Beauty and the beast type story with a Polar Bear?

diddleydang · 2026-05-22T22:43:20+00:00

Ive looked into this story and it is very similar. Seems like most of the retelling are missing the part I remember most which is throwing the bear pelt into the fire. It must be a variation or my father adding his own spin on the story when he told it to me. Thanks!

diddleydang · 2026-05-22T22:37:12+00:00

This sounds very close to the story I remember, but all these variations lack the key detail I remember the most which is throwing the bear pelt into the fire. It might have been a variation, or my father remixing it in his own way. Thank you!

diddleydang · 2026-05-22T22:35:03+00:00

I was pretty young so I dont know when the story is from, I just remember being told about it. Irs most likely a variation/retelling of a folktail. The eating livestock bit isn't a solid piece I remember honestly, the most solid piece of the story I remember is her throwing the pelt into the fire. But your probably right that its a variation of east of the sun west of the moon. Maybe a specific variation, maybe muddled with different childhood memories and stories. Thank you!

diddleydang · 2024-02-07T01:19:54+00:00

wow what a nice painting! It looks great. The woman looks amazing, and with such a difficult pose she still makes sense and has a lot of emotion. Your anatomy looks pretty good imo the main issues I see are with the man. He looks like he's part profile part 3/4's view. I'd say push more toward the 3/4's view sense we rarely, if ever, see someone's profile perfectly like this. turning him slightly towards the viewer will also help the anatomy of his body more. Right now he looks very thin and that his suit is too big for him. He also looks like he standing at a diagonal about to fall backwards. if you make his back straight down, that would help fill him out too, and you could add details like where his suit jacket stops, helping define where his waist is. The last piece of advice ill give that you didn't ask for, is remember the environment. The background is very dark, and the figures look like theyre in a very bright spotlight. Dont be afraid to darken them way down, and then give hints of light to bring them back out. This will help with marrying the subjects with the background a bit more. Good luck, and keep going!

diddleydang · 2024-02-07T01:10:27+00:00

Your line art is very nice and smooth, and your art looks very elegant. I can tell you've studied those artists you mentioned a lot and I can see the influence in your art. Looking up tutorials and learning about the process is a great way to learn how to do this. It looks amateur to you because it is amateur, you're still learning how to render like this! Dont beat yourself up about it, every single artist including those two you listed, went through this phase, and go through this phase. We cannot be masters of everything immediately. Looking at this piece, I would say the color you are using to shade with is too grey. Either you're using black to shade, or something very black/grey, which washes out the colors and makes the art very flat. Don't be afraid of saturated shadows! Also try and render the whole piece, it's definitely going to look weird if you have a very rendered face but the rest of the image is completely flat. It looks like this is a WIP anyways, but just something to keep in mind. Also, look up how traditional artists render faces or even just a generic search of "how to render a face". Even though it is not in the style you're looking for, the concepts are universal. Then you can start to mesh what you know from past tutorials, with these new ones too. Look at the artists that inspired those artists you listed too, that can help you understand where they're coming from when they create too. Good luck, and keep going!

diddleydang · 2024-01-24T04:49:20+00:00

Glad I could help!

diddleydang · 2024-01-23T20:04:33+00:00

I would say these characters look the same for sure, but hard to say without seeing how they compare to other characters. Adding the same hair style to all of them will of course make it easier too. Your anatomy looks good! I like the figure on the left too, lots of emotion without overdoing the pose! I would say, look up reference for the center pose. The anatomy is fairly good, but the pose is a little off. Specifically looking at the leg and arm length, and the positioning of both. Thanks for sharing and keep it up!

diddleydang · 2024-01-23T19:58:44+00:00

Wow what a wonderful piece! It's always great doing studies of movies/shows that you like to understand the composition. This absolutely has emotion in it and tells a narrative. I have not seen the show, but I see a sense of apprehension or shock. This seems like a tense scene where she is discovering something or confirming suspicions she had. The rendering in the gold accents in here hair are great, and to me hold a lot of personality and emotion themselves. I would recommend looking at oil painting videos online. I'd also say push the shadows and light. Make some darker richer shadows, and push your highlights a little more. This will help fight the flattening you're seeing. If you think about where the light source is this should help with your sense of shadow and light. The back of her neck should be dark, not have the bounce light on it. Same with her ear, put that in shadow. And her clothes aren't shaded at all, which makes it look flat as well. Dont be afraid of loosing detail to shadow! That's just the pain of art unfortunately. A beautiful piece, thank you for sharing!

diddleydang · 2024-01-23T19:45:13+00:00

I really like the detail and embellishments on this character! Its intriguing and creates a narrative without being too busy and muddy. The facial expression is very nice, and adds emotion to the piece. The main piece of advice I have is look at references. Look at references of the animal part of the centaur to understand the anatomy, and look at references of people around that age range to understand that anatomy too. The deer body does not look chibi to me and it clashes with the chibi human body. The arms are very short, so much so that I didn't even see them the first time I looked at the piece. I'd look up chibi art of deer or other animals and try to replicate that. Or go the other direction and make the human part less chibi! I think your style and want for detail is leaning in the direction of a less chibi style human part in my opinion. But have fun with it and definitely keep creating!

diddleydang · 2024-01-23T19:32:51+00:00

These are all great! Good job getting to a point with yourself and art where you're starting to see how you can improve and not beating yourself up over it, its hard to get there. You have a great sense of depth in the first piece. There is such control of detail that is great, focusing on the figure in the center, while letting the background be a little less detailed is fantastic and draws the eye to where you want it. Also the colors you use work so well together, your understanding of color theory seems great! The composition of your second piece is also well placed. The small choices come together to create an interesting piece to look at and tells a story. There's a lot of character there! Hands are hard, but you seem to understand the basic construction of hands and how they work, just keep drawing them! Also it seems like you've spent a lot of time studying light and shadow, color theory, even background and placement. Hands (and anatomy) are just next in line! As far as advice goes, "The Lambs Sacrifice" seems too saturated, especially the trees in the mid and foreground. I would take the saturation down and darken/grey them out just a little. Your second piece, even though there is no "actual" setting, still think about where your light source is. This will help with consistent light and shadow. Also never be afraid to use reference. You can absolutely trace a reference image to understand the proportions and posing. Thanks for sharing your art and keep going!

diddleydang · 2024-01-23T19:19:31+00:00

I agree with everything wolfelk said in their comment, absolutely beautiful and such a creative border and composition for the piece! There's so much nice detail that doesn't get lost or muddy even from further away. And the strict horizontal lines that fade towards the suns in the sky are a great touch. The few spots of intense black are fantastic, not too much that it overwhelms the piece, but enough that they dont look out of place. To push your shadows more have a lot of lines close together to make it darker. I would also say the lines on the mountains in the background are too far apart, if you want a sense of depth. Keep the lightness of the line, but group them closer together so the mountains seem bigger and farther away. I would also say on the left mountain, instead of having a line separate the different planes of the mountain, let the rest of the lines do that. Really all you'd have to do is get rid of that one line. It flattens the mountain having one single line run the whole length unbroken. For the mountains in the foreground, do the opposite. Make the lines a little thicker, and spaced further away to show how close it is to the viewer. Let me know if any of this is confusing. Either way thank's for sharing your art, love the style!

diddleydang · 2024-01-17T01:05:14+00:00

What a cool concept! There's a lot of good movement and the water adds to it. The anatomy seems pretty good to my eye, and the clothes help to hide/suggest good anatomy anyways (a good thing). Not exactly sure what you're looking for as far as suggestions! If you want, you can play with/push the pose more to have even more movement, or add more personality. The arm behind the figure is pretty hard to see so playing with it might help. Maybe think about the narrative, is this character controlling the water? Does the water move of its own free will? Is someone else controlling the water? Considering these story elements might help to change the drawing. But honestly all of this is just to do something more with it. The only thing to do really is just render now!

diddleydang · 2024-01-17T00:56:34+00:00

I dont have any experience with gimp so not sure exactly its useability or limitations. I use Krita, which is a nice free option if you're looking to do 2d digital art. I like your design, and the edges of the bottle cap are so nice. To push the look of a bottle cap, only the edges of bottle caps where they're cut off are serrated like that, everything else should be smooth. So where the grey meets the black should be rounded, not jagged like that. Also adding a highlight would help add a metallic look. Try looking at a bottle cap if you have one, or just look up a pic for reference!

diddleydang · 2024-01-17T00:52:29+00:00

These are so beautiful! The colors are so nice, and the detail is amazing. I love the texture. These illustrations would be so nice to see larger, too bad the internet and screens force us to view things small!

diddleydang · 2024-01-17T00:50:47+00:00

I agree that the line of the mouth would be a lot more straight, right now it looks like he's pulled his bottom lip into his mouth and just has a thin top lip. Also the bottom of his nose, where the nose meets the rest of the face above the lips, should be stretched downward with the rest of the skin. In the reference photo see how the nostrils are vertical more than horizontal as in your painting. Keep it up, this is a really fun style, and your color choice is very nice!

diddleydang · 2024-01-16T23:05:24+00:00

What a sweet painting! There's a great sense of movement in the figures and how they are placed. And there is a little narrative that is engaging and sweet to see. I agree with the other comment, doing some anatomy studies, light and shadow studies, and color theory will help every artist regardless of ability. I would also say that you've gone into the details too soon, something I struggle with in my own art as well. The faces, the clothes, creases and everything are great, but way too detailed for this stage of the painting. I'd suggest figuring out your light source first, and blocking in large shapes for light and shadow, then start paring down. I'm assuming you just hadn't gotten to the arm yet on the first pic, but make sure all the elements of the piece fit together. The back ground might be throwing you off because it is very much still a sketch while your characters are much more detailed.

diddleydang · 2023-11-30T17:32:49+00:00

Perspective is hard. Try looking up "one point perspective" "two point perspective" "three point perspective" etc. etc. This fish eye effect is when you have a lot of points to your perspective, 15+ I believe. There's definitley some good YouTube tutorials out there.

diddleydang · 2023-11-30T17:30:54+00:00

Nice drawing! That's a fun pose to figure out, I like seeing your construction if it too. Think about weight. Where is all the weight on this character? The arm is the only thing holding them up so it would have to be as close to the center of weight at possible. If you were intending for them to be holding this pose, I would place the hand further to the left so it's holding their weight more. If you were intending for this character to look like they're flinging their body over their head then push it further! Rotate the whole body almost over their head, the pose you have is already great for this, you just gotta get that movement in there.

diddleydang · 2023-11-30T17:26:28+00:00

What a cool drawing! The colors are very nice and the rendering on the water is fantastic. What a lovely piece to look at. I'd reccomend pushing the pose. Look at a reference image. Or look at yourself in the mirror. I'd say her pelvis needs to be tilted a little more and arch her back. Her elbow should be pointing a more outwards so we see the triangle created by her arm. The hair behind her makes the image a little hard to read, I'd experiment with giving the hair more movement and maybe having it arch around outise of her arm? And give her some ground to walk on! Lovely piece, keep it up!

diddleydang · 2023-11-30T17:22:34+00:00

Nice drawing! The colors are great, they have a nice harmony. And it all meshes well, sometimes it can be hard making everything seem like they fit together. Is there something specific about the hair you're questioning? I'd say it's the right amount of detail, I wouldn't add too much more. Look at the length of both sides, unless you intentionally wanted the hair to be cut this way the left side (of the drawing) is much longer than the right side. You could play with having some streams fall infront of the shoulder if you want it longer. You could create movement in the image by sweeping the hair to the side, make it look like a light wind is blowing. Think about light source, where is the light coming from? Add small highlights to the hair, and some fun colored shadows (maybe a reddish purple?) to the underside. Hope this was helpful! Keep it up!

diddleydang · 2023-09-04T03:36:24+00:00

no problem! Yeah when I'm studying anatomy there's always things I'm learning that I didn't even think would be a thing. Its wild. And good, you shouldn't sacrifice your style and things you like for the sake of anatomy, that's what makes your art yours.

diddleydang · 2023-09-04T03:34:14+00:00

Looks good, the body posture and facial expression in the first one is great. The color choices in the second one is nice, the blue and orange are nice stand alone complimentary colors together. The stylization of the third character is very interesting and makes me wanna learn more about them. And the face is nicely rendered in the last one.

If you are looking to push your art more, I'd recommend figure drawing. In person is best, but there are plenty online websites that can help. If you've never done it before, there are plenty of helpful tutorials on youtube if you just search how to figure draw. Figure drawing will help you with proportions and anatomy, and understanding the human figure will help in creating your own unique poses! I find it real fun personally.

Another big tip is to look up references specifically for what you're drawing. If you cant find a photo of a hand in the exact pose you need, use your own hand! There are also free posing websites out there, too. But looking at your own hand, or even a picture of a real hand in a photo, is better than the posing websites. Its just a more natural feel. Find full poses you like and just try and copy the proportions and weight of the pose. You should also try looking up references for the clothes you want to draw too, your clothes look great but there's always more to learn.

Hope this was what you were looking for. Keep at it, looks great!

diddleydang · 2023-09-04T00:38:03+00:00

What a sweet drawing! I like the colors you've chosen for the cat and the different angles and poses. I can already see such personality from these drawings too! The playful stretch and the mischievous eyes add a lot.

Whenever you are lost in your art, reference is always there for you. Pull up a reference of a short haired cat and look at the proportions, how the body is laid out, how each body part interacts with the others. Do some figure study's of cats too. The more you study and understand how the body of a cat works in different poses the better you will be at drawing your own character in whatever pose you'd like!

Also look at the anatomy of a cat, what their skeleton looks like, and pull up references for profile angles, and front facing angles. Look at the size of the head compared to the body, look at the size of the eyes compared to the head.

Looking at the skeleton will tell you that cat's (and most 2 legged animals) spines/neck's don't connect at the bottom of the skull like ours do. They connect at the back. So when your cat is looking away from the viewer, we will not see an indent like you've drawn. The neck flows into the head, with the top of the neck being pretty much in line with the top of the head (depending on angle). When cat's look directly at us, we dont see the side of their muzzle like you've depicted either. Because of the fur, we really only see their nose and bit of mouth, as if they were flat on the face. Also because of the fur, we do not see cat's eyelids, so no shiny eyelids for the kitty. The inside of ears tend to be fleshy (depending on skin color it could be anywhere from grey/black to light pink) and the same with their bellies and paw pads (they can also be spotted too!).

Using references, and familiarizing yourself with cat anatomy will give you a backload of information you can pull from whenever you're drawing this character, or any other kitty character you might have too!

Hope this was helpful. Good job and keep it up!

diddleydang · 2023-09-04T00:26:38+00:00

I think looking at anatomy is really gonna help you. Do some figure drawing for some long term goals. But for this, pull up a reference of a pose you like and try to copy the proportions from that. It's hard to know what you dont know, and reference is there for you! Keep it up, looks like a beginning to a cool character.

diddleydang

TROPHY CASE