I want to paint a mental picture for you you're a Sonic fan and you want to start making Sonic fan art so you buy a Sketchbook and some pencils or maybe even a cheap drawing tablet and you start learning how to draw Sonic you watch one of the many how to draw Sonic YouTube tutorials there are on the internet and find some reference images to go off of and you start drawing and you're really getting into it you feel like you're in some sort of drawing Zen State and the pen is just an extension of your hand an hour or two has passed and you keep drawing and drawing and then you're done finally time to look at your hard work you gaze upon your completed Masterpiece and you think it looks good that's it just good not great not awesome not way past cool just good you don't think it's bad but it's not really wowing you in the way that you thought it would and then you go look on social media and look at other artist drawings and they look way more amazing than yours and then you start to like a failure and you think that you'll never be as good as them and that causes you to give up drawing and then you ask yourself why did I even think I would be a good Sonic artist and then you go cry in the shower for a good 3 hours and okay maybe that last part was just a little bit too personal for me but I'm sure we've all been there at some point you think your Sonic art is good but you know it can be better but how well in this video I'm going to give you some tips on how to improve and take your Sonic art to the next level couple things though before we get started one these these tips don't necessarily need to just apply to Sonic art they can apply to any fandom and even if you're doing original artwork and two most of you guys watching aren't even subscribed to my channel so if you haven't yet please subscribe hit that notification Bell I would greatly appreciate it and without further Ado let's get started tip number one try drawing the characters from different angles and poses I feel like a lot of Sonic artists myself included tend to draw the characters in what I like to call the 45° angle pose even if you don't know what the 45° angle pose is once I show you these images you'll definitely look at those and be like oh I know what that pose is like they'll draw Sonic facing slightly away from the camera usually about 45° away hence the name and they'll draw him with one hand on his hip maybe the other hand is holding up a finger or a pie sign and to be clear there's nothing wrong with drawing the characters like this I think it looks good but if you really want to understand how to draw these characters I think it's really important to learn how to draw these characters from all different angles instead of drawing Sonic from this angle or even the front angle try drawing him from the side try drawing him from like a 135° angle or completely facing the other way to help with this there's plenty of free 3D models online that you can use and change the direction of so that you can see how each angle is traditionally supposed to look along with drawing the different angles try drawing some poses that you've never tried drawing before in instead of the classic Hands-On hips Sonic pose TR drawing Sonic doing a cool jumping pose or sonic speeding away from the camera something else other than just Sonic standing still a good way to practice this is referencing the Sonic Adventure 2 art style Yuji uawa blessed us with some of the raw Sonic poses out there and using them as reference is a good place to start practicing overall changing the Angles and poses at which you draw Sonic in the gang will make your drawings a lot more Dynamic and a lot more visually interesting speaking of visually interesting tip number two experiment with perspective in its most basic terms perspective is the idea that The Closer something is to you the bigger it looks and the further away something is the smaller it looks it's a technique used by artists to create the illusion of 3D space in a 2d drawing playing around with perspective is a great way to create some very visually interesting and appealing compositions for example let's say you're drawing Sonic and Shadow getting ready to Duke it out you could position them on the same axis with Sonic on one side and Shadow on the other nothing wrong with this looks good but what if instead you position Sonic further away from the camera and bring Shadow closer adjusting their poses accordingly now the drawing looks way more dramatic and way more visually intense once you know how perspective works you can start messing around with it and create some pretty awesome and pretty Dynamic and interesting compositions tip number three learn how to draw backgrounds this is something that I'm still learning and I'm also a bit of a hypocrite for not really drawing any backgrounds in the last few shorts I've made I know it seems like a lot of work but brothers and sisters I promise you if you learn how to draw backgrounds they will give your art an instant glow up because backgrounds are more than just what's going on behind the character backgrounds are essentially like characters of their own they can be used to set the overall mood and tone of a drawing whether it be warm and inviting like cream frolicking through a field of flowers or cold and intimidating like Tails badly injured in a destroyed irvan environment even an abstract background can add a lot of personality and Pizzazz but even though abstract backgrounds are cool I think it's also really important to learn how to draw traditional backgrounds you know with like buildings and Forestry Etc I highly recommend checking out this video done by bam animation on how to draw backgrounds they go into a lot of detail about the process behind designing a backgrounds and I find myself going back and watching it over and over some many times one exercise in their video that I found helpful when drawing backgrounds was grabbing a bunch of random items from around your house and arranging them on a table to make an interesting composition this is a great exercise that tackles a bunch of techniques such as drawing with a horizon line drawing from different perspectives arranging elements in an interesting composition and basic shading speaking of shading the last tip is shade your work again I'm not afraid to admit I've been a bit of a hypocrite with this recently but much much like backgrounds adding shading to your artwork gives it an instant glow up and also like perspective shading gives your 2D drawing a bit of 3D depth to it for example here's a drawing I did recently of the new Shadow render here's what it looks like with just flat color applied and here's what it looks like with shading and highlights looks a lot better wouldn't you say and the cool thing about Sonic art is a lot of times you don't even need to get too crazy detailed with it to actually look good even just a subtle addition of shading and highlights will immediately elevate your Sonic art what I usually like to do for my shading is take two colors a dark purple color for the shadows and a light orangish yellow color for the lighting make a layer for shading and set the blending mode to hard light and the opacity to around 40% you can go higher or lower depending on how intense you want the shading to be now just paint in the parts you want to shade now make a layer for highlights set the blending mode to screen and the opacity to around 65% and paint where you want the highlights this is usually on the opposite side of where you added the shading since that's where the light source is hitting the character for an added bonus you can use a soft brush to add some bounce lighting where the Shadows are this is usually very subtle and you don't want it to stand out too much and there you go you've added some basic shading to your drawing it can take a bit of trial and error especially when figuring out what parts are lit and what parts are shaded depending on where the light is coming from but with enough practice you can try a bunch of different shading angles but overall adding any sort of shading to your drawing is going to make it look a lot better than if it was just flat color and there you go hopefully you found these tips helpful in taking your Sonic art to the next level if you did find these tips helpful and you want to see more tutorial videos like this please leave a like on the video be sure to follow me on all my socials Linked In the description below I also have a Discord server that you can join as well that will also be linked down in the description and again make sure you subscribe and hit that notification Bell if you haven't yet so you guys don't miss out on any videos and that's about it see you [Music] on [Music]