# Bio Rust

> Free digital art technique library: anime and character construction, digital painting fundamentals, process and provenance for artists, and free brushes, textures and palettes.

Every page is an ordered method written and tested by the Bio Rust studio (https://biorust.com/about/editors/), and every article lists its sources. Free to read and to quote with a link. No ads, no accounts, no cookies; visits are counted only as cookieless aggregate page views. Section header still lifes are illustrative and generated, as disclosed on the methodology page.

## Start here
- [How to Draw Anime Eyes](https://biorust.com/tutorials/anime-eyes/): the best known method in the archive
- [Values Before Color](https://biorust.com/tutorials/values-before-color/): the fix for most muddy paintings
- [How to Document Your Art Process](https://biorust.com/tutorials/document-your-art-process/): proving a piece is yours

## Character & Anime Art (https://biorust.com/character-anime-art/)
Faces, figures, and stylized character work. The flagship of Bio Rust since the beginning, rebuilt with the techniques that earned the archive its name.
- [How to Draw Anime Eyes: A Complete Method](https://biorust.com/tutorials/anime-eyes/): The eye is the anchor of a stylized face. Build it in the same order every time, from the gap to the lash line to the iris, and it stops feeling like luck.
- [Anime Face Proportions: Head Construction From Any Angle](https://biorust.com/tutorials/face-proportions-anime/): A reliable construction for the stylized head that survives being turned: ball, jaw, wrapping cross, then features, with the measurements in eye heights and head widths for front, three quarter and profile.
- [How to Draw Anime Hair as Blocks, Not Strands](https://biorust.com/tutorials/hair-flow-blocks/): Stop drawing individual hairs. Group hair into a few large flowing masses from the crown, ink the edges with weight, and add one band of shine, and the whole thing reads as hair.

## Digital Painting (https://biorust.com/digital-painting/)
Light, color, and rendering. How to move from flat shapes to painted form using values, edges, and considered brushwork.
- [Layer Blend Modes for Shading, Explained](https://biorust.com/tutorials/layer-modes-shading/): Multiply, Screen, Overlay and Add do most of the work in digital shading. Here is what each one is for, the stack that uses them, and the order to build it.
- [Blend Modes Cheat Sheet for Digital Painting](https://biorust.com/reference/layer-modes/): The blend modes that do the real work in digital painting, what each does to the pixels beneath it, the job it is best suited for, and a starting opacity. Keep it open while you paint.
- [Values in Painting: Why Your Color Looks Off](https://biorust.com/tutorials/values-before-color/): If a painting looks wrong in color, it is almost always wrong in value. Build the value structure in three greys before you touch hue, and color becomes the smaller half of the job.
- [Hard and Soft Edges: Controlling the Eye](https://biorust.com/tutorials/edge-control/): Edges are a language. Where you put hard, soft and lost edges tells the viewer where to look, what a surface is made of, and how fast a form turns away from the light.

## Process and Provenance (https://biorust.com/process-provenance/)
How to document your process, prove a piece is yours, read image provenance, and tell generated imagery from real process work. Practical craft for artists working in the age of generated art.
- [How to Document Your Art Process](https://biorust.com/tutorials/document-your-art-process/): A repeatable way to keep thumbnails, construction, session saves, layered files and timelapse so you can show exactly how a piece was made, and prove authorship when someone asks.
- [Content Credentials and C2PA for Artists](https://biorust.com/tutorials/content-credentials-c2pa-artists/): A Content Credential is a signed record of who made a file and what was done to it. Here is what the manifest holds, how to read one, and where it stops being proof.
- [How to Tell If Art Is AI: A Craft-Based Method](https://biorust.com/tutorials/spot-ai-generated-art/): A craft-based way to judge whether an image was generated: provenance and process first, then construction, edges, light and detail, with an honest account of how reliable each tell is.
- [AI Art vs Human Art: What Hand Technique Teaches](https://biorust.com/tutorials/ai-art-vs-hand-made-technique/): What image generators do well, what they cannot give you, and why construction, value and edge control matter more when a machine can output a finished-looking picture in seconds.
- [Image Metadata for Artists](https://biorust.com/tutorials/image-metadata-for-artists/): Every image carries hidden fields beside its pixels. Fill the ones that claim your work, strip the ones that leak your location, and test what each platform keeps.
- [How to Check Where an Image Came From](https://biorust.com/tutorials/check-image-provenance/): Before you credit, repost or accuse, trace the image. Seven checks in a fixed order, from the largest copy to the visual tells, with a log of what each one showed.
- [Why AI Image Detectors Flag Real Art](https://biorust.com/tutorials/ai-image-detector-false-positives/): Why automated detectors misread stylized and heavily polished hand-made work, what the research actually found, and how artists, judges and moderators should treat a score.
- [Accused of Using AI Art? How to Respond](https://biorust.com/tutorials/respond-to-ai-art-accusations/): A calm, evidence first playbook for artists accused of posting generated work: what to share, what to keep private, how to appeal, and how to stop it happening again.
- [Artist Statement: Write It in Your Own Voice](https://biorust.com/tutorials/artist-statement-ai-writing/): Your artist statement, bio and captions are part of the record around your art. Write them from process notes, keep them specific, and say plainly when a writing tool helped.

## Free Resources (https://biorust.com/free-resources/)
Free for personal and commercial use, no attribution required.
- [Free Brushes: Getting Started With the Sets](https://biorust.com/tutorials/free-brushes-guide/): Which of the free Bio Rust sets suits which job, how to import them into Procreate, Clip Studio and Krita, how to tune pressure, and how to keep a small brush library you actually use.
- [Ink & Lineart Brush Set](https://biorust.com/free-resources/ink-lineart-brushes/): Twelve crisp tapering brushes for character line work. Natural pressure taper, minimal texture, and one inker you can use for a whole piece.
- [Painterly Brush Set](https://biorust.com/free-resources/painterly-brushes/): Sixteen textured round brushes for blocking, blending, and rendering in digital painting. Most finished pieces need only three of them.
- [Paper & Canvas Texture Pack](https://biorust.com/free-resources/paper-canvas-textures/): Ten tileable grain overlays to give digital work a made by hand surface. Set to Overlay or Soft Light at low opacity, applied last.
- [Muted Color Palette Collection](https://biorust.com/free-resources/muted-palettes/): Twenty considered palettes in low saturation ranges for skin, fabric, and atmosphere. Eight swatches each, ordered from light to dark.

## Optional
- [Tutorials archive](https://biorust.com/tutorials/)
- [About and manifesto](https://biorust.com/about/)
- [Studio and editors](https://biorust.com/about/editors/)
- [Methodology](https://biorust.com/methodology/)
- [Contact](https://biorust.com/contact/)
- [Privacy](https://biorust.com/privacy/)
- [Terms](https://biorust.com/terms/)