in a way, it has its own shape language!

Post automatically merged: Apr 19, 2025

I mainly have issues with proportions. My head ends up to big and the bodies seem small. I can never get that right, but it’s a little more challenging for me because I don’t have a tablet. I’m using my index finger and a phone.

I struggled with this forever too. I’m not sure what style you’re going for, but that can impact what you’ll want to do! If you’re going for a more realistic style, the typical advice you’ll see is that a persons head (at least in regards to adults) is about 1/8th of their total height. Loose figure drawing can help build fundamentals for proportion accuracy, so studying lots of different poses and just sketching them out quickly can be beneficial overall. It’s good that you’re able to identify the problem so specifically though, so I’d say try drawing the head smaller than you feel it needs to be and it’ll probably end up the correct size? Lol. And for digital art maybe you could try adding a sketch layer and a lineart layer, that way if you notice the head is too big you’ll have time to change it before things are set in stone

 

[TotodileStars]

Mirroring what Suguri said, I think this is a wonderful idea for a thread! :D

I also have a question: Is there an efficient way to draw clothes? I find that when I do, the clothes look like they're "pasted" on the character's body when I want it to look like they're wearing the clothes, if that makes sense.

Also, any tips on how to draw hair would be great! It's something I struggle with but would like to improve on.

Spoiler: My art example, for reference

View attachment 619043

I'm not sure what your process is, so you might do the first one already, but here's a couple of pointers for clothes:

• Sketch out the body first, then draw the clothes over it. It would help with imagining how the clothes hang from the character's frame, and make it easier for creating more separation between clothes and body parts. It's also useful for practicing proportions.
• References! Even when you usually want to go for a simpler, cartoony style (like your example), I'd still recommend studying photo/real life references on the side, so you know the rules you're trying to break. If you find that you're having trouble studying references, you could start by finding some photos and tracing outlines over them (don't do this for finished artwork - it's just an exercise to train your muscle memory, and learn how to break things down).
• Learning about clothing folds and creases might help. Even in simpler art styles, it can help to have just a couple of lines for them here and there, to avoid the "pasted on" look you mentioned. There's tons of references and tutorials out there for this (or if you have enough money, there's a book about it in the "Morpho" series by Michel Lauricella, which I can't recommend enough)!

I hope any of these help!

 

[Croconaw]

I struggled with this forever too. I’m not sure what style you’re going for, but that can impact what you’ll want to do! If you’re going for a more realistic style, the typical advice you’ll see is that a persons head (at least in regards to adults) is about 1/8th of their total height. Loose figure drawing can help build fundamentals for proportion accuracy, so studying lots of different poses and just sketching them out quickly can be beneficial overall. It’s good that you’re able to identify the problem so specifically though, so I’d say try drawing the head smaller than you feel it needs to be and it’ll probably end up the correct size? Lol. And for digital art maybe you could try adding a sketch layer and a lineart layer, that way if you notice the head is too big you’ll have time to change it before things are set in stone

Thanks for the tip! I actually didn’t see this until just now. I wasn’t notified of the reply. I have a lot easier time drawing on paper and tracing my art on ibisPaint, the program that I use.

I still have trouble with proportions on paper, but I’m working on it!

 

[Dunquixote]

I was wondering if anyone that uses ibis paint x knows how to resize things without the drawing losing quality? I’ve been using the lasso tool to cut, copy and paste parts of my drawing and then I want to resize the selected part of the drawing but it always loses quality and becomes blurry.

 

[Muna]

I was wondering if anyone that uses ibis paint x knows how to resize things without the drawing losing quality? I’ve been using the lasso tool to cut, copy and paste parts of my drawing and then I want to resize the selected part of the drawing but it always loses quality and becomes blurry.

I've never used ibis Paint X but depending on how much you want to resize the image it just might not be possible to keep the same quality. That's how it is with pixels. The website Waifu2x might help with upscaling the picture.

Feel free to message me if you want to go over the issue in more detail.

 

[Dunquixote]

I've never used ibis Paint X but depending on how much you want to resize the image it just might not be possible to keep the same quality. That's how it is with pixels. The website Waifu2x might help with upscaling the picture.

Feel free to message me if you want to go over the issue in more detail.

Thanks so much Muna! I’ve been assuming it was not possible to save the quality, but figured it wouldn’t hurt to ask. The parts that I tried to resize have been pretty small and even the slightest resizing adjustment made it blurry. For example:

View attachment 620933

The chains on the left I copied and needed to resize a little bit. As you can see to the right, it ended up blurry. I drew over the lines since the lines weren’t clear either.

I probably should have just redrew the chains rather than how I did it. I’m sketching a couple ideas out for a character and I wanted to reuse some of my ideas from the first one that I started working on (the one on the left).

 

[ZeldaCrossing64]

Is there an effective method for blending colors? I tried it by putting colors then using a blur tool, which I think looks decent but could be better.

 

[Beanz]

Is there an effective method for blending colors? I tried it by putting colors then using a blur tool, which I think looks decent but could be better.

what program are you using? when im trying to achieve a similar affect in clip studio paint, i use the blend tool instead. there’s also this tool that has a gradient affect if that’s what you’re going for:

again, not sure what program you’re using but i think it should have similar tools

 

[Izrael]

Is there an effective method for blending colors? I tried it by putting colors then using a blur tool, which I think looks decent but could be better.

View attachment 621023

The smudge tool can also be used for blending colours. It can be a little trickier than using the blend brushes, since you may end up overmixing your colours (like I did with blue and purple).

If you're using IbispaintX, I found that the watercolour brushes produce the best results.

 

[SwampEntities]

So I’m a straight up beginner and I find the hardest part is shading and colours, any suggestions?

 

[TotodileStars]

So I’m a straight up beginner and I find the hardest part is shading and colours, any suggestions?

I have some presentations from my uni course that break down both of these, but I'm not sure if I'd be allowed to share them, so I've explained the gist of them as best as I can! It's simpler than I probably make it seem (I just tend to ramble a bit), but I've split my post up into spoiler sections to make it less overwhelming.

Spoiler: Colour

• For colour, the main thing that would help is learning colour theory. This includes learning how to utilise hue, saturation and value, as well as about different colour harmonies.
• Colour schemes you can look up include complementary (which you likely already know - they're colours on opposite ends of the colour wheel), split-complementary, analogous, triadic, tetradic, monochromatic, and so on.
• Getting the colours to look good involves using different hues/saturation/values so they don't clash against/blend into each other, which will come with practice. If you're a digital artist, a lot of programs will have ways to make the drawings black-and-white, so you can check the values as you go.

Here's a webpage that explains the above, if you want to look at this in more detail!

Spoiler: Shading

• As for shading, here's a picture I found that breaks down the elements of shadow on objects. An exercise that can help is finding some pictures with clear shadows and lighting, and identifying those parts of shading in them.
• Another thing to remember is form. To sort of quote the presentation I'm referencing (bc I don't know how else to describe it), this involves using value and light to convey the shapes in 3D, and create the illusion of depth. A way to achieve this is by breaking down the subject you're drawing into basic forms (spheres, cubes, cylinders, etc.), and applying the shading based on that. Here's a video that goes into basic forms, to start off with.
• And, of course, remember where your light source is! It can be hard to get the shading right even while doing this, but hopefully the above will make it a bit easier to understand.

Learning about perspective helps with form, too, but that's also a more advanced area of art (and one that I still struggle a bit to grasp, myself), so I won't go into it here.

Finally, the best way to put the above into practice (especially wrt shading) is drawing from references. Even if you don't want to do this for the art you want to do the most (understandable - turning every drawing into a study would feel like a chore), I'll always recommend doing it on the side. It'll help to elevate your skills for the things you draw for fun!
If you look for references on Google, add "before:2021" at the end of your search, so you don't get AI-generated images. They don't tend to apply art fundamentals well at all, so I really don't recommend referencing from them.

I hope this helps!

 

[SwampEntities]

I have some presentations from my uni course that break down both of these, but I'm not sure if I'd be allowed to share them, so I've explained the gist of them as best as I can! It's simpler than I probably make it seem (I just tend to ramble a bit), but I've split my post up into spoiler sections to make it less overwhelming.

Spoiler: Colour

• For colour, the main thing that would help is learning colour theory. This includes learning how to utilise hue, saturation and value, as well as about different colour harmonies.
• Colour schemes you can look up include complementary (which you likely already know - they're colours on opposite ends of the colour wheel), split-complementary, analogous, triadic, tetradic, monochromatic, and so on.
• Getting the colours to look good involves using different hues/saturation/values so they don't clash against/blend into each other, which will come with practice. If you're a digital artist, a lot of programs will have ways to make the drawings black-and-white, so you can check the values as you go.

Here's a webpage that explains the above, if you want to look at this in more detail!

Spoiler: Shading

• As for shading, here's a picture I found that breaks down the elements of shadow on objects. An exercise that can help is finding some pictures with clear shadows and lighting, and identifying those parts of shading in them.
• Another thing to remember is form. To sort of quote the presentation I'm referencing (bc I don't know how else to describe it), this involves using value and light to convey the shapes in 3D, and create the illusion of depth. A way to achieve this is by breaking down the subject you're drawing into basic forms (spheres, cubes, cylinders, etc.), and applying the shading based on that. Here's a video that goes into basic forms, to start off with.
• And, of course, remember where your light source is! It can be hard to get the shading right even while doing this, but hopefully the above will make it a bit easier to understand.

Learning about perspective helps with form, too, but that's also a more advanced area of art (and one that I still struggle a bit to grasp, myself), so I won't go into it here.

Finally, the best way to put the above into practice (especially wrt shading) is drawing from references. Even if you don't want to do this for the art you want to do the most (understandable - turning every drawing into a study would feel like a chore), I'll always recommend doing it on the side. It'll help to elevate your skills for the things you draw for fun!
If you look for references on Google, add "before:2021" at the end of your search, so you don't get AI-generated images. They don't tend to apply art fundamentals well at all, so I really don't recommend referencing from them.

I hope this helps!

This helps so much Thankyou so much!! I will definitely look into all of these and Thankyou honestly you explained everything spot on!