always remember this pic of my late cat

i get asked how i draw fat ppl pretty often so i wanted to share some of my non-expertise.
i'm a thin person, and not a professional on bodies, so please take these with a grain of salt. this is a list of concepts to consider, directed at artists who a) mostly draw characters and b) mostly draw thin people.
i encourage other people to provide their thoughts as well, especially fat artists :-)

• first and foremost - why do you want to draw fat people? do you want to depict bodies that are like yours, or maybe, bodies that are unlike yours? are you attracted to fat bodies? is there a particular fat person or character you would like to depict? do you want to get "better at drawing," and if so, why? there's no right answers here, but it's good to sincerely reflect on your desires and motivations. (i am firmly against the notion that artists should get better, purely because they're artists. if you want to improve, that's great, but you don't owe the world skillful artwork!)

• second, if you have not drawn/do not draw fat people - why not? artists in fandom/oc circles often exclusively draw characters that they find appealing. does that describe you? when you sit down to draw, do you usually depict bodies that you find normative, or attractive? why do you do that? how might that affect the way you look at people? again, there is no wrong answer, but asking yourself these questions is important.
• if you have drawn fat people, consider how you frame them. are they usually dressed, or nude? if they are dressed, is it modest, masculine, feminine? do you tend to draw fat people paler, with less body hair, with "pretty" faces? are you nervous to draw fat people looking disheveled/unattractive? alternatively, are you nervous to draw them looking hot, or in skimpy clothing? what is your "default" and why do you think that might be?
• don't trust a simple tutorial to tell you how the entire body works. every "how to draw fat people" tutorial i've seen has at least one diagram of "wrong" fat placement that absolutely exists on real people.
• once you start drawing fat people, i recommend you continue pushing the limit of the fattest body you can draw. this is important because a) if you are used to drawing thin bodies, you are probably overestimating how fat you are drawing people, and b) there will always be a real person who is bigger than the fattest person you can draw.
• drawing a thin person as a sketch, and then trying to add fat on top of them, will only take you so far. it's a nice way to practice smaller fat bodies, but bigger fat bodies have a different range of motion, and starting with a thin base will restrict your understanding of that motion. for example, consider a person with very fat arms vs. one with thin arms... a thin person's arms might hang straight up and down at their sides. however, a fat person's arms will naturally rest further away from their body than a person with thin arms, because the fat will push their arms away. if you start with a thin base, and add arm fat, their arm fat will clip into their body fat.
• fat exists in the face and neck, not just the body.
• draw from reference and imagination.
• obligatory morpho fat & skin folds plug. excellent primer on understanding fat and drawing from imagination
• also obligatory belly of the beast plug. this is not a book about art, but it is about desirability, and the racialization, de/sexualization, and pathologization of fat bodies, particularly those belonging to Black american men (and Black americans who are read as men). as a character artist who Draws Hot People, and a white american, it made me seriously re-evaluate my relationship with desirability, and the way beauty affects politics. it is probably the most important book i've ever read and i highly recommend it.
• last note. drawing fat people does not make you a more open-minded or virtuous person. art is cool but it's not everything.

my magnum opus i drew on a magma board last night
featuring doodles I also did on the same board