Where can I find drawing reference photos of a diverse set of people?
April 8, 2017 2:20 AM   Subscribe

I love to draw people from reference photos. Most reference photos are of thin, "conventionally attractive," usually white people taken with studio lighting. For the last year, I've mostly drawn animals to avoid this problem altogether, but it's time to break my curse. Please tell me where I can find reference photos of people that aren't white models!
posted by yaymukund to Grab Bag (13 answers total) 12 users marked this as a favorite
 
Response by poster: Oh, I've already explored a bunch of options like Facebook (OK, but inconsistent), historical archives (hard to find, usually white people), and movie screencaps (usually white models). If there's some large archive of historical photos of people of color, I think that would be close to perfect.
posted by yaymukund at 2:25 AM on April 8, 2017


Best answer: I think the National Archives website is exactly what you want. They have various collections of historical photos, many of which focus on the experience of minority ethnic groups. For example, here is a collection of portraits of Native Americans, and here's one of African Americans serving in the Air Force in WWII.

If there's an individual group you can't find, you can always search stock photo websites (like iStockphoto) for specific ethnic groups or physical characteristics. For example, here's a search for "tattooed old men".
posted by yankeefog at 3:39 AM on April 8, 2017 [2 favorites]


Try good ol' Flickr.com and enter different tags reflecting the characteristic you're looking for, like "elderly" or "overweight" or nationalities like "Sudanese" or "Ecuadoran" or "Nepalese" or whatever.

Many of the photos won't be of people (rather: landscapes, food, whatever), but a good portion of the photos will be of people, many of them very unconventionally attractive.

Also search Flickr Groups -- there are many Groups specifically for portraits (although many of those are of "conventionally attractive"), but you can also find Groups like this Flickr Elderly People Group that has over 16,000 gorgeous photos of oldsters with fascinating faces.

Also play with the filters. You can filter for photo size (larger photos might help when drawing from reference) and color.
posted by gritter at 3:43 AM on April 8, 2017


Best answer: The Tate website has an incredible online archive of works with lots of crisp images, they have plenty of photography in the collection (and you might enjoy drawing from other art forms too, it's another level of abstraction I've always liked.)

The Field Museum has an image archive, and this one is more organized for your needs. Lots of great anthropological stuff, many interesting environments and details.

Look for other museum image archives depending on your interests. They tend to be lagging behind in digitalizing collections so the image quality can vary widely but it's a great way to find really unusual things as well as lead you to artists who might have their work displayed elsewhere online, since museums are so much better about attribution than most online image archives.
posted by Mizu at 5:07 AM on April 8, 2017 [1 favorite]


When I worked as a game artist, I used 3D.sk . More than ten years ago, they had quite a range of body types and people from all over the world.
posted by fake at 5:18 AM on April 8, 2017 [1 favorite]


Best answer: National Geographic online is usually a pretty good source for photos of diverse people in terms of age, ethnicity, etc. You may have to hunt around a little for people-based stories as they have a lot of flora and fauna too.
posted by pangolin party at 5:45 AM on April 8, 2017 [2 favorites]


The Wetcanvas online artist community has a reference image library which includes a section on people. You do have to sign up (free) to view it.
posted by bunderful at 7:38 AM on April 8, 2017


I find that Wikimedia Commons which has digital images of stuff from around the world can find you a lot of different types of people. Their people by country category might be useful here and they're free to use so no copyright concerns.
posted by jessamyn at 8:55 AM on April 8, 2017


Still majority white, but quite a lot of body diversity in these photos of Olympic athletes.
posted by Tamanna at 10:19 AM on April 8, 2017


The subreddit r/HumanPorn ("This is a Human Portrait subreddit," reads the sidebar) may provide something and it appears that all but the most recent issues of Sports Illustrated are viewable.
posted by mr. digits at 2:15 PM on April 8, 2017


Instagram - specifically "Body positive" and "feminism" and "equality" type hashtags.
Inclusive and/or plus size companies: Modcloth, PinUpGirl Clothing, Aerie, Dove
Nudity ahead: The Nu Project

There's also artists that may serve as inspiration or advice. For example Octoplum does a lot of this - she seems willing to answer questions.

If you're doing an exact drawing of a stranger on Instagram, I wouldn't share it publicly if you haven't gotten their permission to draw them. Though for practice I think anything is fair game that's public. Many many people with large amounts of followers often have fanart drawn of them on the regular though.
posted by Crystalinne at 3:02 PM on April 8, 2017


Response by poster: Wow! Thank you everyone... I'm overwhelmed by these fantastic suggestions you have no idea. I drew from the National Archives yesterday and ended up drawing 2x as much as I normally do because I didn't spend any time searching for photos 😊
posted by yaymukund at 1:57 AM on April 9, 2017


The Met has also recently made its entire public domain collection available under creative commons.
posted by gennessee at 2:52 AM on April 9, 2017


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