[Hubble]

I've noticed a major lack of diversity when it comes to humanoid art and character adoptables on CS, so here's a pretty generalized tutorial on how to respectfully draw characters of color. Humans are obviously extremely varied and I highly doubt I'd ever be able to hit every point in one post, but I hope there are some tips here that can help some of you out!

|| Skin Tones

• Human skins varies in hue, saturation, and brightness. Skin tones can be cool or warm, bright or dull, and light or dark. Play around with different tones when designing your characters!
• Don't just take a light tone and lower the brightness when you want to draw a darker character. This gives you dull, corpse-like tones instead of vibrant and eye-catching ones.
• Every skin tone has undertones in addition to its saturation and brightness. Search around for warmer or cooler shades to add some diversity among your designs.
• Don't be afraid to eyedrop colors from real photos! Just be aware of the lighting in photos and how it may affect the colors.
• You're free to use the chart in the image above if you'd like to, but be aware that it is slightly exaggerated to express the difference in various skin colors.

|| Facial Features

• When you look at a black-and-white photo of someone, you can still tell their race without being able to see their skin color. This is partially thanks to how distinct different facial features are to different groups of people.
• Avoid giving POC European features. If your black character looks exactly like a white character with darker skin, it's a good sign that you need to work on varying how you draw facial features.
• Eyes, noses, mouths, and face shapes are all included here.
• Examples: East Asian people tend to have rounder faces and monolids. People of African descent typically have wider noses with flat bridges, as well as larger lips and rounder eyes.
• There are always exceptions, so don't be scared to get creative. (One of my closest friends is of mixed North Indian and Native American heritage, and they have bright green eyes!)
• Always use references!
Resources for this include:
Artbreeder - Great for learning how faces work in general. The portrait option allows you to use artificial intelligence to change features and experiment with features distinct to certain ethnicities.
Line-Of-Action's Faces & Expressions Tool - Lots of face references from real people.
• It should go without saying, but avoid stereotypes and racist caricatures.

|| Color Shifts

• For people of color with darker skin, tones change depending on the body part. Lighter colors can be found on the palms of the hands and soles of the feet. This is important to keep in mind when drawing such characters.
• Take caution not to make this coloration too light! While the example here would still probably be acceptable, having too great of a contrast can be more reminiscent of minstrel shows than an actual person of color.

|| Hair Texture

• Humans have a lot of really great hair textures, and each one can be styled all kinds of ways!
• Be careful not to draw coily-haired characters with curly hair.
• Hair types are a great thing to add to anthro characters for some diversity. I personally have seen a few fursonas with dreadlocks and I really realyl love them.
• Again, references are your friend. There are thousands of search results for any hair type and style you want.
Resources for this include:
Hair Texture Chart

As always, if you have any questions or think I should add anything, let me know! And never let me hand letter this much ever again.

[superfruit!]

mmark omg

[AdamJ]

a tip on the skin tone,
(that I use)
I often use a color picker to find more of the right color I need, and edit it to the saturation/ shade I need.
(for the others reading this post, you look like you got it down!!)

[Loelya]

these are some fantastic resources! <3 thank you so much for putting these tips together

(mark, so I can find it later)

[jasps]

oh delicious, tysm for putting this out there for people!

[Buzz Aesthetic]

This looks so good! it'll be nice to use as a reference to come back to, thank you hubblelinking so i can have this in the same place too!

[trashguts]

ahh this is really nicely put together!! i hope it helps people :-D !

having some kind of labelled transcription of the text on the oekaki would be nice (i can tell the post has a lot of the same points but i cant read the text on the oekaki very well (maybe because of my screen resolution slkdf) so i cant tell if it's exactly the same/touches on the same points or if im missing something not being able to read it :'>)

[sweathie]

hubble, this is awesome!
maybe you could put in a bullet point about skin undertones? that helps a lot with highlights/shading and helps darker skinned characters not look ashy

[cambion]

oh hell yeah this is so well done !! thank u for your service king

[Hubble]

ahh this is really nicely put together!! i hope it helps people :-D !

having some kind of labelled transcription of the text on the oekaki would be nice (i can tell the post has a lot of the same points but i cant read the text on the oekaki very well (maybe because of my screen resolution slkdf) so i cant tell if it's exactly the same/touches on the same points or if im missing something not being able to read it :'>)

Ah, great tip! I'll do my best to add accessibility descriptions from now on. For this one, they're all just shortened versions of the respective text in the description.

hubble, this is awesome!
maybe you could put in a bullet point about skin undertones? that helps a lot with highlights/shading and helps darker skinned characters not look ashy

Great point, I'll add some stuff in a moment about it.