#it’s a bit of pthalo blue

[passumstars]

Little dragon horns for me

[eowynstwin]

imprimatura

muses - part one - next

Pairing: John "Soap" MacTavish x f!Reader Word Count: 2.8k Rating: Mature (mostly Soap being Soap) Warnings: please see this post for notes about this reader character Also on Ao3.

An artist meets her muse, and a solider meets his.

He arrives early as you’re setting up for your students, in jeans and a tight t-shirt, and the first thing that crosses your mind when you lay eyes on him is Jesus, he’s fit. 

You are no stranger to bodies. Hundreds of them have cycled through your studio, all shapes and sizes and colors; you think you may know every dip, every roll, every hard angle and soft curve that a human body is capable of holding. The mystique of defined muscle has long lost its novelty. Bodies are bodies, and each holds the same value as the next when subject to brush and canvas. It never matters, you teach your students, what a body looks like in the modeling chair. It only matters if they can reproduce it accurately.

Even so, when a body like this walks in, you really can’t help but take notice.

Decadent muscle, fed and worked well, round and full with hydration. It’s impossible to miss, even through his clothes; each group delineated clearly, gracefully, as if sculpted rather than built, and alive with soft, subcutaneous movement. It’s indulgent to look at, the comfortable breadth of his shoulders and chest down to that slight taper of his waist and bulk of his thick thighs. It’s a physique no hard-bodied gym rat could hope to achieve merely with extra time at the racks—a physique that is easily, harmoniously attractive in its makeup of muscle and healthy fat.

The man is also mohawked and suntanned, and his mouth rests at an angle that suggests he often smiles—as if he knows that Michelangelo would have swooned at the sight of him. He comes into your classroom, saunters over to you, and stops precisely two paces away from you.

“Sergeant John MacTavish,” he says, offering his hand. “I understand you’re the instructor?”

He has gorgeous, vivid blue eyes (pthalo and cremnitz, with a touch of hamsa). You blink several times. Fit is still rattling around your skull, and begins knocking against sergeant at the same rolling frequency as his warm Scottish brogue. You realize his hand is still outstretched and quickly take it to shake.

“Yes!” you say. His palm is tough, callused, and not soft in the slightest, but very warm. “Nice to meet you, sergeant.”

He gives a grimace. “John’s fine. Or Soap.”

“Soap?”

“Nickname, y’know.”

Neither of you have released from the handshake. Soap’s grip is firm, the kind of firm that suggests he can squeeze much, much tighter if he needs to. And if the grip isn’t any indication, the broad forearms, dusted soft with dark brown hair, certainly are.

Black lines, a sword and helmet framed in laurels, catch your notice. The ink has the soft edges of having lain in the skin for a few years. You turn his arm to see it more fully. “Oh. Nice tattoo.”

He looks at the ink as if it is entirely new to him, and then gives an easy grin. “Thanks. I’ve got a few more too. Hope they aren’t hard to draw.”

When you loosen your grip on his hand, he releases you immediately. You still feel the squeeze in your bones even as you drop your hand to your side.

“So, then, Soap,” you say, “have you ever modeled before?”

He shakes his head, tucking his hands into the front pockets of his low-slung jeans. It tugs the waistband just a bit, revealing a sliver of warm, tan skin (raw sienna, flesh ochre, naples yellow). “Should have, honestly, with how much it pays.”

“It gets very boring, very fast,” you say. “What do you plan to wear for the breaks?”

“Was I supposed to bring that m’self?”

You are unable to suppress a laugh. “Yes, unfortunately.”

“Oh,” he says, rubbing the back of his neck and going a little sheepish—as if expecting a reprimand. You suppose it’s a valid expectation to have, in his world. You aren’t terribly familiar with the military, but you do know it’s one hell of a stickler for rules.

You also can’t help but admire the appealing pull and stretch of his bicep and deltoid, the flex of his pectoral as he lowers his arm. 

“Why don’t you wait here, and I’ll go see if I can find something for you?” you suggest kindly, letting him off the hook.

“Sorry,” he says, pretty blue eyes filled with genuine apology. “I’ll remember nex’ time. Thanks.”

The expression is so hangdog that you almost want to pat his head and noise at him reassuringly, like an actual dog. You press your lips together to hide a smile, and leave the studio.

When you get back from the models’ changing room, you find Soap with one hip against the counter where you’d been organizing your supplies, one knee loose and shoulders set at a relaxed angle. You want to laugh at his easy contrapposto. He’s going to be an excellent model. You can feel it. 

It looks as if he’s moving around the sticks of vine charcoal with one outstretched finger; he pulls his hand guiltily away when you reenter the studio, crossing his arms over his chest as if to hide the evidence of his snooping. It makes his pectorals bunch and round out, gathers the thickness of his biceps up into chiseled, full definition.

You lift one brow at him as you walk over.

“Never could keep my hands to m’self,” he admits, still sheepish.

“It’s alright,” you allow, smiling back. “Do you draw?”

“Used to,” he says. He looks back at the charcoal. “No time, now.”

“Are you deployed often?” you ask, taking the opportunity to look at his face. 

Beauty is cheap in art, but you notice it all the same—appreciate the strong brows, the hard angle of his jaw, the dark stubble of a beard you suspect he can’t keep shaved down, and the long scar that cuts through it across his chin. The light brown of his complexion is speckled with sun exposure, and there are the faintest of creases at the corners of his eyes, which you expect will deepen into genuine, gorgeous crow’s feet as he ages.

He’s not all rugged, though. There is a soft, thick curl to his lashes, which are as dark as strong coffee or expensive chocolate, and an equal decadence to the pink, plush little swell of his bottom lip—which, in the very middle, has the smallest of divots, as if he regularly spends time biting it. 

They’re traits that are far too sweet to belong on an otherwise masculine face, and their effect is such that they turn an objectively average set of features into a shockingly attractive portrait—that suddenly has something fluttering, just a bit, in the roof of your stomach.

He looks at you, and catches your survey. You can see him realize you’d been watching, the knowledge of it blooming in ocean blue eyes like ink dropped onto linen.

“More often than no’,” he answers, showing teeth in a crooked, interested grin. And now he’s looking at you—attention flitting across your face, dropping down your body and jumping back up to meet your gaze. The creases deepen at the corners of his eyes.

The fluttering intensifies. The sudden role reversal has you feeling at once flustered and unmoored. You are never the subject of any perusal—always comfortably the observer.

“Well—” you try, and you’re embarrassed at the low tone of your voice. You clear your throat. “Well, let’s make use of the time we have you, then.”

His smile remains, cocksure and easy. “Let’s.” 

He knows the effect he’s had.

“Anyway,” you say, blinking several times and proffering the sheet you’d retrieved, “none of the other models are your size, so I’m afraid this will have to do.”

He takes it in his hands, which are sun-dark and striking against the clean white linen. “So it’s a toga, then?” he asks.

“Whatever you like. Let’s go over the basics, and then you can undress.”

“Oh, already, aye? Y’move fast, hen,” he drawls, still grinning. “I like it.”

Heat rushes to your face, but you don’t feel embarrassed enough not to laugh. You busy yourself with tapping your charcoal sticks back in place, putting them back in an even row ascending in order of length, and saving yourself from having to look him in the eye. “Ha! We don’t do a lot of foreplay in this studio, I’m afraid.”

“No?” Soap hums, and he steps closer. He’s very warm, enough that you can feel it even with the space between you. You do have to look at him then. His eyes are half-lidded, lashes casting pretty shadows on his cheekbones as he gazes down at you. “That’s a shame. I’m right partial to it.”

Your brows lift, and you will your pulse to remain steady even as you inhale, catching a thread of—cologne? Aftershave? Just plain deodorant?—coming off of him. The scent caresses you, almost beckoning you to lean forward. You swear you can see the thrum of his heartbeat, there in the soft hollows by his Adam’s apple.

You blink. He is your model. “Well—I’ll try to set you up as best I can, anyway. Follow me, please.”

And you turn your back on him, because this is your workplace, and you are at work, and if you don’t get on with things you might do something stupid like actually flirt back.

Soap hadn’t been sure what to expect when he arrived at the art studio. He’s never been to one before, much less one housed in a university—which he has also never been to—and hell, he only ever took one art class in high school.

If pressed, he’d have imagined old brick walls covered in diagram posters, shelves of supplies in all colors, the smell of paint hanging permanently in the air. What he finds instead is modern, clean, and impersonal. Stage lights hang from fixtures in the ceiling, pointing at a platform in the back center of the room. A tight line of easels, all folded up, stand pressed into a far corner, next to a tower of stacked chairs, and waist-high cabinets line half the room against the bare, painted cinder block wall. The linoleum floor looks new.

None of this, however,  has any opportunity to disappoint him. His final unmet expectation, standing across the room and organizing a tray of art supplies, is a very welcome surprise.

You’re bonnie. Like, every point on his wishlist bonnie. Christ, he must’ve done something really good lately, because he can’t imagine just lucking into this. There’s not a hard angle to you, all sweet and soft, but when you meet his gaze during introductions there’s a sharpness to you that skewers him through the chest. You are much smarter than him, he can tell immediately. 

He’s always had a thing for smart women. Soft ones, too.  And if that weren’t enough, you let him flirt shamelessly with you, while checking him out the whole time.

Steaming Jesus.

You direct him to get onto the platform and sit down, still clothed, in an armchair draped in another pristine white sheet. The stage lights are bright overhead, and they highlight free-floating wisps of your hair in gold. 

“You want to ensure that you don’t rest your weight on only one or two points,” you explain. You have a nice voice. Steady, confident—this is your territory, your studio, and in it you are clearly the master. “The main danger is that your arms or legs might fall asleep, and you won’t realize it until you get up, in which case you’ll fall. We can’t touch you, so we can’t save you from that.”

“Y’canna touch me?” Soap repeats.

“Not without your explicit consent,” you say.

He smiles at you, the kind of smile he saves for bright nights at the pub over platoons of shot glasses. “I explicitly consent to you touching me.”

The corners of your mouth tug upward, just a bit, and you look away, clearly bashful. Something in Soap’s chest starts beating a drum. He knows already he’ll ask you to drinks after the class ends tonight.

“I doubt I’d be able to do much,” you say, “you’re a bit more substantial than the usual models.” Your eyes flick down his torso and back up.

“Guess I’ll have to follow your advice, then,” he says.

“You should,” you say, and he looks at your thigh shamelessly as you pat it—even beneath your jeans, he can see the ripple of the impact. “One of the worst-case scenarios is nerve damage.”

“So you have done this before!”

He can’t help it—Soap’s imagination runs wild. Titanic, draw-me-like-one-of-your-French-girls wild. It’s not exactly polite to imagine a teacher naked while she’s in the middle of giving him directions (and Jesus, what a concept, he might be half-mast already), but Soap has always found that people like it when he’s a little rude.

You drum your fingers. “I have.”

He finally hears the nerve damage part of your instruction. “How, uh—how bad can it get?”

The drumming stops. “For me? It just starts to twinge a bit if I sit on this side very long. So don’t rest your weight all on one hip, yeah?”

Concern assuaged that he had not ignored your genuine pain in order to objectify you, Soap grins. “Yeah.”

“Good,” you say. “Also—even if it doesn’t hurt, Soap, you can stop at any time, okay?”

That has him blinking. “Kinda defeats the purpose, doesnae?”

You shake your head. “It doesn’t matter. This is your first time modeling. You don’t know how you’ll feel, sitting here with your clothes off and everyone looking at you. If you need to stop, I want you to stop. I’ll make sure you’re paid anyway, so don’t worry about that.”

You are…so serious about this. The line of your brows is furrowed, imploring, like a little discomfort on his part is a violation of the highest order.

“Sure,” he says, a little dumbstruck and mostly lying. He’d be a rubbish soldier if he tapped out of a little thing like sitting down, but it’s nice that you care.

You purse your lips, nod, and then move onto the task at hand, stepping back and then down off the platform. When you begin to survey him—gaze flitting up and down his body, more pensive than appreciative—he has to resist the urge to flex.

Instead he watches you as you look at him. He especially likes, he decides, the slope of your nose and the smart, serious press of your mouth. You could get him all turned around, he thinks, if you gave it half a try.

Your tits are also great, but that’s by the by.

“Try resting your elbow up a little higher, and twist at the hips a bit,” you instruct, and Soap obeys. “Hm. How would you feel about crossing your ankles?”

You continue like this—nudging him in directions he doesn’t think make all that much of a difference, standing in different positions around the room to check the angles. He half-wishes he could step out of his body and join you, curious as he is about what you’re seeing, what your students will see. He’s not sure he has any clear expectations for how the class will go, but if you’re any indication, it’ll be more fun than he expects.

“Not sure if I’ll remember how to get back into this,” he says, partly to be helpful and partly to get you to talk to him again.

“I’ll help you, don’t worry,” you say. “Okay, I think that’s a good one, you can move now—I’m going to start setting up, the students should be here any minute.”

He stands, and you turn away to collect your supplies, so Soap figures this means it’s time for him to strip. He pulls off his shirt and drapes it over the chair’s arm, unbuttons his pants and shoves them down to his knees.

“Soap!”

He freezes. Then he looks at you. You’re blushing again, deep and saturated, mouth parted in surprise and hand pressed to your chest. He does not miss the quick flick of your gaze down his body; he’s probably violated some rule or another of the studio, but he can’t help but grin.

You’re adorable.

“Gotta happen eventually, right?” he says.

You cover your face with your palm. “I was going to leave the room first!”

“First time someone’s wanted to run away when I’m takin’ my clothes off, I won’t lie—”

“You just come get me when you’re done!” you say hastily as you beeline for the door. “I’ll be right outside!”

Soap chuckles a little when you’re gone, the door slamming mortified behind you, and folds his clothes up behind the armchair he’ll be sitting in. You’re so cute. He can’t wait to sit naked for you for the next three hours.

And he’s definitely asking you out for drinks.

Author's Note: THE PROMISED FIC. I really hope y'all enjoy this one, I've been teasing it since March and I have so many plans. This fic has a special place in my heart because it's drawing heavily from my college days--my bachelor's degree is in fine arts, and I have a lot of fond memories of many hours in the studio both as a student and as a model.

I expect this series will also have a looser timeline than my Neighbors series, so I'm open to suggestion in terms of scene ideas! I already have plenty, but if I know my mutuals, y'all might have some good ones as well. No promises I'll write them, but you never know.

Thanks everyone for your patience, and I hope you'll look forward to where this fic goes!!

[bomberqueen17]

kitchen colors

so ok it's the weekend and we were snowed in for a week and i've done a ton of unpacking but it's all invisible yay

but dude was making low-key plans for the weekend and i was like NO WE MUST GO TO THE HARDWARE STORE AND GET PAINT SAMPLES

i had to like. drag him to look at the paint chips idk why it was so difficult.

So we haggled and hemmed and hawed and held chips up in various spots and eliminated almost everything I'd brought home. Nothing would do as the accent color. But the wall color... we narrowed it down to Behr's Thai Teal, Celtic Queen, or Bella Vista. Celtic Queen was their pthalo-est green; Thai Teal and Bella Vista are almost the same except Thai Teal is dustier and Bella Vista clearer. Dude felt the cabinets having a dusty cast meant the wall should do, and I strongly felt the opposite. He yielded to my intensity of feeling on this.

But none of the colors I'd picked out were suitable as a trim color to pair with either of the teals or the green, so we'd have to go look. A lime green, perhaps, or a bright orange?

I also felt that painting the bay windowsill a strong color was the wrong choice, so we decided it should be a high-gloss white, but of course a shade of white that didn't clash with the white countertop. Not having a sample of countertop, I instead brought a spare backsplash tile with me to the hardware store, so I could tell what color of white I needed (ugh).

Thus ensued Hell: Trying to pick which of the hundred colors of white would match the tile without being too obviously not-white (which would clash with the white-white plastic of the electrical outlets and the plastic window frames, which I am not painting. The outlet and switch plates are getting painted or replaced with something decorative, sure, but the actual bit you put the plugs into is staying as it is, I'm not painting that shit). But, fortunately, Dude comes of graphic designer types, and came through for me.

[image: a man's hands, holding a white subway tile and several basically-white paint chips, in front of a hardware store display of paint chips in every shade imaginable of white, beige, black, or gray. This is my idea of hell.]

We tried lime green with the teal. It looked banger as fuck, but the only problem was, it also looked exactly like a really classic IKEA duvet cover pattern from about 2000. I could not paint my kitchen to look like the duvet cover Dude had when we met. That is not going to work out, psychically.

I picked a brilliant orange, and also hated it. It looked like... the 1970s. it looked. Too much. It popped but like, in a slightly upsetting way. it was giving Miami vibes, in an early-90s kind of way.

I dithered, and finally Dude went and picked a less red orange, in fact called Joyful Orange. That looked much better, and I got sample pots of Joyful Orange and Bella Vista to take home. (They are SEVEN DOLLARS each can you believe. Ah well.)

[image description: In the center of the photo, a section of wall trim is painted bright yellow-orange, next to a section of wall painted deep teal. To the right, a blue-washed cabinet corner, the white tile backsplash, and a section of counter with the tea kettle on it; to the left is the paler yellow in the distance of the living room, with a bunch of blurry stuff piled in the middle of the room.]

It's. Sort of parrot colors? But it's bright and it's bold. I like it in every lighting situation. So I think this is what I'm going with.

And then for the outlet covers, I got one lighter shade of turquoise, and then dug out my craft paints. I bought a couple of spare outlet covers at the hardware store-- forty-eight cents apiece? I'd be crazy not to-- lightly buffed them with some fine sandpaper, and went to town. This is just the first layer, once it dries I'm going to go back over and try to add realistic veining and like metallic glitter and such to make them look like turquoise gemstone material.

[image: lying on a crinkled paper towel, a US-style outlet cover is mottled in shades of turquoise paint, in an irregularly-textured pattern.]

Ah maybe I should do a layer of clear coat and then do the veining? We'll see. I'm not sure.

[trigunwritings]

Blue Period

Summary: You have never seen the sea. You paint it anyways.

Rating: General Audiences

Relationship: GN!Reader/Vash

Written by @blood--hunter

Note from author: I know very few things about oil painting

Blue. A rare color, all things considered.

The only thing on Noman’s Land that echoed it was the never ending sky. It stretched as far as the sand until it kissed the horizon and disappeared beyond. The desert was vast—so much so that they named it The Great Sand Ocean in an ironic twist of words.

Your grandmother had told stories of the ocean. The old one, on a planet whose name you scarcely remember from her storied whispers. She had lived there when she was very young, somewhere near the sea before it had dried up and humanity itself was forced to take to the stars. She often whispered in your ear when she grew too frail to get out of bed; about dipping her toes in wet sand, watching seaweed wash up on the shore, of catching fish and finding shells and crabs and a bounty that seemed impossible to visualize.

She was gone now. Along with the last memories of something that often filled your dreams from her old stories of childhood. Sometimes you imagine how it tastes when the tears fall over your cheeks and reach your lips, but that’s only on days when you have the strength to cry.

“—Hey!”

Your thoughts, the ones that tended to drag you down into their dreary depths should you stay in them too long, are suddenly broken.

You have to squint your eyes, smiling at you is Vash, his grin so wide and so big that you it matches the sun.

He is holding onto something in one hand. You raise a brow and, with the slow uncurling of his fingers, he reveals its secret to you.

Small, no longer than his palm, is a tube of oil paint.

It can’t be helped. Your eyes widen. You climb down from the hood of Meryl and Roberto’s truck. The two had decided to trek along the expanse, accompanied by Wolfwood, in order to retrieve parts for the broken down vehicle. With the “Undertaker’s” help they were certain to return unharmed, but it the nearest outpost was still a full day’s travel or more. Vash had volunteered to stay with the truck in order to protect it from bandits and varments alike. You had voted to stay with him.

It gave you time to think. To create.

“Where did you get this? And when?” You snatch it out of his hand, holding it up to the light as if you didn’t have enough already, the midday sun baring down on you.

Vash only smiles conspiratorily. It was your ongoing hunch that whenever you started feeling down, he would provide you with another tube of paint from wherever or however he gets it. This only lended more evidence to your hypothesis.

“Pthalo Blue.”

So far you had red, orange, black, white, and yellow.

You smile to yourself. With this, you could create so much more. Paint, especially oil paint, was hard to come by in the desert outside of large cities. It was simply too difficult to produce for anyone but those with the most double dollars, and there weren’t exactly very painters this far into the open terrain.

Vash’s own smile only brightens. “Well,” He says, something eager in his eyes, “Are you gonna use it?”

Without a word you walk towards your pack, thoughts rolling through your mind like the morning fog. Canvas was another thing hard to come by, but if one knew how to use it correctly, it could be taken a long way. You often make your own canvases; stretching the material over wood, nailing and gluing it down piece by piece.

And unfortunately, being around Vash meant being around danger. And being around danger meant getting your stuff damaged. You had only one fully formed canvas left. You would have to wait until you got into town to make more, but that was a problem for later you.

Right now, you wanted to create.

“Blue...” You hum to yourself, beginning to lay out your supplies. Your palette, your brushes, the small bit of turpentine you have left, and of course your canvas and pencils.

Vash stands over you, watching as you plunk right down in the sand and begin drawing.

The scene doesn’t start with any concrete ideas, but it comes to you slowly.

The ocean takes a vague form as you recall the old stories from your grandmother. You don’t know what it looks like. You can’t imagine that amount of water in one place, just waiting to be swam in like a giant bath, but with all sorts of creatures native to living in the waters.

You can’t drink from the ocean—you remember your grandma telling you that. It’s too salty, like tears. But it’s big and blue, just like the sky.

It takes an hour, maybe two, but the piece comes into focus eventually. A careful sketch of ideas that, to an onlooker, seems like a chaotic mess.

And then you start painting.

Vash watches every stroke of the brush as it carries color across the canvas; some smooth and long, others short and targeted. It takes the better part of a day. The color piles on. Thick on thin.

The ocean forms beneath your brushstrokes.

When the morning sun rises Vash is still asleep, so you slide away from your canvas and settle in the front passenger seat of the car, hoping to get a few hours of shut-eye at least.

. . .

“—Whoa!”

The words wake you with a jolt. You pop your head out the window so you can view your art laid out on the hood of car.

“This is amazing!” Vash beams at you.

You stumble out, sleep deprived and a bit hungry. You hadn’t seen your work in the light of day—hadn’t truly seen it finished.

There it is.

The ocean (or maybe it’s the desert? It is the only thing you know,) lies under the dark sky, stars beaming down from their lofty thrones. Kissing the horizon is the pthalo blue, mixing from light to dark as it sweeps across the space. Walking along a wave’s (or a dune’s?) edge is a red cloaked man. His back is to the viewer, but he leaves footsteps in his wake, his hood up, his journey long.

You blink at it, only when you look at your hands do you realize you are the one who made it. The paint is still there, the blue hiding your nails with how thick it is.

“Is that me?” Vash asks, grinning wide again and pointing to his own face.

You smile back at him, nodding. “Yeah.”

“It’s amazing ... but it’s missing something.”

“Like what?”

And when he tells you, you smile.

When the others come back, supplies and parts in hand, they all view your newest painting with amazement. A second figure now walks beside the first:

Vash is still crossing the vast ocean but beside him is you, your footsteps overlapping as your journey together.

[paintinginsomnia]

#77. Discovering the Hidden Detail as the Sun Sets. The Big Book of Painting Nature in Oil. Oil. October 25, 2023.

This was a fun one.

For comparison, here is the reference photo and lesson. I deviated quite a bit, and I think that came out for the better.

One up: really happy with how this came out. I used Macpherson’s method on the trees, where you cut out the negative space instead of painting over with the positive. It’s harder and more time consuming, but I love the look. Also like the receding mountain range in this one, I’ve had trouble with that in the past.

One improve: the sky should be painted more loosely to match the rest of the painting, instead I was up close with a small brush.

Colors: happy how the colors came out. Titanium white, cadmium yellow light, alizarin crimson, cerulean blue, pthalo green.

[zarvasace]

@unexpectedtraveler made this post (to which @lazyowl and I added) about whether or not a Red+Vio combination would simply disappear, since magenta light doesn't technically exist.

Anyway, long story short, I made some very pretty colors.

I love being in a fandom (two!) where this sort of thing is relevant.

More explanation of what I did under the cut!

Okay, so I own nine colors of paint—cool red (alizarin), warm red (cadmium light), cool yellow (ochre), warm yellow (cadmium), cool blue (ultramarine), warm blue (pthalo), viridian, raw umber, and burnt sienna. Oh, and white. I mix all my colors from those. You can see all but raw umber and burnt sienna on the palette across the top, since those are just browns I didn't need.

I made red from a combination of the two, since cadmium is kind of orange and alizarin is not quite bright enough. Green is viridian with some cadmium yellow to brighten and warm it up a little. Blue is mostly pthalo blue, but I added a bit of ultramarine that I don't think made much of a difference. (Pthalo is temperamental and likes to overwhelm everything.) I made my violet from alizarin and ultramarine.

Okay so the thing to know about mixing these pigments is that each pigment acts differently. Warm colors like to dominate a mix, but so do a few specific pigments. I go through a lot of ultramarine because it's rather unpigmented, I need a lot to influence another color. You also have to pay attention to warm and cool versions of colors, since they mix differently.

Since a lot of colors can get pretty dark, standard practice is to mix them with bits of white to see the color better. The titanium white I have cools and desaturates colors. I added little bits of the whitened colors in the corners to show them off better. :)

Red and green are complementary colors, but these specific hues aren't perfect complements, so they didn't make gray, they made brown. A very pretty brown!

Since the red and blue that I had were both pretty warm but not entirely, they didn't mix into the prettiest purple. That gray is really nice, though.

Blue and green mixed the way you'd expect, a nice teal that doesn't need much explanation.

Green and violet aren't complements, but they're close, so they desaturated each other into a nice cool brown color.

The violet and blue mixed just made a cooler violet, even though the blue was warmer. I like that color too.

And then easter color tints at the bottom because I had an extra space! :D

In conclusion: if Link is light, then Red+Vio only exists because of a brain trick. If Link is oil paint, then you should probably worry about Red+Green canceling each other out, if Red gets too cool. Green+Vio need to watch out, too.

[maddiedrawsstuff]

Took a bit because I wanted upload these gals as a set

Original designs adopted from MinEevee on DA

+FOR SALE ON TOYHOUSE: Teal Pearl, Dark Blue Pearl, Pthalo Pearl+

+COMMISSION INFO+

[sofiimagines]

So-Fi Nasturtiums, 11-09-2023 Watercolor on Watercolor Paper, 11"x14"

For this piece I used the colors Yellow Med., Rose, Cobalt Blue, Pthalo Blue, Viridian Green and Sap Green, from the Marie's pan paint set and Bonjour Studios 140lb cold press watercolor paper.

I struggled with this piece a bit. It's not horrible, but I used to do way better, so in that aspect it's disappointing. I guess this is one of the draw backs with taking a very long unpaid sabbatical of a sorts from watercolor painting. Although I'm finding it to be like the proverbial saying about learning to ride a bike again or even like meeting an old friend you haven't seen for a long time and catching up on life.

I preferred the initial greens I mixed by hand from Yellow Med, Cobalt Blue and a touch of Rose from the Marie's pan paint set. It is a very nice set, but as I mentioned before - I'm really more of a tube person. These practice works are affirming my preference! I used to use Winsor & Newton Artist Aureolin Yellow, Cobalt Blue and Rose Madder Genuine exclusively in my older works, but they're way more expensive and I didn't want to waste good paint (and money) for practice pieces.

*Funny story here - I've been mispronouncing and spelling Nasturtiums as Nasturiums for years (it still sounds weird hearing the T). Every time I would mention them to my Mom she'd get a funny look on her face and then pronounce it the correct way. I would then look at her funny. While working on this study it finally dawned upon me that I am the one who has been wrong this whole time...We're going to laugh so hard when I tell her this =)

[businesscatfelix]

like idk couldnt you talk about the gentle slope of his eyes or the roundness of his ears or how i mixed pthalo blue and violet into the stripes so they’d pop a bit from his orange base instead of how much you want one on your desk or whatever 😭

[rattheunloved]

A Highly Pigmented Rant.

Once upon a time art was gatekept less by skill and more by the fact that pigments (being most often ground from minerals, oxidized from toxic metals, and painstakingly leeched and fixed from botanicals... or made from straight up ground up mummies) were very, very, very expensive. This is why a lot of artists had patrons.

Artists made their own paints from ground pigments, binders, etc. by hand, and it wasn't cheap or easy. Van Gogh used bits of wool to test his ideas for color combinations because paint was so fucking expensive.

For once the Industrial revolution did like three things correctly, because we no longer had to boil snail juice for purple. But... it did centralize production, which... has its weaknesses.

The thing is that if/when a color falls out of favor with the automotive industry there's a good chance (almost a guarantee) that the market dives. And in our age of dependency upon single-source overseas manufacture (for good or ill) there might only be or or two companies in the ENTIRE WORLD producing a specific pigment.

In the late 1990s the only global manufacturer of po49 (Quinacridone Gold) discontinued production and sold their remaining stock to Daniel Smith Co. About five years ago Daniel Smith ran out. "Ah" you might say "But it's only ONE color, what's the problem with that!?"

Most folks know basic color theory. Cyan, Yellow, Magenta/ Red, Green, Blue/ Red, Yellow, Blue. Some use a split primary palette that has a combination. Mix those colors in various quantities and you get basically every color in existence... in theory. Most often, however, you get mud.

Why is that? That's because most art supplies use combinations of pigments to achieve their colors. And the more pigments you add to visually get to a color, the much higher the chances of mixtures becoming sludge.

Green is actually kind of a bastard color. There aren't a lot of sources for "green" that aren't mixes. Most greens are quite blueish, though some (like Chromium Oxide - PG17) are very "green" but also very opaque. PO49 was a bright, clean, transparent, single-pigment, lightfast, inexpensive, warm yellow. So a lot of greens switched to using a combination of it and Pthalo Green (PG7, a fairly blue, but very strong and lightfast color) ... and then it got kneecapped.

They switched to PO48 (Quinacridone Burnt Orange) or PY150 (Nickel Azo Yellow) and sometimes either of the first two with a dash of PV19 (Quinacridone Rose) to try and make a substitute for PO48. You can see the problem here, right? Instead of one color, it's now three, one of which is very, very, pink. Instead of your sap green being two colors it's now four. And it looks different. And if you even touch it to another color your chance of getting mud increases exponentially.

And then... it happened again several more times.

The last few years alone we've lost several pigments including PO48 (Quinacridone Burnt Orange), PO73 (Pyrrol Orange), PO59 (Nickel Orange), and PR206 (Quinacridone Burnt Scarlet). For SOME there are alternative single-pigment colors, but they're often a little less lightfast, or toxic, or almost impossible to source. I panic bought a bunch of PR206's pinker version because it's a palette staple for me. I heard other pigments might be going the same way and bought up a few extras just in case.

Yes, there are a few companies that still have stock out there, but it's dwindling fast and really mostly left to the small artisan manufacturers to turn those liquid dispersions into usable pigments and paints. You CAN still get Quin Gold from a few sources. You CAN still scour the internet for the last few Quin Burnt Oranges and Scarlets in sticks and pans and big tubes. But one day, unless a company steps up, they'll be gone.

And it hurts something deep, deep, in my weird little soul that a color can go extinct.

[atdutiesend]

{ About Grim }

!! Outdated! Read the About Page !!

Grim Iteiya was not born on the Source. His story begins in a shard all but devoid of aether, where none could use it - the Ninth. Magicless, the Ninth developed rather like our own world. And then, one day, what felt like yet another panic attack turned into being dropped onto the Source.

Gender: None gender, left he; He/They pronouns Height: ~6'1; tall for Veena Eyes: Steely blue, more grey than blue, and nearly white even so. Hair: Medium brown, it naturally fades to a soft spring-y green after a few inches. Thin strands that grow in thick, leading to an almost fur-like texure. Unbound, it likes to frizz out to shoulder width. Tends towards wavy bordering on banana curls. Complexion: Porcelain pale with an almost unnoticable blue undertone. A scattering of starry freckles. Tends towards dry skin, but hates the feel of lotion and thus deals with being a crocodile. Artistically, the freckles are rendered as almost luminescent. For the aesthetic. Physique: Being brought to Eorzea meant he threw himself into taking care of himself and becoming combat fit. As a result, he’s quite muscular. Tends to move like he’s much smaller than he actually is, though. Age: 30-ish; due to Viera aging he’s closer to his early 20s physically, and struggling with emotional regulation. Soul Color: Pthalo green, a dark but vibrant forest green. Mains: AST / DRK / NIN / DNC / RDM Secondaries: CNJ, GNB, MRD, THA, RPR

Grim was a fan of a game very close to XIV in his home shard, and generally knows the story up to the end of post-Stormblood, around the time Gaius passed Alphinaud over to the care of the WOL, unless the verse is explicitly post-Endwalker, in which case he’ll be caught up as of the rp’s start date. This means plot events usually won’t surprise him, but he does his level best to not assume that everything he knows from the game is exactly correct. After all, who doesn’t embellish a story a bit in the telling? - Not to mention, his memory is kind of shite; he doesn’t remember everything, and certainly not perfectly.

Grim is never a lone WoL. If your muse isn’t a WoL, Grim shares the role with Dove, and appeared at the same time Hydaelyn sent the Warriors of DorknessDarkness back to the First. This exchange may have been orchestrated by Elidibus, in a bid to create a weakness to be exploited later. For other verses, see below.

Due to the nature of the Ninth, Grim initially has horrendous aether sickness as his soul adjusts to the sudden influx of aether. Combined with his aetherial block and tendency to accumulate aether as a result, it’s imperative Grim immediately either take up a casting class - usually CNJ - or find another way to bleed off the excess aether until he can break down the block [RPR and GNB].

Is Grim a self-insert? Eh, shrug. While I use myself as a jumping off point for pre-Eorzea Grim, once he’s on the Source, he’s very much his own dude. I’m not going to force anyone to interact with him if they’re not interested, though, we’re all here to have a good time.

Verses

Sjadarwesfv - Shared with @likeabeaconofhope, where Grim appeared as a counterbalance to sending the Warriors of Darkness back to the First. Beacon promptly adopted him as her elder brother. Light Party - Also shared with @likeabeaconofhope, where Dove and Grim make up half of the Light Party with Beacon. The Arch Rogues - Shared with @stealerofheartsss, where Lennel is one of the supporting WoLs to Dove’s main WoL

Tags

#isekaiposting - General Grim tag #v; bunbun - Sjardwesfv verse #v; crystalbound - Light Party verse #v; birds of a feather

Expanded Lore

{ Green Magic }

[schmope-is-dead]

I mixed a cool color of blue :]

[halfaleagueonward]

Spent today drawing some Moon Knight art! Thought it'd be fun to walk through the process!

I started with a thumbnail I did in my sketchbook a few weeks ago. I did a page of six smaller thumbnails, then a larger take of my two faves, and this is the one that stuck! I redrew it from scratch on my actual paper, then masked off the edges so I'd have a nice clean picture.

The most important step one to working with oil pastels is to lay down the base colors for any scratch board technique you're gonna wanna do at the end! You can see the faint color of the transparent pastel I layered down absolutely everywhere I thought I might want to be able see white underneath- practically the whole paper on this one, with the stars I was planning! Then I put the bright colors over top that. If you put the color directly onto the paper, that's all that will ever show through!

I like working with bright colors in all mediums, but in oil pastel I like them underneath darker colors for richness and color variety-its also cool when they show through in scratch board, though with transparent underneath I largely planned for this to be more subtle

Kept the green only on Marc's side to subtly visually separate him from Khonshu

Filling in colors! I decided to change the stroke direction of the sky and ground to separate them more

Went over the entire sky with purple and blue, and filled in the ground with a tan. This begins to mute and mix the different colors, and creates a solid layer I can smudge to get rid of any clunky white gaps. At this point I had to leave it alone for an hour or two so the pastel could solidify and wouldn't smudge wildly if I tried to add anything on top of it!

Went over the entire sky with two shades of dark blue! ...Pthalo and Prussian, apparently. This let me continue to emphasize contrast and outlines, while still keeping some richness and depth. Having good sillouhettes of the figures was important here, and you can see where I started getting rid of the clouds so they wouldn't distract from the rest of the picture

Raised the arm, not for the figure itself, but so the shadows would be more interesting to look at! Did some shading in the figures, and tested out the scratch board for the stars and the temple- it worked great, thank goodness!

For scratch board, I literally use the same mechanical pencil I use for the sketch, just without lead! I also used a bit of sponge I had lying around to brush away the oil pastel bits that got scraped up, so they didn't gunk up the rest of the picture.

Fleshed out the foreground! At this stage, I took pictures of the drawing and put them into grayscale to make sure I was maintaining good contrast. The left side was a bit boring, so I made it darker- this works thematically for Khonshu, while also upping his visibility.

There were definitely more subtle ways I could have done Khonshu, and I struggled a bit to render without overworking, but I like where I ended up.

I also smudged out and re-scratched the temple so it would sit better!

Scratch board fun!!! Because I got rid of the clouds I needed some visual interest in the sky, so I added a star for each of the three of them- they're color coded to match the shadows I detailed as well! Is the 'multiple shadows' visual inspired directly by yugioh? Yes and with no shame, someone please give me this crossover!!!

And after some tweaking, detailing, and removing the tape- tadah!!!

[ashen-crest]

book art using my book!

okay, so for context, I ordered some author copies of The Stray Spirit a few weeks ago. they arrived, and someone opened the package looking to steal stuff. upon finding that it was a box of books, they threw one of my author copies in the hedges and ran.

so now I’ve got an author copy where the interior of the pages are fine, but the exterior edge is stained and dirty. can’t sell it or give it away given its state.

so, I’m going to try to make some art using the pages of my book! 

unfortunately, the pages are too thin for watercolor (the paper would wrinkle too much), so I’m using acrylic on them. I’m a bit rusty with acrylic, but I’m working on it.

so far, I’ve done this rhythm bloom over a book page that mentions rhythm blooms. it looks better in person than it does in the photo, but whatevs:

[ID: a page of a book taped to a wooden desk, flanked by a thin black paintbrush and three tubes of paint, in blue, olive green, and pthalo green. the page has a white and blue camellia with dark green leaves painted in the middle, over the text. end ID]

what do you think?

I’ve got a whole book of pages to work with, and I impulsively ordered a pack of mattes to make them look nice. I’d like to do a red flower for Cal and aspen leaves for Aspen. but I don’t really know what to do with them once I’m done, you know? maybe some kind of giveaway? idk.

if you’ve got any other ideas for book art, let me know! right now, my other ideas from trawling pinterest are:

magnets using little clippings and those glass dome things

embroidery stitching over a book page, but honestly, that sounds difficult

anyhoo, more paintings to come!

[the-eldritch-it-gay]

you wanna know whats a fucked up thing to do? sell a 12 piece set of acrylic paint, and ONLY include blues with yellow color bias. Yeah Pthalo blue and cerulean blue are fine blues, but if you want to mix purple they're the WORST because they have like yellow in them a lil bit so then when you mix them with red it turns all muddy and brown bcuz of that yellow. you need an ultramarine or cobalt blue or a blue w/o yellow to make a purple, and you need to make sure your red doesn't have any yellow either (like vermillion). completely fucked up to sell a set 12 piece set with all the colors you could need, unless you need to mix purple.

[paintinginsomnia]

#97. Making Sense of a Complicated Cloud Formation. The Big Book of Painting Nature in Oil. June 17, 2024.

One up: Very simple, layered in the clouds.

One improve: I underestimated this one. The blue sky needed to be stronger to contrast with the clouds. The cloud shadows a bit darker with more color variation (more pinkish towards the horizon). I kept the foreground simple, but the wet on wet blended more than I wanted.

Colors: Titanium white, cadmium yellow light and red medium, yellow ochre, raw umber, cobalt blue, cerulean blue hue, and pthalo green.