blazesartbloglmao - Tumblr blog

[blazesartbloglmao]

2023 art summary

so what im getting from this year is i was really busy those first 6 months on account of having a good position at my job before they put me back on desk work because theyre assholes lmao

anyways, 2023 art summary!! im not sure what ive improved with this year aside from shading maybe and just refining my style more. maybe some anatomy has gotten better idk. i restarted my youtube channel stuff, started putting more effort composition just a bit. found a way to draw things that doesnt drive me absolutely nuts with the sketch because for a long time, sketching and then slapping lineart over it has been really tedious. i like to think im finally learning how to combine my love of the sloppiness of my watercolor-and-blue-ballpoint-pen sketches with the potential digital art brings to the table. which is just delightful

hopefully next year, ill actually be able to draw a piece for every month. maybe this new way of doing things will motivate me more, who knows. maybe the speedpaints will, like they used to. im not disappointed with the fact that i only did a little over half of the year again, im honestly just glad i did art at all

feels good to look back and be proud of what ive done

art template provided for free by the lovely minkokev on DA. im grateful they uploaded one at all, because all the others i found i didnt like and i adored the pixelated vibe of theirs. go show them some love

[blazesartbloglmao]

the syndicate

i went through all of my old medibang files to see what was lurking there and found this old sketch i started doing back during techno's birthday stream. the group picture of the syndicate always stuck out to me, and im p sure its because of my own overfondness for group/family pictures in general lmao

anyways, it was a really nice sketch, so i redid the lines and slapped some colors/shading on it. all in all, i think this is one of my favorite things ive drawn this year. i didn't expect to do dsmp fanart, but i think it might always crop up every now and then, the same way i still draw warrior cats every now and then in my sketchbook

also, unless i finish a couple of other things in my drafts, i think this is gonna be the last thing i draw in 2023. so i hope you enjoy it! let the new year be like frozen yogurt in the good place; just okay.

[blazesartbloglmao]

local wet noodle read to by pretty lady

ah haha, ive really fallen deep into it now.

anyways, mary-beth and keiran my beloveds. theres something so nice and sweet about the two of them and i got very upset upon finding out the affectionately dubbed "stinky boy" one night while i was talking to my partner in crime. he has never done a single thing wrong ever

also, hes not a cat in this universe because i said so! i thought it might be entertaining if keiran was actually a coyote, and colm was one too. this sort of could add to the reasons why the gang doesnt initially like him very much. though the two dont look alike at all

did you know coyotes can actually come in quite a few different colors???? i didnt know this and we have so many of them where i live, its a real problem lmao

also, there is a speedpaint to this but its not up yet because when i initially tried to upload it, youtube decided to be a colossal dick. so now ive gotta fix it but there will be one eventually lmao

[blazesartbloglmao]

im sorry, old girl

local boy inflicted by rdr2 brainrot, decides to draw characters as cats. more at 11

yea, my partner in crime got me somewhat into rdr2 last year, and then i got it for myself during a steam sale. now ive fallen so deep into the rabbit hole that ive turned them into cats. almost all of them have designs too! this is hosea and dutch. dont ask how dutch has a mustache still, i dont have answers for it lmao

takes place literally after bessie dies, i was sketching a bunch of things in my sketchbook one day and this was one of them.

i continue to not know how to draw backgrounds

also, i did actually record a timelapse for this using csp's timelapse thingy but i dont want to post it rn. maybe another time. hope y'all enjoy! ive also been writing some fics that are up for your viewing pleasure on my ao3 if youre into that sort of thing

[blazesartbloglmao]

rye whiskey, rye whiskey

rye whiskey i cry / if i dont get rye whiskey / i surely will die

ive been playing an ungodly amount of RDR2 lately because i sprained my knee going down the stairs about a week ago or so (depending on when this post is scheduled) and i keep getting rye whiskey stuck in my head. so i drew my cat characters singing along to it, despite having no idea what the fuck the song is about lmao

one of my favorite things to draw is friends hanging out together and i think this mostly qualifies even if lucifer is very obviously Not part of the group and only there because bloodfang dragged him there lmao. out of them all, rat's the only one who collects these songs and recites them. he learned them from other cats, older cats who lived with humans before the apocalypse and remember these strange melodies they liked to sing. collecting these songs makes rat feel a little more important to the group, because he can offer a form of entertainment when he's mostly bad at everything else

from left to right: rat, tuft, jinx, bloodfang, lucifer

no speedpaint for this one. but i hope you enjoy anyways!

[blazesartbloglmao]

im so sorry (2023 REDRAW)

heyo

if any of you happened to have checked out my youtube channel and scrolled back like 7 years ago, you'd have noticed that 1) ive got a lot of shitty art lmao and 2) i drew this same image all those years ago! ive included the original below the cut, as a way of showing how far ive come in making art since then.

its honestly insane to me that its been 7 years since the initial drawing and not only has the artwork evolved, but so has the story. ive been kind of working on a comic in the background for awhile now, periodically. my books still take precedent and im very much more of a writer than i am a cartoonist, but id love to make this story a reality at some point, even if it'll take a long time.

ill also feature some context under the cut, but for now, i leave you with a link to the speedpaint. said speedpaint took forever to edit and i actually had to loop one of the songs to make it work

anyways, back into the void i go

lucifer (cream cat to the left) and bloodfang (ginger cat to the right) left the city they once called home with a group of other cats, all seeking to escape the cruel cult that reigned supreme, in a post-apocalyptic world where humans died out long enough ago that they've never seen them, but their elders can remember them well enough.

upon reaching this new land, lucifer, who had once been somewhat in a position of power, finds he feels incredibly insecure about what theyre doing now. this new place doesn't value what he's good at (mostly violence and committing atrocities), nor does it hold his belief that only the strong should live. he takes out his aggression on tuft (brown cat in the background), who is doing his best to intergrate himself with the new group of cats that live there.

bloodfang, who was lucifers best friend up until this point, used to share a similar mindset until he went through a few things and learned everything he'd ever thought true was a lie. he attacks lucifer to draw him away from tuft (who is comparatively weaker than those two) and eventually manages to kill him, but not before lucifer brands him in the face with an impressive scar of his own. and, in the eyes of this new group, as a merciless cat killer, capable of turning on anyone at any time.

pictured in the background from left to right are timberheart, dovemist, tuft, rat, ebony and jinx. some of them need design upgrades tbh lmao

and here is the aforementioned original drawing! from 2016 lmao. makes me feel old. anyways, hope you enjoyed!

[blazesartbloglmao]

pinned ya again

i dont remember the context for this nor do i remember why i drew it?? i think i wanted to draw more flirty quino/malikite and play with backgrounds a bit. who knows!

in any case, i hope you enjoy this :)

[blazesartbloglmao]

up in the arctic, there is a little cottage

i think this is the first fanart ive ever posted of a fic tbh. anytime i read fics and feel encouraged to draw something, its usually loose sketches in a sketchbook that never really see the light of day or in the instance of my technoblade design, its stuff i picked up from a fic that i never share the origins of. this on the other hand, is a bit different.

for about a year now, ive been compiling the entirety of the fanfiction collection known as ad astra per aspera by @cacowhistle into a document so i could make my own physical copy. i havent been doing this continuously because yknow, work n shit. but i finished gathering everything while i was getting used to the new PC so i started work on a book cover. thus far, there is only this front panel to show for my efforts. this is the "flats" of that cover, as i like to call it, meaning just the illustration part of the bookcover and not the cover itself.

i think i found ad astra per aspera in my very early days in the dsmp fandom, right around when the exile arc was going on, so there were a ton of fics about that and there were a ton of sbi found family fics floating around as well. i always characterize ad astra per aspera as one fic, despite the fact that its actually 15 works compiled into one series, primarily because all of these fics just feel like chapters of a story told somewhat out of order.

its one of my favorite fics of all time and i am so delighted and grateful that the author gave me permission to make a printed copy for my shelves :) it's taken me a long time, but i hope to be able to release actual pictures of it when i finish this cover. for now, im sharing this front panel with the hopes that anyone who hasn't seen it already, check it out immediately. its so good and the author's written some other stuff that's pretty great too!

this particular illustration is actually a copy of a sloppy painting-sketch i did in my sketchbook 2 years ago. i couldnt scan the sketchbook pages themselves unfortunately, and i think this is a p good recreation of what i did originally

i hope you all enjoy :)

[blazesartbloglmao]

over sixty years, ive been loving her

now we're sat by the fire in our old armchairs / you know nancy, i adore ya

this drawing was literally one of the most frustrating things ive made in awhile. first, i couldnt figure out the poses. then i didnt like the background. i think eventually, i just said "fuck it" and made this lmao. tried to do it in a similar style to "if i never knew you" and i think i succeeded for the most part, though i prefer the former more.

i actually originally made this as a christmas gift for my grandpa last year! it was supposed to be for last year, its looking like he's getting two gifts this year because it took me forever to finish this one.

beorn (the bear on the left) and caoimhe (the fox on the left, pronounced kee-vah or kwee-vah) ó maoilirian are frieda's maternal grandparents! it was foretold beorn was going to be a Hero of the Dredewren Isles, meaning he would accomplish many great deeds, but there would be a catch: beorn would never sire any heirs. he told caoimhe this and she agreed to marry him anyways, she just decided the chieftains wife would be mother to the rest of the village.

they originally thought this meant beorn was impotent but this was apparently not the case. they had at least 18-19 sons, looking various degrees like their parents (the more bear-like sons put a particular strain on her body. islanders are by nature, more hardy than the very human mainlanders but even their magic has a limit), but all died due to disease, accident or unknown causes. their last child together was fiadh. it was a difficult birth and caoimhe; older now and less strong, did not survive it.

in turn, fiadh was raised by beorn solely and whoever he could get from the village to watch her when he was occupied. this image here is meant to show just before caoimhe discovered she was pregnant again, a tender little moment between two older people who love each other a great deal, despite all the tragedy surrounding them

i might keep doing these longer blurbs under the pieces, a lot of the stuff i make requires so much background information to understand it lmao. hope you enjoy!

[blazesartbloglmao]

2022 Art Summary

i honestly didnt draw enough consistently to fill this up which makes me sad and im p sure i havent done the same with this year lmao

the fact that i dont draw consistently and havent really been able to for years is something that's weighed heavy on my mind for a bit. im a little bit of a completionist, i have to do my best to 100% any video game i play (excluding finding all of the koroks in botw/totk because i love myself), and to see these blank spaces brings a bitter taste to my mouth

but then i remember also, that i live a life, i work, sometimes im unwell, and sometimes im just not interested in drawing. none of these things are crimes or necessarily bad, they just art. maybe ill be more successful this year. maybe it'll be next year i manage to draw something every month. maybe ill stick with paper next year. who knows!

the point is, despite how little i drew, im glad i made things regardless. i made things that im pleased with and i like looking at them and that's worth everything in the end.

i hope you enjoy :)

[blazesartbloglmao]

call them brothers

okay so prefacing this by saying i really have no interest in dsmp stuff anymore, ive moved on to other stuff. like, i still keep track of some of the stuff going on in mcyt but beyond that, im working on my own projects. that being said, this particular piece has been a bit of a sore spot with me.

i started working on this back when doomsday happened on january 6th of 2021, with every intention of finishing it. at the time though, it felt like nothing looked right. not the shading, not the characters...everything felt clunky and wrong and i just couldnt force myself to finish it. so there it languished in my WIPs folder, collecting dust as i worked on other stuff and eventually moved on.

then of course, as we all know, technoblade died and i felt like id been punched in the gut even harder. id only gotten into his videos because of dsmp but i loved everything he put out. listening to his streams was of great comfort to me while working on other things and i used to put him on when i was upset about something. i knew he liked to look through fanart the community made, and id originally started this thinking "maybe techno will see it!" of course, as we all know, he never did.

i still finished it though, back in november of last year. i had better designs for the characters, a better understanding of how csp worked and felt it was more up to the task of finishing this than medibang had ever been. this thing actually almost killed my laptop! it was insane lmao it didnt even have that many layers at the end.

and im proud to see it done. im glad to see it finished because even if technoblade cannot enjoy it, you all can and i can, and that's worth it in the end, i think.

sorry for the long tirade. i normally try not to get so personal on this blog (or any blog really) because this is the internet and beyond sharing what i make, i dont really like sharing things about me. but this little story felt too important not to share alongside the art. theyre intrinsically linked to each other and to only share one would feel disingenuous to me.

hopefully, you all enjoy :) blood for the blood god, always

[blazesartbloglmao]

out, damned spot!

i am overfond of macbeth references for a person who hates shakespere.

ive technically had a sketch for this in my drafts for ages but it never really went anywhere because i couldnt figure out how to do what i wanted to do. still honestly cant but i liked how this turned out. it started off as a sketch in one of my sketchbooks that i took a pink highlighter to one night while i was at work. the colors on this are particularly excellent.

quino has this thing where he remembers all of the dragons he's killed from his time in the pit and feels like their blood, plus the new blood he sheds in the events of Constellations is still on his hands. this is sort of meant to be a glimpse into what he thinks he sees. like lady macbeth, there really isnt anything there. only time will tell if he ever makes his peace with what's happened

hope you enjoy!

[blazesartbloglmao]

if i never met you

started getting more experimental with how i slap shading and lineart down, this was when i was using the crayon brush a lot i think??? plus the gouche, as usual. started drawing this because i watched disney's pochahantas one night with my mother, and it has a banger soundtrack, and then i got that song stuck in my head (fun fact! i did not know that they originally cut the "if i never knew you" scene from the movie and only rereleased it in special dvd editions because i grew up watching the special edition of the movie. if i had a nickel for everytime this has happened, i think id have about 5 nickels. which is a fourth away from being a dollar at this point, and rather absurd)

hector and fiadh (pronounced fee-ah) are frieda's parents, though frieda herself takes more after her father than her mother. they met in a tavern while hector's party was debating going after a giant boar and fiadh, being a solitary traveller, offered to help out in exchange for a cut of the pay. the party's leader was an asshole, laughed in her face and later had to begrudgingly pay her for bailing the rest of the group out of what could've quickly become a bloodbath. hector fell in love the minute she sliced the boars head off with a sword she borrowed.

pictured here is how i imagine a reunion would go between the two, if she ever returned to gladeville to see him. theyre much older but still in love and fiadh, though she left, has never loved another in all the time apart. this is one that i wish i could've recorded a speedpaint for but unfortunately, this was before i got my new computer so it was done on my shitty little laptop lmao

hope you enjoy!

[blazesartbloglmao]

made myself mythical, tried to be real

saw the future in the face of a daffodil

the last one of the spotify playlist series that i was able to finish. i still have a few more characters without one but for some reason, its really hard to design friedas and hector technically has one that i want to redraw.

magi's was fun primarily because of her familiars. she keeps a large menagerie of creatures with melanism, starting with the black tabby on her shoulders she calls nyx. she does this sort of to counter the belief that black cats or black animals in general are heralds of death/bad luck. she also did it in a quest to pursue a way to become immortal. yknow, just fun things for a girl to do when shes bored.

also, that one-eyed dog is sort of a tribute to my late greyhound who passed away last summer. thats why he has white on him while the others don't. tyson was a mostly black greyhound and we'd had him since he was a puppy. though it often drove me nuts at the time, i miss how he liked to sit (like a person sits) on the couch and curl up into a little croissant to make me laugh. i hope he's resting peacefully, wherever he is now

i hope you enjoy :)

[blazesartbloglmao]

sold my soul, broke my bones, tell me what did i get?

malikite's design makes it really hard to shade him in a way that looks good tbh. like, i get too attatched to the flat colors and then i dont want to build off of it from there. its a problem lmao.

anyways, the one, the only: malikite! part of the spotify playlist covers series. i think this was around the time i started thinking he needed a new reference because the old one ended up outdated and i needed something to make his playlist look generally better. is also around the time i was still trying to figure out how i wanted to draw lineart. his is very simple compared to everyone elses.

hope you enjoy!

[blazesartbloglmao]

stargazer, stargazer, what do you see?

another one of the pictures intended for spotify playlists. this time, quino! who was surprisingly easy to do in comparison to the other ones i have lying around. i really like how the stars and sky came out, they look really glowy in comparison to other stuff ive drawn. i think this was around the time i discovered the gouache brush on csp lmao

hope you enjoy!

[blazesartbloglmao]

fiadh ó maoilirian

i occasionally like to draw playlist covers for spotify playlists i make of various characters in my books and this is one of them. fiadh can turn into a fox and she honestly prefers that form more than the humanoid-fox form she often appears in around polite company. she also left her family 6 years ago as of the events of Constellations. fun times!

if you'd like to listen to it, you're more than welcome to do so here. i keep updating it and the other ones, so be wary of that. hope you all enjoy :)