Improved filtering for images, exclude certain photo sets/models?

Please consider adding a feature which will let you exclude certain photo sets - the images of the bearded obese man make up more than half of the images that show up in any given session I do. It is incredibly distracting to be taken out of your drawing flow by having to skip past this guy every other slide.

If not excluding certain models, could you perhaps add an option to turn off plus sized models, the same way you can choose to only include male or female models?

Thank you for your consideration.

I'm sorry you dislike seeing or drawing larger people, but I don't intend to enable excluding them any more than I would allow excluding people of color.

yeah i agree with you, i ALWAYS got him! I have nothing against size plus people but i drew him so much that im sure i know his body more than him. This is why i buy the model i want on grafit studio but keep coming here to warm up.

The problem seems to be ratio of images: there are too many images of one model. Perhaps the solution is not a filter, but simply to reduce the amount of pictures of any given model which are in circulation at any given time - until we get more pictures of other models :)

I agree with Theo, though I don't know how hard would it be to code that, I think this would be a great update to the site since some models seem to have way more photos than other models.

I want to say I understand that having an excess of a singular model in the rotation can be an issue with practice.

However, in the many years that this site has been live, and during all the times we've had a single or multiple similar models absolutely dominate the tools with their presence, we have never been asked to remove a model or a type of model from our tools (edit: with the exception of who Kim mentioned for the reasons stated). Rather, there has been a call for diversity to add more people of different bodytypes. We've been desperate for years to add more and more models to our tools because human beings are diverse and we want them represented.

Ask yourselves: if Alex was a smaller sized person, would you still feel this strongly about it? If not, that's a good indication it's time to reflect on how you see large people.

Speaking from a non-moderator position: I find it a little difficult to not see this suggestion as one that came about primarily as a response to a person's size and how it's inherently undesirable, if I'm being honest. Kim and I have been fighting tooth and nail to add more diversity to the tool by including people from all sorts of backgrounds, and it's deeply upsetting that when we used to have average to thin weight models in excess, nobody ever asked us to remove them from the tools like this. Ever.

As a fat person, I have a photoshoot planned this fall/winter with a photographer whom I imagine will take enough pictures to rival Alex's contributions to add officially to the site. I've never modeled for figure studies before, but I desire to be represented as a fat and disabled person who wears medical equipment to live.

Topics like this make me feel insecure and consider not adding to the tool to help solve a lack of diversity, because if I'm 'too much' people will not shy away from publicly demanding that I don't get to have a place like thinner and more abled models. Please be more thoughtful with your words and suggestions. Fatphobia and fat/disability hatred is deeply ingrained in our cultures to the point where most study tools simply don't have any larger or disabled models available at all. And when we finally do, we get a response that insists it's best if we remove a model from the site or reduce their contributions.

That's just not okay. It's never too late to reflect on our own biases and how the way we talk about topics like this keeps harmful biases intact.

You're all very sweet and charitable in your reading of this post.

My view of this is strongly colored in that in the 15+ years I've been producing and running this site, I have only ever received requests to be able to hide 3 models: Olga (A fat woman), Alex (a fat man), and crytpidcosplayer (transgender and disabled). And inevitably, these requests expand from being able to hide a single model to the entire category that they belong to ("add an option to turn off plus sized models" & "only show real men and women"), sealing off any particular problem with that one particular model and betraying that this is just a type of person the writer does not wish to see. Interestingly, I have so far never received a request to show only fat models.

There have been many times that the tool was overbalanced toward one particular model. When we first added Javani, a very fit, conventionally handsome man, it was extremely common that when selecting to draw men, you would see him not just "every other image" but many times in a row. Not one call to hide Javani, ever. There weren't even an above average number of requests for adding more models, above the constant backgroud hum of artists always wanting more models. (There's a very comparable number of images of Alex and Javani, btw.)

I'm very happy, and committed, to continuing to steadily increase the numbers of models, which will gradually solve any model ratio complaints. But that's not how this was ultimately phrased, nor the request that I actually get regarding fat folks, except when people are trying to do a charitable reading of someone suggesting to hide fat people - or non-binary people.

If the concern is ratio, and just bringing things back into more what you view as balanced, Doodlers and above can snooze or remove images from the tool. Such a concern could be answered by clicking through the tool for a bit and snoozing the images you found less inspiring than others, until things settled into a more acceptable ratio, whatever that might mean to you, between the models.

If the concern is hiding a particular person or type of people with a single click, we don't have that option.

If what a person wants is more models with a wide array of body types, and they wish to urge me to be faster about adding them, it's easy to say that without also suggesting that we hide certain types of people.

This request is not a a call against fat people. Diversity is a good thing, but while figure drawing, especially studying the anatomy and complex pose, those models are not very interesting. We don't see people here, we're looking at body to learn and improve our skills.
When the model is naked, we don't see it in a sexual manner, we see it as a bunch of form and volume, we study the muscle, the bones, the light...

The problem is not political (and this is no place to have such debate) but purely pratical.
If the pose is lame or too much fat covering the muscles and bones, it's hard to learn and get better at drawing.
It's important to know how to draw other body type, but it's not this kind of model who will teach us the most efficiently.

• Deleted user edited this post on September 9, 2023 12:15pm.

"Fat isn't a part of human anatomy" is a new one to me.

How fat hangs, compresses, stretches, becomes rolls, adds volume and curve as a model twists and bends and exists is an area of study just like bone, muscle, skin and hair. None of these things exist alone, and to draw a convincing human, study of them all and their interactions is necessary.

If you are currently studying exclusively bone, there are actual skeleton references out there. Ditto muscle.

A pose can be exciting or "lame" regardless of the model's size. Doodlers+ can still hide specific poses they don't find satisfactory.

We don't see people here, we're looking at body to learn and improve our skills.

I find this incredibly ironic because people genuinely don't know how to draw fat people so much that people struggle to draw what I look like all the time. Clearly we need more fat models to enable artists to draw us better.

I'd also like to think that we continue to see the models as actual people who exist in our day to day lives and are part of the world we draw, paint and sculpt. They're not inanimate objects reduced to what people want them to look like. To insist otherwise feels exceptionally dehumanizing to me and I hope to never read a statement like that again.