By: Mike Yeatts

Evening Dress

Patou

1947-1949

MET

some of my favorite vintage dresses         ↳  black

Dress

Christian Dior, 1948

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Dragon tutorial, tumblr edition, part 2

How to draw feet

Military Dress Sword

Dated: circa 1787-91

Culture: English

Medium and techniques: gilt brass, wood, fish skin, silver wire, gilt, blued steel/etched

Measurements: overall length 95cm; blade length 62cm

The sword has a gilt/brass hilt with an oval pommel cap. The oval wooden grip is covered in grey fishskin bound with herringbone of silver wire. The straight steel two-edged blade features etched gilt and blued panels decorated with Royal Arms and military trophy.

Source: Copyright © 2016 Royal Collection Trust/Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

Eeveelution variations!

PLEASE DO NOT REPOST OR REDISTRIBUTE ON OTHER WEBSITES

Throughout the years I’ve seen so many headcanons for the eeveelutions, many of which based the Eevees off of just one animal or a mix of them so I decided to play around with some designs to encompass most of these ideas.

The main idea being that: Because Eevee’s DNA is so wacky and it can evolve into so many diverse evolutions, its species can also vary from evolution to evolution, region to region, bloodline to bloodline.

Many being domestically bred for specific traits whether it be for battling, contests, companionship, or to be put to work, many others are found that way in wild populations where little human interaction has occurred.

All of the standard Eeveelutions shown are supposed to be more or less ambiguous, not based around just one animal but instead, designed to fit their official artwork as close as possible. Basically, standards are mutts as far as what species they are is concerned, hence people calling them catfoxrabbit things. As for the variations, all bets are off and many have been bred and narrowed down to one species.

The three-to-four variation examples I drew at the top of each picture are not exclusive to which species expresses it in the examples below. These variation types whether it be coat pattern, jewels, leaves, skin type, can appear in most any strain of each respective eeveelution.

Likewise, the species variations beside the standard eeveelution are not the only available species per that pokemon as the possibilities of other species and mixes are endless. It’s even possible for your eevee to change species upon evolution, much like the quilava line already does [shrew to weasel to badger].

It took me about three days to finish this and loads of references. In the end I’m quite happy with how it all came out and I hope you all enjoy. And if you want to draw character inspiration from this post please be my guest!!

Is there any chance you could give some tips on how to get better at accuracy? I feel like no matter how much I practice, I can't get poeple to look right. Even if I trace, it doesn't look right (which is funny to me considering how often people accuse you of tracing--seriously have they ever tried it?). You make it look so easy, and I feel like it's the hardest part of drawing.

Okay three things first:

It is the hardest part of drawing.

Tracing will actually set you back unless you do it the right way.

You don’t have to be accurate to make good art.

I grabbed a random screencap to show you how I do it (keep in mind that I’ve made thousands of drawings at this point in my life, so a lot of this is stuff I don’t even stop to think about anymore, so I apologize if any of my advice sounds muddy or confusing):

The first thing I do is note the positive and negative spaces and distances between them (marked in pink and blue below):

I reversed the colors so you only see the spaces for what they are. Look at the black space in particular because that’s the barrier between the two major halves of the entire space.

I also note the angles of things:

And then I start to sketch.

First I break up the space and mark out the major axis of the figure (a good rule of thumb with figures is to draw where their spine would be, and perhaps where their shoulders are as well—you don’t have to do it this way of course but if you’re having trouble seeing an axis, it can be helpful):

Then I start to mark out the major shapes, using each previous set of marks to help me refine things. Some people use circles or scribbles or even whole chunks of light and dark. There are an infinite ways to block out a drawing, but I’ve found that angles and lines work best for me:

You’ll see above that I made a cross for his face the same way I made a cross for his body to marke the center line and where his eyes would be. If you want to practice these angles, something like a fashion magazine works great. Get some paper and just flip through each face and try to copy the angles you see.

Anyway, so then I slowly refine details using the lines and angles to help me see how things are shaped. I can build the shapes of fabric and muscle over the angles as if they were a wire skeleton:

And that’s basically it!

Now, to address tracing…

There are two ways you can use tracing to help you. The first is to pinpoint landmarks, like the corner of a shoulder or the eyes. You can do this by making a dot—and only make as many dots as you absolutely need. Too many, and tracing becomes a crutch, and you want to help yourself learn, not skip over learning. I don’t recommend tracing any lines.

You can also use tracing to repair what you’ve done.

Here’s my sketch overlaid onto the screencap:

It’s pretty good! I don’t have to fix it if I don’t want to, but if I want, I can use tracing to mark the places where things are a little off:

And then I can go back and adjust.

This trick is really useful for helping you see the mistakes you keep making so that you can work at correcting them. For example, I tend to make eyes too big and shoulders too wide. I don’t always need to fix that, but this method helps. 

The idea isn’t to make drawing easier but to make learning easier, you know? That’s why you want to be careful with tools like tracing (or even gridwork) because you’ll find that you’re not giving yourself enough of a chance to learn. That’s also why tracing can’t replace skill.

Anyway, like I said, you don’t have be accurate or mechanically perfect to make good art. These are just some tips to help you see in observational art and to be more confident. But remember that sometimes the best and most beautiful art is a mechanical mess.

Here’s Van Gogh’s room as proof:

Good luck! <3

Stare into the eyes… of the CATS! [ Big Cat Week :30 Launch ]

A workable fuck-ton of male archery references (per request).

[Please note that the top two images of the white statues are for weaker bows; typically, the bow will have a stronger pull weight. The front arm would be fully extended and straight, and the hand gripping the arrow would not be pinching the arrow itself.]