#but I can draw and I can code basic things

[vespidclan]

Um hi I’m gonna talk about 404 and the works 🚶‍♀️ this ended up longer than I expected oops

What is she?

If we’re going to talk about how 404 can do the things she can do, we need to first talk about WHAT she is. 404 is… not just a moth? She clearly is, but she is also the ‘player’! When she got corrupted by the game, she was also given every ounce of power from the game. This left the game pretty much ‘dead’ and her in control, which is why Clangen.exe and the Vespidclan file is still running despite being broken. Basically, her having 100% of power meant that her and the system have ‘merged into one’, but since the system was corrupting and breaking apart as Moththorn went against her programing… That same corruption took over her. Then came the metamorphosis ‘rebirth’ symbolism yada yada yada aaaaaand that’s how 404 was born! 🎉🎉

And being the player, she can do ANYTHING in the game! Aside from creating, but ANYTHING! This means she can skip moons and go back to previous moons (time travel… inevitably caused Heartflicker’s injury), give cats injuries and conditions (basically giving Snakevalley recurring shock and whatever goes on in OOB), playing around with death settings (“dead”: false while letting their “dead_moons” go on and on, keeping the them dead but with conscious still intact so they can feel paralyzing agony *cough* what she does to cats like Spark), and let me tell you this is just scratching the surface.

Why does 404 appear different sometimes?

Shapeshifting? Form-changing? Neither of those! What it really is that she’s splitting her conscious around into different vessels/copies of herself that she can manipulate at will. It sounds complex, but trust me it won’t be after I explain it like this—She’s pretty much just multiplying herself so she can easily communicate with the cats in-game. Think of it like copying and pasting but without it being an exact replica.

To do that she needs some kind of source in the game that lacks much organism code-wise but still able to move around, so there’s room to fit a bit of her code in it. Whether it’s some kind of animal or a manifestation she made herself. Vinepaw probably explains it better than me.

So these guys that have shown up in the comics are her, or maybe 80% of her. She can control them and they have her same thoughts, so it’s basically her with a different identity. One big difference is that her shadow copies can only appear as a ‘hallucination’ and directly in the mind, but mini moth 4 is a real physical vessel that any cat can see, it’s just her text box that’s hidden from a few cats. She grabbed a poor little moth, stuffed her code into it, and now it’s a free new body to possess. The only reason she’s doing this is because Vinepaw’s mind is a little tricky than others, which we’ll discuss later on.

“Can’t 404 just appear normally like herself?” In-game? Nah, she exists in the Out Of Bounds area of the game, which is restricted zone no cat in-game can enter unless they go far enough to bypass it. 404 can barely get out of it herself.

But there’s times where she, her actual self, HAS appeared to cats like Stonepaw or Snakevalley, but only as a hallucination-that-feels-super-realistic-and-real. This would be whenever I draw her in her red and black colors or it’s just straight up her in all of her massive towering glory.

“Why can’t she just do this all the time instead of making copies?” A lady like her is too busy managing OOB and terrorizing the cats there! She’d only show herself if it was a top priority to her, like pressuring Snakie or finding Vinny.

How can she lurk into the mind?

She can’t go to the cats in-game. We all know that. The solution? Enter the mind! The best way I can explain it is she’s ‘hacking’ into the mindscape with all the knowledge she has so that they can see/envision her presence. Sometimes they aren’t too severe like just seeing vague glitches or her text boxes, or they’re very severe where she’s literally in front of you. Sounds easy for an evil moth goddess right?

Well rummaging in the mind isn’t… It’s most easiest when the cat is asleep, has already seen visions of ‘the fourth wall’ prior, or when the cat is most vulnerable. Other times, she needs to really intensely seep into the cat’s mind with, breaking through the barriers intense. Every psyche is different!

Some really good examples come from Stone and Vine! Stone saw 404 while she was just a small lil kit. After that, she’d constantly have nightmares and scary visions of 404. 404 quickly caught on and decided to keep Stone ‘in line’ via stalking so she can have ‘use’ to her plans later, but we all know that that didn’t work out. Vine meanwhile is able to ‘block’ 404 from his dreams, because all he thinks about 24/7 is cupcakes and rainbows. 404 actually managed to get to him later on, but she needed to actually be there than to use a silly copy, because it wouldn’t be very effective.

If she can’t interact with the cats in-game, how is she dragging deceased cats into OOB?

That’s because she isn’t… physically anyways. What she IS doing is coding them out of Starclan and into Out Of Bounds the very moment they die. It isn’t that scary, unless you see it happening yourself. Another trick of the mind that can unfortunately happen if you stand by her radius… but that’s very rare! ;)

How does coding work?

It’s like this

Okay but really… Coding is just what you and I could do on the computer—changing up stuff! Editing, fixing, modding, she can do it all! (apart from… yk…) It’s actually super self explanatory so there won’t be much to go over.

She uses her dexterous claws on these! These are the files, the source of every cats life and blood… The cats in OOB call them ‘The Towers’, cuz these things are taaaaaaallll. They do have their own special area in OOB, which is farther away from the actual place and are set in a ‘black void’, but she can spawn them in when she needs to make a quick ‘fix’.

404 can also take apart the files and rearrange them however she wants. And she can ‘spawn’ pieces of the files to her hand so she can edit them portably without having to climb or bring the whole tower with her.

Usually when she gets her hands on a file it will slowly (or quickly depending on the damage done) start chipping away. It isn’t all that bad, but once it’s taken full effect and broke so much of it, then the cat is also now ‘broken’. Take Heartie for example—She changed her trait from bloodthirsty to loyal, except 404 hadn’t changed it quite perfectly, so now she has a trait that ‘doesn’t exist’ within the code.

Plus like, you can take a look at the Moththorn file and see it’s completely demolished. Wonder why.

That’s pretty much it all for now. Hope you learned something new about how 404 works and I definitely hope this clears some stuff up 🩶

[dyingchemist]

Why the Arcane fandom sucks, an essay.

There is no way to enjoy anything in this fandom I feel, and frankly as someone who isn’t a shipper in any fandom I find it suffocating that the jayvik discourse snuffs everything else out. I also find it disgusting how everyone bullies the non-shippers or OC shippers/self shippers in this fandom I’ve notice. I have also noticed a fair bit of misogyny as well, whether it’s from people who are against Mel and Jayce or Sky and Viktor, or people invading the Jayce x reader and Viktor x reader (especially the fem!reader) tags with jayvik ship material. It’s exhausting if I’m honest. I also hate how the fandom uses any shred of media interviews to basically “go see see look you’re wrong,” to anyone who just wants to enjoy the original media in the way they want to and share it with others. Regarding the post production statements from cast and crew, my personal opinion is that they often try to give relatively (key word relatively) open ended statements while also giving the statement that would be most popular. You forget these people are PR trained. Now I think it’s perfectly fine if the cast and crew think it should be one way or another and I believe it’s still left just open ended enough for everyone to enjoy things how they want. I think I just get frustrated that people are a bit too stupid to see that people will always give the most PR popular answer (except the main writer apparently who I love how his statement is always like yeahhhhh anyways shut up, but everyone else’s statements are law? Idk kinda weird.)

I just think I’m very disappointed that my favorite show is slowly becoming something I hate because of the fanbase and I feel like I and other women are not allowed to enjoy it or our comfort characters unless they shut up and agree. And honestly I am disappointed that people on either side demand answers or for things to be official rather than letting everyone be happy. It’s called headcanon for a reason.

As someone who is ND and has hyper fixations it is hard to cope with this and it’s frankly frustrating and sort of embarrassing I get in such a tizzy that I feel like I can’t just go on IG or even Pinterest and enjoy just Viktor art without it behind shipping art. And I think it’s also ridiculous that I feel like I have to explain that no, it’s not me hating two men being shipped, frankly I think some of the art is adorable, is the fact I’ll put not interested in IG and I’ll get 20 more posts, or on posts that are like Sky x Viktor there will always be some jayvik shipper screeching there. At the end of the day it’s just annoying that no one is allowed to enjoy the same show we all love in a different way and are practically forced out of the internet spaces. I don’t even go on IG anymore because it was making me sort of upset, and tumblr is on thin ice but at least I can filter tags here. (But sometimes I would like a cheeky poly fic so I don’t really filter HAHA.) What I mean to say is that the rabid shippers are pushing BNHA levels, and what I mean by that is how feral they are and if you disagree they double down and sort of terrorize the rest of the fandom which frankly I don’t think is that small of a sect. (Those the disgusting and problematic stuff is not remotely on the same scale. The worst is misogyny and at times racism.)

Fandom and specifically fanfic has always been very fem coded in my experience and it makes me feel queasy that the fanbase for my favorite show actively seems to hate women. For example there was something on tiktok or IG about an artist drawing a racist depiction of Cait and then vitkor beautifully, or the fact shippers are racist towards Mel and Sky. I see SQUAT about time bomb or CaitVi, hell even Vander and Silco! I guess the crux of it is, a little diversity would be nice, character analyses that don’t revolve around sexuality or shipping, theory’s or expansions upon characters that sort of got back burnered like Sky or other councilors or more about the sort of rebellion and why Silco and Vander had a falling out. Writing critique on the show even considering that second season was so rushed imo!

Just let the women be in the fanbase bro. I don’t care that y’all are shipping two men, great, so you shouldn’t care what I and other women are doing too! You should be like cool we love the same show!

I am curious how women/fems/or just anyone burnt out from fandom and shipping feels and copes with this. Saying cope feels sort of cringe and like it’s causing me a mental breakdown, it’s more so the “bro please let me enjoy my favorite thing too,” feeling. We should make our own community with in the fandom so we can enjoy things as well with other people too. It’s okay and it makes me want to finally share my own writings I just don’t know where to start since I’ve been a lurker for 10+ years.

Love,

A Dying Chemist

[buttercupshands]

have a transparent Loop because I actually put efford into this one out of allllll the sprites I did today just because.

[doctorsiren]

he’s mad she ratted him out

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Turtles and Tribulations

[First] Prev <--> Next

[soullessjack]

i think perhaps another layer of autism in jacks character is that he’s fine with being different, but is always upset to be treated or perceived differently.

[yellllowstar]

slowly I'm recovering the beauty of discovery

(creature by half•alive)

(textless + timelapse below cut)

[anothermcytblog]

It's Au time!

This is an old AU for mine that once belonged to one of my old internet friends who let me have it back in like, 2017. They're no longer active online but I still really enjoy the au. I'm gonna tag but no art right now as all their art was theirs and i dont wanna take credit (with one exception being headshots they drew) (:

It's Jerome-Centered with the premise being a group of gods beefing basically due to a love triangle. Every generation a group of people were selected to have magical energy based on their astral spirit with several requirements; You can work well together, you can keep it a secret and you're pure of heart.

The god of life later turned god of death ended up being sealed away but is now gaining power once more so for this generation, the two gods of the Sun and Moon grew desperate and ignored two of the requirements- only caring about those who can keep it a secret.

Thus, we move onto our hero party!

Jason: Air Adam: Earth Ty: Poison Ian: Ice Quinten: Water Seto: Fire (Although something is... Off about that fact (: ) Jerome: “Wood” (Life) Mitch: Lightning

Elementals, as they're called, are absolutely hated/feared by the world, with life being the most hated.

Another more minor fact because I think it's really funny, originally Mitch dies three different times and Jerome has to bring him back each time. (First is a dramatic reveal, second is a 'I won't let you die!' kinda best friend moment and third is when everyone but Jason and Jerome die.)

Also if it's not clear, it's a fantasy world! Or at least fantasy adjacent

[theokusgallery]

@tosteur-gluteal

Father uses sons’ drawings as inspiration for anime transformations

By: Thomas Romain (twitter | instagram | youtube | patreon)

[catstar91]

I think it'd be funny if I talk about a hang out as "me and the gang" but it's clearly just me and my partner? But ahah! There's the trick! My partner is actually partners!

(Unfortunately I probably need clearance with the rest of the chimera on if I could make that joke or not seeing as one such Dude seemed to disagree with the notion that this is his relationship too? So maybe it's still just the one partner that happens to be part of a collective? But also... partner but plural... it just seemed funny in the moment)

[insertdisc5]

🎮 HEY I WANNA MAKE A GAME! 🎮

Yeah I getcha. I was once like you. Pure and naive. Great news. I AM STILL PURE AND NAIVE, GAME DEV IS FUN! But where to start?

To start, here are a couple of entry level softwares you can use! source: I just made a game called In Stars and Time and people are asking me how to start making vidy gaems. Now, without further ado:

SOFTWARES AND ENGINES FOR PEOPLE WHO DON'T KNOW HOW TO CODE!!!

Ren'py (and also a link to it if you click here do it): THE visual novel software. Comic artists, look no further ✨Pros: It's free! It's simple! It has great documentation! It has a bunch of plugins and UI stuff and assets for you to buy! It can be used even if you have LITERALLY no programming experience! (You'll just need to read the doc a bunch) You can also port your game to a BUNCH of consoles! ✨Cons: None really <3 Some games to look at: Doki Doki Literature Club, Bad End Theater, Butterfly Soup

Twine: Great for text-based games! GREAT FOR WRITERS WHO DONT WANNA DRAW!!!!!!!!! (but you can draw if you want) ✨Pros: It's free! It's simple! It's versatile! It has great documentation! It can be used even if you have LITERALLY no programming experience! (You'll just need to read the doc a bunch) ✨Cons: You can add pictures, but it's a pain. Some games to look at: The Uncle Who Works For Nintendo, Queers In love At The End of The World, Escape Velocity

Bitsy: Little topdown games! ✨Pros: It's free! It's simple! It's (somewhat) intuitive! It has great documentation! It can be used even if you have LITERALLY no programming experience! You can make everything in it, from text to sprites to code! Those games sure are small! ✨Cons: Those games sure are small. This is to make THE simplest game. Barely any animation for your sprites, can barely fit a line of text in there. But honestly, the restrictions are refreshing! Some games to look at: honestly I haven't played that many bitsy games because i am a fake gamer. The picture above is from Under A Star Called Sun though and that looks so pretty

RPGMaker: To make RPGs! LIKE ME!!!!! NOTE: I recommend getting the latest version if you can, but all have their pros and cons. You can get a better idea by looking at this post. ✨Pros: Literally everything you need to make an RPG. Has a tutorial inside the software itself that will teach you the basics. Pretty simple to understand, even if you have no coding experience! Also I made a post helping you out with RPGMaker right here! ✨Cons: Some stuff can be hard to figure out. Also, the latest version is expensive. Get it on sale! Some games to look at: Yume Nikki, Hylics, In Stars and Time (hehe. I made it)

engine.lol: collage worlds! it is relatively new so I don't know much about it, but it seems fascinating. picture is from Garden! NOTE: There's a bunch of smaller engines to find out there. Just yesterday I found out there's an Idle Game Maker made by the Cookie Clicker creator. Isn't life wonderful?

✨more advice under the cut. this is Long ok✨

ENGINES I KNOW NOTHING ABOUT AND THEY SEEM HARD BUT ALSO GIVE IT A TRY I GUESS!!!! :

Unity and Unreal: I don't know anything about those! That looks hard to learn! But indie devs use them! It seems expensive! Follow your dreams though! Don't ask me how!

GameMaker: Wuh I just don't know anything about it either! I just know it's now free if your game is non-commercial (aka, you're not selling it), and Undertale was made on it! It seems good! You probably need some coding experience though!!!

Godot: Man I know even less about this one. Heard good things though!

BUNCHA RANDOM ADVICE!!!!

-Make something small first! Try making simple: a character is in a room, and exits the room. The character can look around, decide to take an item with them, can leave, and maybe the door is locked and you have to find the key. Figuring out how to code something like that, whether it is as a fully text-based game or as an RPGMaker map, should be a good start to figure out how your software of choice works!

-After that, if you have an idea, try first to make the simplest version of that idea. For my timeloop RPG, my simplest version was two rooms: first room you can walk in, second room with the King, where a cutscene automatically plays and the battle starts, you immediately die, and loop back to the first room, with the text from this point on reflecting this change. I think I also added a loop counter. This helped me figure out the most important thing: Can This Game Be Made? After that, the rest is just fun stuff. So if you want to make a dating sim, try and figure out how to add choices, and how to have affection points go up and down depending on your choices! If you want to make a platformer, figure out how to make your character move and jump and how to create a simple level! If you just want to make a kinetic visual novel with no choices, figure out how to add text, and how to add portraits! You'll be surprised at how powerful you'll feel after having figured even those simple things out.

-If you have a programming problem or just get confused, never underestimate the power of asking Google! You most likely won't be the only person asking this question, and you will learn some useful tips! If you are powerful enough, you can even… Ask people??? On forums??? Not me though.

-Yeah I know you probably want to make Your Big Idea RIGHT NOW but please. Make a smaller prototype first. You need to get that experience. Trust me.

-If you are not a womanthing of many skills like me, you might realize you need help. Maybe you need an artist, or a programmer. So! Game jams on itch.io are a great way to get to work and meet other game devs that have different strengths! Or ask around! Maybe your artist friend secretly always wanted to draw for a game. Ask! Collaborate! Have fun!!!

I hope that was useful! If it was. Maybe. You'd like to buy me a coffee. Or maybe you could check out my comics and games. Or just my new critically acclaimed game In Stars and Time. If you want. Ok bye

[aria0fgold]

I just accidentally let out the most horrified gasp I didn't think I could make.

[alyanas-little-hideout]

Sorry for posting notes but it's actually worth mentioning that taxonomy is a predecessor for determining how different creatures are related based on shared physical characteristics but, importantly, doesn't presume evolutionary mechanism in the same way that phylogeny- that is, basing the connections between animals on the percentage of shared genome data- does.

Phylogeny has 0 concern for shared physical characteristics- a hyrax and a whale are more closely related than a whale and a shark, for instance, despite the shared body plan and lifestyles of sharks and whales and the completely unrelated body plans of hyraxes and whales.

Also phylogenetically -fish don't exist as a group -lobe-finned fish encompasses all land animals -sharks and ray-finned fish are more distinct than any land animal is from another -trees don't exist as a group -birds are dinosaurs, which are reptiles, which are amphibians.

and other fun oddities of biology.

which of my household appliances am i most closely related to

[roseband]

ugh.....last week i had to do a bunch of overtime, this week......i have like no work and just gotta sit here waiting for requests to come in

why can't things be evenly distributed ;_;

[cheer-nympho]

Steve had been conned into chaperoning the kids to a ren faire.

Admittedly with very little resistance, but he was keeping that to himself. Once there and with their bags packed away into some apparently theme appropriate tents he had shrugged on some medieval casual clothes and…immediately lost track of all of them,

But a figure he did spot was a long haired Jester entertaining a small entourage with juggling,

Steve finds himself laughing slightly condescendingly at the jingling man. Why do people find juggling so impressive?

He picked it up straight away with some hackey sacks while bored between practices. He’s just good with his hands.

When he looks back up to get another glance in however, the jester isn’t perched on top of his little rock anymore and the crowd has merged with the other dweebs.

Steve stares at the empty space for a moment before a jingle right by his ear spooks him into turning around.

“Art thou not impressed by my amazing skills, your lordship?” The jester asks, swaying on his feet and causing the bells all over him to ping, grin wide and mocking.

And up close Steve notices one very important, very dangerous thing.

This court jester is really fucking hot.

He looks like an idiot, a nerd, a dweeb. Its hard not to in a pointy hat. But he also wore it too well, looked too perfect like that.

Steve notices the…is that..? Yes, the corset wrapping tightly around the mans waist, red and black diamonds decorating the sides and leading to small puffy shorts. His legs are covered in tight black leggings which should look ridiculous. It should.

An obnoxious cough and head tilt-jingle make Steve aware that he has been staring at the mans waist for way longer than was ‘bro code permitted’

He looks up with a wince, expecting a look of disgust ranging from mild embarrassment to punch-your-lights-out.

He was, instead, greeted by a smug and knowing smile. The red and black triangles painted over the mans eyes warped where the grin reached them. “Or maybe thou art impressed, but skills are not what draw thine eyes.”

Shit. Fuck. The stupid hot nerd is using stupid nerd speak on him. And Steves stupid nerd, apparently ‘very accurate’ pants are getting tighter. He needs to say something. Anything.

“You’ve got…bells.” Okay, maybe not anything. He used to be better at this shit.

He is rewarded with a wild, joyous laugh as the jester throws his head from side to side. “I do! Isn’t it amazing?The staff insisted on it so they could hear me coming.”

“It certainly makes an impression-“

“Eddie, names Eddie. And what does my lordship go by?”

“Steve is fine.”

“That he is…” The comment was punctuated by a less than subtle glance, almost a leer. “However, Fine Steve seems unimpressed with my merrymaking. As the official court jester, I cannot let that stand.” He stamps his foot, causing another cacophony of jingles.” “Therefore…”

“…Pick a card any card!” A pack of standard cards was presented to him with a flourish, but all he could do was roll his eyes.

“Come on, really? This shit is basic. All I have to do it watch your hands. You’ll swipe my card out and put it back in later, or mark it somehow.”

“Ooo his highness has it all figured out doesn’t he. Well then, princess, you have nothing to lose by picking a card, do you?” And that was…true. Plus he could maybe try to fix his previous fumble and try to claw a number out of this disaster.

So with another bitchy roll of his eyes, Steve plucks a card from the deck and hides it behind his palm. Two of Hearts.

Then out of nowhere… “You know, Stevie, if you think I’m pretty you can just tell me. I know the kingdom would approve not of a noble like yourself marrying a commoner like me, but they need know little of how we…” He begins to reshuffle the cards, motioning for Steve to place his chosen one back in before making some very obvious, very crude movements with his fingers. “…get to know each other in the meantime.”

He was going to die. In the middle of a nerd fest.

“Well, my lord…” Eddie continues, circling him while dragging a finger across his arms and shoulder blades before coming to a stop in front of him. A very bold hand takes Steves jaw and forces his head up, pretending to inspect something on his costume for any bystanders.

“If you would like some more…close up demonstrations…” He leans in tightly, still holding Steve’s jaw in a tight grip. “You can pay me a visit in staff cabin 23 tonight.” He strokes a piece of hair gently behind Steve’s ear before pulling out a card, as if from said ear.

Steve was glad that Eddie took the initiative to carefully pull his hand up and place the card into his palm, because currently Steve was too preoccupied with staring like a fish out of water into Eddies eyes. Everything about him was just so captivating, so alive.

Maybe that’s why he did little more than step forward aimlessly, with small grabby hands when Eddie pulled away. Before Steve could even process it, the bells and jingles had mingled back into the crowd. But that was…that was okay. Cause he could go to the…cabin?

But how was he supposed to- Oh. He looks down. On the card was a loosely clipped room key with a ‘23’ crudely engraved into the edge as if by a pocket knife.

The card itself, to his horror, was the Two of Hearts.

Shit.

He forgot to watch the fucking hands.

[vetyr]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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