Hello! I’m happy to hear you’ve been motivated again, and by my work no less! that means a lot to me~ ;;;
As for your question I’ll try my best to answer it here, using some deltarune characters because why not!
So my approach to drawing bodies is first establishing basic shapes. So when I sketch and I’m trying to figure out their bodies I do something like this (though its usually a lot messier and only comprehensible by me)
you can simplify it further too! like so:
and then after i establish how their body works i draw their clothes on top. kinda like this:
sometimes i don’t need to completely know everything that’s under their clothes and sometimes i use the shape of their clothes rather than relying on the shape of their bodies…. if that makes sense??
i do the same with bigger characters as well, with more of a focus on shapes since sometimes fat makes it harder to make out the shape of some bones, if you get what I mean:
Also, it’s super super SUPER important to draw from real life and regularly use references, its unavoidable, and it will help immensely with your learning. For gesture drawing I usually use the site line-of-action .com.
Also also!! dont be afraid to reference other artists!! there are tons of artists out there with an amazing grasp on anatomy and sometimes looking at how they structure their character anatomy could help you grasp something you didn’t before.
I hope this helps??? Sorry its not terribly detailed ^v^;;;
A few years ago, when I was living in the housing co-op and looking for a quick cookie recipe, I came across a blog post for something called “Norwegian Christmas butter squares.” I’d never found anything like it before: it created rich, buttery and chewy cookies, like a vastly superior version of the holiday sugar cookies I’d eaten growing up. About a year ago I went looking for the recipe again, and failed to find it. The blog had been taken down, and it sent me into momentary panic.
Luckily, I remembered enough to find it on the Wayback Machine, and quickly copied it into a file that I’ve saved ever since. I probably make these cookies about once a month, and they last about five days around my voracious husband – they’re fantastic with a cup of bitter coffee or tea. I’m skeptical that there is something distinctively Norwegian about these cookies, but they do seem like the perfect thing to eat on a cold day.
Norwegian Christmas Butter Squares
1 cup unsalted butter, softened
1 egg 1 cup sugar 2 cups flour 1 tsp vanilla ½ tsp salt Turbinado/ Raw Sugar for dusting
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Chill a 9×13″ baking pan in the freezer. Do not grease the pan.
Using a mixer, blend the butter, egg, sugar, and salt together until it is creamy. Add the flour and vanilla and mix using your hands until the mixture holds together in large clumps. If it seems overly soft, add a little extra flour.
Using your hands, press the dough out onto the chilled and ungreased baking sheet until it is even and ¼ inch thick. Dust the top of the cookies evenly with raw sugar.
Bake at 400 degrees until the edges turn a golden brown, about 12-15 minutes. Remove from the oven. Let cool for about five minutes before cutting the cooked dough into squares. Remove the squares from the warm pan using a spatula.
So I tried this recipe.
And it is GREAT.
It basically makes the platonic ideal of commercial sugar cookies, only in bar form. When I give them to people (which I do a lot, because this is one of those simple recipes where the results seem very impressive), I just tell them they’re sugar cookie bars.
PTA archive 