How to use references

Pose References

Coming up with a pose on the top of your head requires practice and most of us need some sort of support. To practice, here's a picture of a dog which I drew shapes in:


Now to develop your own style of drawing, you might want to change the proportions a tad bid. For example, if you prefer drawing in a chibi style, the head might be bigger, limbs shorter, etc.


After you come up with your own proportions, you can now apply that to different pictures:

I personally don't like to direct reference like the two examples above. I often mash 2-4 references together to create a single pose:


So here I used top picture for the main body, the 2nd picture for the tail, and the third for the head. After doing this a few more (maybe even hundreds) times, you can probably stop drawing the circles and draw straight from your head!

Color Referencing

On the Popular 24 hour page, I always find beautiful paintings with not only awesome concept,anatomy, etc. But epic colors. (which includes lighting, shadows, etc)


So the first one is a like a 3 minute drawing of a forest and the second one is supposedly an ice cream cone with similar colors and lighting. You dont have to color pick from the original but by picking similar colors, the effect will be similar as well ^_^

Still Life referencing

If you need references for hands, or an object you already have, then use that object. Using photos from google or stock photos can help but you can't really get it exactly how you want it. For example I need a reference of a fist from a certain angle; I can just use my own hands and reference that. You can also use still life referencing for colors; find a spot outside where the lighting is exactly how you want it and draw!