Anime Girl - Drawing Tutorial

Hey Guys!
So today I decided to make my first ever drawing tutorial. People always ask me to teach them how to draw and Im really not good at teaching so I thought maybe a tutorial would be easier, also I thought it looked fun to make :)

So Im just going to start off drawing a anime girl face and maybe in the future do a boy face and then some full body ones, idk lol.

Before I start Il just point out that I know Im not the BEST drawer in the world but Im still proud of my drawings and maybe me showing you how I draw might give you some ideas. Also, this is just the way I draw, its not the only way and maybe not even the best way. I dont always draw this way either, this was just the easiest way to show you in the most coherent way, without me going back and forth explaining how Ive changed things that I drew in the first photo etc.. So bare with me lol. Its my first time but I still hope it helps :)

So.. Lets Start!

What youl need

Paper
Pencils, 2B and 6B
Pencil Sharpener
Eraser
Ink pens, 3 different sizes

Firstly always make sure your pencils are sharp. I tend to forget to keep them sharp so I have to keep reminding myself haha.

Step One:

Ive drawn a circle for the head and drawn a jaw underneath. Im using a 2B pencil to draw my sketch. It takes a couple of tries to get it right, I usually have to go back half way through because it looks right at this stage but when I add the hair and face it sometimes ends up being better if I tweak it a bit. But well come to that later.

I then just sketch a couple of guide lines down the middle of the face and where the eyes and eyebrows should sit. Try to make them curve a bit instead of being straight and flat, itl give the face more depth. Again, this takes a few guesses for me to get right, just wing it a couple of times and youl get the hang of it.

Step Two:

Next, sketch the shape of the eyes and eyebrows that you want in the guide lines. The top of the eye should just touch the top and bottom of the guide lines, same as the eyebrows. Then draw the nose and mouth. I dont emphasise the nose or mouth much so Ive just drawn small lines to hint at where they are. I dont usually make guide lines for these, I usually just guess where they will sit.

Step Three:

Now draw the hair that you want. I always start with the fringe and then do the back of the hair. To draw the fringe I started with a "wedge" of hair in the middle and layer them outwards and shape them around the face. Then I drew hair starting from the top of the head and then made it curly as it got to the bottom.

 Step Four:

Now its time to line it with ink. I used a 1.5mm artist pen to outline the chunkier bits of hair, around the face and neck then used a 0.7mm pen to outline the smaller peices of hair and the main features of the face. Finally I used a 0.3mm pen to draw the minor details like the eyelashes, details in the hair and eyes.
Then erase all of the pencil marks so that theres only the clean ink outline left.

Step Five:

 And now we shade it. I use a 6B pencil to shade with. I started with the hair. I shade the darkest at the tip and the base of the hair and leave the middle light to give it highlights. This is a bit tricky to do when the hair is curly so when there are areas that youre not sure of just imagine where the light source would coming from and use that as a guide, or just wing it and see what looks good haha.

Step Six:

Then shade the face and eyes. I shade the face darkest underneath the fringe, I didnt shade the shadows as dark as I would in other places like the hair or eyes because I wanted the skin to look fairly light. Then shade underneath the chin.
To shade the eyes all I did was shade an oval in the middle where the pupil would be and then shade darkest from the top of the eye getting lighter towards the bottom.


And Now Your Done!

A good tip for when youre finished drawing is to spray the page with hairspray. This seals the page so that the graphite doesnt rub off or smudge. There are proper sealants that you can buy but if you dont want to spend any extra money a cheap hairspray will do the trick fine :)

Also, another thing that can be helpful is to just look at pictures of anime and manga and just try to copy them, thats how I learnt to draw. And of course, Practice makes Perfect!

So now all there is to do is to sign it off, spray it to seal it and your done! :) Youve finished drawing an anime girl!

Please let me know if Ive left anything out or if theres anything you want to clear up or if theres any ideas for another tutorial or just ideas for stuff to draw.

I hope this was somewhat helpful, or at least entertaining lol It was really fun to make :)

See Ya!

People who think wearing makeup and dressing up is stupid.

aaaand ANOTHER thing ive been thinking about lately lol

btw, this blog is like therapy for me haha

People who think wearing makeup and dressing up is stupid.

Now, I like wearing makeup, buying new clothes, dressing up doing all that kind of girly stuff. But every now and then (or alot accually) people say "why do you put that crap on ur face? You know guys arent into girls with makeup" or "you know guys arent attracted to skinny girls" or "guys would rather see you in casual clothes rather than dress up for them"

Okay, I do not do ANY of that stuff to attract guys. I do it for me. people sometimes say "why put on makeup doesnt it take you ages in the morning?" no. Accually I really like doing my makeup, I think its fun not only to wear makeup but also putting it on. I also really like choosing what to wear in the morning. I like doing my hair too. But for some reason people just have a problem with it.
People who arent into this kind of stuff generally think that girls are torturing themselves daily to look good for guys. Unfortunatly some girls do, but I dont. I do this stuff because I want to.

The same thing goes for weight loss. I am by no means a skinny girl, but everytime I tell someone that Im trying to lose weight they assume Im doing it to attract guys and say stuff like "guys arent atracted to skinny girls, guys like curves" yeh okay fair enough but I want be skinny, not for other people, for ME.

It gets really frustrating because sometimes I doubt myself and think, "maybe I shouldnt wear makeup its impractical" or "why dress up, im not going anywhere" but NO. I do what I want lol

But anyway, moral of the story, Do what makes you happy! if that means dressing up for nothing, Do it! Wearing crazy makeup, Do it! Dressing weirdly or just not dressing up at all and wear sweat pants all day, Do it! Even if its unnecesary or expensive or just plain weird, do it anyway because no matter what you do someone will have a problem with it.

I wear trackpants to town, snobby cows give me the stink eye. I dress nice and wear makeup, snobby cows give me the stink eye. I dress like a total freak, snobby cow gives me the stink eye.

So do what makes you Happy!!!

Cruelty Free Makeup Hunt

Cruelty Free Makeup :)

 

Okay so ovbiously I HATE animal cruelty. Its one of the few things that really gets my blood boiling.
So, because of that I decided that this year my new years resolution would be that I will replace all of my cosmetics with cruelty free products. So for now I am slowly using the last of my old products and when they run out I will find a cruelty free alternative. When I first, I guess, awakened to the idea that my products were being tested on animals I simply could not ignore it. It was frustrating because I had just found skin cleanser, foundation and makeup that was perfect for my skin and then I read a blog that pointed out that literally every company I purchased makeup from used animals to test on.

The products I was using were..

Garnier
Nivea
Maybeline
Rimmel London
and Covergirl

Usually I would ignore it and keep using whatever brand I wanted but when it came to animal testing I couldnt ignore it so then came the decision to replace everything with cruelty free brands. There are, surprisingly, alot of really awesome cosmetic companys who dont test on animals, but going cruelty free really limits what brands you can use. I am only about half way to replacing my stuff. Im still just using up whats left of my old cosmetics, dont wanna waste yknow.

The problem is finding out what products really are cruelty free. I tried just googling different products and finding info over the net but every website gives you a different story. There are alot of reliable sites that give you lists of brands that are cruely free, but most of them ive never heard of, or theyre abit out of my price range.

Also another thing is that some companies are owned by parent companies that do test on animals. So one company will have a cruelty free sticker but also be owned by a company that tests on animals. So your money goes to an animal testing company anyway! And pretty much every brand ive researched has come up with some people saying theyre cruelty free, some people saying they arent, and some people saying THEY dont test on animals but theyre parent company does. Its all so confusing! So im just going to try my best to keep as much of my makeup bag free of animal testing.

And then when I ask if anyone knows of any good cruelty free products, people tell me its stupid to go cruelty free cause apparently scientists already know what kind of chemicals do what to skin, hair, eyes ect. So animal testing is only mild stuff just to see how the products make hair look and stuff. But why would they need animals for that?? If they know what it does, why dont they test it on themselves?

In my mind the only way to know that no animal is being harmed for my vanity is to know that they arent being tested on AT ALL. I cant possibly know how well they are being treated or if theyr being harmed. Even if the testers do treat them well, they may even treat them better than if they were left in the wild, I cant know that for sure. So I can only try not to use animal tested products.

Id love to make a list of what brands I have found that are cruelty free but ive seen so many lists like that already and alot of people get bitched out for not knowing that a particular company is not accually cruelty free like they claim to be and I am still not %100 sure if all the products ive found are truly cruelty free.

Sooo... if anyone knows of any awesome cruelty free products please do tell me! Thank you~!!!

Art School Blues

Art School Stuff...

So today I thought Id talk a little bit about the work I did for my Fine art diploma. Its a little bit different to the paintings and drawings I do for myself because for my diploma you had to be able to justify what your doing and be able to talk about your work on a proffesional level and I couldnt really do that will my old stuff because I didnt really have a reason for doing it in particular, I just draw what I feel like or whatever. Also I decided to do something different because I didnt want my personal work to be affected by "the rules of fine art" lol.

 Heres a picture of what I usually do...

I usually draw Anime and Manga styled stuff so I decided to play on that for my course. I made a body of work based on the dark side of childhood, the feeling of not being in control, anxiety and fear. I used animals as my characters to refrence fairy tales and story books and used dark "old" colours to show heaviness and sadness. I was influenced by alot of japanese artists like Yosuke Ueno and Aya Takano and lots of pop surrealists like Brandi Milne, Emma Overman, Camille Rose Garcia and Amy Sol.
So I really liked how it turned out :)

My Graduate Exhibition...

Anyway, to carry on studying and get my bachelors degree I had to apply at another art school. I had really good grades, lots of good feedback from my tutors and and the end of year exhibition went great so I should have gotten accepted... but I didnt..

Getting my application in was a nightmare! I just kept getting back luck, everytime I tried to print out my portfolio the printer would break, I tried a bunch of different places and I just kept getting the same terrible luck. I FINALLY got my application ready, spent like $30 just to print it, and then sent it off. Only to get one of those default "sorry try better next time" letters. At this point I didnt even care anymore, I was sure the universe was sending me a sign that it was not to be so I just rolled with it haha. But I still wanted to know why I wasnt accepted.
 I had a meeting with my tutor, who was pissed off that I wasnt accepted. He sent them emails and phone calls to try and get some information about the reason why. Unfortunatly Im still not sure why. BUT I have heard rumors that that particular school have completely stopped accepting students that are influenced by anime and manga.
Which SUCKS.

 I guess I can understand that there are probably quite alot of people who are influenced by it and it might be too much for them, but my entire application letter was pretty much based around how willing I am to open up to new ideas and Im willing to try different styles ect..

They need to warn people of this stuff though! I just spent the last year building a portfolio based on the genre of art that theyr NOT accepting. But it is nice to know that it was just the genre of work that they didnt like, not the quality. But still! It is a bit unfair. Oh well....

The universe has other plans for me apparently.

But! Im still going to keep doing the kind of art I want to do, even if it never goes anywhere, thats ok.

And a message to fellow Anime/Manga artists! If youre applying at an art school, make sure you find out theyre not doing the same thing here!

"Opinions" and "Honesty" not an exuse to be mean

 Just something that has been on my mind for a while...

So, I was remembering a time (this was like a year ago lol) I was talking to two of my class mates, I wont give names haha, about what kind of music we liked. One person asked the other girl who was with me and she said she really liked hip-hop and rnb. I totally cant stand rnb and was thinking to myself "gah that is like my LEAST favorite genre of music" but of course I didnt say this out loud because she JUST finished telling us that she really liked it, so I just smiled and said thats cool. Then I was asked what kind of music I liked, I find it kinda hard to answer this question cause I like alot of different genres so I kind of babbled a bit. But I said I really like foreign music, I love jpop and I also love heavy metal, like really heavy stuff. While I was saying this I got given the most horrified disgusted look and then got a lecture about how its horrible and you cant even hear what theyr saying and its all just "rah rah rah grrr" and they were just hardcore dissing something I JUST finished explaining to them that I really liked.
 For some reason at the time I thought it was okay because heaps of people hate metal and I should have expected that and it would have been wrong for me to bitch about rnb or hip hop because more people like it than people who hate it. But then I thought about it again later and NO it was not okay. Especially after I just held my tongue about my opinion on your favorite music.

 I get that people have the freedom of speech and they have the right to state their opinions but I think its really messed up when people will disregard others feelings JUST so they can have their opinion stated. Like, what do you even gain from that? Now im a lil bit pissed and you look like an asshole. Just so you could state your opinion.

Another time this kind of thing happened was when I got my nails done. I got them done from a friend who is a nail technician, I helped her design some business cards and she did my nails for free. I was super happy with them, they were clear acrylic blue with glitter in them and the pinky finger and the thumbs were stilleto (pointed) and the rest were squared. They were dope. Anyway, I went to class the next day, super proud of them and one of my  classmates grabs my hand and looks at them with disgust and says, way too loudly, " ugh! theyre so long! I dont know how girls get this stuff done to their nails it looks terrible! How can you do anything with these theyr like talons?!" And I sort of shrugged it off because having acrylic nails isnt exactly conventional, especially for art school. But its okay because I work better with long nails, I feel like a cripple with short nails.And I dont know I guess because I had low self esteem I kind of thought it was okay for people to say stuff like that. Again, I thought about this later and realised it was totally messed up and WRONG. This person had really short, bitten nails, like accually gross and she was judging MY nails?? My perfectly manicured, awesome nails? then I thought really, I would hate to have nails like YOURS, I dont know how people can have their nails like YOURS, not mine. That was really frikkin mean, like accually. Mean.

I really wish that at times like these, I would have realised it was horrible at the time instead of feeling like, because I was doing something that was not normal that it was okay for people to say harsh things. Unfortunatly these things happened over a year ago and I would look totally nuts if I went back to those people and hit them up about it now. Another sad thing is, is that in both of these situations these people were my friends.

I just think people have totally stopped thinking about other peoples feelings before they talk, and people think that because theyre being "honest" and stating their opinion that theyre doing the world some big favour. Honestly, nobodys opinion is more important than somebodys feelings. I dont get why people just feel this need to blurt their "opinions" to everyone. Like theyl have an annurism if they dont. What happened to the saying "If you dont have anything nice to say dont say anything at all."???

And what REALLY pisses me off is that I held my tongue, I kept my opinions to myself because I knew they were negative and that no good would come of it if I just blurted them out. I would only have pissed people off and made myself look like a dick. But I didnt get the same respect back. And now because I didnt say anything at the time those people probably think its totally fine because nobodys feelings were hurt and they were totally justified in what they said. But NO its not okay.
But its too late now lol. But at least I know for next time to stick up for myself and to realise when someone is being a bit out of line.

Now in saying that, I DO think people should have their own opinions, and do be honest and speak your mind. But just think about it. Im sure ive said things in the past that were totally un called for and I am sorry for that but I try very hard to think about what I say to people and to always make people feel comfortable and to keep an open mind of peoples interests. I feel that I should get the same respect. I just think people need to be careful, and keep an open mind. State your opinion, tell people what you think, but just dont be a dick about it lol.

Buut I guess there are some people out there who will be offended by ANYTHING. And it can be exhausting trying to filter everything you say to make it not offensive, and it wont always work, but just try your best. Thats all I ask of the world! Just try your best to be nice to people! And EVERYBODY deserves to be treated politely.

Anyway rant over. :)

My Answer to the question "Who are you really"

Who Are You

 So i've been thinking about this question alot lately and its come up in conversation a few times and ive always found it hard to answer because it isnt a simple question.

When people ask me "who are you?" or "what kind of person are you?" I always get tongue tied and end up just shrugging my shoulders and sayin "idunno" simply because how the heck do you even answer that question?! Its not that I dont know myself or I dont know who I am. Its just that you cant just answer that like its a simple question.
 I feel that I, like most people really, have multiple personalities inside of myself. I like dark things, I also like cute things, I like to read horror novels, and then watch cute cartoons and anime. One day Ill wear all black with dark makeup and lots of gothic things, the next Ill wear pastels and pinks and lots of pretty stuff.
 And its not just taste in clothing or music that contrasts, my opinions change, the way I feel about myself and others around me will change and vary.
I am an ever changing and fluctuating human being. My personality is like water, it never really stays the same for long, and thats a good thing. People arent meant to stay the same theyr meant to grow and change. Sometimes it isnt that Im "changing" exactly, sometimes il even just have two completely opposing opinions on something at the same time. I can hate things and love them at the same time. Or I could like something and also like something thats the complete opposite of that at the same time.
Also I hate it when people say "Jam thats so not like you" and things like that, cause its like, what IS like me? what ISNT like me? everything and nothing.  Kinda like when people speak differently over the phone, or how they act differently online compared to real life, it changes, not intentionally, it just does.
I think its very simple of people to believe that you can only have one personality "type" otherwise ur being "fake" or ur "confused" about who you are.
By the time ive finished explaining to people who I "am" Im probably a completely different person by then.



... or maybe Im just indecisive.