How to Draw (Black) Babies!

[_Izzy_]

oki yall i know this sounds silly but hear me out TvT

this yap sess is inspired by two things i saw randomly today

1. a post abt a women complaining that a back baby doll having exaggerated lips and a big nose
2. someone redrawing [censored] art and ppl saying the original wasnt [censored]

oki so ima get to my 3 points

• all babies lowkey look the same: as a person who was once a black baby and has seen many black babies irl and online, most black baby noses and even lips are no different then white baby noses! in fact most babies have what i call a lil buttom nose and the more unique shape only starts appearing way later (for me i had the lil button until i was 4-5!)

• giving black babies long hair isnt the progressive move ppl think it is so in the art that was redrawn, both babies had short hair, as babies do, but the person redrew the black girl with longer hair... this isnt rlly cool, most babies have short hair, ESPECIALLY coily haired babies bc we have HELLA shrinkage, this drawing had this baby with a perfect afro puff... my hair is to my shoulders straight and i cant do a perfect afro puff without braiding the back, while everyones hair is different, most babies dont have long hair and your not ACTUALLY representing what black babies rlly look like when u draw them this way.

• Dark skin ppl dont have naturally bright red lips!!! alot of ppl didnt get why the original art was [censored], one thing was the lips. peoples lips are usually are close to their skintone, a rlly dark person would NEVER have rlly bright red lips unless theyre wearing lipstick, which babies... dont wear TvT ive seen other vids off ppl redrawing [censored] art and giving characters bright red lips, just remember that dark skin ppl's lips dont look like that unless they're wearing make-up!

so yeah, here are basically 3 things for the local artist on here to be aware of when drawing baby/young black characters! feel free to let me know if theres anything i need to clarify!

[Yanderemenhera]

@_Izzy_ why... who tf is drawing babies with red lips in general, have they never seen a baby that isn't pale before 😭 i'm just imagining a sephora kid, like 2 or 3 years old with a bunch of makeup on

[_Izzy_]

@Yanderemenhera youd be shocked!!! so many ppl in the replies saw nothing weird or [censored] with the original drawing, and its not rare for ppl to replace drawings of black ppl with donut lips with bright red lips instead

nothing wrong with red lips but like i said its not natural for dark skinned ppl at all!

[Yanderemenhera]

@_Izzy_ don't people look up reference images? or is that a dead skill

[Yanderemenhera]

@_Izzy_ sounds like people are drawing leo kakinoki from ghost stories

[_Izzy_]

@Yanderemenhera people just dont care, alot of black characters and depictions of black ppl are just people practicing preformative progressiveness and i feel like its worse then blatantly [censored] art TvT for me personally its rlly obvious when a character was actually made with intent to represent and when its just someones token character or their just now learning how to draw poc

im convinced most artist dont care abt the cultures the depict and never have:/

i know im making it sound OD but drawing ppl of any background genuinely isnt that hard TvT just be MILDLY culturally aware and aware of their physical traits/differences and treat them like normal people, they should be a genuine character before they are their race (if that makes sense)

[Yanderemenhera]

@_Izzy_ I did once before spend a few hours researching a nice time period accurate outfit for a japanese woman, it was pretty and I took screenshots to make sure it was period accurate, idk why more people don't do that :c I don't think I still have that drawing but she was pretty and I wanna draw her again to use as part of my potofolio for art school

[Yanderemenhera]

I'm not going to say what type of woman she was, as that delves into extremely sensitive topics, but idk, I feel like people should look into different cultures and time periods in general b4 drawing something or at the very least use a ref image

[_Izzy_]

@Yanderemenhera im making a comic abt japanese mythology (and some other cultures will be included) and now that i think of it ppl have NO problem doing research for asian cultures but act like doing some basic background checking for POC is a big ask lol

basic research is just a part of being a artist and personally i enjoy it alot:p

anways i also have many drawings of japanese characters from the heian and sengoku era, might post em:p

[w1ckedsticky1983]

@_Izzy_ genuinely, it always pisses me off whenever someone draws a character that's clearly given eurocentric features but just with a darker skin tone, or, on the other end of the spectrum: just makes a weird caricature of what they think a poc person looks like based on preconceived stereotypes. Like, if you're going to take the time to learn how to draw white features, then you can also take time to practice drawing the anatomy and different traits of poc people. It always just comes off as lazy and somewhat [censored]. Although, there's a clear difference between someone practicing to draw those features than someone who blatantly doesn't care enough to put the effort in. Especially if the artist's main focus is drawing people/humans.

It's not even that difficult to learn, just search up references the same you would do with someone of another race.

[Yanderemenhera]

@_Izzy_ cool XD (about the comic thing) though that's actually a sad observation honestly

[_Izzy_]

@w1ckedsticky1983 omg bro im tryna go to sleep but i made WHOLE post on the Eurocentric thing with dark skin on my old account!!!! I hate this! oki i dont HATE it but its meaningless representation TvT fire emlblems solm prince and princess are a GREAT example of this (even tho i do loveee their designs either way TvT)

[w1ckedsticky1983]

@_Izzy_ uggsgshsu yesss dudeee,,, I remember seeing your post a while back that discussed something similar to this as well. I dunno, it's just always been so weird to me.

Another thing is when they try to blame it on someone's art style, which is just a horrible lazy excuse imo. Any race can fit into someone's art style if they at least try hard enough. I was actually thinking of making a topic a while back proving that you can, indeed, fit any ethnicity into an art style, but it seemed pretentious to me. I dunno.

I see this commonly with a lot of anime art styles, which I do understand that putting in ethnic features such as bigger noses and different hair textures might be difficult, but I feel like you can always just implement these features into the art style. I've seen plenty of example before, so it's really just a matter of effort. Making diverse characters just to be diverse just shows a lack of care people put into the designs because of obvious prejudice or racism, and most commonly both.

[_Izzy_]

@w1ckedsticky1983 omgg this!!!!

yall for anime and chibi artstyles its not that difficult

a good example is my pfp
its still a small line nose but i made the line go from side to side instead of up and down to look wider then other character noses

easy ahh solution, i do this for my chibis aswell
as for more detailed styles i just do a simplified version of the actual nose shape

drawing ppl of different races is genuinely not as painfully difficult as ppl lowkey be making it sound TvT

[w1ckedsticky1983]

@_Izzy_ I wish I could upvote this, but the fuckass update won't lemme lmao, but I do definitely agree with this!!

As for my chibi artistyle, I usually put a mini swirly line in the middle of their face where their nose bridge should be and a flatter line for their nose similarly to what you did when it comes to black characters. And as for white individuals, I typically do the same, except the squiggly line goes on their cheek and the nose line is slightly slanted. I'm probably gonna put a pic here in a lil bit as an example so you can see what I mean better,,,,

I'm horrible when it comes to articulating

[Yanderemenhera]

@w1ckedsticky1983 FINALLY SOMEONE AGREES i deadass hate it when people will draw anime and say they can't draw like, African American people or actual Japanese people =-= and it's "an artstyle" deadass pmo so badly

[_Izzy_]

@Yanderemenhera real shyt TvT

[w1ckedsticky1983]

@Yanderemenhera I physically start tweaking whenever I see an ignorant asshole start spouting bs like that 🤧🤧

[Yanderemenhera]

@w1ckedsticky1983 my Chibis are hevaliy stylized. as for the face just two massive eyes, a month and a [censored] head 💔 I get textured hair drawn, find a nice, pretty color for their skin and such and they look African American then for example, like you can do hevally stylized work and still get it to look right, I usually find a good ref image (I do this with literally everything a lot of the time not just people who aren't white) i'll post an image of a chibi girl soon but I'm busy rn

[w1ckedsticky1983]

i was busy for a bit, so i couldnt post these right away, but here are the ways that i draw chibi-ish characters of two different ethnicities for like the 2 people that wondered:

fun fact: these two dweebs are madly in love and are doomed 80s yaoi/hj

anyways, here are some other poc drawings that i have in somewhat different, but still really simple artstyles,

Spoiler

if these look like the same 2 characters, its because they are LMFAO,, taylor and jeremy are my children zawg <3