Motivational Christmas Memory

Hello, fellow Art Warriors!

     I want to write this blog not to talk to you as a blogger, but as a creative friend. Some of you are teenagers in college who just took their final exams and/or midterms and don't know how to relax, while some of you don't know what to do for the holidays. On the other hand, you may just need someone to motivate you after a stressful semester or year. Whichever the case may be, I guarantee it's going to get better.
     For example, there are those of you that took midterms and final exams; as a result, you are panicking and hoping for a passing score or maybe even a perfect score. If so, ask yourself these three questions:

1. Did I panick? if so, then don't! Being cautious is one thing, but being calm and collected goes a long way.
2. Did I study? Some of you don't need to, but some of you did. But to be safe, always study what information was given to you as it is being given
3. Did I do my best? Taking a test isn't just study, study, study tirelessly and hope to get a high score; there's also your health involved. After all, you can't go take a test without eating healthy, getting as much sleep as possible and making sure to find some way to relax.

Then, remember this fact: Somethings are exaggerated more than they should be. Make sure to find ways that you're comfortable with to learn (as long as it's legal and even compromising with your teacher!). School work isn't always easy, but when you remember to look back at the progress you've made you'll feel more motivated to keep going. Then there's this question: what happens now?

     Well for starters, there are the Christmas Holidays to think about! A time to share with your family and a good way to help yourself relax and give unto others. However, there are plenty of ways to do both; for example...

1. How can I give to others? you can make a gift out of what you have (ex. variety of origami projects), create a gift (ex. craft something out of different materials), or you could simply conduct a good deed (ex. helping out a neighbor or even a friend)
2. How can I relax during the holidays? there are plenty of wonderful traditions that come with Christmas such as relax with a warm cup of hot coco (marshmallows are optional), lighting a warm fire to read a book next to, or simply take some time to reflect and do what you love. 
3. How can I spend my holidays? There are some individuals who have family and friends, some have only family or only friends. However, there are also some that are truly alone. To those individuals, I would say to remember what the holidays are about, why they started in the first place - the gifts are a bonus, but the greatest gift anyone could receive is the you spend with the ones you love and memories you've made.

you don't need gifts to celebrate the holidays, but a warm family or some peace alone can make Christmas a wonderful time of year.

     The nearing end of the year can be a beginning and an end for people around the world; it could be a checkpoint for progress in their lives or a session of relaxation. A commonality to remember is to look back at how far you've come and realize that there is no one else who could have done than you. you come a long way to give up now, so don't! you've only hit the peak of what you can and will accomplish.

     Thank you so much for your patience and support this year. Enjoy yourself, your family and your friends. Whether you're dealing with good or bad times - it will get better! Happy Holidays and Have a Wonderful Christmas, my Fellow Art Warriors!!!!!🎄

Taking Flight: A Beginner’s Guide Into Drawing Wings

Here's the second one as promised. Enjoy and Happy Reading!!!!!

by Monika Zagrobelna18 Sep 2013

Length:LongLanguages:EnglishDeutschEspañolMagyarBahasa IndonesiaPortuguêsRomânăPусский

DrawingVector

This post is part of a series called How to Draw Animals.

How to Draw Animals: Cats and Their Anatomy

There are a few things every artists should be able to draw, with wings being certainly one of them. In this tutorial I'll show you how birds' and dragons' wings are built, why they're built this way and how to create believable poses for them.

1. Basics of Wing Anatomy

Step 1

Wings evolved from the same structure as an arm, so they're quite similar. Just look at the plan below - as you can see, it's mostly the hand structure that makes the difference:

• Birds have most of the hand bones united in simple shapes.
• Bats' fingers are very long, they also start directly on the wrist.
• Both birds and bats use their thumbs for precise maneuvers.

Step 2

When the wing are folded, all of the bones try to come closer to each other.

Step 3

We can simplify the plan of the bones to better understand the way it's working. Also, these basic lines are all you need to start a correct picture of wings!

Step 4

Since wings are so similar to your arm, why don't you use it to find a good pose? Try to flap your arms, spread your fingers - imagine you have feathers of a membrane between them. It will help you understand what poses are natural (therefore, realistic when drawn).

2. The Structure of Feathered Wings

Step 1

The whole bird's arm doesn't build the wing. It actually starts just before the elbow.

Step 2

Have you ever seen featherless chicken's wings? This is the part built of bones, muscles and skin. To build real wings, we need to attach feathers to this naked arm.

Step 3

The feathers have different directions according to the part of arm they're attached to.

Step 4

The first "layer" of feathers you should draw is lesser and median secondary coverts. These are the little scale-like feathers that cover the upper part of the wing. They end with alula - a small cluster of feathers attached to the thumb. You can treat alula just like a bird's thumb for easier understanding.

Step 5

Even when placing these little scaly-feathers you need to remember about right direction. But that's actually the only rule you need to remember at the moment; you can draw them quite chaotically and lightly. There's no need to draw them one by one, they're so small and tightly placed that usually you can't see single feathers.

Step 6

Before we go any further, you need to learn one important rule that usually amateurs are unfamiliar with. A wing has two sides - top and bottom. The feathers overlap each other in a non-random way. From the top view you can see only outer edges of the feathers, from the bottom - only the inner ones.

Step 7

Since you know the rules of direction and overlapping, you can start to draw the primary coverts. Here come two new rules:

• Don't draw the feathers pointy - the ones used for flying are always rounded;
• The closer you are to the joint, the shorter the feathers.

Step 8

This part of a wing is called greater secondary coverts. They're pretty easy to draw.

Step 9

The greater secondary coverts should also be placed behind the elbow point, though they usually start to blend with abdomen/back feathers here.

Step 10

Once you've covered all the arm with feathers, time to attach the most important ones. The "hand" feathers are called primaries. We can see two joints here - on the wrist and where the fingers starts. The feathers attached to the fingers are great for precise maneuvers. Big birds (like eagles) have them slotted. They give them more agility and look awesome, too.

Step 11

The rest of the feathers of this part are attached to the wrist-palm area. They're big and rounded.

Step 12

The secondaries are attached to the forearm. They look just like a bigger copy of greater secondary coverts above them.

Step 13

The tertials are an element blending the wing with the body. When you draw a wing from the top view, draw them as a cluster of long feathers. From the bottom view, they'll be just partially visible and covered by a part of secondaries.

Step 14

That's the fully sketched wing.

3. The Structure of Webbed Wings

Step 1

Bats' wings aren't as complicated as birds', but they're still fascinating. Their arms are very similar to humans', as there's a whole hand of long fingers. All the fingers are connected with each other and the body with a membrane. When bats spread their wings, the membrane is stretching - that's why it doesn't crease so much when the wings are folded.

Step 2

But hey, who really draws bats? They're surely cute, but... let's be honest, it's their wings that interests us. Wings that we can use for our dragons and demons! Bad news is you are not able to draw an anatomically correct dragon wing. Good news is - nobody can! Dragons just don't exist, and if they existed, they could use different mechanics of flight (and probably they wouldn't be able to fly majestically as we imagine them). However, I can give you a bit of advice to draw them as realistically as possible.

First, you'll need strong arm muscles. When the body is well-built, the wings must be equally strong to carry it. You can use human arm anatomy for reference. Also, it's important to give your dragon very big back muscles.

Step 3

When drawing the "finger", it's important to stress the joints. They give a realistic feel and let you attach the membrane correctly.

Step 4

There's one mistake a lot of people do (me too, in the past!). It's probably because a bat's arm isn't as long as a dragon's (at least, as most of us imagine them). When the dragon's arm is bending, we can see a fold under the elbow. Hence the conclusion there's a bone deforming it, just like the bat's foot deforming the membrane of the tail. Putting a bone here doesn't make too much sense, yet a lot of professional artist do it. Apparently, it's not forbidden, but you need to ask yourself if your dragon really needs it!

Step 5

Cover the arm with a membrane. As you can see, the arm - bones and muscles - is placed inside the membrane, not on it. That's why you should blend the fingers into the wing. Also, the membrane should be stretched the most between joints.

When it comes to tears, they look quite realistic (they say wings are used), but they need to be as small as possible - as they would drastically break the lift.

Step 6

Below is how you can do it:

Step 7

A membrane isn't a dead material, it needs to be nourished by blood like every other organ. A web of veins will add a realistic feel to your drawing. Just remember - big blood vessels spread into thin capillaries. They start on the arm, not somewhere at the edge of the wing. If they did, every little tear would lead to serious bleeding!

Step 8

When drawing the veins, keep them light and almost invisible. A nice trick is not to draw all their edges, and stress only some of them.

Step 9

You can also add skin texture to the wings. The easiest one is a wide cross-hatching. Change its density according to the membrane's stretching - the bigger tension, the thinner the texture.

The dragon wing is done!

4. Flight Theory

Step 1

To fully understand how to draw wings realistically in every position you need to first learn how they work and what's the purpose of their shape. Beside the obvious learning benefit, isn't it nice to know how things work?

So, how is it a bird or a bat can fly? Let's start from the beginning of every flight - the take off. Our birdie - let's call him Bob - is sitting on a pole. The little circles around him are the air particles. When there's no wind, they don't move.

Step 2

Bob just spread his wings and jumped into the air! The gravity is dragging him down for a moment, but he has his ways to fight it...

Step 3

Bob uses his strong arm muscles to flap his wings. They're so wide that they move all the air particles on their way under Bob's body.

Step 4

But hey, now there's an empty area over Bob's back, and the particles under his body are squashed! Air particles like balance. They want to be placed evenly in the space, without any vacuum spots. So, our squashed air particles fly up to fill the empty area. And when they do it, they push Bob's body up and forward.

Step 5

But that's not enough to make Bob fly. Flapping just makes him moving fast forward and thus generate wind (air movement) that the bird can use to create more lift.

To put it simply:

• When a bird moves through the air (even falling), there's a lift created under its body - it's pushing it up. The faster the movement, the stronger lift. At the same time, gravity is pulling the bird down.
• As we have noticed, flapping creates lift too.
• Thanks to the special wing's shape, air particles hitting the wing need to fly faster over the wing than under it. Gravity has less time to strike this way.

What do we need lift for:

• When lift is stronger than gravity (weight), bird is pulled up.
• When lift is equal to gravity, bird glides/flies.
• When lift is lower than gravity, bird falls down (and needs to flap - create more lift - to stay aloft).

5. Wings in Motion

Step 1

It's important to know wings don't move just up and down when they're flapping. The only purpose of this action is to push the air down, so the upstroke serves only one point - to get the wings up again for another down stroke. What does it mean?

• During the down stroke wings are wide spread, they try to push as much air as possible.
• During the upstroke wings are slightly folded, and the primaries are separated. They don't come back the same way, they're actually sneaking back not to break freshly created lift.

This will apply to bats/dragons too.

Step 2

You can see the rotation clearer from the back/front. Take a good look at both down stroke and upstroke. Also, notice how air motion changes the shape of primaries' tips.

Step 3

Folding a wing of a bird isn't that hard once you learn one simple rule about it - primaries are overlapped with the rest of the wing while folding. That's all!

Step 4

Folding a webbed wing is a bit more complicated. You need to imagine the areas of tension first. They can look like simple feathers. When the wing is being folded, the feathers are getting closer to each other, overlapping them.

As it was said before, you don't need to add that many wrinkles to the folded membrane. It should be just less smooth than the fully spread wing.

Step 5

Once you know the rules and wing's anatomy, you can draw them in any position using perspective (yep - you won't avoid learning perspective, it's everywhere!). The trick is it's always best to start with bat wing for a pose, as the fingers will help you establish the primaries too.

6. Common Mistakes

There are a few mistakes most of us do at some level. They usually come from ignorance - you think you know how a wing looks, so why wouldn't you draw it?

Step 1

Firstly, a wing's arm cannot be fully expanded. There's a ligament between the wrist and the shoulder, and it can't expand forever. This applies to both birds and bats.

Step 2

Feathers are rounded, not pointed. Big birds like eagles can have slotted feathers in their primaries, but that's the only place they can exist without breaking the lift.

Step 3

Another mistake is drawing all the feathers in the same direction. As we noticed before, it's not how it works! Feathers overlap each other, and they can't overlap both sides at the same time.

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Step 4

Dragon fans are not innocent either. The most common mistake here is drawing the wings completely flat (no joints in the fingers) and forgetting about the membrane between the shoulder and the wrist. That membrane is very important for building an aerodynamic shape.

Now You Can Fly!

Now you're a wing expert! You can draw birds, bats, gryffins, angels, dragons and demons with natural, realistic wings. Until next time, happy drawing!

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Monika Zagrobelna

Poland

I'm a Polish artist with a long experience in doing useless, but creative things. Since I realized how bad I was after all these years, I decided to take fate into my own hands and actually study things in order to draw them properly. My tutorials are the result of thorough studies - I hope they help you as they helped me!

mzagrobelna

How to Draw Furries, aka Anthropomorphic Characters

Hello everyone! I finally found time to post some artistic articles for you; however, I'm going to post two today and two or three tomorrow. I hope it makes up for all my delays. Thank you so much and I hope you enjoy your weekend! Happy Reading, fellow Art Warriors!!!

by Monika Zagrobelna18 Jan 2018

Length:LongLanguages:EnglishEspañolPусскийукраїнська мова

DrawingDrawing TheoryAnimalsAnimal Anatomy

What You'll Be Creating

You can remember them from your childhood—Bugs Bunny, Donald Duck, Disney's Robin Hood... All these walking and talking animals that are so human-like that you start treating them like humans. These characters are anthropomorphic: they're basically animals with their bodies modified to resemble humans both in the way of moving and in their general behavior. 

Anthropomorphism is often used in children's movies/books, because it's easy to create original characters this way, and kids are naturally more drawn to cute animals/talking machines than to "normal", boring humans they can see every day. But anthros, as such characters are called, are also popular among older audiences. 

Just like in manga, anthropomorphic characters can be much more interesting and visually appealing than real humans. Their exaggerated facial features allow artists to communicate their emotions freely, and there's no pressure to reach full realism, since anthros are not real by definition. Because of this, they can be an excellent topic to draw! 

But what exactly are anthropomorphic characters, and how can you create them?

What Is Anthropomorphism?

We are born with a tendency to assign human attributes to non-human entities. Before the dawn of modern civilization, people used to see a soul in stones, trees, and animals, and treated natural phenomena as powerful entities with their own will. Even random occurrences were assigned to the will of "fate", which sometimes "smiled upon" a person or was "cruel" to them. 

This curious trait of the human mind has allowed us to create stories with non-human characters, to make them more interesting and to make their meaning clearer, especially for children. Non-human characters make the story obviously untrue, so that it can't be confused with real events, but it just makes the deeper truth hidden in them stand out more.

Original depiction of a fictional anthropomorphic rabbit from the first chapter of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

To anthropomorphize means simply "to make something human-like". It can be done in various ways: a tree can be said to think and speak while keeping its normal tree look, but it can also have "arms" and "hands" made of branches, and a fully expressive "face" carved in the trunk. In the case of animals, they can be made bipedal and wear human clothes, and their faces can be changed to show human emotions.

Anthropomorphic characters are used today in cartoons and children books, but also as mascots for institutions and events, and as illustrations for ideas. An anthropomorphic polar bear can make us more empathetic towards these animals and feel more responsible for climate change, and an anthropomorphic Earth can help us care more about recycling. Even subtle anthropomorphism, like attaching a smile to an item, or simply talking about it as if it had feelings, can make us care more about it.

It's very easy to feel sorry for this "lonely chair" once it's given a recognizable facial expression.

The high expressiveness of anthropomorphic characters makes them very popular among artists, because they don't require you to be so faithful to realism. You can make your character have human-like adventures with his friends (go to school, fall in love, get a pet) without ever having to draw a human, and make the story even more interesting this way. Your characters may have a finished, professional look, even if they're actually simple—because their simplicity is not a flaw. 

Besides the obvious functionality of this solution, anthropomorphic characters simply have aesthetic value to many people. There are only so many ways to make a human beautiful, while you can design a thousand amazing bird-men based on various species. Just like manga characters, anthros can be made completely fantastic and detached from reality in their look, which lets the artist get extremely creative while keeping the story grounded in reality. Simply thinking of various anthros can be quite inspiring, too—what would a cheetah-man look like?

Goggly Cheetah by 0laffson

Anthropomorphic characters are also used in fantasy to make the world more remarkable and different from ours. In such worlds, humans are simply one of many intelligent "races", which becomes a convenient base for interesting interactions. For example, in a fantasy world, cat-men may be treated as slaves, which can be used as a safe way to tackle racial discrimination. Such a story can be made completely realistic, even dark, despite having such unreal characters.

In a fantasy setting, anthros don't look so odd at all. Art by Rainbow-Foxy

What Are Furries?

Among anthropomorphic characters, animals are the most popular. Humans are animals, after all, so we are all pretty similar, especially among mammals. It almost comes naturally to us to assign human characteristics to animals, for example to call a dog mean for destroying our shoes, or to feel sorry for a male bird rejected by a female. Making the animal stand on its hind legs and do typically human things doesn't seem too far-fetched to us because of this.

Art by Ilya Royz

We can also identify to an extent with certain animals. We can think of ourselves, "I'm like a  wolf, quiet and withdrawn among strangers, but very loyal to my friends," or "I'm like a lioness, I'll do everything to keep my children safe." If you're creative enough, you can imagine a detailed vision of your "animal self", taking it outside of your mindset and into actual physicality. Wouldn't it feel cool to have a tail to wag when you're happy, and express your emotions more clearly with your ears? If you like this vision, you may be a furry.

Furries are people who are fans of anthropomorphic animals. It's a very broad term, because your sympathy towards the fandom can be expressed in many ways. You may simply like reading comics starring anthro animals, draw them, or role-play as an anthro animal with your friends. You can create a detailed design of your fursona—your imagined animal-self—and "become" this character by wearing a special suit. You can even attend special furry conventions, where furries can interact with people who share the same interests. "Furry" is also the term for an anthropomorphic animal, even if it's a reptile (though the term "scalie" can be used as well for the latter).

High quality fursuits are very expensive, but they allow for a great immersion into this fantasy world. Furries of Moscow by ThatFrank

While often portrayed by the media as freaks, furries are simply people who love the concept of anthropomorphic animals. The only difference between them and, say, Trekkies (fans of Star Trek), is that they are more visible—by the art they create (lots and lots of original art, not just fan art, like Trekkies), and the fursuits that seem to many people more childish than "normal" cosplay. A person cosplaying as a minotaur (bull-man) will get far fewer judgmental looks than a person cosplaying as a fox-man, which can only be explained by many misconceptions about the furry community.

For furries, anthros are like people of different species, sort of non-human-looking humans. When asked about the appeal of such a design, they usually mention the boring look of human characters (limited by their humanity). Anthro animals introduce a simpler, purer way of communication, without the complexity of "normal" human interaction. And their look can express their character clearly, which is not so simple in humans.

Art by iguancheg

Furries usually have a vast imagination, and many of them express it through their artistic skills. Creating art is the easiest way to make a furry character real and visible to other people. Drawing your fursona and using it as an avatar on social media can let you become that character and be seen as one by others. Role-playing is also easier when you have a "photo" of your character to show other players.

How to Draw Anthro Animals

I mentioned earlier that anthro characters are easier to draw than realistic humans, but easier doesn't mean easy. You still need to know something about drawing humans, because anthro animals are human-like animals. So let's see what you need to know to draw good anthro characters.

Anatomy Is the Key

Humans are the only truly bipedal mammals (walking on two legs as a normal way of locomotion). Therefore, simply making an animal stand on two legs makes it automatically look human-like. 

You can also simply attach an animal head to a human body. However, you lose many opportunities for an interesting design this way, because while it technically can be called an anthro, it doesn't look plausible, which kills the immersion (the "sewn" parts drag your attention away from the personality of the character).

Is it a rabbit? Is it a woman? Your brain has a hard time interpreting such a hybrid as one creature.

To create a realistic furry character, one that people could believe in, you need to look into the anatomy of both humans and animals. Once you get to know it, you'll be able to create convincing designs—anthros that look as if they could really exist. Even simple, purely cartoon characters have their anatomy simplified, not guessed, and this makes a difference.

Rhythm

If you look at humans as a whole, they look relatively similar—some taller, some shorter, some skinnier, some fatter, but these differences are not really striking. Cartoon artists exaggerate these tiny differences to tell us more about a character, and the same should be done with anthros. 

You can achieve this by using a simplified body rhythm. What is the very first thing you see when looking at the character? How would you describe its silhouette if you could only use the terms of simple shapes? Always start your sketch from this, and you can be sure that your character will send a consistent message about its body shape.

If your character is typically cartoon, make sure to repeat the rhythm throughout its entire body, for example: elongated torso, elongated head, long fingers and feet. If you go for realism, this is not necessary, but still make sure that your character has one base rhythm in its whole body.

You can learn about drawing rhythm from these tutorials:

• 
  DRAWING THEORY
  Quick Tip: Create Dynamic Poses Using Gesture Drawing
  Rowena Aitken
• 
  DRAWING THEORY
  How to Use Gestures to Draw Creatures From Imagination
  Monika Zagrobelna
• 
  DRAWING THEORY
  How to Start a Drawing: 5 Methods for Beginners
  Monika Zagrobelna
• 
  DIGITAL DRAWING
  Take Our New Course on Dynamic Gesture Drawing
  Andrew Blackman
• 
  DRAWING
  Human Anatomy Fundamentals: Learning to See and Draw Energy
  Joumana Medlej

Structure

Every animal has its own body proportions. Anthros combine the proportions of humans and animals, but they're still not random. Proportions come mostly from the skeleton: the length of bones and the joints between them. You don't need to know fixed values ("like 13 cm"), just relative ones ("the forearm is slightly shorter than the arm"). 

You can learn the proportions of the bones by analyzing the skeletons of both humans and the animal that you want to use. The Internet is full of great references for this, especially if the animal is one of the common ones. To analyze the proportions, gather a set of various references (the more different views, the better), and sketch the skeletons in a simple way, trying to find a recipe you can memorize.

Later, combine both sets of proportions into one, focusing on functionality as well as the look. Animal legs look the way they look not because this is cute, but because they are optimal for quadrupedal motion. Similarly, the uncommon structure of human legs comes directly from their function—creating an upright position and allowing for bipedal movement. A bipedal fox-man, therefore, can't just be a fox standing on its hind legs—they must be modified to look more human-like. And that's just one of many things you need to consider when creating a body structure for your furry!

Humans have evolved many adaptations for upright locomotion, and lions for quadrupedal locomotion. If your lion-man is supposed to walk on two legs, he can't do it while still looking like a lion!

• 
  HUMAN ANATOMY
  Human Anatomy Fundamentals: Basic Body Proportions
  Joumana Medlej
• 
  DRAWING
  Human Anatomy Fundamentals: Advanced Body Proportions
  Joumana Medlej
• 
  DRAWING
  Human Anatomy Fundamentals: Flexibility and Joint Limitations
  Joumana Medlej

Mass

After you have your proportions, you can add the actual body mass to them. The shape of the body comes from the muscles, fat, and fur, in this particular order. Fur allows you to hide a lot of details of the silhouette, but it still shouldn't be done in a random way—the direction of the hairs is affected by the shape of the surface under them.

Again, this subject is best learned by analyzing the anatomy of real animals and humans. You don't need to go as far as to memorize the name of every muscle and ligament; all you need is the form they make. So search for diagrams of muscles and sketch them, trying to simplify the forms into something easy to memorize and reproduce. You can find such diagrams in my tutorials about drawing various animals:

• 
  DRAWING
  How to Draw Animals: Cats and Their Anatomy
  Monika Zagrobelna
• 
  DRAWING
  How to Draw Animals: Big Cats, Their Anatomy and Patterns
  Monika Zagrobelna
• 
  DRAWING
  How to Draw Animals: Dogs and Wolves, and Their Anatomy
  Monika Zagrobelna
• 
  DRAWING
  How to Draw Animals: Birds, Their Anatomy and How to Draw Them
  Monika Zagrobelna
• 
  DRAWING
  How to Draw Animals: Horses, Their Anatomy and Poses
  Monika Zagrobelna

Once you know where the shape of the animal and human body come from, you can mix them into your design. Feel free to exaggerate!

But muscles aren't everything when it comes to the shape of the body—we have the fat and fur as well. These you need to study separately, to understand how they change the shape created by the muscles. You can learn it by sketching real animals with their muscles only (using a photo reference), and then adding the other elements. 

You also need to remember that photos don't show you the whole picture. You can learn more from videos, and even more from observing the real animals. Take your sketchbook to the zoo!

• 
  DRAWING
  Human Anatomy Fundamentals: Muscles and Other Body Mass
  Joumana Medlej

Details

Finally, when your character has a full, roughly sketched body, you can start adding details to it. Does it have hands or paws? What do its feet look like? What does it wear, what clothes, what jewelry? This is the most fun part about designing a character, but there still should be nothing random about it. Even the details should be functional!

The feet, for example, are used for walking, not for looking cute. The paw pads are not random—they're cushions for the bones in the foot. If your character is bipedal, do paws instead of hands make sense, if it doesn't really use these "feet" for walking? You need to think about all these things if you want to finish the design in a convincing way.

It's not only about anatomy. The jewelry, clothing, and armor must fit the body and allow for natural movement. Don't just draw a bracelet on every empty area of the skin; try to become this character for a while and see what you would wear and how if you were them. Maybe long, dangling earrings are not a good idea for a hunting cat-man? Is wearing a skirt wise if you're moving by hopping? If you keep thinking this way, you'll avoid mistakes that break the illusion you're trying to create.

• 
  HUMAN ANATOMY
  Human Anatomy Fundamentals: How to Draw Feet
  Joumana Medlej
• 
  DRAWING
  Human Anatomy Fundamentals: How to Draw Hands
  Joumana Medlej

Simplify to Clarify

You might have heard of a phenomenon called the uncanny valley. Generally, the more realistic the face, the more we like it, until it gets almost real, but not quite. This little lack of realism is much more unsettling than stylization, because we see clearly all the face isn't. You can use this information to keep your anthros "real enough"—stylized in a convincing way, but far enough from the uncanny valley to avoid comparing it to the real thing.

Manga facial features look good on a typical cartoon drawing, but when they get realistic they become creepy, not better.

Simplification can let you drag the attention to what really matters in your design. Make the feet flat, exaggerate the muscles, make the eyes huge and expressive as in manga characters—and you'll make it clear that it's not realistic because it's not supposed to be, not because you didn't know how to do it.

Simplification removes the unnecessary elements and exaggerates the important ones, but you need to do it consistently to create a convincing image. For example, a nose made from a simple shape without the nose holes will look good only if the rest of the face doesn't have too many details. Otherwise, the lack will be visible and unsettling for the viewer.

Real anatomy is not easy to learn and remember, and simplification can save you from it. People will see a leg even if it doesn't have a perfectly shaped knee—it just needs a joint in a certain place and some mass around two bones. But this is something you need to go to yourself—learn the real anatomy, and then remove the redundant parts step by step. Remember, guessing has nothing to do with simplification; stylization is purposeful, not random.

Make the Face Talk

Humans have a lot of tiny muscles in their faces used specifically for creating various facial expressions. We can also recognize the smallest change in them to interpret the mood of the other person. Animals, though they have a repertoire of facial expressions suitable for their species, are not nearly as expressive as us, and the whole body matters more in their communication than in ours. 

Because of this, simply attaching an animal head to your anthro's body will make it quite hard to treat the creature as a person. We need moving eyebrows, flexible lips, visible whites of the eyes, to convey the messages written in the language of human facial expressions. Moving the ears or changing the shape of the pupils can be just an addition—they're enough for an animal, but not for an intelligent, talking person.

This means you need to simplify the face to make room for more human-like features. The eyebrows are a must, and they have to be mobile—we can read a lot from them. Many animals seem to carry a single facial expression all the time because of fixed facial features that we recognize as eyebrows (for example, many birds of prey look angry or proud, regardless of what they feel). They don't need to have the shape of human eyebrows, but they should be capable of affecting the shape of the eye.

Many mammals have a tuft of whiskers above the eye—you can transform this part into pseudo-eyebrows.

Flexible lips are another thing. If you take a close look at human lips, they're actually a rim of skin curled out. In us and other mammals, this part of the skin has its own muscles, so that we can suckle when we're babies. Because of this, we can move them, though humans have taken it to an extreme—the motion of the lips sends emotional messages as well. Females tend to have fuller lips, which is an easy way to accentuate the sex of your character.

Lips are also important for talking—notice how you pronounce 'm', 'p', 'b', 'f', 'w', 'v' (talking birds can have problems with those). If your character is a bird, you may have to use a compromise—you either keep it realistic and never use any expression around the "lips", or treat the opening of the beak as normal, human lips.

In most animals, you don't really see the white of the eye, and when the animal wants to look around, they usually use their whole head. But humans are different—because there's so much of the white of the eye visible, you can see exactly where the person is looking. 

Hypothetically, this used to help us in group hunting (silent "pointing" with eyes), but today it's mostly used to send non-verbal messages. Rolling your eyes, looking away, looking around when thinking—if you want your character to be able to communicate this way, make sure the whites of the eyes are visible.

Experiment with the size of the eyes as well; bigger eyes are usually more expressive.

But furries are also part animals, and they can have additional means of conveying emotions. For example, most mammals show their mood by moving their ears, and a reptile can use its tongue for something more than tasting the air. Experiment with it to see how you can make these additional motions a part of understandable facial expressions.

• 
  DRAWING
  Human Anatomy Fundamentals: Basics of the Face
  Joumana Medlej
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  ILLUSTRATION
  Human Anatomy Fundamentals: Advanced Facial Features
  Joumana Medlej

Emotions Are Simple

Although we have so many emotions and so many ways to show them, in the end they can be simplified into a few groups. The simplified face of your anthro character can be very efficient at showing emotions, and its simplicity makes it even more expressive—because there's little room for confusing mistakes. Move the eyebrows, drag the corner of the mouth, squint the eyes, and you'll tell a lot. 

Look into a mirror and try to show these basic emotions: joy, sadness, surprise, anger, disgust. See how easy it is? Sure, these are "acted" facial expressions, and we look different when the emotions come naturally, but you don't need this kind of realism for your anthro character. You don't really need to learn this—just make the same face you're trying to draw and you'll see you already know what to do. But if you want to study this topic more, you'll love this complex guide to emotions:

• 
  DRAWING
  Human Anatomy Fundamentals: Mastering Facial Expressions
  Joumana Medlej

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Keep It Consistent

A well-designed character looks the same every time. You don't just recognize it by its species, color, and clothing, but also by the body proportions and the face. That's why it's good to create a reference sheet for your character, where you will show it in various views and with various facial expressions, or in different clothing/no clothing. 

There's more to Donald Duck than him being a white duck in characteristic clothing.

A reference sheet lets you see the character as a whole, not as one drawing. You can use such a sheet to draw the character later consistently, or to show to other artists, so that they are able to create art (or a fursuit!) of this character faithfully. You can learn how to create such a sheet (and how to create a werewolf anthro, too!) from the tutorials below:

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  CONCEPT ART
  Design and Draw a Model Sheet of a Werewolf Warrior
  Monika Zagrobelna
• 
  CONCEPT ART
  Design a Model Sheet of a Werewolf Warrior in Adobe Photoshop: Painting
  Monika Zagrobelna
• 
  HUMAN ANATOMY
  Human Anatomy Fundamentals: Drawing Characters Consistently
  Joumana Medlej

Conclusion

While anthropomorphic characters have been popularized in our time by children's books and movies, they are certainly not limited to them. Half-humans, half-animals can combine the best of both worlds, giving the artist full control over the character without submitting to the stiff rules of realism. They're also so diverse that everyone can create a personalized, unique character expressing their own personality in a way not possible in the human reality.

Are you a furry? What is your fursona? What do you like the most about anthro characters? And if you're not a furry, what are your thoughts on the fandom, or anthro animals in general? I'd love to hear what you think, so feel free to leave a comment!

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Monika Zagrobelna

Poland

I'm a Polish artist with a long experience in doing useless, but creative things. Since I realized how bad I was after all these years, I decided to take fate into my own hands and actually study things in order to draw them properly. My tutorials are the result of thorough studies - I hope they help you as they helped me!

mzagrobelna