beks-art - Tumblr blog

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was mucking about with this sketch initially as a digital painting but I'm rather fond of the flat colors and might just make this a regular illustration instead.

[beks-art]

taking a break from one drawing to... slap some colors onto a different drawing.. it makes perfect sense. hastag artist problems

ANYWAY

now that I've finally unearthed my tablet from a box that it's been sitting in for uh like nine months I wanted to just quickly put a bit of value and color onto a sketch I did of Luis a couple weeks ago and I'm having one of those moments where an OC is actually coming to life for me. It took me a while to kind of get into the right headspace for roleplaying him because he's in a whole different TTRPG system than what I was used to and it was on the tail end of the DnD campaign abruptly ending. I've been doing picrews to get his face kind of more solidly formed and doing some tipsy sketching nights but being able to actually put him to full color is breathing a lot more life into him in my head now.

He's got blue blood. Literally. Something I've been thinking about a lot is how that would look under a regular human skin tone with regular undertones. I have a bit of a nighttime screen tint right now so I'm hoping this is registering with leaning more into a rosier undertone for him because I think it'd just look pretty nice when trying to bring out the areas where his blood would more noticeably add some hue to skin. Lots of experimental color picking here. I'm not sure if this is going to be a fully finished digital portrait but it sure does feel nice to finally be diving back into digital art again.

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>doesn't draw consistently for months at a time

>decides to try to draw my Lancer pilot while he's dangling on the ropes inside a dumbwaiter being jumpscared by whatever the fuck this creature is from several different angles

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local halfling gets manicure to relax after a traumatic 6 months

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memorializing sasha's horrible mentor who bit the dust in DnD this past session. they're having a great :) time :) at a party and both are unaware he is going to be very, very dead in about five years

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about a year after it was published in print, this is now my full 6 page submission from the Sequential Arts Workshop anthology Rhythms. I wanted to post the whole thing sooner but then just kept forgetting, and then now that enough time has passed it makes me sad to look at this. I'm amazed that I got it done in time to turn it in but what this comic represents is why I was struggling so much in the first place to finish it at all. The burnout hit me hard and there was a time when I thought I seriously was never going to draw again.

I remember one night early on into being a fiduciary I was crying in bed to Alice about how I felt like a stranger to myself. I never got used to the commute, the schedule, trying to fit school in. people say you make time for your hobbies but there was no time and I was not sleeping. The only reason I finally got an idea for the final at all is because I had a dream about a shadowy ghost in my room, and then over time morphed it into a shadow work project.

I do have a little follow up comic idea for this now that I'm actually drawing again. In the mean time, this is one of the most personal things I've drawn. It's rooted in a bad time in my life and there was a lot of pain and uncertainty that went into it despite it's simplicity.

[beks-art]

while I was sad at first that my 11 year streak of no boatman was finally broken, there is something really fucking funny about sitting on this crowded boat full of other dead people and realizing that you can just like. sneak away. and the boatman would not even notice

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Uh so when I started this I was not realizing I’d also be doing an entire background to go with it but I lost control of my limbs and my sanity. Literally I think the secret this whole time I’ve been stuck in art block is that I need to let go of perfection. I let it go, and this is the first thing I drew after that epiphany.

Sasha and their first swordsmanship mentor, Kadell. A bit of a backstory moment.

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I’m not quite sure why it took me so long to realize that part of why it’s been hard for me to draw is because... an extended period of time not drawing meant that it felt like my skills were lacking. I’d attempt to draw something but I hated it because it did not look as good as I know I can do it and it’d feed right back into the fear that somehow I will never draw again. It’s been like this basically since probably 2020-2021? The other day finally I was like “fuck it, even if it sucks at least I drew something” and then somehow that was the thing that just kind of finally got the engine going.

DnD is still inspiring me a lot. I think when I really can get my slightly atrophied drawing skills back up I want to do illustrations of the player characters and NPCs as major arcana cards. Sasha (pictured here in the WIP) is The Fool hands down.

Earlier today I drew a couple quick comparison portraits of them with their sister Isari.

It is definitely starting to feel more and more like my old self. I’m playing it a little safe and not doing something super dynamic right now because this is about getting my brain to remember that I Like To Draw. I’m trying to kill the idea of perfection so that way I can remember how to have fun. I’m sad that it’s taken me this long to start to feel progress again but I’m finally feeling optimistic.

[beks-art]

twice blessed

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I joined a DnD campaign recently and this is the character of one of the other players. Rhi is a gnoll ranger with quite a backstory (some of which is a mystery even to her!). Her current armor is actually made of a few gnoll skulls but I do not have it in me to try to draw those right now HAHAHA

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A Year in the Life and Then Some, 2022

acrylic paint, notebook paper from 2019, union booklet, glue, match, and fire.

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a little preview of a thing I’m working on...

(this was inked traditionally and boy do I need to clean it up)

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smashing my creative block the way that Weird Raven Macton smashes cogs

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“When someone leaves your life, those exits are not made equal. Some are beautiful and poetic and satisfying. Others are abrupt and unfair. But most are just unremarkable, unintentional, clumsy.”  

griffin mcelroy

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An actual, proper reference for my toon! Animals and cartoony features are not my strong suit for drawing but I think I am slowly getting the hang of it. 

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So... I am in the Sequential Artist’s Workshop program this year! The 100% online version, because you could not pay me to live in Florida for an entire year in residency.

Instagram targeted ads are scary sometimes, but an ad came up for SAW several months ago and it had me really intrigued. Since for like... honestly the past couple years, I’ve been struggling with trying to get motivated to draw as often as I used to, but work has been slowly burning me out until it all boiled over last year. Seeing the SAW ad felt like a weird sign. It’s another year long endeavor that I’m doing, but instead of accounting classes for a job that I don’t like at all, it’s art and comics and at the end I will receive a sequential arts certificate.

It’s really liberating to just be in the process of learning these concepts and not feeling pressure to smooth these out and make them pretty. There’s no pressure at all for algorithms and exposure and trying to get retweets or likes or whatever the fuck (I saw, knowing full well I’m going to be tagging this appropriately and reblogging to my main blog later LMAO). It’s just a bunch of artists learning how to do comics. I’m not sure how much of my coursework I will post here but I wanted to put these up at least because I like the concepts I came up with. This was for the Storytelling class and it was practice work to do three narrative images.