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Tutorial/tips - Sketching
🕑 Added 2025-06-23 13:00:09 +0000 UTCHello everyone! Hope you are having a good summer so far! 🌞⛱️
Sketches. They are hard, let's be honest. I know I do at least. I personally is really bad at making natural straight lines. My hands just says "nope sis" 💅.
I think the majority does outlining when it comes to sketches in our community. Some might call it tracing, but for me is it not completely the same. Tracing for me is following everything to the exact, while outlining is just to somewhat having the outline/silhouette as the major reference to create the base. But this is a somewhat complicated topic.
In which way, do do not feel bad if you do it. I think the goal for everyone is to be able get away from it, to do everything completely free hand and do not rely on following reference pictures, but it is hard. So here three tutorials/tips on how to with take these baby steps:
Dots
Do you guys remember these art sketches where you follow dots to create a sketch as a child? This is pretty much that!
This way can you also make the dots with more space in between the more comfortable you get. Because with times does your hands almost know what to do by themselves. I do need some dots to have as a guide. As I said before, my hands just can't comprehend doing natural lines, you've seen my messy sketches 🥴
1. First, you make dots along the outline.
2. But also add a few dots to point where the shading of the muscles etc should be. You can make more dots or less with how confident you are, just as with the outline dots. How i did here is the goal for the base as well - just being able to have very few
3. Then you just follow the dots to draw the outlines
4. Important to not place the dots and sketch on the same layer!
5. I'll not show any pictures of my shading process as I already have shown it before, and it is pretty much still the same. So you will just have to witness my messy sketching 💃
6. And voilà!
Shapes and lines
Another way i think many use is having the reference as a base to make shapes as the guiding for the sketch. This (without the reference) is how many does for free handing as well. I know many art books when I was young explained with it at least, I guess it is the same nowdays, but online instead. Never made any sense for me i remember however, I just got angry 😂. So not my favorite way personally, but i can show it anyway:
1. I use tools you can use in photoshop to create sharp straight lines (as I suck at making them free hand). The type of shapes to create is all up to what you find the easier to go after. This is just an idea.
2. Then just follow the shapes to make the base
3. Also make a few lines as a base to go after for important points for the sketching
4. My messy sketching ™
5. Here is to show that it actually turned into something that looks like a front leg
Stick figure
Another way art tutorials was back then, and nowadays as well, show is to make the the first part of the sketch into straight line with dots as key points, like a stick figure.This way is however a bit hard as this is as close as to free drawing you can come to between these three tutorials.
1. Draw straight lines in the middle of whatever you are going after. It is very important to place it in the middle so you easily can estimate the right shape. Place the dots where the lines breaks off in a new direction.
2. Then you make the base sketch.Let it take the time and do not get too frustrated if it doesn't turn out like you want. You can always change it as much as you need and even afterwards too.
3. If you are having a warp tool in your program/app can you use it to tweak it. Place the reference pictures slightly underneath/closer to your sketch if you need to see better. In the beginning you might need to do it more often and that is ok.
4. Fill in the base and use the stick figure as the key points for the rest of the sketch
5. The finished shading! I also cleaned up the outline a lot as it was very messy ✌️
I hope you felt like you could get any help from these tutorials. Remember; baby steps is better than nothing. Take it in your own pace. Art should be fun and liberating, not daunting and making you feel like shit. You need to, take it in sections and steps, like I did for the last two tutorials with the legs.
If you have any questions, do not hesitate to ask ❤️
Hugs, kisses and do not forget to stay hydirated in the summer heat 🍹-
