Do you have any advice for finding reference images? Your Caleb and Essek drawings are soooo dynamic and well composed and I was wondering if it was just built up understanding of anatomy or well referenced

thamks for the compliment :3c i get most of my references from three sources: googling stuff, using 3d posing software like magic poser, and taking pics of myself lol. in the case of those two drawings i used two references:

1 i literally googled ‘kneel run’ cause google will give you very relevant shit based on like two words mashed together, and this is the image i used as a reference for the Caleb pic:

obviously the finished picture doesn’t look much like this one but i only needed a reference to figure out how close your chest gets to your thigh when you put your hands on the ground in this position. bam! this one helped a ton

2 for the Essek pic i referenced a photo of my fist

in my opinion, when you’re working on a drawing that is supposed to be it’s own separate thing and not a study, it’s best not to reference a photo entirely but to ref one part of it for added realism, or to break down the pose in that photo and draw it from a slightly or entirely different angle. the reason for that is because it makes your drawing look less stiff! usually artists naturally exaggerate and stylize things that are most important in their drawing, which makes it look dynamic and alive. a photo most likely won’t give you that!

another thing i do that i think is very important and doesn’t have anything to do with references is assuming the pose that you want to draw yourself and noticing the way your body behaves and where all parts of it are in relation to each other. right now i’m drawing a pic that features some cuddling and i’ve spent a truly embarrassing amount of time hugging my blåhaj to figure out where the arms should go

hopefully this helps!!