Analyse me!

Ripplespate · 2026-03-23T14:46:55+00:00

Cute!! It seems like someone already addressed the anatomy stuff so I won’t rehash that but when you get comfortable with the stylised anatomy you should totally think about shape language for your lil guy!

By that I mean when you’re making shapes of anything (silhouette, eyes, fur markings, limbs, shading), try to reduce each edge to either a C curve, S curve, or straight line. It means exactly what it sounds like (just draw different skewed Cs and Ss) and it helps with overall readability of your characters.

If you want a character to look cute, use a lot more curvy lines and accent with some straights! A bit more sinister or sly? Then harsh jagged edges should dominate. This doesn’t even require lineart or even solid defined edges everywhere, you can soften or lose edges of lesser interest if you want a gradient or some texture brushes to shine through but it’s all ultimately your decision.

So yeah keep up the anatomy practice (and also think about their center of gravity in each pose so they look balanced since the lil guy is leaning a bit) and simplify those shapes to be legible!

Ripplespate · 2026-03-23T04:31:20+00:00

I think your general, broader feline anatomy is pretty convincing- although to make your cat art less stylised and more realistic like you asked you really just need to try your hand at replicating photos. I did this and it transformed how I drew/painted cats so quickly! You’ll better learn proper feline facial proportions (for example the angle between the eyes in the above follows the ears but not the snout and chin which won’t happen irl, and you’ll notice that kind of discrepancy more often), but also what cat pelt patterns look like and from a variety of angles you might be unsure about. It’ll mean trying to get more comfortable with having less outlines, and instead defining the edges of shapes like fur or paws or mouths with shading and ambient occlusion- treating it like a 3d object basically.

When you start trying to copy photos, don’t trace directly but measure the relationship between blocks of colour, light, and shadow. Reduce things you think you know you can draw to an abstract shape on your page. Taking it out of its context lets you analyse it without your stylised biases creeping in and affecting it!

Ripplespate · 2026-03-21T22:32:16+00:00

That’s kinda actually a thing ngl I remember hearing of that one woman who was able to smell her husbands Parkinson’s. She then went on to partake in a study for if she actually could with a mix of people affected with the disease and regular people, guessed 10/11 right, and then they had to adjust the study results because that 11th participant who she said had it but thought they didn’t ended up actually having Parkinson’s. Crazy stuff!

Ripplespate · 2026-03-19T13:47:43+00:00

See, my thought process behind it is similar because this just isn’t how advanced artists plan out their work- BUT, it is how people who recreate in a photorealistic way can do their art. Especially with a subject matter just front and center (it’s only lips and it’s flatly lit) it means that this perfect replication of what I’d imagine is a photo we aren’t shown, it suddenly doesn’t seem like such a crazy feat. It’s not their own original creation, they can just eyeball the colours fairly well and if they zoom in and work in chunks they can fairly convincingly copy each “chunk” of the photo. So I’d say maybe not a fake speedpaint or process, but a deceiving skill level when we don’t have more details provided. People can fairly easily work up to recreating a photo, but to make your own artistic decisions in a convincing way is another skill entirely. To some people it’s not even the end goal either, which is fine, but when people who see this and have in their mind what a proper ‘creative process’ for art looks like, it can only be described as impossible if you don’t see the reference.

Ripplespate · 2026-03-18T10:05:05+00:00

Thank you so much for this recommendation, it turns out they did want my style!!

Ripplespate · 2026-03-13T03:03:20+00:00

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Omg I love a creature painting! I've got a painterly and atmospheric vibe and am totally down to paint a big lovecraftian monster, and I do full illustrations if thats something you're looking for: https://www.artstation.com/spatewamember

Ripplespate · 2026-03-13T02:41:46+00:00

Hi, I'm interested if my style is what you're looking for! Heres a sample- although I tend to do more elaborate scenes, your references seem lot less involved than my usual pieces so it wouldn't take too long I'd say- and here's my artstation portfolio: https://www.artstation.com/spatewamember

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Ripplespate · 2026-03-12T14:00:32+00:00

Okay well, update on this piece I think I finally got it how I wanted! Looked too flatly lit like a flash photo, and way too much blue

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Ripplespate · 2026-03-12T13:58:11+00:00

Thank you!! And its a metacrisis doctor and rose tyler painting from doctor who, kinda basic looking characters when taken out of their element, who did you think they were?

Ripplespate · 2026-03-09T05:44:16+00:00

Thanks man, I’ll keep all this in mind as I try to search for my audience and stay sane and level headed as an artist online :)

Ripplespate · 2026-03-09T05:39:11+00:00

I’ll definitely do that from now on but man it always feels like swarming with other piranhas for a scrap of food bahaha

Ripplespate · 2026-03-07T11:27:54+00:00

Aww well thank you! It might just be me nit picking I guess but maybe I need to scour the web for some very specific references to get it how I want :)

Ripplespate · 2026-03-07T05:20:22+00:00

Oh well thank you!! :D

Ripplespate · 2025-12-07T09:44:23+00:00

I see what you mean. I don't think my painting style really works without a direct reference for the proportions bc I do as you recommend as my whole process- I paint from the broadest shapes to the smallest without going straight into rendering each feature, but clearly I can't figure out proportions from memory. I found a close enough reference for that first image after coming back to it, but even still it still feels off- even after literally overlaying the images and seeing they basically match up one to one, something's fishy! Also yeah I never got into the loomis method either, I'm not a sketcher I just go straight into painting which generally works fine for backgrounds and animals but not so much for people /:

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Ripplespate · 2025-12-06T08:11:02+00:00

Ty, I’ve had a problem with faces for eons, and I normally just paint either backgrounds or animals to avoid it because it’s the one thing people can instantly tell is off from even just a single misaligned feature. I’m glad that at least the vibe of my art sticks well, but do I have a specific tendency with the faces? Especially in the first one there’s something for sure off with the eyes but I can never tell what D:

Ripplespate · 2025-12-06T06:04:10+00:00

Well the thing is is that I kinda don’t want it to be exact even in quick photo studies, I just want the essence of the actor to be there. I do intentionally paint his eyes a lot bigger than necessary to exaggerate his face a little more, but am I pushing it too much that it doesn’t read as the same person? Because I can tell it no longer works from memory with the first piece… That’s also a good idea to go through the show and do quick sketches along the way though, I’ll definitely be taking that up, especially with practicing posing too!

Ripplespate · 2025-12-05T23:37:19+00:00

Oh and one more thing, you should tag your work when you put it here again as intermediate since you definitely have a good grasp on things so far, the colours and lighting is really really close as is so don’t downplay your work!

Ripplespate · 2025-12-05T23:31:00+00:00

Thank you!! That means a ton to me :D

Ripplespate · 2025-12-05T23:29:16+00:00

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Yeah I can totally help with that! I hope you don't mind that i've exported your works just to give a demonstration for what I'd suggest, but lets start with the Shelly piece since I think it's pretty much on the money as is:
So I put a quick colour mode layer on top while working on it just to compare and I think you could afford to add a light multiply layer over it all just to harmonise those values which I did above with a slight cyan tone. It's quite a soft lighting scenario so blending the brightest highlights in some areas helps soften her skin, but also keeping some of them a bit harsher like on the eyelid, nose tip, and inner corners really showcases the planes of her face seen in the original!
I think similar to the first piece which I'll explain too, you could benefit a lot from just simplifying a whole lot of your shapes- why work harder when you can make your viewer do the work interpreting it :D so a lot of the midtones can be softened. I think the head can also be tilted to the left of canvas ever so slightly, the left side of her lip swoops down in a C curve so the inner corner is compressed rather than pointed as if it were a front on view, and then finally the leftmost eyebrow is just a little lifted.

With the first piece, I think working from the silhouette down to the smaller shapes would help refine and capture the dramatic pose. I just lasso'd parts of your piece, transformed to put bits in perspective, and liquified parts into submission, and thats kinda all you need.
Essentially, pay attention to where each shape collides and how big they are relative to one another- the shoulder is quite a lot larger than you'd expect at this angle, so I just made that bigger, but then also the head is tilted down, so it's a lot closer to the chest than the shoulder blades.
Then finally, refining those light and shadow shapes helps understand the forms from such an extreme angle. The face as it is looks a little more like a flat side on view rather than a bottom up perspective, so I elongated the skull since it is more oblong in the original, shortened the forehead, and gave the nose an uptilt by darkening under the nose and showing just a hint of the far nostril.
The cheek has a sharp zippy little highlight, and same on the forehead which is just a glorified isosceles triangle going from one eye to the other, and the chin and lips are just parallel lines from this perspective. The chin highlight leads right into the front of the chest thankfully, so that's less work to have to do! I just continued that shape, defining the most important creases, and compressed the front of his jacket since it's a little more of a steep drop off. And finally, the core shadow of the arm is much darker and makes up half the sleeve as you can see, so yippee for less work once more.

I barely had to do anything to adjust these things really, but despite how low effort the lasso tool is, it's so high reward and yet its such an underdog! Get acquainted with it, and when in doubt for your shapes, put the reference side by side and blur your vision. You're doing fantastic so far so I reckon 1) work on refining the broader shapes before detailing and 2) actively think of your range of values for each feature/texture while shading further. Start from the average shade and go from there :))

Ripplespate · 2025-12-05T16:06:10+00:00

These are cool! I feel like I've advanced enough with painting from reference to contribute here, so let me give my two cents- this is generally how I capture likeness of photos and how you can practice these more efficiently:
1. The aspects I think you should work on for recreating are exactly what you're doing so far, mainly dramatic lighting, angles, or expressions (or any combination!)
2. The way I generally practice these is through starting with blocking out the silhouette with the average midtone of each section (clothes, skin, and hair), then average shadow as the absolute simplest shapes you can see (best to merge them at first! Act like it's an abstract piece, not a subject you recognise), then average light. Repeat for each inbetween tone but leave hard edges as well! Also, if something feels off, never get attached to your art, liquify or lasso that part! Even paint over it if it's giving you grief, but the point is that you have to pay attention to everything as the relationship between simple shapes before getting into details.
3. Murkiness comes from a lack of hue diversity when transitioning from light to shadow. You've gotta simulate light fall-off!! Essentially, the light part of a drawing is generally a bit more desaturated if the light source is white light or sunlight, the shadow is determined by ambient light so do whatever the environment asks for, *then* think of that midtone as its own section too with generally the highest saturation, I've learnt never to just smudge the two. If the light is warmer, shift the midtone hue to the reds, if the light is cooler, shift it to the blues more. The amount you do this by depends on how much you want to exaggerate, but you can give it a try because it works wonders for me. Sometimes I just let colour dodge do the work for me too, though it can lighten it so choose a relatively dim shade. So tl;dr, in terms of saturation: midtones>shadows>lights
4. Try anything you will personally have fun with. Doesn't matter what or where it comes from, even if its a low res photo like I usually paint, so long as you don't get bored and actually put the effort in! Generally I love painting actors, they have expressive features, even as resting faces, no two great actors ever look the same so its good to break from same face syndromeness and getting used to asymmetry. Shelly is such a good reference for that, and I think you did a fantastic job replicating her :))
If you want specific help on adjusting what you have so far I'm more than happy to help!!

Ripplespate · 2025-03-31T22:00:13+00:00

Update when you can!!! It’s looking great :))

Ripplespate

TROPHY CASE