eralacrimae - Tumblr blog

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Yes, I'm also taking part in the Warp Gala art event on twitter. I'm just really, really, really fashionably late at finishing it.

(You may guess who.)

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[40k OC wip]

Cornelius Acherusia, what feels like an eternity ago

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I've lived through this for long, long years. I'm still struggling to learn how to think long-term, how to plan for things that make up a long time perspective for my life because my aim was constantly just to get through the day, and even that was difficult so many times. Just to get through the week so I can rest. Then just forget it. No energy, nothing. And then it started again. A horrible cycle.

If you see this - this is your sign. You are not alone. You can get through this. Reach out for help if you need it. I'm rooting for you.

The worst lie a mental illness can tell you is that the way you are feeling, right now, is permanent. In the moment, whether you’re experiencing a depressive episode or a panic attack or hallucinations, confusion, being nonverbal, or any of many, many symptoms, that feeling or symptom is entirely temporary. You will eventually get control back. You will feel better. It might take awhile, but it will pass, and when your brain tells you that you’re stuck this way forever - that’s a lie.

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Intrusive thoughts are unwanted, the person does not want to act on them, they are distressing - and they don't define you or make you a bad person.

I was so relieved when I learnt about this. I was so anxious about having such thoughts, and I felt so weird for having them.

Learning about your mind and how to talk to yourself and be kinder to yourself, and having support helps a lot.

Sharing this here too

I do not usually make posts like this but recently I have seen a lot of content on Instagram, Twitter and I think tiktok too misunderstanding the meaning of intrusive thoughts, which may cause people experiencing them to be upset.

I have tried to shortly explain the difference of impulsive and intrusive and hope it will help people to understand and use the words correctly.

Reblogs are very much appreciated!

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Detail of Vision of Saint Francis of Assisi, Jusepe de Ribera, 1638.

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The Source

11x17 pen and paper

2024 - by me

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hi, i ireally love your work and i don't know if you've answered this before but, what kinds of studies do you do or how did you learn color theory? i wanna get better at rendering and anatomy but im having trouble TT TT

Hi! Long answer alert. Once a chatterbox, always a chatterbox.

When I started actively learning how to draw about 10 1/2 years ago, I exclusively did graphite studies in sketchbooks. Here's a few examples—I mostly stuck to doing line drawings to drill basic shapes/contours and proportions into my brain. The more rendered sketches helped me practice edge control & basic values, and they were REALLY good for learning the actual 3D structure behind what I was drawing.

I'd use reference images that I grabbed from fitness forums, Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest, and some NSFW places, but you could find adequate ref material from figure drawing sites like Line of Action. LoA has refs for people (you can filter by clothed/unclothed, age, & gender), animals, expressions, hands/feet, and a few other useful things as well. Love them.

Learning how to render digitally was a similar story; it helped a lot that I had a pretty strong foundation for value/anatomy going in. I basically didn't touch color at all for ~2 years (except for a few attempts at bad digital or acrylic paint studies), which may not have been the best idea. I learned color from a lot of trial and error, honestly, and I'm pretty sure this process involved a lot of imitation—there were a number of digital/traditional painters whose styles I really wanted to emulate (notably their edge control, color choices, value distributions, and shape design), so I kiiind of did a mixture of that + my own experimentation.

For example, I really found Benjamin Björklund's style appealing, especially his softened/lost edges & vibrant pops of saturated color, so here's a study I did from some photograph that I'm *pretty* sure was painted with him in mind.

Learning how to detail was definitely a slow process, and like all the aforementioned things (anatomy/color/edge control/values/etc.) I'm still figuring it out. Focusing on edge control first (that is, deciding on where to place hard/soft edges for emphasizing/de-emphasizing certain areas of the image) is super useful, because you can honestly fool a viewer into thinking there's more detail in a piece than there actually is if you're very economical about where you place your hard edges.

The most important part, to me, is probably just doing this stuff over and over again. You're likely not going to see improvement in a few weeks or even a few months, so don't fret about not getting the exact results you want and just keep studying + making art. I like to think about learning art as a process where you *need* to fail and make crappy art/studies—there's literally no way around it—so you might as well fail right now. See, by making bad art you're actually moving forward—isn't that a fun prospect!!

It's useful to have a folder with art you admire, especially if you can dissect the pieces and understand why you like them so much. You can study those aspects (like, you can redraw or repaint that person's work) and break down whether this is art that you just like to look at, or if it's the kind of art that you want to *make.* There's a LOT of art out there that I love looking at, probably tens of thousands of styles/mediums, but there's a very narrow range that I want to make myself.

I've mentioned it in some ask reply in the past, but I really do think looking at other artist's work is such a cheat code for improving your own skills—the other artist does the work to filter reality/ideas for you, and this sort of allows you to contact the subject matter more directly. I can think of so many examples where an artist I admired exaggerated, like, the way sunlight rested on a face and created that orange fringe around its edge, or the greys/dull blues in a wheat field, or the bright indigo in a cast shadow, or the red along the outside of a person's eye, and it just clicked for me that this was a very available & observable aspect of reality, which had up until that point gone completely unnoticed! If you're really perceptive about the art you look at, it's shocking how much it can teach you about how to see the world (in this particular case I mean this literally, in that the art I looked at fully changed the way I visually processed the world, but of course it has had a strong effect on my worldviews/relationships/beliefs).

Thanks so much for sending in a question (& for reading, if you got this far)! I read every single ask I receive, including the kind words & compliments, which I genuinely always appreciate. Best of luck with learning, my friend :)

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a journey of pain, growth and persistence

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Lateral View of a Vigile in Hell / Study for Kerberos sculpture, 2020

Ink and bodycolour on paper

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After I spent the majority of my late teens and my 20s in depression...

I turned 30 in December. It was tough, that the time that was "supposed to be my happiest time" seemingly just went down the drain. But no, it didn't. I had to learn to ask for help, I had to learn to stand up for myself, I had to rebuild myself, I had to learn to value my health - both mental and physical - more than trying to please people and conform to their expectations, I had to learn to reach back to my roots and not to feel ashamed for who I am.

There were times where I couldn't imagine I would live this long, or that I would ever be happy and have a happy life.

And now here I am, and, you know, I don't want to shout it out but it feels somehow... in my reach, achievable. That I will be alright.

And I'd like to believe it isn't too late. I've learnt a lot, I still have a lot to learn, and I'm here to learn to make art and live to make art, and I'm staying for that.

You can discover your favourite band when you’re in your late twenties. You can meet your best friend when you’re in your thirties. You can finally accomplish a life goal when you’re in your fifties. Your youth isn’t the only time frame where amazing, life-changing things can happen.

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"being alive is as special an occasion as it gets"

So true.

A brief moment of rationality from the bird place.

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Quick painting study, testing out brushes.

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Fire in Rome by Hubert Robert

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Ascension