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whatgaviiformes · 2 years

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Fic: yellow's not my favorite color aka: Gordon's Birthday Mini-Scenes 2

Pure, self-indulgent Fish-Tank for your Gordon's birthday celebrations. I am unapologetic about this.

Also, it's hardcore fluff this time, promise!

For @gumnut-logic FabFiveFeb and @godsliltippy who also has a one shot about this idea, which you can read here. It's great. :D

Characters: Virgil, Gordon Words: 1362 Genre: Fluff

Where Gordon had free reign, chaos was sure to follow. This meant there were a few places around the villa he was barred from entering. It included each of his brothers’ bedrooms, Brains’ lab, and Virgil’s studio. So naturally, those were the places he tried to frequent on a regular basis. Either out of spite, or boredom, for the love of the challenge, or just to get under his family members’ skin, Virgil didn’t know.

Little brothers. Annoying as hell.

He’d taken precautions. Ignoring the fact that he’d had a grand time designing the lettering of his do not disturb sign and the that means Squids underneath, he’d also reset the code on his lock just in case the request for privacy went ignored.

Which is why it still surprises him when his door swings open with a hiss backed by a triumphant whoop from the exact squidling of a brother he needed to keep out in the first place.

“Great job on the lock there, V!”

“What is wrong with you?!” He can’t help it; it comes out screeching, as he’s more occupied trying to block his brother from seeing what’s on the canvas than he is the tone of his voice. The shock hinders his ability to sound authoritative and intimidating the way he’d want – plus, that never seemed to work on Gordon in the first place. “How did you get in?” he demands.

“Johnny,” Gordon says, sauntering his way further in, and turning to examine the pristine collection of art supplies Virgil’s got organized and displayed. “He thought I couldn’t break your code. Turns out, I can. Take that, Space Case.” He sticks his tongue out at the ceiling.

“You annoyed him to the point he gave you a challenge to get you out of his hair,” Virgil corrects, “and into mine. Thanks, John.”

“Call it what you will. But we do need to talk about your passwords. Kip Harris’ birthday, really, Virgil?”

He flushes. “Gordon, I’m working on your birthday present. You can’t just barge-”

“I know, and I looked away.” He swirls back to him, a set of art pencils in his hands. “Promise.”

“Put those down!” His footsteps thunder and he can feel his blood pressure skyrocketing the longer Gordon grins at him, not backing down. “This is why you’re not allowed in here.”

It’s supposed to be his quiet space, his sacred space.

“I’m just bored.”

His meditative space.

“Please, Virgil?”

His. Own.

“Please. You know how I get when it’s raining.”

“Fine,” he huffs, prying his expensive set of pencils of Gordon’s hands and placing them back where they belong on the shelf and instead grabbing a set of sharpened Crayola. “But you use these.”

“Thanks, Virgil.”

Gordon selects a sketchpad too, and Virgil also watches him like a hawk to make sure it’s one he’s comfortable with Gordon drawing in. Gordon knows better than to look through his sketches, so he’s really only allowed to touch the yellow book. Virgil had chosen it that way for a reason, since Gordon was drawn to the color yellow the way fireflies were drawn to light.

Virgil watches him as he moves around the space. There’s a chance the pressure has caused pain in his back, but Virgil knows better than to ask. Gordon will tell him if he needs anything more than a distraction from the fact the rain has left his usual haunts – the pool, the lagoon, the beach - inaccessible. Virgil still notes that he moves a little stiffly, hinting at perhaps that his brother is handling some pain.

His brother settles into the comfortable armchair nestled below the massive leaves of Virgil’s monstera plant. Her pot is to the right of him, but she towers within the room, flourishing the way Virgil likes it – a little unruly, and using the environment around her as support. In a place where he’s got everything meticulously organized, the whims of the plantlife remind him that nature is beautiful in spite of not being perfect. And it’s kind of right that his most chaotic sibling sometimes finds solace beneath her shadows, where the fenestrations in her leaves form stripes of shade over his face as he doodles in Virgil’s book.

In his brother’s book, which Virgil keeps in his studio and might sometimes leave little fishy sketches in.

Virgil’s got Gordon’s birthday present on the easel, and his set up is luckily angled in the right position where Gordon can’t see what he’s working on from his corner, and for a bit they work together in silence.

For a bit.

“Have you heard about the sea turtles over in California?” Gordon starts, and Virgil tunes him out because, while he does actually listen to what Gordon has to say most times, Virgil knows that he’s just speaking to fill the silence. He nods and hmms at appropriate times because he’s got bigger fish to fry at the moment than listening to Gordon rave about the latest in his collection of news articles or marine podcast, which (for the record) Gordon’s also no doubt already ranted to John about. So, he doesn’t actually need Virgil to respond.

Virgil’s busy frowning at his palette of colors. His skyline is complete and he’s figured out which way he’d like his light source to be coming from, but his vision for the painting feels off. He can’t put his finger on why, but he has to decide soon. He’ll have to scrap the painting if he gets too far along and decides it’s not what he’s going for.

The problem is Gordon.

It’s always Gordon, but in this case it’s not the babbling in front of him. It’s the fact he wants to do this right and his brother’s favorite color is yellow. Of all things, bright yellow.

“ – and so their shell designs are like our fingerprints and – why are you staring at that paint tube like it killed our puppy?”

“We don’t have a puppy.”

“Mhmm. And?”

Virgil finally glances up at him. “Why do you have to like yellow so much?”

“Uhhh, because it’s a delight. Why?”

“My brain’s not letting me use it, but it’s your birthday gift so I’ve been trying to figure it out how to include it,” Virgil laments. He gives him a small, wry smile, holding up the offending tube of paint for Gordon to see. “Would you hate me for not including your favorite color?”

Gordon squints at it from across the room. “Yellow’s not my favorite color.”

“Excuse me?” It’s a good thing the lid was on his paint tube. “What in the world? Gordon.” He laughs in an almost hysterical panic because this? This is ground-shaking knowledge, world-shifting, in fact. “You wore yellow speedos every swim meet! But your favorite shirt – and Four – your favorite flowers are sunflowers!”

“Well, yeah. Yellow’s my luckiest color. And my happiest,” he agrees. “But it’s not my favorite.”

“What’s your favorite, then?”

Gordon bounces out of the chair, and slides his way into Virgil’s space, taking care not to step around the front view of the painting. He takes the paint tube out of Virgil’s hands and examines it, smiling. “Daffodils are also up there as far as favorites go, but here” - he hands it back to Virgil and rummages through the selection of paint tubes, pulling a new one free – “green.”

Gordon hands it over to him, and his vision blurs staring at it. It’s his green, the green of spring, and the dress their mother wore the first time she took him to an art museum, and Two.

“It makes me feel safe,” Gordon tells him quietly. “And that’s a really, really good feeling.”

“Damn,” Virgil curses as he feels his emotions pooling at the corners of his eyes. “I’m supposed to be mad at you for breaking and entering and snooping.” He drags Gordon into his arms, still holding the tube of paint between his fingers but curling his hand around the mess of hair at the top of Gordon’s head. “You do this on purpose, don’t you?”

“Mhmm,” Gordon mumbles into his paint-smeared work shirt. “Sap. But it’s still true.”

#gavii scribit #fabfivefeb #fabfivefeb2023 #gordon tracy #virgil tracy #for the love of fishtank

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momo-t-daye · 1 year

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Hi! Just wanted to ask something: I love ur art and I wondered what your drawing process was? Coz ur art has a very specific vibe and I wonder how you managed to do it. Also, I just love to see other artists process xD. I think I saw somewhere on ur blog that you drew traditionally then scanned it but I'm not sure :V

Have a nice day!

Hello!

I am glad that you enjoy my art and that I have an art vibe! I draw traditionally and then scan and do a bit of digital clean-up/adjustment (because scanners never quite get things right!), I have issues trying to make nice precise lines with the touchpad on the laptop, so I usually don't do anything fully digital (but it was fun making the flight+invention animation!).

As for a process, I tend to have a silly little thought/come up with a little story in my head/read something that gives me an idea, and then I make thumbnail plan pages out for comics and sometimes I'll make rough draft ideas for non-comics. I sketch very messily with pencil and then go over lines with a brush pen and micron pens (since those are waterproof). If I'm adding color I use alcohol pens of various brands (generally whatever happened to be on sale/given to me) for skin tones, Crayola water colors (the fancy 16 color set that was apparently manufactured in 1997), sometimes colored pencil on top of that, and lately I've been playing around with acrylic paint over the watercolor since I found some nice paint on sale and it's fun to experiment.

I hope this answered your curiosity! I always like to chat about art processes and to see how other people create!

Do you tell yourself little stories when you draw?

Cheers,

Momo

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please-be-mine-forever · 2 years

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Canvas ( Yan! Artist MK & Red Son)

Prompt: As an Artist, It only seemed fitting to try and try, again with every failed attempt.

TW: Spiraling to Obsession, Blood, Unsolicited Picturing, Slight Gore(?), Implied OCD, Perfectionist, Self-Harm, Hyper Fixation, and Offending a Diety.

A/N: I kinda intended, this to be more on the Queerplatonic Spectrum, It's one of my chapters in my fanfic called 'Canvas'

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The, tip of the brush was dipped into a thick coat of mahogany hued acrylic paint, gently stroking the blank canvas, another one of their attempt to recreate the likeness, of his muse, and added a warm orange hue for the highlights, to the eyes.

It needed to be, nothing more than authentic perfection.

Floods of paper, overflowed the already dirty tiled floor. It was all failed attempts; all ripped and scratched. It crinkled beneath his sneakers. No matter how many times he tried to recreate a full on body shot or a simple portrait, He could never capture, the—said 'Likeness' of the Fiery Demon

"No..No...No"

Discarded sketches were scattered across the room, even the forgotten trash bin was filled to the brim with torn illustration boards.

The faces on the discarded sketch, was messily scribbled with charcoal pencil out of pure frustration, while paintings thrown across were marked with messy yet bold red crosses, on the top, as the Artist felt deep dissatisfaction for his own creation, everything his worn and pale made, was simply—wrong.

"Not this one" The ivory-haired man's breath hitched, grimacing that this was another failed project.

Mk, is an artist, solely devoted and dedicated, to create masterpiece, to put together authencity, and for his own personal enjoyment. Only creating artwork for his eyes only, only for him to take in the beauty and for those curious on goers, that do dare to stare at his creation than only cruel fate knows what will happen to them.

Out of all the candidates, that he had previously worked on, or of all the subjects he used for reference. The fiery demon, had to be the most difficult subject to even work with, His stubbornness didn't help, with finishing this personal project especially, when he denied his request to be his personal muse.

No matter, what task MK done, or what he'd scarifice for the fiery demon, The request of just standing still would be met with a simple no, before turning his back on him.

So simply had to settle, by using photos of Red Son, instead.

It angered, him, that his request was denied, and that he was no where to close to progressing.

His work, would be easier for everyone, but mostly to himself, if Red Son, were to just cooperate and stand still, even for a moment instead of running off in fear.

He bit on his own fingernails, anxiously at another waste of material and impulsively chewed off the skin off his fingers, his teeth tearing off a small amount of flesh and just enough, to make blood seep out of the wound.

"Someday, I will finally capture your elegancy"

Touching the wet canvas, They, carefully smeered, the blood, all over the canvas; thick crimson liquid oozing out from the bitten wound, covering the ugly colour of mahagony paint, earlier.

He began to notice, that none of the other paint, could suffice, even, when trying other art materials, such as acrylic, gauche and even oil paint but nothing could mimic the same deep red hue, that was Red Son's hair, that was always tied in a tight ponytail, but when fights got too intense, strands fell down and locks, of his hair tousled on his shoulders.

There was even a time, where he curiously tried to use crayola or, oil pastel in another medium but it yeiled the same result.

It, needed to be his blood, and his blood alone.

His fingers, were throbbing from the immense pain, yet absentmindedly ignored it.

An artist, like himself should make sacrifices for desperate times, like these ones.

His chestnut hued eyes, took another good look at the photos, plastered all over the wall board. It was all taken for educational' purposes, to make sure he was finally doing this right, instead of failing everytime, and disappointing himself, then everyone.

Pondering to himself, MK, jokingly believed that, Red Son, could most likely be a reincarnation, of the God Tu'er Shen, due to the feelings that evoked inside of him, dragon flowers slowly blossoming in his heart.

His hair was woven from hell fire, fine strands of passionate flames, and ashes.

It, was even mentioned in the books; form his previous research on the official biography of an immortal being, his first fixation, the Monkie King.

That stated, the Moon Diety, Chang'e was undoubtedly the most attractive Goddess, none of the mortal nor celestial realm, could match her beauty standards but upon seeing her art in the Museum, for inspiration.

Mk, was disappointed and could say that Red Son, undoubtedly, proven himself to look better, physically.

He couldn't pinpoint the exact words to describe the fire demon, It was all comparison that couldn't even reach to to the demon's level, but they knew he looked better than those Gods, even when, all of their features were combined.

But that begs the question, Can a demon even be a reincarnation of a God?

As an artist, The little details mattered to him, but only physically. He couldn't be bothered to dig deeper beneath the surface, not when he hadn't explored every nook and cranny of the surface.

His ignorance, might be the reason why he couldn't capture his essence, but MK, shook that thought away

"I know his every ins and out, I understand him more, than he understands himself"

All he had was pictures of Red Son, not the real life model.

That didn't deter away MK's determination, and only had a single goal in mind.

The need, to capture every aspect, every nook and cranny, The intense urge building inside of him to find eveey detail.

The artist, only desired to perfect the painting.

Yet, How could he even consider himself Artist, if they weren't even able to paint, a simple and blank look, correctly nor creatively.

Mk, is an artist—was an artist.

A shameful one.

He couldn't even capture that, So how could he possibly, capture the likeness that Red Son had?

Mk, considered himself,

To be a fraud.

What good of an artist, would he be, if they couldn't even paint such a simple art piece?

Heck, He couldn't even sketch the likeness of his Muse.

But, Red son was anything but simple

He was complex.

Those type of thoughts bothered him to the point, where, could barely even sleep nor eat. That constant frustration and disatisfaction kept him isolated inside this warehouse.

His phone, was off, ignoring all the messages, calls, emails or any distraction that might try to rip him away from his goal.

They locked himself, inside an abandoned warehouse.

The pitiful artist, paused for a moment, His only companions, was being alone with his degrading thoughts, that had no mercy for his own failures.

He longingly stared at the photos once more, all arranged in a messy order.

The young adult felt his heart pound, mercilessly, as if his heart was about to tear itself through the ribcage, but even with his newfound motivation to start all over again, He could never replicate the same essence, into his canvas.

That thought, only encouraged him to cause another tantrum.

"All wrong..." That was all, he could mutter after using his a strength to have, such a childish outburst, He, dropped down on the discarded paper, and long forgotten paint materials, whose liquid was used to the very bottom.

The blood, from his fingers spilling all over the photos, that was deemed to be unfit for his reference, yet still kept for other reasons.

He, breath to make the painting, as accurate as possible.

The only thing, the Artist felt grateful, was for the Heavens; the Celestial Realm to bestow upon him a gift.

Even when offending them, by always finding them all unfit for his standars od beauty.

He, was still given a gift.

The gift, being born, with both of his eyes, that are able to experience such beauty, and for being to catch someone that was beyond his standards.

But mostly, being blessed to such an exquisite existence.

And, the other being a smile.

The smile, that their Muse, etched on his face, when the demon, was victorious over the most simplest thing, or being finished building, the most difficult machines.

Truly, This obsession of trying to perfect the art and the desire to be able to touch the muse, wanting to know his warmth all over his skin and wanting to know how he feels felt seemed borderline criminal at this point, Does it even matter?

#redson & mk #lego monkie kid #lego monkie king #jttw #lmk mk #monkie kid red son #artist mk #clone mk #red son #yandere mk #platonic yandere #dark spicynoodles #dark spicynoodle #Spotify

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milstrim · 3 years

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Comfort in My Shadow

Chapter 6: That I Would Be Good

By @iwritedumbshit for @iron-mum

Rating: Teen and Up Audiences

Relationships: Peter Parker & Tony Stark, Minor Pepper Potts/Tony Stark

Characters: Peter Parker, Tony Stark, Pepper Potts, Ned Leeds, James “Rhodey” Rhodes

Summary: Soulmates are definite in the universe. Nobody knows exactly why they exist, or what dictates who is bonded to who, the only thing known is that they are never wrong. But Peter’s not so sure about that.

Living at the group home had taught Peter a lot about laying low and how to stay alive when nobody cares. But he’d always clung to the hope of the shadow at his feet reflecting his soulmate that had watched over him for years.

Typical that his soulmate is actually a superhero that Peter is convinced shouldn’t want anything to do with him. Maybe, just this once, the Universe was wrong.

But Tony Stark is desperate to prove that it is right.

Ch 1 // Ch 2 // Ch 3 // Ch 4 // Ch 5 // Ch 7 // Ch 8

---

When Peter woke up, it was horribly bright. His eyes opened a sliver only to be immediately squeezed shut with a groan, a sensory overload surely on its way as the harsh yellow light broke through even his tightly shut eyes. He could already feel the migraine, but the teenager pushed it down as the memories of what had happened flooded back.

The ferry. Mr. Stark. The suit. The men in the alley. And then...darkness. And now wherever he was right now he guessed. After a few moments, Peter managed to crack his eyes open again, surprised a little by the room he was in, not that he'd expected much to be honest.

Peter himself was chained to a pillar, his arms cuffed around it uncomfortably while metal ropes twisted around him at least five times over. His entire body was stiff, leaving him to think he'd been stuck in this position for at least a few hours. What time was it? Had anyone noticed he was missing? Peter blinked emptily, very much doubting it. Nobody at Queens Pinehill Group Home for Boys would be expecting him home until late, and it wasn't like Mr. Stark was going to be looking for him.

The teenager took a deep, rattled breath, pushing the regret to the back of his mind and observing the rest of his situation instead.

The yellow lights in the room were horrible bright, allowing for Peter's shadow to loom out in front of him in a stark contrast to the light concrete ground. He forced himself to turn away from it, instead trying to find a means of escape. There were no windows in the small room that he would peg as a larger storage room, though there wasn't really anything to store. There were a few plastic shelves that had wheels on the end, but, save for a couple of blankets and a pillow, there was nothing resting on them. The only other things in the room were a metal door, a stained bucket, a few stools, and a blinking camera.

Peter turned to glare at it directly, watching it warily as the light on it blinked red. Who was behind that camera? It had to be the vulture guy, right? He'd recognized one of the men that had come to grab him, and they had alien weapons, so. Yeah, Peter may have gotten in a little over his head.

"Hello?" he called, shouldering the ropes wrapped around him. They didn't give, just rubbing against the hoodie that still smelled of Mr. Stark. He tried desperately to block it out. "Hey! What the hell's going on!?"

There was, of course, no answer, so he slumped against the pillar, grimacing at the hunger gnawing at his stomach. He wished desperately that he knew what time it was. Then again, he guessed it didn't really matter. His grounding had already been extended, and what was a few more missed meals? It surely didn't feel like it really mattered anymore.

It was a few minutes before anyone came by. Peter was straining against the chains, struggling to get some kind of hold in his awkward position, when the sound of footsteps caught his attention. He paused in his efforts, stilling to stare at the door as it opened and a wrinkled man stepped through. It took him a moment, but he was quick to realize that it had been the man on the ferry.

This must be the vulture guy.

The door boomed to a slow shut behind the man, who grabbed one of the stools and sat atop it, regarding Peter easily. There was a minute of tense silence before anyone spoke.

"I'm sorry to do this to you, Peter," the man started. Peter scowled. Great. Of course the man knew his name. "But you're bad for business, and so is your little shadow right there, so you'll be staying with us for the time being."

Peter blinked, trying to hide his surprise as he glanced down at the shadow he'd been avoiding. The vulture guy knew Mr. Stark was his soulmate?

"What is this? A ransom? Because he won't pay."

The man huffed sarcastically, shaking his head. "You two seem close." Peter bristled at the mockery in the man's voice. "But, no, I'm not going to ransom you for money. You'll be a nice and easy distraction while we take what we want."

Peter stared at him in confusion. "What do you mean?"

"I'm afraid you aren't cleared to know that," the man said, standing up. "The light will stay on while you're here, in case you give Stark any flashes. The only way out is through this door, which has a second electric door on it that will reactivate once I leave. If you stay nice for this first day, or if you somehow manage to do it yourself, you'll be let out of the chains and brought meals on the regular. Understand?"

"How long do you think you're going to keep me here?"

"Just a few days. You will miss your Homecoming, though, I'm afraid."

"How did you find me?" Peter demanded. The man gave him a threatening smile.

"All we had to do was follow your shadow."

And then he was out the door. Peter was left alone in the overly bright room. Just him, his shadow, and the clinking chains.

He knocked his head against the pillar, closing his eyes shut with a regretful sigh.

---

After a few hours of rest, Peter managed to wrestle out of his ropes. First he snapped the handcuffs holding him against the pillar, flinching as the metal cut into his skin, and then tearing through the last of the binds restraining the rest of him. As the man had promised, no one came for him after he'd freed himself from the ropes, leaving the boy to his own devices. So he'd gone on to try and figure a plan of escape. These men were planning something, scheming to trick Mr. Stark, and they were going to use him to do it. And Peter wasn't going to let them.

That had been two days ago.

With a tired sigh, the teenager knocked his head against the stone wall for the millionth time that day, staring up at the camera and wishing desperately there was at least something for him to do. He'd even take a coloring book at this point. With those dumb twisty Crayola pencils. Anything was better than just sitting here and wondering.

Wondering what was happening. Wondering how people were reacting to his disappearing. Wondering if Mr. Stark had heard, or if he'd cared. And, of course, pondering the 'What if?'

What if Peter hadn't gone after the vulture guy? What if he'd listened to Mr. Stark? What if he'd done better and been able to take the man down without messing up? Would he be a good soulmate then? One worthy of Mr. Stark?

There were no answers to his questions. Not one. There were speculations and dreams and nightmares that had shocked him awake the few times he'd been able to catch slivers of sleep in this place, but there were no concrete answers. Maybe there never would be.

"Forever."

Peter shook himself vehemently, turning away from the camera to stare at the door instead. At least the meal times here were consistent, more that with Mr. Fowler, though with the same boring peanut butter sandwiches for every meal. In all honestly, if the teenager had been given something to entertain himself with, or the lights were at least dimmed for when he needed to sleep, he'd consider this place better than the group home. Yes, he was aware of how horrible that was, but anything was better than the musty odor of liquor and the sharp tug of a hand, fingernails biting.

Teeming with unbearably restless energy, Peter pushed himself to his feet, walking around the small room in laps, trying once more to find anything to get out of here. A loose nail, a crowbar, something cool that an alien weapons dealer might have left in their storage room, but, like the first thousand times, there was nothing for the teenager to grab. There was the bucket for him to relieve himself in, the couple of empty storage shelves (he'd placed the left over blanket and pillow on the top of one, feeling much safer to be at least out of temporary reach should anyone come into the room to try and grab him), and the stools. There was, also, the camera, but that had made out to be very off limits since day one.

He'd crawled up the wall towards it and the light had immediately flashed red, a warning buzzer screeching through the storage closet. With a shiver up his spine, Peter had dropped from the wall, clutching at his ears desperately. The light had turned yellow once more and the room had been returned to that horrible, thick silence.

And it had been like that since.

And today it changed.

The hairs on his arms raised, forcing Peter to sit up from where he was laying against the wired shelf. He glanced at the camera warily but, a few seconds later, the door buzzed and then opened. There were three men. Vulture guy, shocky-gauntlet dude, and the other man that had been in the alley when Peter had been taken. They all had weapons.

Vulture guy was the calmest of the three, horrifyingly easygoing as he stopped in the middle of the room, looking at Peter lazily. The teenager eyed the gun strapped to his belt.

"Get down here, Pedro. You've got work to do."

Peter stared at the man. The man stared at Peter.

"What kind of work?" he asked hesitantly, keeping his expression painfully schooled, though he wasn't sure it'd worked.

"Just a bit of good ol' fashioned negotiation."

"I already told you he wouldn't pay a ransom."

"Money's not what we're looking for, kid," the man said. He gestured to the gun strapped to his hip. "Now we can do this the easy way, or the hard way. You choose."

"What are you? A cop?" Peter muttered, but he jumped down from the shelf anyway, keeping his head up in an attempt to avoid his shadow. The man smiled, clearly amused by his joke.

"I've got the cuffs to prove it," he joked, pulling the thick metal cuffs out. They weren't regular cuffs, like the ones that he'd snapped out of a few days ago, but instead thick ones that would coat all the way up to his wrists. They were held out, open, in front of him expectantly. "Putter' there, kid."

With a low exhale, Peter placed his hands in the cuffs, resisting a flinch when they clamped shut. The man just smiled on him, a condescending pat on his shoulder. He couldn't help the flinch.

"Great. Let's get going."

Peter followed the man out of the room he'd been trapped in, his hands stuck together in front of him and his head forced up away from the glare of his shadow. The teenager finally took in the building he'd been kept in for the past two days, eyes narrowing as he tried to remember every single detail, but it wasn't some sort of maze like he'd been expecting. It was just--a warehouse. An empty warehouse, a few loose pieces of furniture and knick-knacks scattered on the cement floors.

It wasn't very long before they stepped through one last hallway, ending in an open room. It was as dim as everything else had been, shadowed pillars holding up the ceiling. For some reason, his hairs raised and his spine shivered. He halted to a suspicious stop, staring at the vulture guy for a moment before turning to stare at the rest of the room. Something in here was wrong. Very, very, wrong.

The man with the shocker knocked against his shoulder, pushing Peter forward. With a hesitant shiver, the teenager followed after the man, examining every inch of the room he could see.

They stopped in the dead center of the room beside one the pillars. A pile of chains sat on the ground next to it. Peter stared at it for a moment, brows furrowing, before turning to look back up. His eyes caught onto a timer on the wall, sitting idle at thirty minutes but not yet counting down.

The clinking of chains caught Peter's attention, and he turned to see the shocker guy and the other men grabbing the metal and staring up at him expectantly. He glanced between them and the timer, his eyebrows raised. The vulture smiled.

"It'll all be explained later," he said. Then he shrugged. "Or maybe it won't. I don't really care either way. Now sit down."

Peter glanced at the pillar, the men with the surrounding chains, his cuffed hands, and, finally, at his shadow. His gaze rested there for a tired moment, at where he'd been refusing to look at for days. At the sharp cut of Mr. Stark's chin and the hair that was always spiked up in a constant swoop. He was grateful that shadows didn't have eyes, saving him from the man's disappointed stare.

But the shadow wouldn't save him from the men here, so Peter would have to. He'd have to at least try.

"Yep. I will definitely do that now," Peter said, moving over to the men.

He allowed for the shocker gauntlet guy to move just a little closer, and then he struck. With metal encased fists, the teenager lashed out, landing a harsh punch to the man's face and following it with a kick that launched him halfway across the room. There was panicked shouts as he whirled back around, ducking low as a bullet fired, lodging in the pillar behind him.

He rolled as he ducked, using the force of his weight to slam into the other man's legs, who consequently tumbled to the ground. Peter rolled fast enough to carry past the man as he fell, springing back up onto his feet clumsily. He ran, ducking behind a pillar as gunshots rang, the men picking themselves back up.

The teenager twisted, searching for an escape. There was a door to his right, about halfway across the room. A few pillars stood between him and his best shot at freedom, just enough for him to dive and grab some cover, but it would be risky. Peter glanced at his shadow.

He ran.

He only made it past two pillars when his senses spiked. He dropped into a crouch on instinct, flinching as the pillar beside was slashed, a slice of beating wind rushing over him. He squinted up to see the vulture's wingsuit, turning around at the wall and circling the room once before coming back to Peter. He moved to run, but the suit had already caught up with the gasping teen, blocking his path and knocking him to the ground.

Footsteps echoed lightly as Peter tried to scramble back to his feet, only managing to push himself onto his elbows until there was the click of a gun. He turned, glaring up at the vulture guy, a pistol in hand pointed barely a few feet from his head.

"Nice try, Pedro," the man said, pulling back a smile. He called, "Schultz!"

Shock gauntlet guy was back, one eye black and his gauntlet buzzing with power. It charged up with an electric whine, the man raised back his fist, and when it came down, Peter only knew two things. Pain and darkness.

---

Tony stared around the completely packed tower, only a few boxes left in his lab to be moved to the plane that would blend into the dark New York night in barely ten minutes. He sighed, tucking his hands in his pocket as he looked out the window over the city. The billionaire had never been known for his sentiment, but even he could say that this move held a lot of significance. And, not only that, but, out there in the dark city below, his little shadow remained.

He'd been reeling the past couple days from the incident at the ferry, about Peter's actions and his own. In the end, the kid was only a kid, one desperate to put some good in the world. He was smart and strong and everything Tony hadn't been, but then he thought of the people on that ferry. If one had died, and Peter had been the cause of it--well, it was easy to see the kid would have never recovered from that.

He needed time, and Tony needed time too. 'Forever' had been a little rash, but a week and a half didn't quite have the consequences the teenager needed to swallow. After returning from the dock, he'd placed the neatly folded suit into the nearest box and hadn't looked back. He assumed the suit was somewhere still in the empty lab, waiting to be unpacked and then eventually returned to the kid when Tony saw him on Friday.

He furrowed his brows, pulling out his phone. Maybe he should text Peter, or call him, and make sure he was okay. He hadn't really expected to hear from the kid in the past few days, but after seeing Peter's thin ribs and hearing that his foster father had taken his money, he was less than thrilled to leave him alone.

Glancing back at the boxes left, he moved to click on the kid's number. This wouldn't take too long, and they would be going in his car anyway. No plane required.

An echoed ringtone answered the stale night air before he could click call.

"What?" he muttered to himself, turning his phone off. He turned away from the window to stare at the leftover boxes. Hesitantly, he stepped over to them, opening the one where the ringing was loudest.

Peter's suit sat inside, twitching as it rang. He reached out his hand, grabbing the red fabric and pulling it out. It was folded crisply, the mask tucked away neatly between the cloth. He snagged it from beneath the fabric, surprised at the heaviness of it.

A badge, a card, and a ringing phone all tumbled out, clattering on the floor as the mask was upturned.

What the hell...?

He kneeled down beside the items, heart racing and picking up the still ringing phone displaying an unknown number. He snatched it up, answering the call immediately and pressing it up to his ear, picking up the other items left behind.

"Hello? Who is this?"

"Hmm, I expected a cute kid like Parker's soulmate to be nicer." Tony froze, motioning for Friday to begin tracking the call. "Then again, I knew what I was walking into ever since you pulled him out of that lake last week. You two should really be more careful about where you hold your conversations, y'know."

"Get to the point," he snapped. Out of the lake. Vulture Guy. He pulled up a separate hologram and began to search for what he'd previously left to the FBI. Pictures and shaky videos of the large metal wings appeared in front of him.

"Y'know," the man dawdled, ignoring Tony's demand. "I didn't quite believe the kid when he said you wouldn't pay a ransom. I mean, a billionaire for a soulmate and, with no hesitation, he just said it. But really, I get it now. I do."

"You don't get anything."

"I don't? Well, that's a surprise. I usually get things, and this one isn't very hard to tell. Kid hasn't looked at his shadow in two days."

Two...

"What the hell have you done to him?" he whispered, voice cold. He whirled around towards the screen that had the phone's location, brows furrowing when it wasn't any closer to finding out the source of the call.

"I've insured that business will continue to boom, Tony," the man answered easily. Tony took a seething breath, reigning himself in. Ransom. He'd said something about a ransom.

"What do you want?"

"Did you finish packing yet?"

Tony glanced at the boxes. "Yes."

"Good. That plane of yours is scheduled to take off soon. Let's make sure it stays that way."

"And Peter?"

"You get to come and get him."

"And if the plane doesn't stay on schedule?"

"You won't get the location in time. No more shadow for you."

Tony glanced down at the mask clutched in his hand and then at the shadow on the ground. It was pale in the dim room, hair curly and clothed in a baggy sweatshirt.

"I need proof that you have him," he demanded. There was ding. Drawing the phone away from his ear, he glared down at the photo. Peter was slumped against a cement pillar, chains wrapped tightly and thickly around him and the pillar. He was gagged and clearly passed out, a purple bruise forming around his eye. He still wore Tony's red hoodie.

"Did you get your proof?"

Tony swallowed. "Yep. Loud and clear."

"Great. When your plane leaves, I'll send you the location. As of now, you have half an hour."

"Until what?"

"I guess you'll find out."

And then the call disconnected.

"Shit!" he yelled, grabbing the suit and balling it up. "Friday, location."

"I was unable to trace the call, sir."

He rubbed at his face. "How long until wings up?"

"Ten minutes."

"Keep an eye out for an anonymous message. Notify me immediately. And how long would it take to get out a suit and reassemble it?"

"For the current Mark, anywhere between ten and fifteen minutes."

"That's too long," he muttered. Everything was taking too long. "Get my car ready downstairs. I want it waiting out front for me at a moment's notice."

"Of course, sir."

Panicking only slightly, he grabbed the last two boxes, piling them in his arms and rushing them to the elevator. The ride was quick, but it could have been quicker. When the doors slid open, he dashed out to where workers were piling the last of the tower's belongings into the open plane, Happy overseeing them all.

"All right, wheels up in eight minutes. We just got to load Tony’s old Hulkbuster armor, prototype for Cap’s new shield, and the Meging... the Meg... the... Thor’s magic belt," his friend called, catching sight of Tony, he paused. "And these two boxes. Hey, boss, what's up? You look like you're about to be sick."

"I need the plane going as quickly as possible. And I really mean as fast. As. Possible."

"Tony, what--"

"Just get it going," Tony snapped, making a note to apologize to his friend later. There wasn't any time to explain. Happy stared at him, and then nodded.

"Okay. Five minutes, it'll be in the air."

"Good. Thanks, Hap."

Tony left the boxes, keeping the suit and Peter's belongings with him and dashing back to the elevator. It took him to the empty bottom floor as quickly as possible, where he practically tore out through the doors and to where his car was waiting for him. The gas was already running as he slipped into it, pulling out his phone and waiting.

"How long since the timer started, Fri?"

"Seven minutes."

"The plane?"

"Taking off now."

Tony rolled down the window, poking his head out and squinting up. There was a distortion of movement, and then there was a buzz. He turned back into the car, glaring down at his phone to see an address in Brooklyn.

He floored on the gas.

"How far away is this?"

"Approximately twenty-eight minutes."

"How long we got?"

"Twenty-two."

"Great. Let's be there in twenty. Quickest route. I don't care how many laws we have to break to get there, got it? And trace the message's location, send it to Rhodes when you find it."

"Of course, sir."

Tony didn't know how many red lights he forced the car through, how many people he cut off and sped around, cutting every corner he could possibly find. It didn't feel fast enough. But nothing ever could. The only thing that went fast enough was the rapid pounding of his skittery heart.

How could he have been so stupid to leave Peter alone like that? To meet him and then drop him off like the drop of the hat. And to not even bring him home or make sure he wasn't injured. Or to even just have a reasonable conversation. It was despicable of Tony. And now Peter might die because of it. His little shadow.

While driving, he ordered for Friday to find Peter's missing person's report, his heart beating rapidly as he tried to piece together when the kid had been taken. Where? How far out had Tony been? Had they just been waiting for him to leave?

As it turned out, there wasn't one. Tony chewed his lip, pushing it to the back of his mind for now and just continuing to floor the pedal. One step at a time. He just had to get there before whatever was going to happen happened.

Tony ended up arriving in eighteen. He barely even parked the car, just ripped down the joystick and leaped out, running without any kind of hesitation into the dark warehouse.

---

When Peter blinked awake, it was to a constant ticking and the loss of his shadow. He panicked, struggling in an attempt to see what had guarded over him for so long. He needed it now more than ever. The chains he was trapped in rattled and clinked with his weak movements, and he winced at the pain around his eye and the soreness in his jaw. After a moment, he realized that it was the tight gag cutting into his cheeks so hard he was sure that there were cuts around the area.

A little more searching revealed to the trapped teenager that his shadow was still there, if a little faint. It stumped out in front of him, hard to make out, but Peter was grateful nonetheless. He knocked his head against the pillar, staring at the shadow in an attempt to force down the way his hairs were still raised on end.

He forced himself to tune into the ticking that was still happening, furrowing his brows and straining his ears. There was a lot of ticking actually. One in the pillar across to him, and the one across from him, and the ones line across the room...

The pillars were filled with bombs.

His breath caught.

Breathing was hard through the tight gag, but he managed to shudder in a few deep breaths, his whole body moving with the impossible action. After what felt like forever, he was a little more coherent, a little more able to comprehend his situation. Peter glanced away from his shadow, instead staring up to where the timer had been earlier. It was counting down quickly, now leaving him with five and a half minutes. The vulture guy hadn't said what was going to happen when that timer ran out, but, given the ticking bombs in the pillars, he had an idea.

The teenager began to struggle, trying desperately to get a good enough grip to pull his cuffs apart, but the chains kept his arms firmly strapped against his side. He let out a frustrated grunt after a minute of fruitless wrestling with the clinking metal, letting his head drop and blinking tiredly. Think, Parker, think.

"PETER!!"

Peter perked back up at the sound of his name, his eyes widening as he recognized the frantic voice echoing through the halls. Mr. Stark. What was Mr. Stark doing here? Is this what the vulture guy had meant?

Peter tried to shout back but, of course, the gag muffled his ability to speak. All that was choked out was a long grunt that barely made it past the room. He tried a few more times, rustling his chains as loud as possible to catch the man's attention. It apparently worked, because footsteps approached.

Mr. Stark burst through the door, frantic and wild eyes landing on Peter with a short gasp, but he never stopped running, sliding to a stop on his knees in front of the boy.

"Peter. Oh, my God, Peter, I am so sorry," the man apologized, his voice a whisper. Hands reached out towards his face. Peter couldn't help the way he flinched away, his head knocking against the pillar painfully, leaving splintered cracks in the cement. Mr. Stark paused, mumbling a horrified apology and glancing at his watch anxiously. "Okay, here's the deal. We're under a pretty strict time limit, okay? I just gotta get you out of here. Can I...can I take your gag off? Please?"

Peter hesitated, glancing at the clock behind Mr. Stark's head. Three and a half minutes.

Mr. Stark followed his gaze, glancing over his shoulder to catch sight of the ticking timer, his expression darkening. He turned back to Peter.

"Like I said, time limit. So, can I?"

After a moment, Peter nodded, leaning his head forward to let him grasp at the fabric. His instincts screamed to not give the man purchase to his hair, but Peter knew better. Not that he could stop the flinch when Mr. Stark's fingers brushed against the back of his head.

Mr. Stark reached forward immediately, untying the knot and pulling the gag away in a gentle manner, letting Peter finally take a deep breath. He moved his jaw, trying to undo some of the tension trapped there and wincing at the pain that dug into it. The billionaire moved onto working the chains, his watch turning into a bright red Iron Man gauntlet that began to power through the metal.

It was silent a moment before, "When did they get you?"

Peter swallowed, leaning his head back and shrugging. "After the uh--after the ferry. Cornered me in an alley probably half an hour after."

"I'm sorry, kid," Mr. Stark apologized, but Peter just shrugged again, staring pointedly forward. He kept a careful eye on the clock. Two and a half minutes, and the chains weren't looking good. He narrowed his eyes, glancing down at the watch. It didn't have a direct power source, and he very much doubted it would be able to break through all of his chains in time. He swallowed.

"It's okay. My fault anyways."

"No. This isn't--"

"It is, Mr. Stark," Peter protested. Mr. Stark stared at him, but he needed this off of his chest. This horrible guilt that he was he'd never get the chance to get rid of. And now might be his last opportunity. "I was the one who went after the vulture guy. Not even with good intentions. I just... I don't know. You're--you're Tony Stark, and having me for a soulmate seemed less than thrilling to you. I just wanted to prove that I was worthy to be your shadow. And I didn't. And I'm sorry. And...and I get why you didn't want to talk to me again."

"Peter--"

"Just go, Mr. Stark."

"What? No! I will not leave you--"

"The clock, Mr. Stark." They both turned to look at it. "Less than a minute. You won't get me free in time."

"We don't even know what will happen! It could be a fluke for all we know," the man protested. Peter stared at him, unable to keep himself from trembling in fear, gesturing towards the nearest pillar with a nod of his head. His voice was a quaking whisper.

"These all have bombs in them. Every single one, except for the one I'm tied against. You won't make it if you stay here."

Mr. Stark stared at him, his gaze hard, still blazing through the chains. None had been completely broken yet, but they were beginning to turn orangey-red. There was a frightening resolution in his stare, and Peter did his best to return it despite how much he was blinking back horribly frustrated tears. He forced his gaze away, checking the timer once more. Twenty seconds.

"Please, Mr. Stark. You need to go."

"I'm not leaving you," the man said. The chains were getting redder, Peter could probably tear at them soon, but not soon enough. He continued straining anyway, grunting as the metal resisted against him. "We're going to have a much longer talk later, kid, but I don't want you to think for a second that I don't want you as my soulmate. You're a good kid, with a good heart. There is nothing to prove. Absolutely nothing."

Peter glanced at him from where he was straining, surprised at the wetness swimming in the man's eyes.

The chains snapped, falling around Peter in a metal heap. The timer beeped.

The thundering of booms crowded Peter, going off around the room in a sporadic circle. Mr. Stark's arms wrapped around him immediately, a protective body shielding him against what Peter had honestly expected to be a bigger explosion. Instead, they were small, knocking out the middle of the pillars so quickly that trying to follow them made his head spin. He figured out what was happening just a second too late.

Working against the instinct to curl himself into a protective huddle underneath his soulmate, safe from the crowding dust and explosions that shattered through the air so hard that he could feel the vibrations underneath the man's arms, the teenager broke free of his hold. The ceiling crumbled down as quickly as he moved, forcing Mr. Stark to the ground as far away as he could reach and piling himself in between.

No amount of bracing himself could have prepared Peter for the pain.

Ch 1 // Ch 2 // Ch 3 // Ch 4 // Ch 5 // Ch 7 // Ch 8

#friendly neighborhood exchange #peter parker #tony stark #Iron Man #spiderman #irondad #spiderson #irondad and spiderson #ironman fanfiction #spiderman fanfiction #marvel fanfiction #soulmate au #platonic soulmates #not st*rker

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effigistkim · 3 years

Text

Budget color pencil suggestions

Actual budget color pencil suggestions to replace Prismaclor from an actual artist who has actually made art with these pencils and still uses them.

In general I have a price point for what I consider a quality pencil, this day and age about $1 each, and actively avoid most of those a million pieces for $19.95 sets at the drug store grandma might want to get you. She could at least get you the Michaels or Hobby Lobby store brand.

If you don't give artistically inclined children decent art supplies they could become discouraged and burn out.

King Art- here's a good brand that comes in 'fancy' wooden boxes that look nice. A mixed media set is a nice introduction to different mediums. Has a small portrait set with a handful of colors.

Crayola- Their original colored barrel ones. A medium to hard pencil that does good lines. Can be a bit waxy but if you're burning thru a set to build some skills why not use an affordable one that takes abuse

Tombow recycled- a good practice set

Derwent Studio- a 'hard' set and the same cores as their turquoise barrel art set. Can be a bit scratchy at times. They feel similar to the Black and White set which is 'dry' at times. You can get sets and individual replacements. The Studio line had other mixed media supplies. Will do if you want to be seen with real 'artist' pencils.

Blick Studio- a good line, some darks could be darker, but you can get individual replacements, exactly the same as Ultrecht, the portrait set from Koh-i-noor looks suspiciously similar but I haven't used those yet. Will do if you want to be seen with real 'artist' pencils. Has a portrait set with all you need except black.

Faber Castel Goldfaber- a decent workhorse that layers a bit better than some of the other wax pencils. Their Art Grip line has matching colored pencil-watercolor pencil-marker lines. Can get individual replacements. Will do if you want to be seen with real 'artist' pencils.

Lyra Giants- these have very thick barrels and cores and will definitely take awhile to use up. Has a skin tone set which is just peach-tan-terra cotta-browns.

Black Widow- I'm usually cautious if a barrel is black (Bic Conte don't work well), but these are quite good. They have different names for sets that come in nice metal tins. The skin tones come in two sets and you might need one of their regular assorted color ones to fill it out. If you are in want of a large set of 120 or more to build skills with consider them as they look to offer shades and tones.

Cretacolor Soho- they feel similar to Prismacolor Premiere, maybe not as soft, another okay practice set. I also have their Marino watercolor pencils which are an okay introduction to the medium but I find them lacking a bit in pigment compared to some other brands.

#budget art supplies #cheap color pencils #budget color pencils #prismacolor premiere alternative

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griba · 3 years

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I love your drawings so much, they all just make me go :D! What do you use for colouring? The colour just looks so soft & smooth!

!!!! tysm!! :DDD *spams heart emojis* i'm glad you like themmm <333

ok maybe this is kinda funny but i just use crayola markers :D ...and 14 hours of digital editing /hj

sort of a bit of backstory to that: for the past few years i've been living in and out of places that didn't allow non-washable art supplies, and about a year ago i decided i'd give in so i didnt have to suffer every time i had to go back and forth. so after i left i just got one of those 100 packs of supertip markers (for like. 15 bucks at walmart or something) and while a third of them are probably lost/dried out and i've replaced most of the the dark colors twice, i've made do with them lol :]

also the """skin tones""" those crayola markers came with are just Impossible To Actually Use so i use crayola colored pencils and a very old (like almost dead, i have to smudge my lineart to get it to work :[) and saturated white skin tone marker to blend them out. i want to replace it soon but its just unlabelled so ?? idk lol;; i still edit skin tones a lot because i got the colored pencils recently and i'm still learning how to use them, and the smudging is a big deal to me lol

for pens i use pink and black microns (size 05) that ive had for years and also a bunch of twin tip pens that are from the same unlabelled package as the blending skin tone one?? it was either from a dollar store or art supply store idk but i remember them being on sale

but i actually think like. at least 75% of this is cancelled out because of the amount of digital editing i do after i take the pics. seriously it's scary to unhide the layers because how did i think that was ok before omgomg- /hj (ill try to get before and after pics in a sec lmao)

#gwagwgagaa tysmmm #anthosaidsmth #the editing is only so heavy because that marker i blend with it SO BAD it makes it look like people made out with the road #cause of all the smudging :[#also when i said 'living' in those places it was actually just for health needs so yeah ig #thats why we couldnt have a bunch of the drawing stuff i did use #but anyway #ill get pics in a sec #long post #???? i actually cant tell #my mobile version is a tablet not a phone so its way bigger lol #gri ask tag #nice asks

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tiny-personal-university-thing · 6 years

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101 Ways to be Productive When Classes Are Not In Session

Get a job

Learn guitar

Learn piano

Study a new language

Purchase new study materials for the next semester (i.e new notebooks, a new pencil bag, a new backpack, new pencils, pens, or highlighters -- 10/10 would recommend Crayola SuperTips they are extremely cheap!)

Clean your room

Clean your apartment/home

Make your bed

Make a list of your goals

Exercise

Write

Find a new podcast (for my pre-law friends, I recommend Think Like A Lawyer)

Read a new book or read all of the books you have bought but not been able to read yet

Clean out your closet - donate clothes you do not wear anymore to Goodwill

Clean out your car/wash your car (actually necessary to ensure that dirt does not accumulate in its parts - TRUST ME)

Be a tourist in your own city - find a new coffee shop you might like to study at when classes resume

Try new recipes - learn to cook by watching Youtube videos

Start a new skin care routine (I recommend Noxema {app $4} for your face wash, follow it up with Witch Hazel {app $6} and finish with Tea Tree Oil {app $8}!)

Start a new blog (or check out my new blog @tiny-personal-aesthetics-thing I know I’m shameless)

Volunteer at local animal shelters, retirement homes, hospitals, libraries, Habitat for Humanity, etc.

Redecorate your room - try moving your bed or furniture around and see how it changes the fung shui (if you are into that)

Learn about photography

Work on your mental and physical health

Take your dog for a walk - I’m sure they would appreciate it

Ride a horse

Create a budget for yourself

Start a bujo

Draw

Paint

Watch a documentary

Create goals for next semester

Reflect on this past semester

Learn self-defense

Visit a museum or a park

Sell items you don’t want anymore on apps such as Letgo or via the Facebook Market

Start gardening

Call friends/family you haven’t heard from in awhile

Write friends/family you haven’t heard from in awhile

Go for a hike

Improve your vocabulary using resources such as: vocabulary.com, or enhancemyvocabulary.com

Fix your sleep schedule (!!!)

Learn about your family history

Utilize Khan Academy videos to brush up on math, science, or humanities

Clean out your email inbox

Get a test prep book for the LSAT/MCAT/GRE

Talk to an adultier adult in the field you wish to enter regarding your career options

Work on your resume

Increase your typing speed using websites such as: typing.com, typeracer.com, or rapidtyping.com

Write thank you notes to professors/instructors/advisors that you found particularly helpful - or to friends/family/mentors that also helped you out

Get your planner organized for the new semester (or buy a planner if you haven’t already)

Find and price the textbooks and access codes you will need for the coming semester

Jazz up/update your social media accounts (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn) to reflect more on your professionalism (if you have those)

Update your style - new semester, new clothes, new you

Go swimming - nice low impact exercise

Find a professional to shadow

Find an internship

Find scholarship opportunities (create a new email account to specifically use for scholarships!)

Get a head start on the classes you will be taking by self-studying (a plethora of free information exists on the internet)

Be a mentor - tutor high schoolers/junior high students for SAT/ACT prep, or generally for whatever subjects they need help in

Do manual labor - fix something, build something, mow the yard, clean the gutters

Do yoga

Work on breathing exercises

Treat yourself

Learn to say no

Go on graduate school tours

Travel (can be near or far, cheap or expensive - know your budget)

Do your own research project

Take an online sample course via edX,or Coursera

Start your graduate school application

Pet sit for someone

House sit for someone

Start your own Youtube channel

Work on your handwriting

Try sculpting

Attend networking events

Attend leadership events

Start a fundraiser for a cause

Learn to code

Study abroad - or solidify a study abroad trip

Create a four year plan for your degree

Visit family

Visit a friend

Get letters of recommendation

Get crafty

Take a practice test for the LSAT/ MCAT/ GRE

Take all of your loose change to a CoinStar and exchange them for cash

Learn about where your food comes from

Drink more water

Find an audio book to listen to when you are in the car or on the bus

Catch up on your laundry

Forge new good habits such as utilizing a planner or making your bed every day

Start a compost pile

Grow your own herbs

Start meal prepping/meal planning

Play basketball

Play tennis

Get a haircut

Organize your desk

Organize your laptop

Learn about astronomy

Rest, relax, and recuperate for the semester to come

#studyblr #studyspo #studygram #study #student #college #university #school #realistic student #realistic studyblr #studyblr community #new studyblr #new studyspo #productivity #mental health #physical health #hobbies #learning

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ginnyzero · 5 years

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My Fashion Connection

I’ve been trying to pin down lately why I love fashion and fashion design. Because I don’t love clothes and designing clothes and the choosing of fabrics because of the glitz and glam of high end runway shows and the glossy pages of Vogue magazine and adulation of famous design houses. Most of that I didn’t even know about until I went to school. I didn’t choose fashion because of any of those things. I really wanted to go into Computer Game Design because of games like Myst.

Growing up in a very small town in the middle of the southern tier of New York, fashion wasn’t anything that anyone in our town was interested in except the town pageant queen who had a ‘reputation.’ It’s dairy country. My town was and is much more interested in dirt bikes, hunting and fishing and kegger beer parties. There were a couple of families that were more well to do and worked at Cornell or IBM and thus wore nicer clothes but out of a town of say 50 to 100 people, there were more cows and farmers and retirees. It’s the type of town when two of the young people marry each other, the entire town becomes related.

My mother is a home sewer. I hate the term sewer in professional capacity because it has the connotations of a house wife sitting at home making amateur garments. My mother made a lot of my sister’s clothes growing up and when she started sending me to Christian schools with dress codes, she also made clothes for me. (Mostly jumpers.) Eventually she either got tired of sewing or felt that we needed to buy things to keep up appearances and she stopped. (This ended up with us shopping in budget discount overrun boutique shops. Yes. A thing. Family Dollar and Dollar General didn’t exist yet! And mother hadn’t discovered the “joys” of the Salvation Army and second hand or they simply weren’t close enough to shop at.)

In a tiny town, you have to drive almost an hour in every direction to get to anything that remotely resembles a fabric shop. Except, between our tiny town and the city of Ithaca we got lucky, because out in a nowhere more nowhere than our nowhere was a tiny fabric shop run by a petite old woman named Leona.

To get to Leona’s shop, you took this very twisty road over and through the hills and turned right when you finally hit another ‘major’ road. And then off to the left less than a mile was a huge stand of pine trees and in the middle of these pines was a dirt drive. You’d drive up the hill between these tall pines the rocks in the dirt crunching under your tires that opened onto a clearing on top of a hill that held a farm. Leona ran her shop out of her home, a one story mixture of a red roofed, white trailer with an add on to make it an L shape. The barn hadn’t been kept up and the red stain was fading and the barn was falling apart. You parked on the edge of the drive, hoped it hadn’t rained lately and it wasn’t pure mud so you could get back out. (If you got stuck, there was always the local farmer with a tractor and chains to pull you out.) You had to park on the edge because despite the fact the farm wasn’t an active farm, she rented out the land and your cars needed to be out of the way for the tractors to get through.

She had the shop in the add on built on the back of the trailer. Firewood piled up next to the screen door and cats lounged everywhere. Leona liked hoarding things so the walkway had gnomes, garden statues and benches and wheelbarrows and yes, there was a tiny garden windmill in the middle of the circular drive. If it was winter, salt crunched under your boots and you had to walk carefully across the ice covered mud slush. If it was spring or summer, there were flowers peeping up among the grass.

And once you crossed the threshold, warmth, Leona smiling with her curly short white hair and the measuring tape around her neck behind the measuring counter. Bolts and bolts of colorful and textured fabrics lined the walls and the blank spaces of walls over tables were old fashioned wall paper in dark red with ducks or cream and pink rose prints and warm golden colored wood panels. Painted sawblades provided decoration. The clock might have been a novelty item, a cow or a cat or even something with shears for the hands. I can’t remember. (There might have been all three.) It smelled mostly of sawdust, dust and in the winter, the sharp smell of a burning fire from the potbelly stoves. Leona’s help were also middle aged or older ladies like her and they weren’t quite as friendly, but they were helpful.

Leona stocked her shop by going down to NYC and buying overruns from the warehouses. (Overruns are fabrics that designers don't end up using and fabrics manufacturers make too much of because they predict more sales than they make. Most fabric retail stores are stocked by overruns.) She mostly had colorful cotton prints and upholstery fabric. There was a little fashion fabric and by the time I hit high school, she had things like stretch velvet. She mostly sold to quilters and people like my mother. Cornell doesn’t have a fashion design program, only a science textiles program, but she’d occasionally get students. Her hours were irregular. I don’t know if she ever turned a profit. She encouraged touching the fabric. (Though she didn’t like children taking bolts out of the shelves for good reason.) She didn’t mind that I wandered about away from my mother. She always remembered me no matter how much time had passed.

But every time I go into a fabric shop, there is still that bit of magic from going to Leona’s. When I returned from college, I wanted to go and show Leona some of my projects. She died before I got the chance and I still regret that.

Professional shops like Mood, Britex, B&J’s and to an extent the discount fabric warehouse that I used during college in San Francisco make me shake my head because the workers don’t always feel helpful. They don’t make you feel like every customer is important. They aren’t like Leona, as frail as she was, with her sunny smiles and slightly raspy voice, glasses, and cheerful attitude and love of textiles.

I also had Barbie. I’ve talked about Barbie and my love of Barbie. I would play with Barbie rather than with baby dolls. (My baby dolls took lots of naps according to my mother.) And I loved the clothing packs. I loved dressing and undressing her and trying new outfits out of the outfits I had. Barbie was a safe present to buy for me when I was growing up, because a) that meant my group of Barbie’s got new clothes and b) if this Barbie had different color hair or skin then I got more variety in my Barbies. (My favorite was the long red headed mermaid with the teal outfit. This was back when the tail was a “Skirt” you could take on and off.) I had maybe one Ken and I inherited a lot of clothes from my older sister who grew out of Barbie about the time I started getting interested. Some of them were homemade but I couldn’t get my mother to make more and she wouldn’t teach me how to sew to make them myself. (In fact, she said it was too hard and downright discouraged it. Guess who doesn’t really like sewing? Me.)

Today, I love Monster High and Ever After High, but if they’d existed when I was a child, I wouldn’t have gotten them because of my parents’ extreme dislike of anything related to monsters, ghosts or Halloween. (I am a November child people. This is ridiculous. Come on, I share a birthday with Bram Stoker. OKAY.)

And somewhere in that time, (1992 apparently, man, I was younger than I thought) when I was getting a pittance of an allowance and had saved money from Christmas, I had enough money to buy a new Barbie or a Crayola Fashion Design stencil/tracing kit. This was before Project Runway. This was before the idea that these Fashion Drawing kits were thought to be remotely popular. No one thought that little girls might like drawing clothes! (Go figure.) The Easy Bake Oven was still the biggest and most innovative thing for a girl’s toy. But Crayola came out with a stencil kit with a bunch of papers that had design outlines, and pattern rubbing plates and a light box. Everything in the kit was meant to fit in the light box. The light box was plastic, pink and ran on D batteries (not included bummer.) And I had just enough money to buy it or a new Barbie. (I think my only other difficult choice that compares to this was the Star Craft Battle Chest and something else and I chose the Battle Chest.)

(I can't believe I found a picture of that, someone is selling one on ebay.) Because, I mean, a new Barbie would only give me one set of new clothes, with this fashion design kit I could draw clothes, lots and lots and lots of clothes. I had always been an artistic child. I liked drawing. This had never really been encouraged except in the “here, have another set of colored pencils, pastels, watercolors, no lessons included.” So, here was Barbie in paper form! I didn’t have to take the clothes on and off. I could just trace what they had on the sheets or try to come up with stuff myself.

Pages of my Fashion Design Kit Now

I’m not going to say I was very good at it. The point was, I had fun, this was something to do that didn’t involve playing a game on the computer or reading a book or practicing my piano and I hadn’t gotten into writing at this age. So, from using this stencil, I started with encouragement of one of my friends, to try and make it more real life proportion and draw the figures myself (once again without any sort of drawing classes. The art classes at my school were a joke.) I bought sketchbooks and took them to school with me. I started writing because of this same friend.

It was frankly an escape. My allowance never grew bigger. So, it went towards buying new books to read, sketchbooks and replenishing my Crayola colored pencils. (Though Imperial ones were better but I only got those out of the colored pencil color by number kits.) I didn’t buy fashion magazines. The idea of fashion as a career wasn’t on my radar. I didn’t have a career on my radar. College was one of those, “I’ll think about it later,” things.

The girls at my school who were cheerleaders and liked fashion weren’t precisely my friends and felt like complete foreigners and strangers to me. I didn’t ‘get’ them. We had our groups and we stuck to them. Having arrived to this school after the groups were formed, I fit nowhere and living so far away from everyone else, there was no way that I could feasibly see to hang out with them after school in order to get to know them well enough to fit into one of the groups at all.

Magazines were a luxury in our house. Vogue never made it into the house ever. It took until after 7th grade and a major fight that we even got the newspaper. So by the time I hit eleventh and twelfth grade and college was ‘mandatory’ and I had a list of requirements for what college I could go to, I had to look through what the colleges offered versus what I was interested in and thought I could be good at. (Let me say that writing wasn’t considered because my mother was very anxious about me being able to have a ‘real job.’) And the practice test for the ACT in 10th grade came with this odd employment aptitude test thing to help you find the job that would be the right fit. (Goodness knows if it was remotely accurate.) Fashion design was in my “right fit” category. And between all the majors, there was a tiny college in Ohio that happened to have a Fashion Design degree under their Health and Human Services Major. And since the only computer graphics and gaming major I could find was at a Calvinist college in Michigan, I thought the Mennonite College in Ohio was probably a better idea.

I didn’t read fashion magazines. I didn’t know really how to sew. (Sewing lessons with my mother were a complete disaster.) I couldn’t make a pattern. I had absolutely no portfolio. There were three things I liked, writing, computer games and drawing clothes. And let’s be clear, I wasn’t that great at drawing clothes and my designs at the time probably weren’t that innovative. I had to make a choice and what very little information I could glean from the Ithaca Public Library (seriously, you’d think having Ithaca College and Cornell, the library would be better,) fashion seemed the way to go. It was a massive industry. It had to have work available after I attained my degree.

Oh to be that young and naïve again. Probably sheltered is the better term.

I was over a year and a half into my fashion degree at this tiny college when someone finally thought to clue me in that “to get a design degree you have to have an art minor.” Realizing that this was utterly ridiculous and that making patterns in ¼ of the size wasn’t really going to get me anywhere after trying to talk with one of the other students about whether or not we could really get work after going to this school, (I’m sorry, sweetie, I hope you realized I was trying to convince myself as well as you,) I transferred out and into the Academy of Art. (And this took another large fight.)

Where, I had a lot of credits but I essentially had to start from the beginning. So, having those credits wasn’t actually to my advantage because the numbers of credit hours earned made it appear that I had more experience than I did. This got me more scrutiny and really a worse college experience.

Let’s understand something, I grew up in New York. The Fashion Institute of Technology is part of the SUNY system of colleges. I was a New York resident. It would have been fairly cheap for me to go to FIT. My parents didn’t want me in NYC or at a secular school. Parsons was always out of the question because it’s as costly as Cornell and I understood that. FIT would have been an extremely LOGICAL CHOICE.

Oh well, I loved San Francisco. I loved the big city/small town feel of it and the ability to walk most places and the public transit. If it wasn’t so expensive to live there, I might still be there.

So, schooling wore away at me, but it didn’t dim my love of creating clothes. My love of creating clothes was never founded or predicated upon the idea that success was a runway show and a big fancy store and my name in lights. I didn’t want to be the next Coco Chanel. I didn’t know who she was and at the time I started drawing clothes, I frankly didn’t care. My going into fashion was me going “here is something I love and enjoy doing, can I make a job out of it? Yes. Yes. I can.”

No one can take that from me. I might get bored or tired, but you can’t take the love of creating away from me.

And by the way, I still don’t read Vogue. It’s out of date before it’s printed and 75% advertisements. I also still don’t care about a runway show or seeing my name in lights as a “name” of a brand. That’s not the fashion price point I do or understand. And that’s okay, despite the push by fashion schools to design for that price point and that should be your goal, there is a lot more to fashion than ready to wear. Maybe that gives me an advantage, maybe it doesn't. That's not my connection to fashion. Magical fabric shops, Barbie, Crayola, the joy of creating, those are my fashion connections. And those are a lot more tangible than a runway or a name in lights by my account.

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thetwilightroadtonightfall · 6 years

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Art Tutorial!

by popular demand of @whoelsewillihaveicecreamwith and some other kind people, here’s a short & snazzy tutorial on how I do my drawings (they’re traditional, with filters from an editing app)

Disclaimer: I’m going to assume that beginner artists will also be reading, so I may or may not over-explain things. Also I’m not a teacher or a super amazing artist myself, so if there’s anything you don’t like about my methods, you don’t have to follow them.

1) Pencil sketch

this step can be as messy as it needs to be and can often take some time to get right; the main point here is trying to get the general idea from your head onto the paper as best as you can

I try to do it as light as possible because I need to erase these lines later and I don’t want to mess up my paper during the erasing process

sometimes this can be the finished piece, just with some minimal grayscale shading such as with this piece or this one

2) Linework with pen

pretty straightforward, all I do here is go over my sketch lines with a drawing/gel pen (what I use atm is a 0.7 MUJI gel pen but in the past I’ve used anything between 0.1 to 0.5)

making adjustments is totally fine at this or any step. As you can see I don’t always follow the sketch lines exactly

I also leave the smaller details such as facial features and clothing wrinkles for last after I erase the sketch lines. For those, I use a much thinner pen (atm a 0.38 MUJI gel pen)

like with step 1, you could also potentially end here, such as the case with this piece

3) Flat Colouring

I start with colouring the blacks, then the skin, then everything else (shading is the next step). For Strelitzia, her colours are thankfully pretty simple.

with other characters who wear gray, I colour gray right after black using a dual tip or a sharpie

to colour everything else, all I’ve been using lately are crayola thin markers (aside from the skin and gray tones, which I use some cheap dual tip markers for). In the past, I’ve used pencil crayons.

*side note: the only part of this piece that is coloured with pencil crayon is Strelitzia’s hair because I don’t have the right coloured marker for it

4) Shading

this is pretty straightforward too, just use slightly darker tones to add depth

I’ll admit that shading’s not my strong point. What I’ve been doing for now is just having the light source always on the left and shading accordingly

I’ve also added her freckles using a marker and some more small details using the 0.38 pen

5) Re-lining

next, I re-line everything to make it pop more and also because the original linework gets duller each time I colour over it

I sometimes also add extra depth by using thicker lines (like on some of the strands of Strelitzia’s hair for example) but tbh sometimes it’s just pure luck lmao

optional: something new I’ve been doing lately is adding individual strand lines in hair using the 0.38

6) Editing

alright, here’s where things get funky

I use an app called Camera+ to document and edit the art (making sure it’s high quality and there are no shadows cast over it)

the editing and filter steps vary from piece to piece. It’s mostly experimentation and personal taste

for this piece in particular, I saturate it slightly and adjust the brightness and contrast until it’s just the way I want it. Other tools in this app that I use often include exposure control, shadow and highlights control, and sharpening (among other things)

7) Filter(s)

Camera+ (and other editing apps I’m sure) comes with a lot of different filters that can be layered on top of each other and adjusted with a scale. The ones I use here are called Cross Process and Nostalgia, and they’re arguably the filters I use the most simply because I like them and they’re pretty vibrant

as I mentioned in the previous step, whatever filter you use depends on the colours you have and/or what kind of mood you’d like to evoke. For this and many others, I choose to use filters that emphasize on the warm tones particularly in Strelitzia’s hair

the combinations are endless!! you could even do something cool like this if you wanted to (Transfer, Purple Haze, Dreamstate, and Helios at various levels):

8) Finished Product

back to our original Cross Process and Nostalgia version, we’re done!

all that’s left to do is to slap on a caption and tag it however you like

for reference: this took about an hour

And that’s a wrap! I hope this was helpful in some way, or entertaining at the very least. Feel free to shoot me any questions.

#my art #my posts #art tutorial

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im-999 · 6 years

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May I please ask what brand of watercolour you typically use or is your preference?

Hey Kayterchmater! Sorry for the delay on answering this ask. Questions on traditional artist materials are usually hard for me to respond to without writing some ridiculous, convoluted 10 page essay, complete with shitty photo diagrams haha.

See below

To answer your question, I mainly use Schmincke-Horadam pan watercolors. Since they’re marketed as artist grade and made overseas in Germany, they come with a hefty price tag attached. Is it worth it? It’s really hard for me to give two thumbs up as there are definitely aspects I dislike about them. I’ll fully admit, when I bought my first set 10 years ago (from Pearl Paint RIP), I didn’t completely know what I was doing, other than I knew I wanted a pan set of professional grade paints to take with me on my watercolor adventures. However, I’ve learned over the years to adjust my painting style to account for some of its shortcomings (sometimes by bumping up the contrast in photoshop haha) and even up to this point I’ve been using the 30x30 watercolor challenge to rethink my methods and see if I still have it in me to learn some new tricks. :P

The bigger palette in the centerof the photo is my Schmincke-Horadam off the shelf 24 full pan set, which I purchased more than 10years ago at my local Pearl Paint (using their annual 30% coupon around Christmas) and the smaller set on the right started as anempty tin that I gradually filled with half-sized pans over the years. This palette happens to double as my travel set; Ican tuck 2 small paintbrushes plus a mechanical pencil comfortably in that central gap without any problems closingit.

As to how I would describe the general behavior of Schmincke paint, the colors appear deliciously vivid when wet on the page, but as soon as they dry they take on a light and delicate quality. It’s not entirely uncommon for pan paints of different brands to exhibit this though, because regardless of the brand, you’ll always need water to reactivate the paint which in turn, dilutes the color (depending on how much you use of course). This sort of effect can be desirable when it comes to painting certain subjects…like light skinned people under daylight conditions for example. But on the flip side, if you want to achieve darker hues, glazing is essentially a must (unless you’re not sticking entirely with pan watercolors). Unfortunately, a big drawback I often run into with this method is that the color appears to lose some vibrancy when there are too many glazes. You can kinda see this happening in the blue cloudy background enveloping my Ignis test, particularly around his hair and shoulders, where I’m trying to build up the contrast. While I’m relatively content with the overall values of this topless Iggy, the colors appear kinda lifeless, especially up against the bright swatches hovering just above him. I have a hunch that the paper of this watercolor journal is also contributing to the uneven, mottled look…but I’m not entirely certain at this point; I think a few more tests may be in order before I can give a verdict. Browsing around the interwebs, it does seem like heavy users of this journal paint more landscapes and still lives than figures, which is also telling…textured papers are more suited to those subjects IMHO.

Off the top of my head, if you’re looking for an affordable starter pan set of decent quality, Sakura Koi’s Pocket Sketch Box and Winsor and Newton Cotman’s Sketcher Pocket Box come to mind. From what I remember playing around with my friends’ sets, the colors appeared nicely saturated and responded well to all basic watercolor techniques. Mid to high range student sets like these usually provide a nice transition to artist grade should you take the plunge. And even if you choose not to take that route, the saturation and quality of the paints are high enough for making the occasional piece for display, gift, or sale.

While it is true that materials don’t make the artist, for every paint medium there generally exists a bottom-of-the-barrel threshold for supplies that aren’t worth the time…because practically speaking they’re really made for children who haven’t grasped the idea that paint is not meant to be consumed or smeared on your clothes and skin. Thanks to the addition of cheap fillers for that non-toxic factor, all of these paintsperform too poorly for the medium’s standard and/or are extremely fugitive (subject to change or fade under UV exposure, humidity, and other environmental factors). If you want to be able to display or sell your original work with minimal degradation, I’d give a hard pass on sets like Crayola and Prang. On a side note, the non-washable Prang is actually decent to paint with…but again, with the fugitive nature of the paint, its just not worth it. The difference between a crappy Crayola set and a Winsor and Newton Cotman set is only $12 right now which is not terrible…

Sorry for the rambliness, I hope this was able to help you in some form or another. I know you didn’t explicitly ask for recommendations, but Schmincke is just way out of budget for most people, and its not even that stellar so I would feel bad just leaving it at that.

Poor Iggy, next time I’ll draw you topless on better paper. ಥ_ಥ

As always, feel free to ask me any q’s!

#ask #30x30 watercolor #self critique #disappointed egg #faq #watercolor

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wallpaperpainter · 4 years

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onstagesport · 7 years

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Color My World Chapter 1/ 2

I may be taking a hiatus from Ao3, but I still want to share this. I did a lot of research for this and also am ignoring the passage of time (aka It’s 1903 but they haven’t aged)

Crutchie supposed that he just didn’t ‘get’ art. He enjoyed sketches and even some paintings, but he couldn’t really distinguish them from each other unless the content was really memorable. Most of the time, it wasn’t. But that was okay, he just didn’t ‘get’ art.

He liked Jack’s art, though! Everything Jack showed him, even the paintings he thought were kind of ugly though he never said that out loud. Jack was usually so secretive about his art that if he shared it, he either knew it was ugly and didn’t care or he was especially proud of it. Either way, Crutchie voicing his opinion would do no good.

After a stressful day of selling, all Crutchie wanted to do was go up to the penthouse and unwind with Jack. The headline had been crappy, and his leg hurt more than usual but he refused to play it up for sympathy. That would make him just as bad as all the others who faked their limps.

He struggled up the ladder to the rooftop, pulling himself up rung by rung and holding his crutch under his chin. If he dropped it from all the way up here and it fell to the ground, he might never get it back. That would be the cherry on top of his day.

“Hey, Crutchie! Heard you coming!” Jack appeared above him with a jovial laugh, ready to lend a helping hand.

“I can do it,” Crutchie glowered. Jack had seen him do it before.

“I know,” Jack promised with a smile. “But how’s about I take your crutch and then you don’t have to worry about it, huh?”

Crutchie frowned up at him but allowed him to take the crutch up to the penthouse for him. He took several more seconds to climb, but eventually he got there. Jack was waiting for him at the top of the ladder and he held out the crutch with fanfare. Crutchie had to smile at that. Jack could brighten even his gloomiest day.

They settled in and Jack returned to what he had been doing before Crutchie arrived. Unsurprisingly, he was sketching on some rolls of paper that Miss Medda probably provided.

“What are those?” Crutchie asked curiously, pointing to the sticks Jack was using to sketch. They were shorter than Jack’s pencils and wrapped in paper, so they couldn’t be the coal sticks he occasionally used.

Jack turned to him, beaming.

“Just got them today,” he nodded, proudly handing over the box. “For a nickel.”

Crutchie nodded as he read the box.

‘Crayola Gold Medal Eight Colors School Crayons Binney & Smith Co.’

“A nickel?” he repeated, looking up at Jack.

Jack nodded. “Yeah, saw them in a shop and figured ‘you know, I deserve something nice.’”

Crutchie snorted, shaking his head at Jack.

“What? You think I don’t deserve something nice?” Jack pouted, placing a hand over his heart. “That hurts, Crutchie.”

“What I think is I think you got conned.”

Jack huffed out a laugh and held up the eighth crayon that was missing from the box to show that he had gotten what he paid for. Crutchie turned the box over in his hands to see if there was any more information about crayons.

“Can you pass me the green one?” Jack asked, holding out his for an exchange.

“Sure thing,” Crutchie nodded. He picked one from the case and passed it to Jack. “What’re you drawing?”

Jack didn’t respond, but instead gave Crutchie a slightly confused look for a moment. Crutchie somehow felt very small. He wasn’t used to feeling like that with Jack.

“What?” he asked, his eyes darting to the ladder. He knew that he wouldn’t need to escape from Jack, but there was a fleeting moment of panic.

“Sorry. Did I say ‘brown?’ I meant green,” Jack corrected, handing the crayon back.

Now, Crutchie looked at him in confusion.

“No, you said green. …Like the grass,” he confirmed.

Jack side eyed Crutchie. Whatever this joke was, he sure was committing to it. He asked for the box back and Crutchie willingly handed it over. Jack plucked out a crayon that was almost the exact same color.

“Green, like the grass,” he repeated. Crutchie stared between the two crayons, trying to see how either was more grass-like than the other.

“Can you not see colors?” Jack inquired. Crutchie knew he didn’t mean to be, but after the day he had, that rubbed him the wrong way.

“I see colors,” he grumbled. He didn’t need a messed up leg and messed up eyes. He continued a little more quietly. “They just all look the same.”

Jack stared at Crutchie in awe like he was some kind of exotic exhibit in a zoo. Crutchie grabbed for his crutch. Even though going inside would be loud and grating, it was better than sitting here and getting silently made fun of by his best friend.

“Hey. Hey, where you going?” Jack asked, sitting up straighter as Crutchie got to his feet.

“You’re looking at me weird,” Crutchie defended.

“Sorry, I never knew nobody who couldn’t see colors,” Jack explained, rolling up the papers so he could stand too.

“I didn’t know I couldn’t see colors!” Crutchie burst. He had a limp and he couldn’t see right. If he lost his hearing, the guys would think he was an absolute goldmine for garnering sympathy buyers.

Jack reached out to him, carefully touching his shoulders and starting to bring him in for a hug. It was too hot for that and Crutchie shook him away.

“Hey, it’s okay,” Jack smiled at him. “It ain’t a big deal.” An idea struck him. “You know, I bet we ask Davey and he would be able to tell you a ton of people who can’t see colors. Inventors, scientists, millionaires…”

Crutchie perked up a bit. Not only about the fact that there might be other people like him, but at the mention of Davey. He hurried to the discarded box of crayons and picked it up. He drew two and stared at them for a long time.

“Davey’s eyes are blue,” he stated decisively, holding them both up when he couldn’t choose between them. Jack laughed, but it was almost endearing enough that Crutchie didn’t mind. He took one of the crayons out of Crutchie’s hand.

“Davey’s eyes are blue,” he confirmed, smiling. “This is purple.”

Crutchie wanted to argue that they were exactly the same color but Jack was the one of them who saw colors right. He gritted his teeth and forced himself to be good-natured. He shouldn’t be surprised something else was wrong with him.

“I guess I’ll just have to believe you,” Crutchie dramatically sighed in Jack’s direction, sitting back down. Jack smiled at him.

“You’re not leaving?” he teased, settling in beside him. Crutchie shrugged like he hadn’t made up his mind to stay.

“What were you drawing anyway?” Crutchie asked, looking around for what Jack could have been referencing on the roof that required green.

Jack sank into himself a little, modest.

“I never used crayon before, so I was just doing some little test doodles,” he brushed off the question. Crutchie stared at him insistently, silently probing for more. “And I like to draw people I know when I doodle, okay?”

Crutchie scrunched his face in confusion. “And you needed green? Why?” He had a theory but it was probably stupid so he kept it to himself. He didn’t want Jack to laugh at him for asking if the boys with darker skin or darker hair could be green.

Almost sheepishly, Jack reached over and unrolled the paper he had been using. “Now, like I said I never used them before so it’s not that good and I didn’t finish, but…here.”

He showed Crutchie a half-finished portrait. The lines were kind of flaky but they were still definitely outlining his own face.

“Is this me?” he asked, looking up at Jack again, smiling. Jack nodded. “Why did you need green?” He looked down at his beige clothes. “Do I wear a lot of green?”

Jack laughed again and shook his head.

“Your eyes are green,” he shrugged.

“Oh.” Crutchie frowned before falling silent. That was the second thing he had learned about himself in the span of half an hour.

“Hey,” Jack nudged him. “You ain’t upset about this, right?”

Crutchie shrugged despondently, “I can’t see colors, Jack.”

“So what? Huh? Blink can’t see out of one eye at all,” he pointed out.

“How many things are wrong with me?” Crutchie demanded. “Is…Is my arm gonna fall off tomorrow?”

“No,” Jack shook his head. Granted, he didn’t know that for sure but it seemed unlikely. “And if it did, I’d carry your papes for you if you want. Any of us would.”

Crutchie slumped with a sigh. That was true. He wouldn’t want the help, of course, but it was good to know that they would be there if he ever did.

He reached over Jack’s lap and grabbed the box of crayons. He idly flipped through them as though shifting them would magically allow him to see their true colors.

“Hey, is that why you thought I got conned?” Jack asked suddenly.

“It looks like you only got three colors for a nickel,” Crutchie explained.

He dumped all of them out into his hand and separated them. Blue and purple were together. Green and brown were together. Yellow, slightly darker yellow, black and weird brownish-gray were all their own colors.

“Okay, I guess you got five colors,” Crutchie corrected.

“Penny a color, just like a pape,” Jack laughed.

“Oh! Speaking of papes, the headlines today?” Crutchie changed the topic to complain about the papers. Anything except him. “The most exciting thing was the pope getting sick again.”

Jack laughed but agreed. “And we’ve been reporting on his health for two weeks. There’s only so much interest for ‘the voice of God might be dying? No, for real this time.’”

They dissolved into laughter, and Jack soon started sketching again while Crutchie continued talking about his day, trying his hardest to be cheerful and forget about his weird eyes. They kept on like that until it was about time for dinner, signaled by Jack’s growling stomach. Before they descended, Jack showed Crutchie the finished portrait. Crutchie nodded at it.

“It looks just like me,” he praised. Or at least the version of him that he saw when he caught his reflection. But Jack could have colored him different from real life and he never would have known.

With that, they descended the ladder. Jack went down first and Crutchie followed after.

“You won’t tell any of the guys about me not seeing colors, right?” Crutchie asked when they were halfway down the fire escape.

“Not if you don’t want them to know,” Jack promised, rumpling Crutchie’s hair. “Now, c’mon. Else Henry’ll eat everything before we even get there.”

#crutchie morris #jack kelly #newsies fic #newsies #color blind crutchie #my writing

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mysticsparklewings · 5 years

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Tombow Recycled Colored Pencil Review

Look! I finally got some more colored pencils to try out! This time we're looking at the Tombow Recycled Colored Pencils. Tombow is probably best known for their water-based dual brush pens, which I have a few of, but these and their other line, the Irojiten colored pencils (which are a bit fancier and noticeably more expensive than these), are more intriguing to me. These pencils specifically are called "recycled" pencils because if you look closely at the pencils in person, each one has a couple of zigzag lines dotted along the barrel/wood casing. These are "finger joints" where partial pieces of wood have been joined together to make a piece the proper length for making colored pencils, whereas most normal colored pencils just use whole pieces of wood and, apparently, thus generate a lot of wood-waste. But what really caught my attention about the recycled colored pencils, and why I ended up getting them before getting the Irojitens even though the packaging and idea behind those are ridiculously attractive to me, is because the word on the internet is that the core of these pencils used the exact same formula as the Irojitens. This is important because the 24 set of Recycled Pencils goes for about $14 on Amazon, and anywhere from $13-$30 depending on where else you look. But any of the three sets of 30 Irojiten pencils can go anywhere from $25-$50 depending on where you look, and while there are only 24 Recycled pencil colors, there are 90 Irojiten colors (the full set going for about $80-$100, again depending on where you look), so you'll end up paying a lot more to get the full set of those. What that means then, if they are indeed the same core--I couldn't find confirmation on Tombow's website or the Amazon listing, so it could very well just be a very strong rumor--that these are a cheaper way to try out the formula for the Irojiten pencils to see if you even want to invest in them. Hoping this was one of the times the internet is right, that's what I did. I'll get my big complaints out of the way first: I wish there were more colors, the pencils are a bit of the harder side (but not to the point they're painful to work with), and the white and metallics fell a little short for me. But, even so, I think the pencils are pretty nice for their price point. So let's take a bit of a deep dive and I'll address those things as they come up. The first thing I noticed once I actually had the pencils in my hand is that they're designed similarly to the Caran D'ache Luminance and Faber Castell PITT Pastel pencils, both of which are considered high/artist quality pencils and their price points reflect that very strongly. (Translation: Those pencils are hecka expensive). Most of the pencil is the naked wood casing, but the very ends, about 1/4 of an inch, are dipped in what's supposed to be the color of the pencil. The pencils, as well as the hinged tin they come in, have a lot of either Japanese or Vietnamese printed on them. (I've heard multiple times that Tombow is a Japanese company but these pencils both on the packaging and on the pencils themselves say there were made in Vietnam, and as uncultured American swine my untrained eyes can't tell the difference between the two written languages) This makes figuring out which color you have a wee bit tricky, but the color names are printed inside the lid of the tin and each pencil is numbered and they're laid out in the correct order, so if you can remember which color is which number, you should be okay. This problem could also be eased by some washi tape either on the tin with the number or one the pencils with the names (or both), but I got used to the numbers/placement to figure out which ones I wanted pretty quickly. This would be a much bigger problem if this was a larger set, though. Speaking of which, about those colors... For a 24 set, I do feel like you get a pretty good range; There's a white, black, pink, peachy/light skin tone color, even a gray and two metallics: silver and gold. Comparing this color range to both the Prismacolor 24 set and the Crayola Artist/Blend & Shade 24 set, I do wish they'd swapped one of the yellowish colors for a light turquoise/blue-green color like the other two sets have, and if I'm really splitting hairs then swapping the metallics for another lighter skin tone/peachy/tan color and/or light purple/lavender would've been really nice. But this set has a nice gray, which neither of the other sets do, and otherwise is pretty well-rounded for a small set, in my humble opinion. There is one thing that bugs me about this color selection though; there's one pencil, 16 Ultramarine, that from the paint on the pencil looks like the typical darker warm blue color you'd expect Ultramarine to be, but when you swatch it out, the color is noticeably lighter. So, in reality, it's about the same darkness/value as the regular 15 Blue. This is disappointing because that means unless you use black there's not a good darker blue in the set to shade with. The irony is that another color, 23 Magenta, is a lot more saturated/vibrant on the pencil than it is swatched. This is less disappointing because the slightly darker, more muted hot pink color is arguably more useful that the brighter, more fuchsia-ish color would've been. Otherwise, the colors on the pencils match the swatches fairly well. But I think the disparity is largely because there's no white base layer between the wood of the pencil and the color dips, and so the colors on the pencils are all slightly tainted by the color of the wood. Even with a layer of white pencil, with these or any other pencils, my tan and gray papers always affect the final colors, so it does matter. Anyway. As for performance, for the price point--which I'm garnering as the $13-$14 range because that's what I paid, even though it can be higher--they do really well. They're not as soft as Prismacolor, but from my pre-purchase research, I had already expected that for both these and the Irojitens. And I mean, if we're being realistic as this point there's only like two pencil brands I will ever expect to be as soft as good ol' Prismacolor--the Caran D'ache Luminance and the Holbein pencils from Japan--but those are ludicrously expensive and so it will probably be quite a while before I can see how true that impression holds. Unless the pencils are so hard/unpigmented that it hurts my hand to use them when coloring for long amounts of time (20 minutes or more sessions), I typically don't count that super harshly against the pencils. But I digress. It is a little queer though because these pencils--it's like they're somewhat soft at the same time that they're noticeably rigid, which reminded me somewhat of the Faber Castell Polychromos, which are an oil-based pencil. I couldn't find a definitive answer--on the Tombow website or the Amazon listing--on if these pencils or the Irojitens are supposed to be oil or wax-based (though I could have missed it somewhere), but this combined with the more creamy feel on the paper makes me think they're actually a strong wax/oil hybrid. When they go down on the paper, the amount of friction and general feel is nearly identical to wax-based pencils (creamy feel as opposed to oil pencils having a silky/gliding feel), but the more rigid nature and the fact that these prefer to be layered up slowly rather than trying to go right for a heavy pressure layer to get the best color pay-off is definitely more in the family of oil-based pencils. And they don't have as much a of a "waxy" sheen when you move them in the light, again like oil-based pencils. I'd almost say they are oil-based, but there's just enough feel of a wax-based pencil, and the way they look on the paper, I don't feel comfortable sticking them squarely in that category. As for layering and blending, my research had also pre-cautioned me that these do better to layer them up slowly instead of trying to burnish them in right away. And that does indeed seem to be the case, just like with the aforementioned Polychromos. You can get decent color pay-off from going in heavy straight away, but it's easier on the hand and I would say looks and feels better to use layers instead. They do blend better than I expected from the way they felt; it's not super-duper smooth like Prismacolor or like I've had with Schpirerr Farben sometimes, but it is pretty smooth and as you can see here is very workable. It helps that they do appear to have the layering power you'd expect from other oil or oil-hybrid pencils, meaning while the first couple of layers look a little rough and concerning, once you've built them up they smooth out and you can keep going to build them up for noticeably longer than your typical wax-based pencil. All this in mind and backing up a little bit, the white was disappointing to me because it's not that strong/pigmented on its own. It's not the worst I've ever seen, but unless you put the white down first and pre-plan where you're going to want that strong white highlight and avoid going over it with other colors, it's not very good for adding strong white color back into a drawing over other color layers. But it is pretty good for blending, which I find tends to be the give and take on white-colored pencils: if they can't stand strongly on their own they usually work better as blenders. You'll also notice that despite my earlier comment on not having a proper darker blue/Ultramarine color, I was able to fake it pretty well here by layering up purples, blues, and a bit of black. And overall I'd say they do mix pretty well to make new colors, so the smaller set size is a little less of a problem than I initially expected. I also have to mention that in testing they have some of the best erasing I've ever seen for colored pencils that aren't specifically marketed as being erasable. Naturally, they don't erase 100% completely just like no colored pencil does, but it did really surprise me. Also, my white gel pens were a little fussy over top of these pencils. Not as bad as some other pencils I've tried, but they responded very similarly to how my other wax-based pencils do. But obviously, I was able to get them to work without too much headache. Overall, I give the pencils a 3.5 out of 5, which is pretty good as far as my standards for colored pencils go. I did take into account that I'm not crazy about the hinged lid on the tin them come in, but that's not a huge dealbreaker as it doesn't make the tin annoying or outright unusual to me, unlike other packaging issues have in the past. Also, of course, I took into account the other issues I mentioned, along with even my beloved Prismacolors only get a 4.5 out of 5 for minor issues and there always being room for improvement, even for favorites or "the best." Like I said earlier, the pencils really did surprise me for the price that I paid. That said, this does make me want to get the Irojitens to compare and see the proof in the pudding as to whether they really are the same core or not, as well as if they are to just have many more colors at my disposal to pick from, as in the end, I think that really was my biggest problem with these; 24 is just not a huge range of color to pick from. And, like I said at the very beginning, the packaging gimmick for the Irojitens constantly calls my name, but I'll save talking about that for the day that I actually have them in my hands, whenever that ends up being. I'd say if you want an experience that manages to hit somewhere between Polychromos/oil-based colored pencils and Prismacolor/wax-based colored pencils, that are still pretty nice quality and won't totally break the bank, these are very much worth a try. And now if you'll excuse me, I have some other supplies and some backlogged art on my to-do list that demand my attention. ____ Artwork © me, MysticSparkleWings ____ Where to find me & my artwork: My Website | Commission Info + Prices | Ko-Fi | dA Print Shop | RedBubble | Twitter | Tumblr | Instagram

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