it sounds obvious to 99% of writers, but i’ve seen a couple of instances now where it’s not made completely clear to people that yes you can make fanart! all the fanart! and post it! so here’s a psa: go for it
Trace them. Or use a ruler. Don’t fuck around. Like. I could write you a book about angles and proportions but there are so many books, and you can get a book if you want, but faces in perspective are hard as hell. Even if you know what’s supposed to happen, it can take a long time to get the hang of it, and it can take a long time to train your eyes how to see it, so give yourself some training wheels. That kind of thing… the skills won’t come from knowing what to do but by repetition and getting used to seeing what happens.
For practice, you could draw yourself in the mirror. Or get a bunch of screen caps of a character from a single scene where his face angle changes. Trace them. Compare them so you learn to see the differences.
To worried youths in my inbox: Tracing is a tool. It’s not cheating. That’s a bullshit notion perpetuated by little boys who can’t draw Batman.
Art is not a magic trick that comes from the sky and infuses your hands with divine powers. Inspiration is a lie. Natural talent is an even bigger lie.
Nobody expects a surgeon to be able to do brain surgery without a chart, a scan, a ruler, the right tools, an entire team, a hospital, and practice.
Trace the damn thing. Use the tools you need to make the art you want to make. Even Michelangelo traced.
I think a lot of people who don’t make art and therefore don’t know how art gets made insist on having opinions anyway about how art should be made
And that’s garbage
You can’t replace skill. That’s why we say tracing is a tool, because it’s ONLY a tool. You can’t trace and end up with this:
Trace to help you see. Trace to get from here to there. Don’t waste your time waiting to be a magician.
I forgot camera obscura is a thing. I remember being shocked and–not knowing better at the time–slightly disappointed when my art teacher pointed out that one piece I was admiring was done with camera obscura. Even now, years later, I still feel like I’m cheating when I trace. The truth is, tracing is not easy either, and it helps tremendously. Thank you op for addressing this. We should not have to feel guilty or explain ourselves to anyone regarding the techniques we use to create art.
Anti-anything in art is almost totally guaranteed to be the product of elitism in art. It’s one group of people wanting to control what stories get told, and you do that by elevating and mystifying storytelling, allowing it to be seen as a divine skill that only a select few have been chosen to have, while at the same time invalidating all other methods as vulgar or dishonest.
In the Renaissance, it was the Church doing the controlling, and that body has changed over the years, but it’s still white men, and it’s still the patriarchy or the wealthy, it’s still colonialism. It’s still hetero and cis. It’s still able bodied and able minded. It’s still the belief that one person can be more valuable than another.
You are the sovereign of your story and how it gets told. Gatekeeping is bullshit.
I get antsy when I haven’t produced content in awhile. I worry I’ll be forgotten. I feel like I have to keep buying my place in fandom with stuff like art and writing. Which makes it hard to produce content because that’s a lot of pressure to put on my creativity muses. So I sit here worrying instead.
Bleh.
HOLY SHIT THIS IS SUCH A MOOD
To everyone in the fandom who has been posting this the last few days: You are not obligated to continuously produce content. You are valued within this community by others, no matter what. I promise you that. You will not be forgotten. Don’t feel pressured. Do things in your own time. You are awesome. You are talented and you are welcome here always.
Constant creation – and the demanding of constant creation – is the fastest way to burn a creator out. Take your breaks. Go play a video game, read a new series, take some classes in something utterly related to your usual creative or work fields. GO OUT DANCING!
And don’t make creators anxious or guilty about it when they do.
Regardless of how much or how little a freelance artist decides to set their commission prices at, they are in every right to do that.
If you feel an artist is charging too little for a commission, tip them!
If you feel an artist is charging too much, they’re not, but they’re out of your price range and you should not be spending money on luxury goods you cannot afford in the first place.
Every artist should be charging more for their work – but they do not for any number of personal, professional or financial reasons. That’s their individual decision – if they are comfortable bumping their price they will, in the interim, encourage tipping/them accepting tips.
There are also more and more artists that are beginning to charge more for their work, and they should – it’s a highly-valued luxury good. That is their individual decision – if you can’t afford it, that’s your problem, not the artist’s. They are charging according to a variety of wage standards, time, labor, media, tools and etc. to formulate their prices.
Art is a luxury good that requires specific specialized skill sets and prices set around hours creating unique custom digital or physical goods with expensive programs, devices, tools or mediums, tailored to client specifications. You are not entitled to cheaper prices and artists are not entitled to increase or decrease their rates at the whim of others.
If you do not want to pay for a luxury good, you are going to have to learn and invest in how to create it yourself instead.
As a side note, I can’t stress the tipping enough. A lot of artists won’t raise their prices for any number of personal, professional or financial reasons and that’s their business, so instead of telling them over and over to raise their prices, buy at the price you think is too low and then just tip them for their work.
There's a Mirror on the Wall 