mjhartwork

[mjhartwork]

2 normal people who you should let investigate your shed full of poison

[mjhartwork]

a disco elysium portrait of Jinshi, to go with that one of Maomao I did.

process below the cut!

he had a rough start because i tried tilting his face up a little bit, and i couldn't make it look right. he just looked like he had a square head. we called him "the Jinch" and my friends made me make him bald and then the next day i redrew his face to be a more normal angle

[mjhartwork]

Disco Elysium style portrait of Maomao

process under the cut

i've been accused of "maomao vibes," so i started with a sketch of my own face, and then changed some of the features to be slightly more in-line with ming dynasty portrait ideals. then i maomaoified it :)

being able to use myself for shading reference helped a Lot!

maybe the cat silhouette and medicine cabinet are too representational to be "elysian," but i've still barely dipped my toes into expressionist painting.

I think I want to do one for Jinshi next! Shes gotta have her Watson, right?

[mjhartwork]

the Disco Elysium artbook has process pictures of Elizabeth's portrait, and I want to expressively loosen up my art, so I decided to do a master copy study of her portrait stage-by-stage!

original below the cut

yeahhh it's a pretty poor screenshot (,_,)

[mjhartwork]

This is @soliddraws's lil guy, Oliver, in the coziest corner of his eldritch pocket dimension filled with all knowledge

[mjhartwork]

The Great Buzzcut Growth Experiment, part three

this is a continuation of the buzzcut growth reference photos I've posted, I've linked the other posts at the bottom of this one!

Month number seven... a month of discovery! I found out that, with sufficient bedhead, I could grow an antenna! Also, if I swooped my hair back while it was wet and held it in place with a hat or headband until it dried, I could comb my hair (with my fingers) into a sidepart that kept my "bangs" out of my face! (and the separatists from my sidepart could form an antenna too!!)

month number eight... not many photos, but there were more discoveries! I could put my hair into a little ponytail!

Month number nine! In the second pic, I showed what it looked like wet before I styled it. At the far left of the middle row is my group critique outfit for this project, and I wore pigtails in honor of Dorothy's twin braids. I've never liked wearing pigtails before, but they looked cute this way!

Last but not least, month number ten! The last five pics are from right before I got it buzzed off all over again, so I had just washed it and not bothered to style it. I think you can see why I had to style my hair.

It was exhilarating watching my hair change so quickly, so that it was like I had a new hairstyle every day. For years before I did this, my hair had always remained the same, with the only change being that it crawled down my back inch by inch. This was a wonderful experience! (except for month 5)

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[mjhartwork]

The Great Buzzcut Growth Experiment, part two

this is a continuation of the buzzcut growth reference photos I've posted, I've linked the other posts at the bottom of this one!

Month number four! I've got great faces, don't I? By the way, that bottom-middle one was taken by my roommate with her nice camera, so it's one of the nicest photographs I own, and also the only one in this reference series that isn't taken by an android phone! Savour its glory!

Month number 5. This was my least favorite month. My hair flattened, and so I missed being spiky. My new "bangs" itched my forehead.

Month 6. It started out as miserable as the last month, and none of my colleagues recognized me when I came back from winter break! (granted, before winter break, i was a porcupine. Now I looked like a lost Beatle. (but when I started the school year with a fresh buzzcut after a year of 2-ft-long hair, more people were able to recognize me! (I guess that's the power of "bangs."))) But, towards the end of the month, I started realizing that it looked... kinda cute??

Also, the reason there's so many back pictures for this month is because I was taking reference photos for this piece. The grey shirt is before washing my hair, when it was oily, and the black shirt is when I had clean hair.

Continued in the next post

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[mjhartwork]

The Great Buzzcut Growth Experiment, part one

Howdy! I'm an artist who prefers photo references for hairstyles, and when i tried to find references for what a buzzcut looks like when it grows out, there weren't any for straight hair that didn't get a different haircut in the middle of the journey! (I found out why. If your hair's straight, there's some ugly phases you'll want to skip.)

So, i buzzed my hair off (actually, my mom and stepdad buzzed it. Thanks, mom and stepdad!!), and now I'll provide the annotated-and-dated photo references of my 8-month hair growth journey so that you don't have to buzz your own hair off too!

I won't apologize for any odd expressions, outfits, or photography choices. I am who i am, and the person that I am takes pictures with an old android phone.

(JSYK, my hair grows at .8 inches per month, and the only hair product I ever used is shampoo.)

month number one! just a basic buzzcut. It sure was weird going from 2 ft of hair to none! I liked it a lot!

month number two, things got fuzzier. Top right and bottom left was reference for these mockups, and bottom right is me trying to get a reference for a hand in this painting

It's month number three, and as you can see, i have gotten porcupiney. I knoowww the elephant one looks bad, you can't see most of my hair in it, but it shows a little of the way it crumpled when i put sunglasses on it!

i'll continue this in the next posts!

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[mjhartwork]

literally one right after that message-

I've never had commission scam bots come into my notes before this month, has anyone else been noticing a surge?

[mjhartwork]

First commission of the summer, for @time-jester! Jacqueline and Nate are so cute!!

[mjhartwork]

I've never had commission scam bots come into my notes before this month, has anyone else been noticing a surge?

[mjhartwork]

for an assignment, i made a licensing collection called "Memento Putrefacere," or, "remember you will rot." (or, if i allow the classical latin scholar in me to directly translate, it just says "remember to rot.")

Most text flourishes/ornamentations/embellishments/whatever are either floral or completely abstract. Well, I like fungus, and fungus likes to eat corpses, so I based these assets around that. Perfect for goth poetry and classy ecological studies! (if you are writing a study on fungus/decay, or could use these for other pursuits related to those topics, I will give you these assets. for free.)

[mjhartwork]

a city icon for Ljubljana, Slovenia. Ljubljana castle inside the silhouette of one of the dragons from the famous dragon bridge.

sorry, no transparent png :( there's some clipping issues

[mjhartwork]

i made a mastercopy of the dragon city logo for an assignment. So i guess i just kinda have this now...a perfect transpaent png png (and adobe illustrator working file) of the old dragon city logo...and if you download it from this post now you'll have a perfect transparent png of the old dragon city logo...

i'm sure there's a use for it other than staring in wonder at the great job i did on that egg.

But i haven't found that use yet.

[mjhartwork]

This group project was fun! We each designed a wizard of oz character in the style of Mary Blair, the golden age Disney concept artist. I chose Dorothy (and Toto!)

Once i tested out all the (default) Firealpaca brushes I could use to imitate a gouache style, and downloaded these wonderful free 8k paper textures, it was off to the races!

[mjhartwork]

Have you ever seen the UPA style? that's what a lot of famous old animations, like the pink panther or Rooty Toot Toot, are in. It broke away from classic disney-like proportions and techniques in order to be more abstract.

we were tasked with designing UPA-style characters according to the prompt of a paranoid general Latrine, and their declared enemy, the friendly alien Zontar.

I was a little worried that UPA style would be too exact for me to mimic, but it was pretty fun!

I based my general latrine off the silhouette of a toilet, and I got the colors from a swatch one of my classmates made from UPA cartoons.

[mjhartwork]

concept art for Roxy Roberts, the human protagonist of a book I'm making up called "Flying Blind." (here's the book cover and more information about it!) Because of her curse, she was yoinked from earth by the ancient spells of the mythical reality of Lux.