Rules for Drawing Beth Webfoot

"Actually, it's more of a guideline than a rule..." --Dr. Peter Venkman

This would probably be more appropriate for my DA account journal, but honestly, I don't want to overspam there. So it goes here instead, and then eventually, I'll put it up over there. :)

These are, I guess, "Guidelines" for a few reasons - first of all, I love seeing people draw different characters in their own styles and I hate to say "do it this way and ONLY THIS WAY". If Beth looks a certain way in your head then I encourage you to draw her that way! However, if you're looking for guidance, here we go. :)

Another reason these aren't rules is becuase half the time *I* don't/can't follow them. :P

But I needed to set some things in stone, because certain things I have just never specified even though I do actually do them on purpose instead of just by mistake. ;P

So, with that in mind... Onward!

1) General features, ie, a colour guide: Beth has brown hair and blue eyes. (I didn't choose those colours because the combination was unusual, btw, she just struck me more as a blue-eyed gal; digression) Specifically, her eyes are a *light* blue, not crazy vibrant light but not deep or dark or "midnight" or anything either. Not like Elijah Wood, but still noticably light. Her hair is not light or dark brown, not strawberry blonde or anything, it's just your average brown. I apparently decided on a whim recently that it has red highlights but I think that's only when she's standing just the right way in the setting sun - general light and sunlight don't make her hair look anything but brown. Her feathers are that cream colour, lighter than Gosalyn's, but not white.

I don't mind if you gave her white feathers, y'all. Half the gift art I've ever received of her has her with white feathers. In fact, before I started drawing when all the art I had of her was by Lar deSouza, his first pic gave her cream feathers so I did that when I started aping his design of her. Then he came back and gave her white feathers. Then he went back and forth. XD So, bottom line - I give her cream, if you want to do what I do give her cream, but honestly... pffft. This is one area where I don't give a rat's behind. ^_^

2) Hairstyle: She wears her hair in a ponytail about 80% of the time. She usually only wears it down for special events, I think. Mostly this is for simplicity's sake. It keeps her hair out of her face, etc.

If you draw her with her hair down, more power to you. :) Again, this is not a hard and fast rule, it's more just how I visualize her.

Her hair is in a low ponytail, tied back at the nape of her neck.

High ponytails look incredibly cute on her though. *shrug* Again, this is something that I get about 50-50 of over the years. I honestly think it's a lot harder to draw a low ponytail so I can totally understand why people like to do the high one.

She has bangs, they're just the tiniest bit long, not enough to be messy but enough to cover her forehead and start to drape towards her eyes. She doesn't part her bangs but lets them fall towards her eyes. Think of it as kind of a shield that lets her avoid eye contact without being obvious that she's doing so.

3) Height and body type: Beth is quite skinny. In the early fics I intend her to be underweight; she eats very badly (like, not much) and is tall for her weight. She's not anorexic by any means, she's just skinny. I do think that once she befriends the Mallards and LP, she starts putting on weight a litlte because she's happier, and she fills out some. She remains tall and thin, though.

Officially her height is supposed to be right smack in between DW and Launchpad - I'm not officially sure what the "head count" is so I can't specify it. I'd like to say a head taller than DW and a half-head shorter than LP, but that's an estimate since I know Darkwing is about 3 1/2 heads tall(?) but I don't know for LP. Therefore, I don't know for Beth, but I usually aim for around 5 heads tall.

This is where I fall into "I am totally lying" city. I have never managed to give her a consistent height, due in part to my general habit of making everyone too tall (I've managed to get Darkwing's proportions right ONCE, everybody, JUST ONCE) and also due to just a general inconsistency. But, the above is what I would like to be true, and if you draw and figure things out by this manner, then there you go. :)Another point I'd like to make: technically, if Beth is underweight, she should look it and be a lot more bony and unattractive about it. I'm not able to go there. I don't want to make her utterly unappealing, so I'll never actually manage to draw her looking underweight. :P The biggest rule to follow is that she is beanpole lean, has more on the hips than she does in the bust, and has a long body. She's got a long torso but long legs, too, so there's not a disporportion effect. She's definitely a small bust size but I suppose one could say she fills out a little in that area when she starts putting on more weight. ;)
4) Physical characteristics: She dislikes wearing clothing that shows much of her skin/feathers, so she almost always wears either long sleeves or 3/4 sleeves (you know, like - to the elbows). This is also why she wears turtlenecks. She owns a lot of loose-fitting shirts but not all of them are, some are more form-fitting. But she never wears anything that shows much of her neck, shoulders, or arms, not because there's anything wrong with them, just becuase she is self-conscious. By the same token she pretty much always wears jeans, not often shorts or even skirts; if she did wear a skirt it would be a long one.

She doesn't always wear shoes, but that's not a hard-and-fast rule (it depends more on whether I feel like I can manage duck feet when I draw her *lol*). She has thin hands and long fingers. Despite her poor eyesight and thick glasses, rather than having squinty eyes like Honker she actually has large, wide eyes which tend to make her look either surprised or worried. When drawing her eyes I usually make the lids go up from the outsides (rather than up from the insides, which is the more femme-fatale kind of look). I also give her eyelashes towards the insides, depending on the angle, since this gives her eyes a more innocent look.

She has a DWD-style bill (rather than a DuckTales one like Launchpad). Her glasses are blue, if you feel like colouring them in.

That's about all I can think of. If there's anything you were curious about that I didn't touch on here, ask away, and I'll add it!