Art Resources
This page compiles websites for art reference including anime style tutorials, screentones, manga fonts, perspective drawing tutorials, figure drawing and anatomy tools, and classical art resource databases.
Art Reference
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art
- The MET's online gallery is a treasure trove of historical resources at high resolution, I have spent hours on here.
- Discogs
- Useful for looking up album covers, I have also spent hours on here.
- Aesthetic Research Institute
- Graphic designers and researchers have documented their attempts to categorise art movements or aesthetics after the 1970s. Find names to describe aesthetics you may remember from days forgotten.
- Finding Advertisements
- Tips and database links from Michigan State University to find historical advertising reference.
- Settei Dreams
- A database of character reference sheets for japanese animators, excellent resource for learning to draw your favorite anime characters.
- Gurney Journey
- A blog full of detailed articles about art by Dinotopia creator James Gurney. May help you learn about some impressionist or realist artists and their techniques.
- BookLive
- A Japanese eBook site, but you can find some manga here not on other sites, I've bought a few for visual reference as they weren't legally available in English.
Pixel Art References
- MobyGames
- Screenshot compilations for a variety of retro consoles, warning some 18+. Many pixel art games are recorded on this site in case you are looking for reference material.
- Spriter's Resource
- Sprites and backgrounds from classic games. Excellent for studying sprites from old games.
- Image Dithering
- A description and source code of 11 dithering algorithms by the creator of PhotoDemon's dithering engine. Will be of interest to pixel artists and those interested in image processing algorithms.
Anime Style Tutorials
- Anime Style Tutorials (Ichi-Up)
- Ichi-up is a japanese site with high quality anime illustration tutorials written by professional artists. Download a translator plug-in for your browser and enjoy this great and overlooked resource.
- Lemma Soft Forum Resources
- Artistic resources for those interested in visual novel and story-based games.
- How to Draw and Paint Glittering Eyes (Ichi-Up)
- A translator plug in is recommended for Ichi-Up tutorials. Learn techniques to make a glossy anime eye.
- How to Draw Fruits - Strawberry and Lemon (Ichi-Up)
- I never got around to doing this one but it looks really appealing, would be good for food illustrators.
- How to Copy To Be Able to Draw (Ichi-Up)
- A useful tutorial to help you replicate poses from memory. Mainly it reinforces the necessity to practice drawing from memory.
- Paint Hair In 7 Steps (Ichi-Up)
- Some useful tips here to select colours and make your anime hair look 'glossy'.
- How to Draw Long Wavy Hair By Referring To A Ribbon (Ichi-Up)
- Helped me with drawing wavy hair.
Manga Drawing Resources (Digital)
- Screentones for Photoshop
- Downloadable screentones, including dot patterns, noise or static tones, lines, plaids, wires, weaves, and bubble style tones.
- Let's Create a Manga (in CSP)
- An official video resource but goes into some depth on using the manga drawing and creation tools in Clip Studio Paint.
- Free (Japanese) Fonts For Manga
- Different kinds of manga-style fonts if you want to type japanese characters. Even includes a pixel-based font.
Perspective Drawing Tutorials
- Perspective Grid Assignments
- Good exercises to help you get used to eyeballing perspective grids. I use this technique quite a lot to create a perspective grid.
- The Theory and Practice of Perspective by G. A. Storey
- A useful free resource to help you get used to projecting shapes in perspective.
- HandPrint: Advanced Perspective Techniques
- Not for beginners but a helpful breakdown of circles in perspective with different techniques. Would be helpful for drawing a spiral staircase.
- Circular-Based Arches
- Some terminology and drawing techniques for architectural arches.
Figure Drawing
- Quickposes
- Timed resource to practice figure drawing.
- Male Head Light Reference
- An in-browser 3D tool that lets you rotate a faceted human head and the light source. Helpful to get the light right on faces.
Anatomy
- AnatomyLearning
- A free tool for viewing muscles, skeletons, and more in your browser. Rotate, zoom, and pan over 3D models.
Classical Art
- Digital Rare Books Archive
- The Institute of Classical Architecture & Art has collected a large number of public domain resources about old objects, artifacts, architecture, building techniques, ornaments, and much more.
- Classics Databases by Harvard University
- Tools and resources for finding records of old objects, online collections, museum catalogues, inscriptions, archaeology, and more.
Vegan Art Materials
- Vegan Art Supplies
- A blog post by a website called Jackson Art with examples of products that are vegan and an explanation of which versions aren't vegan.
- Vegan Gesso
- A short blog post by artistvegan on Wordpress about gesso (type of glue typically made of animal matter) and vegan alternatives (namely acrylic glues).
- Alternatives to Beeswax
- An article by the website Crafting a Green World about candelilla wax as an alternative to beeswax for crafting projects.
Misc
- Monitor callibration: Setting Gamma
- How colours and value range should look when Gamma is set correctly.
