When you look at the art can you tell whether it's BL or not? When you read a manga that's not BL can you tell if the mangaka does BL?

I'm usually right when I read a manga and guess that the mangaka does BL. The art really gives it away.
When I'm wrong it makes me sad that the mangaka doesn't draw BL, such a shame. 😐
I find it more difficult when it's only Shonen-ai at best and not yaoi. Take CLAMP for example.

[img]https://i.imgur.com/0Wtxj7y.jpg[/img]

ahaha in my opinion generally you cant really tell.. unless the authors art design gives away some of the guys features differently, because i read a manga that was shounen-ai and if i didnt watch the anime, the art wouldn`t of given it away since
it was really professional! 🙂 (no.6)

but who knows? i never thought about it xD

lιvιɴɢ ιɴ α yαoι woɴderlαɴd
-QaF-

Well, there are some that I think are really obvious, and some that, well, aren't.

For instance, when I check out Kunieda Saika or Ima Ichiko's josei works, they seem really, well, josei. If I hadn't known they did BL, I wouldn't have been able to guess. The same goes for Yoshinaga Fumi or Yumeka Sumomo. I can't tell they do BL just from their art. And, I didn't even know Sugimoto Iqura and Kuon Mao were the same person until I checked out her profile here, and boy was I surprised.

I think, typically, for those who write/draw outside of the BL genre, their art is more... fluid (for lack of better words) and more suited to both genres, rather than strictly to BL. Hence, I think it's more difficult to tell when picking up the author's shoujo/shounen/josei/seinen works that he/she does BL.

(However, I do think that Hoshino Lily is fairly obvious, regardless of which genre she writes in. The entire time I was reading/watching Otome Youkai Zakuro, I kept on flashing back to her BL works... And, I think Clamp is pretty obvious in the BL department too. Not because of their art but because of how they somehow manage to insert a slash couple in almost every single one of their works...)

No, not at all.

When I think of "BL art style" I'm really just thinking of the different styles my favorite BL stories contain.

Most of those styles are shoujo, which means the artist could be drawing anything from het to yaoi to yuri and she'd do it all in the same style. These days we even have shoujo styles popping up in shounen series, so I can't even peg an artist as one or the other just by looking at the art. I have to consider the story as well. If I can't tell the difference between shoujo or shounen from the art, then how could I guess what other types of stories that artist draws?

There are some older shounen styles that remind me strongly of BL books, but that's just because all of the older books tend to have the same type of art: the tight little heads and bodies and thick bold lines - or the very airy wispy hair and backgrounds. There wasn't a lot of variation back then, so anything from those days falls into one or the other with few exceptions. Old art styles make me think of yaoi, but that's only because the older yaoi stand out strongly in comparison to the yaoi of today.

I think the idea of this thread is that people who draw yaoi have a certain way of drawing male characters that can be spotted even in their non-yaoi works. But that could be said for artists who never go near yaoi. Artists tend to find a style that works and use it for every project. Take Yuu Watase (Fushigi Yugi, Ceres) for example. All of her characters are drawn the same way. Because her girls look alike, can you assume that means she does yuri? Of course not. Just because Yoshiro Togashi (YYH, HxH) draws his males the same from one series to the next doesn't mean he does yaoi. The fact that Clamp does all their guys the same way doesn't prove they do yaoi. We know they do yaoi because we've seen them do it. If we hadn't seen it, they would be no different from any shoujo artists who draw all their series with the same well-established art style.

Assuming that just because an artist has a firm style means they do yaoi on the side is a major leap. All of the examples are ones where you know the artist does yaoi on the side. If you didn't know that in advance, there would be no reason for you to suspect they do. If you find out after the fact that they did do yaoi on the side, you can go back and point to their art style as "hints" if you want. But you would never have seen those hints if you didn't already know they've done yaoi. I think people make this connection because they want to see it, not because there's anything inherent in the art style of sometime yaoi mangaka that sets them apart from the ones who never dabble in it at all.

I don't think there is anything inherently different about the art of those who have done yaoi and those who have not. There might be differences in the character depictions and possibly even the story angles, but not in the art itself.