pigeon-splice

[pigeon-splice]

waiting to actually post this when i get confirmation that i don't need to post this as "spoilers"

like, if you know you know. But if you don't know... does this tell you anything?

I wanted to give that vibe. Specifically "WHATS UP FUCKS GUESS WHO JUST GOT OUT OF PRISON" for the first crowd.

[pigeon-splice]

speedpaint link

i wish i was good at irl watercolors but at least i can... practice having the anxiety... in krita

i wonder what he does with all that mayonnaise i give him

[pigeon-splice]

speedpaint progress

dry brushes, my beloved, i'm sorry i ignored you for so long

the issue i have with my portraits rn is that i am constantly trying to fix issues with anatomy, lighting, basic things after i've started detailing, and that is so much more time consuming to fix at that point. i really need to have something i can stop at to say both "this looks fine" and "this looks like it could be finished", like a rest stop of some sort. so between this portrait and the next sweater portrait (the thing i'm working on right right now) is to get to that happy balance.

and then it'll be time for the ides of march, which i first said was going to be balatro but tbh that sounds more like an april fools thing. so actually it'll be turnip boy robs a bank. Or really turnip-chan is packing heat. i'll post about that

oh, also i made my icon the same across everything except bluesky. i love that ill purple pigeon guy but hes seven years old and considering that i keep drawing that lil blob as a signature when i remember to it feels more right to use him as the bird instead. his name is meatball and i got him from ikea.

And on tumblr and bluesky, pigeonsplice has the childbirth adelle shitpost face, because it feels right...

pidge relearns portraits in order of sweater drawing difficulty (2/?)- agnes in lorien

[pigeon-splice]

I KEEP FORGETTING TO RECORD

out of energy, so i cant finish this today. i'll probably finish it by sunday. this is becoming more complicated than i was intending

at least i figured out how her dress is supposed to work... maybe...

[pigeon-splice]

i forgot to record but i think i have one more session left

out of energy, so i cant finish this today. i'll probably finish it by sunday. this is becoming more complicated than i was intending

at least i figured out how her dress is supposed to work... maybe...

[pigeon-splice]

out of energy, so i cant finish this today. i'll probably finish it by sunday. this is becoming more complicated than i was intending

at least i figured out how her dress is supposed to work... maybe...

[pigeon-splice]

I super fumbled the piece i wanted to finish this week so i'm trying to cram one as quickly as possible so i still get one up

thankfully i know nikki has my back

i have enough of the colors and the shapes, tomorrow its just cleaning and a bit of detailing and then i'll put it aside

[pigeon-splice]

you know i wanted to have this be the last recording and post it after the final goes up but uh. i ran out of disk space for the recording. so one more recording before it goes up

so close

[pigeon-splice]

and we're back

I had to deal with an urgent situation yesterday (everything is fine it was just something that needed to dealt with turbo immediately) and i ended up not being able to finish all the princesses yesterday. and I'm really tired today but i really needed to get them all in some sort of state... you can tell which ones i drew today... they look like a mess lol

there's a bit that didn't record , its when i was drawing the razor and suddenly she's there along with a worm that says DEN, even though that became the beast.

then it's doing lighting plans. I really want to give this somber but intimate but intimidating look? so the lighting will be focused on the princess in the middle, who i need to find a way to show that its the heart of shifty. I might do it via hands? I don't know about the knives. i feel like it would be cleaner to have lil glowy noodle hands everywhere that does the composition what i want - little lines from the hands that converge on the princess and the rim lighting on all the other princesses doing a bit of a spiral thing that encapsulates lq and shifty. in the next two days i need to finish this up - i think tomorrow will need to be finishing up lineart and basic lighting and everyone's faces, and the day after will be for details. and then it goes up on valentines day

anyways time to sleep

night

[pigeon-splice]

i took a copy of the image as it was now and put that as the background, and each original layer in the painting is behind the background. When i work on it, i bring it above the background to work on it. So i have an idea of what the lighting should be - which was added on top of all the layers instead of being per painting layer - and i can compare and contrast it while working on the more detailed version

or at least when i just turned it off to work on the individual figures.. i'll fix the lighting for everyone once everyone is blocked in for real.

something big that i needed to change was the apotheosis, which i felt like was too similar to that one drawing that Abby did on stream for STP:PC. so i made her a mouth and cleavage instead. granted, that adds the lil eye dress thing she has, which is a fit that i'm a big fan of.

Another thing is that I FORGOT ABOUT THE FURY. I need to figure out where to put her...

i think the next steps, after getting all the princesses back in (hopefully today???), are

fixing the lighting

cleaning up everything and doing the lineart thing

just really fucking with the colors. crazy shit involving curves. idk i'll figure something out

Two things i've remembered since working on this is that iridescence is a thing (so i have something to think around when adding colors to this thing that should really just be monochrome) and that i have a poster of The Forgiveness Of Jon just looming over my computer. Whenever i forget how good monochrome is supposed to look, i always to forget to look up...

[pigeon-splice]

it begins

i was worried about getting ideas for this, but then i decided to let myself cry a bit and put hurt by johnny cash on. and then i had a lot of feelings that i could finally vent. i put it into planning this. the thumbnail i drew when i first had of the idea (the princess and the player dancing on a hill of a bunch of princesses) ended up being something else; i wanted something that has this idea of intimacy in a crowd of noise. I referenced promo material for Paprika a lot, since all that art had the exact "hide a big important thing in a chaotic mess of tiny things" vibe i want for this. Also, its not in the sketch because i gave myself like 2 minutes to draw every princess and figure out where they go (and they all look so scribbly, but they're all there! except the ideal woman. i'm only including the razor. sorry babe). but i want the princesses to look like they're melting; the faces in the dress are supposed to be melting into it, if that makes sense.

Listening to johnny cash worked a bit too well though, and now i have an idea for a portrait that i've also wanted to do for a while, also with someone that i relate to the song a lot, and really relies on chairoscuro. maybe for march.

[pigeon-splice]

i'm so tired momo

[pigeon-splice]

timelapse. flashing lights warning.

had to put it on youtube because its too long. there's no audio, so feel free to listen to what you like. my pick is renegade by styx.

quick nikki portrait

[pigeon-splice]

first abandoned wip of 2025

yippee

puts this here for safekeeping

[pigeon-splice]

migrane

puts this here for safekeeping

[pigeon-splice]

thumbnail -> construction -> lines (charcoal set, details pencil) -> basic colors n shading (RZV, Hard texture grain) -> texture with grain merge, very light softlight (airbrush, the more opaque the layer the more soft it was and i didn't want that strong an effect for this), color dodge a teeny little bit for the hair, and then cleaning up. i wanted all of this to look kind of presentable for each phase of the drawing after construction because that is a big problem for me.....

i want to move away from using wet brushes when i can - as much as i love my wet brushes, i think i'm using them in places where the texture would want something else. So for these portraits i want to just stick to the lineart, hard texture, and only use airbrush for light ambience.

From a different standpoint, kai fella is such a weird sweater because of the intarsia blocks. i really wanted to make sure that the seams and color lines move correctly in the arm holding the lamb.

Also, of the sweaters that i have on deck for this mini project, this one was actually for my husband. i had so many ends to weave in. the end product is very cute and he looks great in it. but my god the ends

pidge relearns portraits in order of sweater drawing difficulty (1/?)- tiz in kai fella

[pigeon-splice]

puts this here for safekeeping