What are some real references that look wrong?

[TheSingularitySeed]

IMO using real foreshortening looks weird.
Maybe it's bcuz real proportions don't always work with my style.
I like when people push the foreshortening.

Another one is sunrises.
Too bright and not enough clouds!
I always use sunsets for sunrise refs. I heard movies do the same.

[darthmongoose]

Most action poses and expressions tend to look a bit too restrained when used for comic art. It tends to capture the "feeling" of that motion or emotion better if you exaggerate it a bit. There's even a section on that in Making Comics by Scott McCloud.

Teenagers. If you draw a teenager realistically for what kids that age looks like, everyone will think they're younger than they are because of how TV and films tend to use people in their twenties to play teens. I found this the hard way in the Prologue of Errant, where Rekki and Sarin are fourteen, so I drew them how I remember fourteen year olds looking from years of running workshops in schools and libraries and stuff... and everyone thinks they're like twelve or something.

Here's a funny one though: Flags on ships. When people draw sailing ship with flags, like say a Pirate Galleon, they'll tend to draw the flags steaming behind it, like the flags on a moving car, or a person walking with a flag would.... but actually, because the ship and the flag are being blown by the wind... the flag ought to be blowing in the direction the ship is moving. But it looks so wrong to everyone except people who regularly sail in sailing ships!

[Lensing]

I think you always have to make references your own and bend and change it when you draw it.
I just use it as general inspiration and make my own version of it because they never look right.

[tarraxahum]

.....damn, the flag thing makes so much sense yet I've never thought of it before

my world is changed

[river121693]

I don't think too many photos, if any, can capture how we see natural light--like how red everything is at sunset, or how we see things in black and blue at night. It's almost a mood, and hand painted art are actually better at capturing it.

[TheSingularitySeed]

@darthmongoose
I know nothing about big ships so that's neat!

And teenagers! So true!
I have seen some old looking teens, but even they don't look like TV teens.
It's always funny when a show decides to cast actual teens for extras. The contrast is so distracting lol

@Lensing
Definitely true!

@river121693
Yes! It's a little frustrating taking pics and it just not coming out how you see it. I always edit my refs to be more like how I remembered it.

[NickRowler]

When I worked as a photo editor, I noticed that some old low grade cameras were not good at lighting dark skin especially if someone with lighter skin was also in the picture. A lot of the time what happens is they only correct the lighter skin which can make the darker skin look too dark, washed out or blue.

I am using this screenshot from Stranger Things which definitely had this issue for Lucas. This is not a good reference for how to do dark skin.

[cherrystark]

When I worked as a photo editor, I noticed that some old low grade cameras were not good at lighting dark skin especially if someone with lighter skin was also in the picture. A lot of the time what happens is they only correct the lighter skin which can make the darker skin look too dark, washed out or blue.

I am using this screenshot from Stranger Things which definitely had this issue for Lucas. This is not a good reference for how to do dark skin.

In the show "Golden Towers", Betty White realized this problem whenever she did a scene with Don Cheadle. So she did everything she could (change her clothes, hair color, etc.) to make it easier for Don to be lit correctly.

[TheSingularitySeed]

Oh yes. Another good example of pictures not being perfect.

Shading and highlighting characters is another thing I usually don't use refs for that I only realized just now.

I bet your photo editing experience helps a lot in your art. It's something I want to learn eventually.

[moontokkym]

A tonne of lesser known animals "look wrong" so I tend to use them as inspiration for monsters or stylised "normal" animals. Like the rainfrog looks like an angry pebble, it doesn't even hop, the maned wolf walks on stilts, the tibetan fox looks... incorrect. Even if you were to trace the photos people unacquainted with the animal would assume you can't draw.

[TheSingularitySeed]

LOL I remember the first time I saw the Tibetan fox.
I really thought it was bad taxidermy.

I do more plants and there are also plenty of weird and "wrong" ones.
I've seen plain dragon fruit used as an alien plant a couple of times haha

[RedLenai]

Can't find the original argument but gosh this was so funny, the thread literally reminded me of this situation

And this other thing is more of a personal one, but there is this huge missconception that all dark skintones are warm, for some reason people expect you to have an orange-maroon like skintone for art, saturated and vibrant colors, in art is common to see this as a way for composition and arrangement but at the moment to take references a lot follow this because when they see references from irl pictures they don't realize the manipulation of lighting, reflection, non-natural arrangement (Makeup, editing, etc) which leads to this mistake and basically there is this HUGE argument about "Oh, you're making this character's skin WAY too ashy!" and I also went through this same mistake as well, but fun thing... our irl reference was probably looking at ourselves in the mirror or glancing over at our arms lol.

You learn that is not true that all darker tones are warm, the face alone has more than 30 tones that can go from yellows, to greens, to purples, red, blues and more, make up helps it get an uniform color, accompanied by lightning and professional set-up and real skintone it's hard compared to "the real references" from pictures. During the whole career, I had fellow artists as classmates, and me being the one with dark skin... My skintone is pretty ashy, muted, cinnamon like but with a weird twist to it, I ended up looking like Donal Trump more than 5 times by accident lol.

[JoshRaed]

People who are literally standing stiffly and boringly.

Also a lot of zendaya photos apparently.

[NickRowler]

I have another one...

There is a condition called Brachydactyly type D aka Clubbed Thumb. I have this and so does the actress Megan Fox. It's where your thumb doesn't form properly and it looks super short.

When I took art classes and I was told to draw my own hand but when I did, people said my drawings didn't look right. I think this has also lead to most of my characters having stubby hands because I am mostly using my own as a reference.

[BoomerZ]

When I was in life drawing classes there was lots of times I would look at a pose and say if I drew that how it looks, it would look "wrong". That is why most artist have a set of hand and feet poses they use over and over. They look right. Same goes for faces. If you really look at some faces, little things stick out that would look very wrong if you drew them. People with no chin, large or bulbous foreheads, large nose and ears, etc.

[darthmongoose]

This thread actually reminds me of the time a few years back, I did illustrations on a Doctor Who book, and I had to do a drawing of Jodi Whittaker as The Doctor in her very first scene in the role. I had to reference the scene very closely to get it as accurate as possible...

But then every time I sent them an image, as closely referenced from the scene as possible, I'd get all these notes from the BBC like:

"Make her smile more"
"Her nose is too big"
I was referencing the expression she has in the scene, and Jodi Whittaker does have quite a large, prominent nose (which I personally think is rather attractive), and without it, it looks like a generic, conventionally pretty blonde lady cosplaying as The Doctor. The notes kept coming, even when I gave up on my usual lineart style and did a painting extremely closely referenced from a still frame of the scene where she had the biggest possible smile out of the whole thing.

It was an absolute nightmare. They wanted it to look exactly like that scene, but also kept asking for things that weren't true to the scene.

...and that's why drawing portraits can suck. Everyone simultaneously wants an accurate likeness...but also a flattering likeness, even when it actually makes it look less like that person.

[alliascompany]

As someone who genuinely likes to draw ships, the flag thing is mind blowing for me, not sure how I didn't think of that before

@NickRowler
Had that happened to me. Drew my hand only to be told that it looked too thin. Teacher asked me to hold up my hand, only to go, "Oh, I guess your hand is pretty thin."

[TheSingularitySeed]

@RedLenai
LOL that's a classic!
I have the same problem as that feet person with my flexibility. Some of my joints bend weird so I had to learn how other people bend.

This is a good example of how editing photos can also have problems.
Sometimes photos don't have enough color so adding vibrancy feels like natural compensation. Then that goes through the game of art telephone.
And then you add different backgrounds and styles
I understand why people say the eyedropper lies lol

@JoshRaed
Zendaya's photos? Is this a meme I don't know lol

@NickRowler
Oh this gives me flashbacks to when I thought this was a gendered thing
As a kid I saw men with hands like these so I would add them to manly men. Even tho I knew not all men had these?
I almost completely forgot about that lol

@BoomerZ
Hand poses! Yes!
I like hands better when fingers are grouped. If I move my hands IRL the fingers don't connect but it somehow looks less wrong to do it that way.
The different facial features is also a good point. A lot faces don't fall nicely into that rule of thirds for proportions.

@darthmongoose
Oh I learned the hard way "Can you draw me?" usually means "Can you draw the hottest version of me?"
A little different from company asking that but it's difficult
That's why I don't do portraits hehe

[JoshRaed]

[TheSingularitySeed]

Thank you for sharing!
It's a very good example of picking quality refs to work with