Furry 101

SO you want to be an artist and draw digital art? Well OK, this takes a little time so hang on to your hats and get your Wacom out.
Talking of which…

What you will need:

1. You will need a computer capable of running graphics software. This is a no-brainer, but I had to start somewhere…
2. Mouse or Graphics Tablet.
   OK, this is a bone of contention. Some people say that a mouse is all  you need – and yes, this is true, in the same way that you can theoretically walk to anywhere you need to be, swimming any inconvenient rivers and sleeping under drifts of fallen leaves when necessary.
   However, a graphics tablet, with it’s pressure sensitivity, and pencil like use, will make things so much easier, especially if you use a pencil or pen to do pictures.
   Then again if your chosen workflow is to grasp half a brick in your hand and drag it around, then the mouse is certainly your best bet.
   Wacom do the best tablets – I recommend the Bamboo, or Graphire for beginners. I personally use a Bamboo.
3. Software…
   I use Photoshop. Most of the things I’ll be showing you work fine in Paintshop Pro or The GIMP/GIMPShop – Many items in the tutorial will not work well in Artrage or Painter.
4. A music player with a good playlist. This wills top your brain turning to puddding.
5. Some pudding. Mm. Pudding.

Getting started

For this tutorial I’ll be creating a completely new piece of art – not using some stuff I’ve already made. I will be going through, starting from nothing and taking you right through to a finished peice… now this is how I do the job. This isn’t the only way to do a picture.
During this, I will of course make mistakes. Some deliberate, some genuine – and showing you how to fix these. Everyone makes mistakes – and Digital art is peculiarly good at letting you recover from those mistakes.

Start up your program, create a new document, and then create a new layer.

We’ll start with a sketch; Every picture should tell a story.

In this case we’re going to tell a story about someone who’s been up far too late on their computer. To do this we’ll start out by doing a quick and dirty sketch of the scene, pose our character and then add some detail.

First, we need a sketching pencil – so open up your Brushes palette

Start off by setting the “Control” in “Shape Dynamics” to Pen pressure. This will tell the program to get the size form how hard you press – just like a real pencil. Next go to “Other Dynamics” and set “Pen Pressure” for the Opacity:

Now you’ve set up a brush that works nicely as a sketching pencil Next, change the colour to a nice dark blue – blue pencils are traditional for sketching as “non photographic blue” pencils are used for doing the sketching before inking. In this case it will make it easier for you to ink the picture later.
Any colour will do, as long as it’s easy to see on the background, and doesn’t look like black.

Now let’s set up the scene. First we’ll do the background:

Click to see the full size image. It’s a very basic scene – two walls, a window and a poster. OK, so let’s add some detail…

A desk, a laptop, some clutter. Notice how the lines overlap – We could have avoided that by drawing the desk in first, but then it’d make it harder to arrange the perspective. You can just erase the lines if they’re getting in the way, or use a second layer for the foreground.

Talking of layers, let’s add our character. To make it easy, let’s switch colours and put them on a new layer.

Eesh! What a mess! But we can easily move our character around – slide them further under the desk, or further away – so if you’re not happy with the place you drew them you can adjust. Let’s have a look at just the character, with no background….

Hit the eye icon next to the layer you want to hide, and vanish it away while you look at your sketch.

Hmm. A little messy. Let’s flip that stylus over, or select the Erase tool by clicking it’s icon or hitting “E” on the keyboard. Zoom in using the zoom tool (Z) or , and let’s start erasing those lines.

OK. Much better. Tough I dink that head is at the wrong angle. That’s easy enough to fix… Use the Lasoo tool (L) to cut out the head. You can either hold the mouse down on the button to get the different versions of the lassoo tool, or press Shift+L  to cycle through.

Now you can go to Edit > Transform > Rotate and you should get the “Rotate selection” box up. you can now turn the selection around. You can use the mouse to grab the little cross hairs in the centre of the box and move it – that’s your pivot point… when you rotate, the selection rotates around that point.
Rotate and move your selection around until it’s got that “Big yawn” pose. OK, that looks hideously wrong, so let’s grab the brush tool (B) and start altering it to look less “Snapped my neck, and I can’t get up”.

Much better. Now let’s add some gender identity. I think cervine and female, so let’s look at what that entails.

First of all – gender. The primary sexual characteristics for an anthro are usually breasts. So let’s add those in.

On the left, gravity defying, fanboy pleasing beachball boobs. On the right some far more realistically proportioned and shaped breasts, though it’s still worth noting they’re still exaggerated. No Nipples? No Problem – it’s not a nude scene.
So why bother to draw in all this anatomy? because it’s going to act as a guide for drawing clothes.
OK, let’s also add in some ears and hair, and do a little editing…

I moved the arm and forearm like I did with the head, moved one breast down a little due to it being too high, added the tendon on the inner thigh, and the crease on her side where she’s leaning back. Also I drew in an ear, tipped back – watch your cat or dog yawn sometime; They move their ears around when they yawn – and some hair.

OK. So now we have our doe, in a peculiarly nude state. This is the time to draw in  the secondary sexual characteristics if she’s staying naked, or add some clothes…

Let’s add some clothes. Heh heh heh.

Add a new layer. Pick a new colour, and decide what’s appropriate. Now in this scene, she’s up late on the computer – a Ballgown or Victorian riding outfit – or an Anié battlesuit probably is a little out of context. A nightgown would work, but I’m going to go for a top and shorts.

As you can see – I’ve used the contours of the body I drew to “hang” the clothes off and give me an idea of how they look as I’m drawing them. I made them nice and loose – the sort of thing you sleep in, or lounge around in.

To make it even easier to see what you’re doing, you can use the “Layer Mask” tool to hide part of the layer without actually deleting it…
Select the layer you want, and hit the button at the bottom of the layer palette. You can now use a brush and a black colour to hide part of the layer, white to unhide it, and shades of gray to make parts more or less transparent.

I’ve used the Layer Mask to hide parts of the layer, to hide the sections below the desk and the clothes – So let’s have a look at our scene now:

OK, now we have art. In the next tutorial, I’ll show you how to ink this up.