A lot of illustrators suffer from the “grass is always greener” syndrome. We spend more time appreciating the work of others, and less time appreciating our own work. This is a common issue among most creatives. Why even bother writing a story or painting a picture when I can think of dozens of people who would do it better? My answer to that is simple, and something I only recently (and finally) accepted with my own work: just like our handwriting, no one can create exactly like we can. Our inherent individuality—coupled with years of training and growth—is what buoys our creative lives.
OK HANDS ARE ALSO THE BANE OF MY EXISTENCE. I only recently sorta learned how to draw them (still not great and I still make a ton of mistakes) but there are a few things I’ve learned over the years.
TIP 1: I stare at my own hand a lot to get a sense of how it moves, how it looks, etc. I suggest you do this. Contort your hand, move your fingers, pay attention to the contours and silhouettes your hand makes. One of the important things I learned is that if you don’t have a sense of how a hand should look, it’ll be hard for you. People make it easy with the tutorials they make like oh “draw a square palm, then do the skeletal fingers, then fill it in and voila!” Nope, that’s not enough, because I’ve followed those exact tutorials and was like um…this still looks nothing like a hand what the hell??? Soooo definitely, get a sense of how a hand works and moves first!
TIP 2: Fingers have VOLUME. This was a HUGE breakthrough for me when I discovered this. Yeah, I know it sounds obvious but it’s a surprisingly often overlooked fact. They’re not pointy sticks, they are fleshy tubes? Well anyway, I use the FINGERNAILS to represent volume. When I draw a finger, I first draw the top ridge (indicating three segments), the fingernail, THEN the rest of the finger. Idk, it’s a weird thing I came up with.
TIP 3: Know the relative relationship the fingers have with each other and how they move together. This is similar to TIP 1, but I felt it needed to be on it’s own as well. Not knowing how a finger curls, how it moves in relation to the others, will make for awkward hands (unless that’s the aesthetic you’re looking for)
My biggest struggle is making the size of the hand proportional haha (I always make fun of yaoi hands but it’s a genuine struggle??? Like I understand where the artists are coming from, it is so difficult NOT to make the hands too big or too small.) Thank god for the transform tool lmaoooo
I’ll also do some notes on perspective and dynamic posing later. (We’ll see how dynamic posing goes considering I’m not too great at it myself so… yeahhhh.)
okay this is so late and probably not relevant and also the worst tutorial ever but
I super recommend checking out skinned rabbits if that doesn’t bother you, their musclestructure is beautiful and it helps show exactly how much power is hidden in all that cute fluffiness!
You might be surprised to learn there are a lot of different species of raven and crow! The taxonomic difference between a raven and a crow (that is, whether a species gets named of or the other) is size and lifespan rather than genetic grouping. When comparing the species most of us are most familiar with – the American crow (C. brachyrhyncos) and common raven (C. corax), which will be the two I’m focusing on here – you can’t exactly tell the bird’s age most of the time, so if you have other animals or objects to compare the bird to, size is often the first clue.
The common raven is is massive for a passerine. It’s the size of a red-tailed a hawk, with a wingspan over four feet. Crows, on the other hand, are typically about the size of an African grey parrot. Compare someone holding a crow vs someone holding a raven:
And lemme tell ya, it’s one thing to READ about how big they are, but it’s another to SEE it.
If you see a corvid in flight and can’t get a bead on its proportions, the shape of the tail and flight feathers is another good identifier. A crow’s tail is triangular or fan-shaped, while a raven’s is wedge-shaped (ie the middle tail feathers are longest). Both have well-defined primaries, but a raven’s are much deeper and tend to spread wider. Ravens tend to soar a lot, too; crows are consistent flappers.
Finally, if you can get a good look at the head, the differences are pretty obvious. A raven has a beak that hooks at the end and is as long as its head (or in the case of a Chihuahuan raven, longer than!) while a crow’s beak is straighter, shorter, and lighter-looking in general. Both have nasal bristles, but the shape these bristles form is different due to beak size (a raven’s often looks squared off). Crows are kinda shiny and a bit fluffy; ravens are iridescent and have a very distinctive “beard” of shaggy feathers at their throats which bristles up like hackles when they call.
Finally, their voices are a bit different – a crow’s flat, high caw vs a raven’s deep, resonating kronk – but both species have a very wide range of natural vocalisations and are accomplished mimics. [This video] has some great examples of the caw vs kronk sounds.
