ko2vo

[ko2vo]

When it's #makeabadcomicday2025 but you're melting in 35°C heat

[ko2vo]

whatchu thinking about, creepy boy?

[ko2vo]

It's been 3 yrs post-op and I don't miss the old near daily ritual

[ko2vo]

hi i've been reading Bad Seeds and i think it's a great comic and i love your art style and choices! looking forward to when you pick it up again, keep up the great artwork and hope you're having a good week :)

also, can i ask what you think gave you the best help in practicing art to get to where you are? like drawing with references or copying and repeating certain anatomy structures or just sketching if something pops in your head, etc.

also if you don't read comments on the comic blog i wanted to say here that i think the detail you put into flesh and gory stuff is really nicely done and visually pleasing + believable.

anyway have a good day ^^

Aaaa! Thank you so much for reading it and for noticing the details ;O; I love reading tags and comments on Bad Seeds, they sustain me so thank you for a most delicious and hearty meal

For practicing art! I’ve chronically sketched and doodled since I was kid (in the margins of school notes, in cheapo sketchbooks, etc), went through a visual art program in my high school, and then did a couple of figure drawing classes in university, so I’ve done a mix of everything. Honestly, the past couple of years are the longest I’ve gone without consistently drawing (grad school kicking my ass) so I dunno if my advice will be too helpful, but I’ll ramble a little under the read more:

Studying anatomy and generally referencing photos/real life helped me improve my art the most, personally. IRL references helps more than photos because it’s easier to get a sense of form, depth, and lighting. In school, we did a lot of drawing exercises like contours, blind contours, and quick gesture drawings in our introductory classes and I remember being frustrated when I did them because they always looked awful to me, but it was kinda the point of the exercise. It helps trains hand-eye coordination and build confidence in line strokes because they’re all timed. Gestures are typically very quick, like 1 min, 30 seconds, 10 seconds; contours were usually a lil longer, like 4 mins, 6 mins, etc.

Here's some contours from when I was uhh 16 I think:

Exercises, studies, doing art projects that challenged me in different ways, experimenting with different mediums and styles, looking at other artists contemporary and old alike, they all helped. All of it can absolutely be self-taught as well, there are tons of art challenges/prompt lists out there and resources. One of the biggest benefits to formal classes was feedback from teachers and peers, but a good community or friend group can also serve that purpose.

I continued to do studies after high school, these ones are around when I was 20 or 21:

More than that though, I didn’t JUST study and train, that would have turned me off art real quick. I drew for fun and knew what I liked. For subjects, that was people, figures, and characters. For mediums, it was ink and pen and digital art. Overall, art for me was about storytelling and comics. There are dozens of sketched comic thumbnails that have never seen the light of day in my sketchbooks, as well as RPG maker game maps, concepts, and character designs.

I remember this was me doing a comic of my high school friends and I in a zombie apocalypse at 15 lol:

General sketching comics and character ideas and fandoms from ages 15-18 (I didn't do a lot of fanart but OFF was a big one, idk why I drew homestuck dave tho cuz I haven’t read beyond the first 2 acts lol):

I like getting the ideas down, even if it's messy and they never develop fully. I used to be very precious and secretive about ideas, but at this point I’ll toss ideas at my artist and writer friends cuz im not doing anything with them and we’ll tell the stories differently even if I do get to it. I like exploring toxic and unhealthy character relationships. I wind up exploring queer and peripheral topics. Gore and body horror and bodies. Quotes litter my pages, some are concepts, or snippets of conversations characters have, or what I overhear from people irl or streamers, or just words that sound pleasing.

Here’s an RPG I wanted to make about a group of masked kids that steal rich people’s pets to collect the reward money, and it eventually goes all wrong:

Here’s another RPG about an Angel Surgeon, who needs to deliver a pill by travelling inside a mutated angel with his surgical team (I was really inspired by a yume nikki fangame game called Vis I think):

I also just like hanging onto all of my sketchbooks to revisit ideas I’ve mindlessly jotted down, seeing what I’ve improved on and sometimes digger deeper into old ideas. Bad Seeds started out as a few sketchy interactions in comics I drew in an itty bitty dollar store sketchbook when I was either 19 or 20 lol first Daniel I ever sketched:

Not the first Poet tho; Poet was repurposed from another, even older story I had where he was an obsessive stalker of one of the main characters, but he was very out of place cuz the story was supposed to be a silly and cozy college romance? And Poet just emerged from the ether and brought a ton of darkness into that otherwise lighthearted universe LMAO but I liked his character, so he got shelved until Bad Seeds happened. It's useful, sometimes I've completely forgotten my own ideas and artwork until I pull out a sketchbook and rediscover old ideas.

So yeah, TLDR: when in doubt, just draw! Training and doing different exercises helps improve anatomy, memory and accuracy, giving yourself challenges can help you discover preferences and weaknesses to work on, but don’t forget to just draw what you enjoy and be self-indulgent, even if you think its bad.

My sketchbooks have turned into more of an esoteric visual journal recently as I try to get back into the groove. Some recent scribbles, quite happy with my crayon croissant:

Hope that was a lil helpful! Thank you for messaging!

[ko2vo]

[ko2vo]

sometimes ya just gotta doodle some dark academic refs

[ko2vo]

I'm just spinning my wheels tbh. hoping to get some traction soon

nonetheless: hiiii, it's good to hear from you again 💜

Box! It’s nice to hear from ya, I hope you get unstuck soon!

[ko2vo]

Happy New yearrrrr! How we surviving so far?

[ko2vo]

Very important reminder! This made me check my 3DS, which was fine last year when I moved but the battery has definitely started bulging now. Not significantly but enough that the back cover was raised so time to recycle it for sure.

Haven't used it regularly for maybe 3 years.

Hey if yall have any older electronics be sure to check in every once in awhile that their lithium ion batteries haven't gone bad!

Especially if you have a psp (playstation portable); my gf asked me to check mine and I'm glad she did cause this was a fire waiting to happening that was stored under my bed 😱

[ko2vo]

Take responsibility.

[ko2vo]

Cancer rot

[ko2vo]

Been REALLY inactive since starting school, but I recently got a secondhand iPad and have been trying out procreate. Here are some doodles while I’ve been trying to figure it out.

[ko2vo]

This isn't an official event, it's just a personal prompt list I'm sharing since people seemed to like the one I made in '22. Don't ask me about rules, cause there aren't any. Get as literal or symbolic as you want, mix up the order of the prompts, replace some with your own, go extreme turbogory or make it implicit, be a completionist or take it casual, whatever you're feeling. Go nuts, be free

[ko2vo]

Some crops from this year's artfight posts!

Experimenting and trying to get used to Procreate. Feel free to hit me up over there =w=

[ko2vo]

aneasthetize

[ko2vo]

Photoshoot with my new SON

I started crocheting him Feb 2023, and just finished a few days ago! I estimate he took about 90+ hours in total, by far the biggest crochet project I've done =w= I made some changes to this free pattern (colours+upped the hook size to 4.5 with a tight tension)

Last pic are some of my other creations that he lives with on the back of my couch now owo

[ko2vo]

tamagotchi garden my beloved