#like i sort my digital art by year and month

[mokeonn]

I know that like when you get better at art there's like more choices being made and so you can't really pump out art like you used to anymore because you know better and blah blah blah but after years of being able to finish a whole piece in a day, having to work on the same drawing for 3 days is a crime what do you MEAN I only made 5 finished drawings this month?? What happened to the good ol' 57???

[quirinah]

i! ro! ha! (six years edition)

[vimbry]

"likes don't do anything" they do

"there's no algorithm" there is

"well nobody uses the for you tab" I do

"reblog all art and fics you see" there's no thought put into that. if this does work on people, then it's just pity engagement borne out of guilt rather than genuine interest, which is arguably worse than having none, because it's totally hollow.

[mg549]

5 years in review (2018-2022)

[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 :)

[btsarmymoonmoon]

Loved you from afar

Yoongi fluff that was in my head for a good few weeks. Inspired by my friend Taeyi. Shy Yoongi, non idol style. 4k words. No warnings. I hope it will make you feel warm and fluffy and head over heels for this Yoon. (didn't read it or spell checked sowwi)

‘I’m here!’ – you waived at the man walking down the mall along the shops towards you. He was holding two cups of coffee to go and a small bag which looked like the kind you would get from a pastry shop. He walked past few other people on the way and made his way to you. He was wearing a pair of shorts and long dark oversized t-shirt, high top converse with white socks sticking out. He smiled widely when he saw you waive. ‘The queue was crazy, I’m really sorry it took so long’ he muttered and handed you the drink. ‘It’s okay Yoongi, I told you it’s mental around this time of the day’ you smiled grateful he went to get a lunch for the two of you. ‘Let me just let my boss I’m going on a break’ you pointed at the inside of the clothing shop you were both standing in front and you disappeared inside for few moments, still holding your coffee. Yoongi nervously looked around, trying to find something to look at whilst wating for you and he decided to just stare at his own shoes. You came back not long after, poked your head around the corner to see your friend just staring down. It wasn’t anything new to you, as he tend to be a little bit awkward in public. ‘All sorted, ready?’ you surprised him and he glanced at you, smiled and nodded.

Right outside of the mall on the left hand side was small park-ish area. Few swings for kids and benches for the parents. But it was all empty because it looked like everyone disappeared for lunch. The both of you moved towards the area, picked the cleanest bench and sat on it. It was getting colder as the autumn was approaching soon. The sun was still quite high, it just wasn’t giving the same warmth as two weeks ago. You have taken a sip of your drink and closed your eyes, listening to the silence surrounding the two of you.

‘Taehyung wanted to go to the movies later today’ Yoongi muttered kind of towards you but kind of just in to the universe.

‘Oh really? What are you going see?’ you got interested right away. You knew Yoongi for years now. It’s been at least 8, maybe coming to be 9 soon? You became friends at school, then you graduated and still were hanging out, both got few part time jobs across the time of few years. You also managed to hold an serious adult office job for about three months before you decided to get a degree part time, which you also decided to abandon few weeks in. It was too stressful and all you wanted to do is draw. You were really good at it, so you opened a small business on the side selling your digital prints and art you drew on your tablet. But it wasn’t enough to keep you going, hence the part time job at the mall.

Yoongi always wanted to make music and he was on the side. He was definitely making enough now to not work part time but for some reason when he found out you will be working in the same mall as him (before he decided to quit) he changed his mind and decided to stay. You never really questioned his decisions. During your summer breaks you spent hours together locked in one of your rooms, him making music at the desk and you drawing on your tablet. The perfect combination. Both the artsy types, both quite shy and timid. Not all the time tough, there were multiple crazy stories you could tell your friends. One of the more memorable one was when the two of you got really drunk after work and you sat in a shopping trolley which he was pushing, whilst on his skateboard. Both laughing like two crazy teenagers until the security got rid of you. Yoongi was shy. Very shy. But he was also so warm. He would always cover your with a blanket when you fell asleep and he continued working on his stuff. Would always bring you hot soup when you were ill. Lunch at work was always a must. He really cared. He was also the type to never admit if he ever had feelings for you. If he did, he treasured your friendship more. He could always be around you and catch you when you fall, without ever risking and jeopardising your current relationship. He could love you from afar. Of course he spent nights thinking if your lips would be soft on his, or what would it be like to hold your hand for real, not just for a second when you were wrestling on the bed. What would it be like for you to fall asleep on his shoulder, when you actually intended to put your head there, not just by accident when he was near by and you were to tired to sit straight. His stomach flipped every time you mentioned a date with someone. He was terrified of someone else having you, at the same time he would never stop you. And he was always there when you were broken up with by another guy who didn’t know what he could have. He watched all the silly films with you and devoured half of the tub of ice cream you always liked. He was always the one to peel a tangerine for you, or an orange when they were around. Without asking if you fancy one, he would just do it and hand it over to you.

‘I’m not sure but he wanted me to bring you with. He said he invited the new girl he was seeing and he wanted it to be little bit less official than a date’ Yoongi answered, slightly worried you might get the wrong idea about the entire thing. But it wasn’t the first time you would go to the movies as his +1. Anytime one of his friends needed a double date you two were the go to. Even though you obviously weren’t dating. Obviously to you, not so obviously to Yoongi. Well it was obvious enough but it started getting to him the more he thought on how long you two have been hanging out for. Nearly 9 years. He was a loyal friend, he was a loyal friend to his other friends too it was just the way he was. He brushed through his long dark hair, overgrown from the summer. He looked at you, nervous as always even though he asked you the same question multiple times before.

‘So WE are going? I didn’t really want to go out tonight but..’ you started, desperately trying to get your pastry out of the paper bag that was laying between you and him on the bench.

‘If you don’t want to I will tell him you had other plans’ he quickly jumped to conclusion. He would never want you to do anything that you weren’t comfortable doing.

‘No, no it’s fine. We can go’ you smiled seeing him getting flustered. He held the bag steady for you and you finally managed to get your piece out of the bag. You grabbed the pastry and bit into it right away. Sweet cream and jam inside filled your mouth and you felt better. Less dizzy and shaky. You didn’t have anything else this morning and Yoongi knew it. Because when you asked for lunch you asked for coffee only and he brought food. He knew you too well and he was sure you didn’t have anything else that day.

‘Are you sure? I can go on my own..’ he asked looking at your pretty face devouring the pastry he picked for you. He admired every second of every time spent with you. Your eyes wondering around the sky, which he dreamed of staring for hours at the time.

‘Yes it’s fine, let’s do it. What film?’ you looked at him again, in between bites.

‘I didn’t really ask, let me text him’ he got a little bit nervous, of course he forgot to ask Taehyung about the film, at the end of the day he didn’t really care. He knew he would have a good time because it was with you. ‘Anyway, I will pick you up at 7? I will take my mums car’.

‘Sounds good! And don’t worry we haven’t seen any of the new films anyway, so whatever Tae picked will be fine’. He loved how unproblematic you were. How easy it was for you to just go with the flow. It was easy for you because you knew that it was always a good time with Yoongi. You knew nothing bad will ever happen to you around him. He would always protect you and take care of you. And you loved it about him so much, but you could never admit it. How could you ruin a friendship like this? He was older so in your head he was always treating you like a younger sister. The age gap wasn’t that big, you met at school at the end of the day.

You picked a really flowy dress, the evenings weren’t super cold. Short green platted dress with a cream cardigan because it was an evening and the dress was on thin straps you were bound to get cold and you promised yourself you won’t get Yoongi to give up his hoodie yet another time for you. You put few bits in your bag, lip balm, pack of tissues, your wallet and your keys and you run out seeing Yoongi approaching in his mums car. You got in and he got immediately flashed with your scent. Sweet but light floral perfume that you have been using for as long as he remembers. Your hair half up, with the rest flowing down your shoulders. He got stunned. He couldn’t say anything, there was no thoughts in your brain apart from just how beautiful you looked that night.

‘Yoongi? Hello?’ you waved your hands in front of his eyes and he finally shook his head and came back to his senses.

‘Pull yourself together’ he whispered to himself and you heard him say something but you couldn’t make up any of the words.

‘What? Are you okay?’ you asked, but then he looked back at you, smiled and nodded.

‘Ready? You look great’ he complimented. He always said it. No matter what were you wearing and it was true. He loved you in every outfit. No. He was miserable about you in every outfit. Including his hoodie and joggers when you both got soaked that one night running home from the shop. You were perfect to him in everything you wore. Oh how miserable he was about you. And recently it has been becoming more and more impossible to hide it. He would stutter when you would approach him without a notice or he would get stunned just like just did in the car.

‘Let’s go!’ you said enthusiastically and put your hand into a fist and made a really awkward ‘lets’ gesture. He didn’t say a word the entire time to the cinema. Not a word. The music was playing in the background, nothing too crazy, nothing too loud. He was always quiet but he was acting really strange this time. Almost too strange. And when you started thinking about it, he did become different recently. He was more distant, quieter. He wouldn’t come around as much after work anymore. Is he dating someone? Was your first thought but then you declined that idea since he invited you to go and pretend to be double dating with Tae tonight. Surely he would of invited his real date if he had one.

Anyways you made it to the car park behind the cinema, walked inside and stood there for a while trying to localise Taehyung. But he wasn’t anywhere to be seen. Not yet anyway.

‘Is he late? Are they late? I mean it’s nothing new for him, but isn’t the film about to start?’ you asked and looked at Yoongi as he was taking his phone out. You watched him text Tae for the 5th time in the span of 20 minutes as you were waiting for him. You turned around and looked at the popcorn machine and went towards it to get some for you and Yoongi. In that time Taehyung sent a message back to Yoongi ‘We are not coming. I will explain later’ is what the messaged said. You came back to him with a giant bucket of popcorn with a smile on your face excited to devour it during the film.

‘Well they are not coming apparently. Do you still want to go and see the film?’ Yoongi locked his phone and put it into his pocket. You looked at the popcorn in your hands and pouted at first because the idea to miss out on all of that crunchy deliciousness made you a little sad.

‘Do you?’ you asked quickly, still staring at the food.

‘Sure why not, we are already here and we got the tickets’ he nodded and took the bucket away from you. It was always like that with him around. You never had to carry anything, you never even have to ask. You never had to ask about the hoodie when you were shivering either. He just knew. He did a little bit excited for the idea of just the two of you in the cinema. All on your own. Last time you both went was few years ago and he was really nervous to just be alone in a dark room like that with you. Even though you spent hours overnight in each others houses. But the cinema was always a strange place that just gave him this one particular feeling. A feeling of a date.

You found the screening room and went inside. The ads have already started as you were waiting for Tae and his date for a while. Yoongi found your seats and lead you to it. There wasn’t a lot of people around anyway, not many people chose to come in on a weekday after all.

The film started uneventful, it was supposed to be a thriller but it doesn’t seem very thrilling at first anyway. You were slowly going through your bucket of popcorn when a huge jaw came out of you. You hid your face in your hands quickly with an apologetic look on your face, staring at Yoongi. He giggled as it made him laugh. The film wasn’t very good and he clearly could tell that you were getting bored too. But you both decided to give it another try and started paying attention again. The film did get better. The story moved at a more faster pace and when a random guy popped out of a rubbish bin with a knife you jumped on your seat and your handed intuitively landed on Yoongis. He looked at your hands and froze for a second. You were now holding his hand. Well he was holding your hand. You were holding hands. He gasped without you noticing but he didn’t pull away. He promised himself to distance from you. Give you space to breathe because even he could notice the way he was behaving around you recently. But today, the smell of you in his car, the green dress and the fact that Tae stood you two up made a potion of courage for him. He decided to just go with the flow. It wasn’t like him at all. But he kept wondering what would it be like to hold your hand, and how would you lips fit in his.

You noticed he was looking at your hands but you didn’t pull away either. You didn’t let him see that you saw him looking. What a huge game is being played here. Pretending to not see each other movements or delicate stares. You smirked to yourself and decided to pretend this is not a big deal. It’s just a hand right? And then another strange thing happened and the film and you squeezed his hand. And all of a sudden he just let go of your hand and wrapped his arm around you. You froze. Yoongi? What the hell is this? He wasn’t looking at you, he just did this and went back to watching the film. But you couldn’t focus anymore, his fresh scent surrounded you. Just like every time you worse his hoodie. It felt so homey and fresh. His warm arm around you. You not moving an inch. You gulped. What is going on? You thought to yourself. He was never like this. He was never this brave nor forward. But it felt so nice. You didn’t know what to do next. You were so conflicted already overthinking scenarios in your head. What if we won’t like each other like that for very long? What if he will get bored of me? What if…

He saw you having an internal conversation with yourself. He knew you too well and seen it too many times. He wasn’t sure what it was about but he  could tell you stopped focusing on the film. Did I fuck up? He thought to himself but he didn’t move an inch. He looked at you again and he saw two round eyes staring right at you. There was nothing else around for him just the pair of your eyes looking at him. He exhaled loudly and looked a way for a second. Brushed his hand through his overgrown long dark hair and looked back at you.

And there you were, still staring at him trying to read what was going on in his head. Trying to understand what was going on between the two of you just then and there.

‘Fuck it’ he said very loudly and leaned forward. Where did Yoongi found all of his courage to do all of this neither of you will ever know nor question. Because his nose was touching yours now, his eyes closed and his lips touching yours. And the both of you froze for a second. You didn’t back out but you didn’t kiss him back right away. You were trying to understand the motive behind his arm wrapped around you not beg for a kiss but he clearly read you wrong. Well wrong wasn’t the correct word. He understood you differently. And now his lips were at yours. Your stomach flipped and it felt like 10 thousand butterflies just hatched inside you and try to escape. You could tell he was nervous because his arm that was still wrapped around you was getting a little shaky and heavy. Without thinking too much anymore you started kissing him back and a slow and soft kiss turned into a slightly deeper one and he started grabbing you closer with the wrapped around you arm. You cupped his face with your hand and reciprocated every inch of his kiss. It felt like the both of you were floating above the seats now and nothing else really mattered anymore. The semi good film, the popcorn you had your eyes on for most of the duration of the film.

He finally had the guts to go for it. He didn’t know when was the next time be, that it will be just the two of you in the cinema which for some reason he had really strong feelings about. It couldn’t be in the car. It also couldn’t be anywhere else. You kept making out until the film finished, without noticing and the lights turned on. Only then Yoongi realised that the film has finished and he let go of you and sat back in his seat. He didn’t say anything, he just smirked and then smiled with one of his gummy smiles to himself.

You got off your chair and looked at him for a second, really shy and flushed face. You were blushing, now that it wasn’t dark around the two of you. He followed, grabbed the rest of the popcorn bucket and took it with him to leave at the bin downstairs. Both of you silent just moved towards the exist and then towards the exist of the building and straight to Yoongi mums car. No word, not a look not a sight was heard. The silence was deafening and it almost felt like either of you regretted what just happened. Yoongi couldn’t stop overthinking it. He was sure he fucked up. For once he had the guts to act the way he really felt and it all ruined your really long friendship. He just wanted to get you safe home and disappear for few days, give you time to breathe.

‘So…’ you finally opened your mouth as the both of you were standing in front of the car.

‘So..’ he answered looking away from you. Both of his hands in his pockets, playing with his shoe shyly. ‘Listen I know this wasn’t planned..’ he started again. He didn’t have a plan. Again. He didn’t know what he wanted to say. All he wanted to do is to lean you over the car and kiss you again and again. But you were still blushing and looking away from him just now.

‘It’s okay if you regret it’ you interrupted him right away. If? That sounded like you weren’t regretting it. He looked at you for the first time since you left the cinema. You were standing in front of him, pink nose from the wind outside, red cheeks and glary round eyes drilling into him.

‘I don’t..’ he braved it out of himself. He took a step towards you and you froze again. You turned your head to the side almost like asking a question and he took one of his hands out of the pockets of his hoodie and leaned forward towards you. ‘Come here’ he whispered and you took his hand. He pulled you closer and leaned you on the car door. Took few steps towards you, the tip of his nose touching yours. He bit his lip and then looked into your eyes. You gulped so loudly he could hear. You closed your eyes before he closed his and he smirked and shook his head. Your insides flipped, the butterflies hatched in the second wave and started flustering inside you. You bit the inside of your mouth and patiently waited. But nothing happened. He was just there looking at you with your eyes closed. So you opened one of it and you saw him smiling. Gummy wide smile, eyes in half moons. Pure happiness and you have never seen him like this. ‘If I kiss you again, that will be it you know it?’ he finally managed to get few words out. ‘You will be mine and I won’t let you go’ he added before you had a chance to respond. And you nodded. That’s all you could do. Just nod. So he came closer and this time the both of you closed your eyes at the same time and his lips met yours again. It felt so right, it felt like this is what you have been waiting for, for years. Tears started rolling down your face as he kept kissing you more and more. And then he felt the tears and stopped.

‘Why.. why are you crying? Do you not want to?’ he got instantly worried and regretted being so confident in himself but you shook your head.

‘I didn’t know this was what I was waiting for, for all these years’ you answered and pulled him back to you. His head was spinning. You were his. He was holding you in his arms. He was kissing your lips. Finally. All the worries he always had stopped him from doing this went away. Maybe tomorrow he will think about it and worry about the future but for now. Now he had you and you were his.

‘I loved you from afar for years’ he didn’t think through what he was about to say. Today was the day he was just saying and doing everything he felt like was right. But you didn’t answer, just pulled him closer to you and hid your face in his arms. He hugged you so tight and wrapped his arms around you. And you felt safe. Like there was nothing else in the world that could hurt you. His pocket buzzed and he pulled out his phone to see a message from Taehyung.

'I hope you enjoyed ;)' . The both of you looked at the message and then saw Taehyung in a car parked opposite of you waving and showing his thumbs up.

[reallyhardydraws]

2023.

i hope any of you reading this will forgive the essay. i started posting to this art blog ten years ago in 2013 when i was just at the very end of high school, uploading short animations i'd made for one of my final projects, preparing myself for art school where i was gearing up to become an illustration/animation student.

i went into my art foundation course in 2014, still thinking i was going to be going into storybook illustration or with faint hopes of becoming like a concept artist for game/animation, although even then i'd started thinking about patterns...

and then in 2015 i did go into my BA, going in for that illustration with animation degree that... usually when i talk about it in real life, i say didn't really feel like the best place for me. if i think back, the best things i got out of it were two of my best friends, one of whom is now my partner. looking back on my BA era, there's some bits of sketchbook stuff...

and while i was at university my main fandoms were thunderbirds are go and x-men for a bit... these are from the end of 2015 into the beginning of 2016...

then for a little while i was doing this still sort of pastel-ish lineless situation:

and i alternated between that and this thin fineliner type work (pretty sure all of the linearted pieces were done on paper and scanned, and all the lineless were graphics-tablet-only) - it was in this style that i started to offer commissions for the first time too.

and i also had fineliner-lined work in sketchbooks that i coloured with marker and posca pens, the colours of which were generally a bit more intense just based on not being able to slide the hue/saturation around on paper:

also 2016 was when i discovered the spongebob musical just after it's trial run in chicago (which ended in july of 2016) and i started making fanart at that point... which would have the biggest effect on the way i drew (and i did end up handing in a piece of spongebob musical fanart as one of my art school homeworks lmao)

from summer 2016 until early 2017 things were still quite soft and pastelly in my digital art, colour-wise:

and then suddenly everything got whacked up to 100% on saturation. also i was using the binary tool to give everything really thin pixel lineart for some reason.

then i went on vacation in summer 2017 and didn't draw for maybe a month? just short of? and when i came back i decided to change everything up again... giving characters blobbier, more ugly-cute faces with large squinting eyes and big nostrils and i was worrying a lot less about making anything look smooth, lineart-wise. i turned off the pen stabiliser in SAI and let it wiggle.

then... the spongebob musical opened on broadway in late 2017, i went to see it live in person for the first time... and my whole brain was ENTIRELY consumed by my love of it. i was putting that david zinn inspired pattern explosion into everything, even if it wasn't sbm fanart.

as we go into 2018, i started colouring my lineart. my biggest interest was still broadway musicals (with spongebob at the top of the list)

i think summer 2017 - early 2018 is probably my favourite art era, i was at my most bright and colourful and exciting... although i know in my actual real life i was struggling a lot with my home situation and i had been for some time. art was definitely my escapism back then, and i think a lot of the time i drew really bright, joyful stuff to try and inject that feeling into myself.

as for my university work, i was putting my focus into 3D paper-mache puppets:

and i was also starting to do more repeat patterns, mostly inspired by things around me. i'd learned how to make patterns actually tile and repeat in 2017, so made a few during my time at uni just to accompany some of my projects, but never as the focus of them. one of my university tutors told me that maybe i should put more focus on doing surface pattern, and maybe applying it to textiles, but i said i wasn't interested.

i graduated from my BA in the summer of 2018, and immediately began volunteering at the whitworth art gallery doing anything i could - stewarding, helping with arts and crafts, dancing with families...

in 2019 i was still very colourful... i was trying out more chunky colouring on characters skintones that i think was def inspired by tumblr artist jadenvargen:

but the blobbyness and ugly-cute style of drawing faces was gone by here, and i think... the way i drew characters probably had better *anatomy*, proportions were maybe a bit more realistic...

in 2020 i started adding the black shading to under the chins and some other places on characters' bodies because i started watching the anime my hero academia with my brother, lmao (and i was starting to pastelise colours a bit again, these are the most pastel-ish examples) my lineart has really smoothed back out too, though i never turned my pen stabiliser back on in SAI. i think my hand just adjusted. probably seems a bit insane to miss that, but i do.

by the end of 2020, the almost-year of lockdown over cobid had... made me a bit insane, i think, and i moved out of my mother's house and into a flat with a friend from university.

in 2021 i think things were much the same... i think from this point on is where things have sort of settled. i don't want to say stagnated, but i do think things have been very... like this for a while.

2022 - got the most exciting examples out...

also i was very into these little frames in 2022.

and then on to 2023! in 2022, i did begin trying to shift gears a bit -- hoping to put more energy into sewing and making products (like my tutor has suggested back in uni, even though i'd really resisted the idea.) i sold at a few in-person markets during winter of 2022, but got disheartened by the amount of money i had to sink in up front to sign up for a spot...

which has made me VERY grateful for the people who have supported me via online sales. it has really helped me stay afloat in 2023 - AND it has felt more wonderful than i can describe that there have been people interested in my work... especially when a lot of it has been my original designs, rather than the fanart that i expect a lot of people initially followed me for.

i've also... in the past 2 years... branched out a bit more when it comes to 'being an artist' - and have had the opportunity to deliver arts & crafts workshops with local refugee & asylum seeker support charity, afrocats. it's taken me to their home base in a church to hotels across the city where asylum seekers were temporarily placed while waiting on their new homes, and of course to my beloved whitworth art gallery, where we welcomed visitors from all backgrounds: from the typical white middle class visitors the gallery usually expects, to all the refugee visitors coming into the space for the first time.

and through my volunteering at the whitworth, i showed up so often they decided they might as well pay me. so i've also become a facilitator of... creative play sessions, my favourites of which have been outdoors. monthly, year-round, we have 'outdoor art club', where i get to paint with mud and make potions from leaves with kids & families - here you can see me tell you a little bit about it in this video below with 'crempog' a puppet character that makes videos about activities for kids and families around manchester (my bit starts at 01:10 although i am in the intro and thumbnail haha)

and then of course the summer 'PLAYTIME' activities we've had the past two years: scrap studio in 2022, and play market in 2023. it's the best freelance gig ever -- just to hang out and encourage families to be creative and have fun.

in working more in these new avenues... outside of being - as i've called myself for a long time - "an internet artist"... i've found myself more interested in this sort of thing. in being a "real world artist" too. in doing surface pattern design, and being a workshop facilitator, i find myself wanting to put more energy into these sorts of projects.

in 2023 i've also dabbled a little bit more in youtube videos! i have had a channel for a while and have made videos in previous years, but 2023 has been the year i've done the most in. admittedly most of them haven't been about my art, and more just like... random things that interest me (the spongebob musical in particular) but i've really been enjoying video editing. that's kind of an art form too, so i'm including it here!

moving forward, want to keep putting even more of my energy into other things. my shop, with a bigger range of products to offer. workshops in real life, where i can make a difference.

as for my art blog... i feel like i've done the least drawing in many years in 2023, and... well, things have been weird and complicated for a bit in my real life. i hope to draw for fun a bit more again very soon, and to return to doing things in more of a wild and crazy way, to be more creative and exciting with the way i draw things. still, here's some of my favourites from 2023:

thank you so much to everyone who has borne witness to my art journey this past decade!!! i hope you will stick with me, who knows, maybe for another 10 years if tumblr holds out. especially a big thank you to everyone who has ever commissioned me, or bought anything from my store, you literally keep me able to make art at all and i cannot, cannot, cannot overstate how much it means to me.

i'm moving homes soon, possibly into very cramped temporary conditions for a little while before HOPEFULLY starting my real life with my partner. if i can take one more moment to plug my work, then [here is a link to my online shop] and [here is my ko-fi page too.]

cheers, cheers, cheers!

- LOREN 🌈🍍🎉

[cattocavo]

Full artwork of Baz in the bonus content room for @thewholelemon ! Go read Chapter 3 of their fic “Just Remember Me When” https://archiveofourown.org/works/57161218/chapters/145389706#workskin

This piece holds the record for digital painting I’ve spent the most time on, just 20 minutes shy of 50 hours! It definitely felt longer, somehow😅 i practically painted the whole background with the knowledge that i would blur it in the end. I felt if i didn’t draw it all, the blur would look incredibly unrealistic and weird.

Jenny and I talked extensively about how the composition should look. Or rather, originally i wanted to fit all 5 people from the scene into the drawing, but just couldn’t not make it work. Jenny was incredibly nice and flexible, and told me that i didn’t need to, since Baz looking at Simon was the important part. Thats how we ended up with this composition

We also talked about how we wanted to represent the bonus content room, and settled on drawing inspirations from long exposure photography. I tried my best to get the effect via combining procreates different blurring options, using a bit of perspective blur and motion blur. Perspective blur was used to keep Simon’s face as a sort of focal point in the blurring, making sure his face was still intelligible. Im not quite sure i actually managed to make the blurring look specifically like long exposure photography though😬 maybe in the future if i get to draw something like this again, i might try some different methods!

Im incredibly happy i could be part of Carry On Big Bang this year! Ever since i read the books in November 2021, I saw fics written for the project and thought it was the coolest thing. Since i adore this project so, i knew i had to give it my everything (something my mother was really unhappy about. At the same time i was in this project, i was chosen for a project to illustrate one of many stories for a book about loneliness, one that would be published, which my mother thought i should prioritize and basically shit on this project🙄 safe to say i didnt agree. In the end i managed both. Take that mother.) (although i did actually put way more time into COBB whoops… but the carry on fandom deserves it)

See you next time, when i might post an artdump of all the art i did for artfight this past month!

[stevelieber]

PORTLAND COMICS ARTISTS: Would you like feedback on your work from an experienced professional? I'll be at @bookswithpictures this Friday July 5th from 4-6 PM for First Friday Office Hours. We'll be outdoors at the tables next to the shop.

How does this work? You show me 6-8 pages of comics storytelling. I'll give you feedback based on my 30 years in comics. What works, what doesn't, how to tweak a panel for clarity or impact, tips for saving labor- the sort of advice your teacher at a comics class might offer.

I'm not there to hire you, or read your pitch, or introduce you to a publisher. I'm there to look at the pages you've drawn. I restrict this to comics pages- storytelling- because that's what I know. Scripts, stand-alone illustrations, graphic design, posters? Not what I do.

It's fine if you work digitally, but BRING PRINTOUTS if you can. It's WAY easier to critique work on paper than on screen. I can scribble notes right on your panels, or lay tracing paper on top of them. And we won't have to deal with app glitches, battery problems, or tiny phone screens

We do this the first Friday of every month, 4-6PM. In-person, not online. Also? It's 100% free. No charge. Free. Free free free. Just bring your portfolio and your love of comic book storytelling! See you this Friday at Books With Pictures, 1401 SE Division.

Shares appreciated! I'd love to spread the word about this to art students at Portland's colleges, but I don't have a good way to reach them.

[abyssalzones]

What's your comic writing process like? I'm starting to get into making my own comics and I really admire your work!!! Any advice?

Ah, intrepid traveler, you've done well to journey to this secluded mountaintop spire, in search of the answers you seek. I indeed can provide such forbidden comicmancy knowledge... at the cost of your mortal soul...

coughs. anyway, I'm going to warn you immediately that what works for me does not work for everyone else, and in my experience the way I do things can prove very slow and discouraging for anyone who is more interested in the actual "drawing the damn comic" part of the process. I only do it this way because I enjoy weaving a narrative web that feels not only fully contained but re-readable, but my projects are often so long and my memory so shitty that I can't just keep all of it in my head! It would spill all over the place and make a really embarrassing mess of brain-juice. Not ideal.

but as for my own process, uhh... I suppose a comic would be fitting, right?

a little choppy but you get the idea.

as for turning words into art, I've been experimenting with figuring out the best way to do that for a little while now. Originally what I was doing for something like Ad Astra Per Aspera was to take my "script" and sketch it out on paper very loosely, before transposing that onto my canvas and working from there:

...but, I've found that can make it kind of difficult to space everything around on your standard page-size, and the thing I'm having the most problems with currently seems to be finding the sweet spot of panel-size proportions. So, I've taken to printing out standard thumbnail templates (you can just find these on google) and sketching very tiny panels in those, which seems to give me a slightly better sense of scale... (mild chapter 5 spoilers, sorry ad astra fans)

but I have yet to totally pull through on this, so who knows, maybe I'll try something else in the future!

As for advice, this is probably most applicable to me, but as a disabled artist I have a very hard time managing my workload without literally working myself into injury. I don't think I talked about this publicly but when I was working on that ten year anniversary comic I was literally drawing every single day for 3 solid months. Sometimes, in my case, I really can't bring myself to stop once I've latched onto an idea, and sometimes I find the most rewarding thing I can do with my time is to draw- but I seriously cannot overstate: Do not fucking do this.

You will fuck up your wrist, your back, your neck, your eyes, and probably your mental health. It's a well-known fact that mangaka have a lower life expectancy than the average japanese person due to the intense workload imposed on them by deadlines and personal expectations. Comics are a very demanding artform, and even though I'm not on any sort of mandated schedule there are times where I've toiled away at something when I likely should have been exercising or taking vision-breaks. Therefore the best advice I can give you is to chill the hell out.

Namely, find parts of the process you can be lazy about, and embrace the laziness! You don't like digitally sketching? Don't do it! Skip it, or maybe find a way to traditionally sketch things out in advance like I do. Hate lineart? Don't fucking do it. You really don't feel like wasting your time writing 72k words of comic scripts? ...then, don't be like me. skip that part. I'm a flawed human being and what works for me might not work for you.

The second most important piece of advice I could give is to read comics. Of all kinds. The reason for this is pretty self explanatory: In order to figure out your own comic-making style, you should first pick out bits and pieces from the artist's buffet to add to your plate. Manga, graphic novels, american comics, european comics, weird niche little webcomics, funny papers, anything and everything. This advice rings true of pretty much any art form, but I find it to be essential to honing comic-making skills because so many things you feel will just come intuitively often don't. and that's okay! nobody is born knowing how to leave space for speech bubbles or shape their panels in a way that imitates stretches of time. The best way to figure out stuff like this, in my experience, is to study the "masters", and then after becoming well accustomed to the basics, figure out what rules you want to bend or break to create your own style.

I consider myself to be in equal parts a writer and an artist, which lends itself well to making narrative comics, but maybe you're a bit more of an artist and want to focus on panel-by-panel visual storytelling. Or, conversely, maybe your talents lean closer towards writing, and the art itself is more of a secondary skill. Regardless of your unique blend of talents you can and should make a comic, you should just also be aware of your strengths and try to hone in on those- there will always be opportunities to build up skills you lack, but focusing on what you do best will always lead you in the right direction.

Anyway, that being said, here are some recommendations in no particular order:

Monster, Naoki Urasawa (!!)

Bone, Jeff Smith

Witch Hat Atelier, Kamome Shirahama

The first IDW run of Transformers comics (namely More Than Meets the Eye and Lost Light)

Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi (!!)

Through the Woods, Emily Carroll (really any Emily Carroll comics)

Kill Six Billion Demons (webcomic) (!!)

Akira, Katsuhiro Otomo

The Third Person, Emma Grove

Tintin, Hergé (can be super racist please be wary)

Dungeon Meshi, Ryoko Kui

Calvin & Hobbes, Bill Watterson

Maus, Art Spiegelman

Cucumber Quest (webcomic)

Jellyfish Princess, Akiko Higashimura

Golden Kamuy, Satoru Noda (!!)

Note that I did not grow up with manga so I am seriously behind on a lot of extremely influential japanese comics such as Dragon Ball, One Piece, basically any of the original Shonen Jump comics, but they're widely considered building blocks of the genre so if you love the artform I think you should give them a try! Same goes for classic non-shonen manga genres like various Shoujo, Josei, Yuri, Gekiga, ETC.

same as above applies to a lot of classic DC and Marvel works, I unfortunately am just not a big fan of superhero comics... but I'm sure there's good stuff in there. a couple of my mutuals talk about booster gold and the blue beetle all the time so I'm assuming there has to be something worthwhile.

...and many, many, many more that I'm forgetting! I noticed as I made this list that, to my knowledge, hardly any of these are made by black or just non-japanese-mangaka BIPOC artists, which makes me sad about the gaps in my own comic collection. Therefore, anyone is welcome to add their own recommendations in the replies!

now go forth, and combine images with text!!!!!!!!!!!

[nebularobo]

Hello, I'm NebulaRobo, and I'm a full time digital artist. I've been working on commissions for 7 and a half years, nonstop. I work on art because it's what I love, and also to provide for my family, my mother, and siblings, as they try and work, as we live in a country that pays very poorly, and I make a lot more by underpricing my art online than having a regular job here. And I'm glad and grateful that, because lots of incredibly kind people like my art, I've been able to make a living by drawing. For that, I'll always be grateful!

And I plan on continuing to make art, to work hard, create projects I've always wanted to and manage tens of hours of commission work every week. Because of many expenses this year, to help my partner, my family, my cats' health, the taxes will hit us really hard this month and the next months, and it puts in risk our living conditions. Any sort of help is appreciated, from just kind words, to likes, to commissions, to donations, help me so that I can continue to make art, and help the ones I love. I'll work hard so that this will never be needed again, but it's what I must do at the moment. Thank you to everyone who's ever helped me, even by liking my art, who helped me be able to provide for the ones I love!

Here's my Ko-Fi, commissions prices: https://ko-fi.com/A714PA6 https://x.com/NEBULArobo/status/1717941421993308558

[starrysharks]

OK so I'm feeling some guilt I started to draw cartoony like you but I get frustrated because it does bot look perfect like yours it's mostly small stuff like colors and clothes I love making cartoony body's sometimes clothing but I have color picking because I'm still new to art that has colors is my feelings normal or is it wrong of me? And how do I pick colors because it frustrated me to no end and made me stop drawing for months anyway in short summary how do I color the right way like I guess I know skin tones but anything else goes wrong and the other summary is how do you draw clothing because I can't for the life of me get clothing right

don't worry - it's normal to get frustrated when drawing. i know i've literally quit and deleted entire illustrations in the past because i didn't like how the colors came out, and i can spend whole hours just choosing base colors TwT i think the important part about learning art is not to rush. i'm seriously flattered you see me as inspiration, but what worked best for me back when i heavily referenced other artists was "mixing" styles together to create a "new" one - so i'd recommend studying and copying multiple artists you like and trying to blend their styles into one if that makes sense! ^^

hating color picking is completely normal when you're first starting out, and even late into art like i said before - i've been making original digital art on ibispaint for about 5 years now, and it's still difficult. but it's easy to make it fun, and the best way to do that imo is to experiment! i'd recommend studying color theory on a larger scale, and understanding how certain colors might look completely different based on where you put them. or maybe make an illustration and color it in a bunch of alternative ways! also, having "bad" or "awful" color skills starting out is OK - i still think my colors suck sometimes even now lol.

anyway, the best way for me to color pick is to just use that color for whatever the OG artist used for their art. let's use alex ahad as an example because i find his art and color use super interesting -

i don't usually color pick, but when i do, i typically start with picking the eye color. then, based off of the eye color, i chose a base color based on the character's color pallete (easier of the eye color is already close to the main color of the character, which for clyde is turquoise).

then, i pick more colors directly from the reference, for stuff like skin. at this point i have a good idea of the colors i want to use and stop color picking from the ref, but there's no shame if you still feel you need to.

after that, based on the colors i picked, i'll color in the rest of the piece. i usually end up changing the colors that i did take from the reference due to experimenting - for me, i just use color picking as a sort of stepping stone for when i'm not sure how to color a piece the exact way i want.

eventually, you can learn to color pick by eye rather than with the picking tool in your art program, tho that takes a lot of knowledge on color theory.

really there is no "right" way to color, especially for skin imo - don't limit yourself to just peach, tan and brown. clyde's skin is bright white, but i still used a yellowy color here because it was relative to the other colors in the piece. i've also used "alien" tones for human-toned characters in the past before!

and about clothing folds - i can make a full post on that if anybody else is interested OuO

[moldspace]

new year new news

hey everyone! wow! 2022 is over! what a year! i made a lot of art, had some cool opportunities (painting a mural!!!) and some challenging transitions (quitting my job, switching academic programs!) but i think, overall, i’m glad to put this one in the rear view mirror. 

now, to get out of the rear view mirror and look forwards into the metaphorical windshield - my resolution this year is to MAKE MORE ART and to GET OUTSIDE OF MY COMFORT ZONE and with that in mind, my first actionable goal for 2023 was...

to start a patreon!

not gonna lie, i’ve been just as nervous as i’ve been busy setting this up the past few weeks (and the imposter syndrome has kicked in HARD), but hey, doing new things is always scary and awkward. and i really wanted a good excuse to put some time and energy into behind-the-scenes stories, progress shots, sketchbook pages that aren’t pretty enough to post on their own, and rambling talks about the winding path my own art tends to follow. so maybe check it out and throw some money my way, if you’ve got extra and are curious!

currently i’ve just got one $3 tier up, but i’m sure that will change and evolve as i figure out what i’m doing. but what can i access with three dollars, i hear you ask? well...

full digital copies of all of my zines! with transcripts, and personal commentary!

polls! maybe i'm making new stickers and don't know which design to go with, maybe i'm amassing work for an update and don't know if i should make some more selkies or some more sphinxes - these polls will help ME decide what to make more of, and help YOU ALL see more of what you want from me. win-win!

behind the scenes posts and videos! i have to admit that i harbor a secret love for video editing, but I have so far had no real outlet for it (aside from the AMVs that i occasionally make in a fugue state and NO i’m never showing them to a soul) - but i've just filmed and edited the first full start-to-finish process video for patreon! watch me make a ceramic beasty from sketch to glaze firing, with full voiceover commentary (my voice was once described by a child as “why do you sound like that? you sound like you’re going to cry” so look forward to that!) i have plans in the future for tutorial posts and videos, more process timelapses, and full behind the scenes zine-making retrospectives, from writing to illustrating to binding.

this month (january 2023) only, sign up as a patron and i will personally send a little doodle to your house! yes, like in the mail. feel free to send me a prompt with your pledge, otherwise it’ll probably be some sort of creature with a human face and stars on it. maybe it will still be that, even if you give me a prompt.

finally, you will get my eternal gratitude! i truly cannot thank you all enough for the support and love over the years. it's been such an amazing honor to find other people who like the wacky little critters i make, and whether you've purchased art from me, follow me, or are even just someone who's seen and liked a piece of mine, i am forever grateful to be able to connect across space and time, with you, over art. 

whether or not you decide to pledge, from the bottom of my heart, thank you! i am so lucky to have this space on tumblr to share my work - every kind comment means the world to me, and i just hope my work can be enriching to your worlds in some small way, too! i know making it enriches mine :^)

[crushedsweets]

Got any cool hip creepypasta headcanons?!?😱😱

DEPENDS... its hard without any specific prompts but yk what anon im capable of talking out of my ass no matter what.

this'll be talking about the main 12 i usually talk about, so if i say smth like 'so and so is the ONLY one who does this', they aren't actually the only one

toby rides a bike everywhere. he just steals random ones if he sees one he likes or knows hes hella far from home and doesnt wanna walk. brought home a pink beach cruiser once and natalie laughed her ass off. . .

the proxies (tim, brian, toby) have a cabin that tim and brian treat more like a safehouse rather than a home. tim and brian share an apartment near the city though. toby is the only one who lives there full time. they all have to pitch in for the bills, but toby has to scramble to get the majority bc again.. lives there full time.

the cabin only has 2 bedrooms, 1.5 baths, a connected kitchen/living room, and an attic. the small bedroom is filled to the fucking BRIM with random bullshit that they keep as storage but its just ridicoulous. like boxes filled with random shit toby steals (i kinda hc toby as a kleptomaniac too), tables, dressers, clothes, etc. a lot of it is also stuff that like, jeff or nat dropped off being like 'keep this safe for me' and it eventually just devolved into a storage room. the master bedroom is where tim or brian sleep IF they are at the cabin. toby made the attic his bedroom, but he falls asleep on the couch or in the master bedroom if the other two aren't home. he just likes that the attic is someplace nobody else really wants to go cuz.. why would they need to?

tim owns a busted rusty reddish colored pickup truck. he totally named it something like sheila and calls it a 'she.' brian prob just has a basic little grey honda. does not name it . .

natalie has huge issues w her gender. not in a queer way(well sort of in a queer way bc im projecting) but in a like. 'fuck this shit im fucking tired' because growing up, she was always a daughter, sister, niece, etc before she was her own person. she grew up in a house of men, and her extended family was largely ran by shitty, loud, sexist men that constantly ostracized her for being a girl. toby is legit the only dude she's fully like Ok. I'm ok with u. ur just fucking stupid. and she pokes fun at him being a mamas boy and says thats why shes ok with him. she stopped talking to him for like a month the one time he made a gender roles comment that he got from his dad.

natalie used to play volleyball and basketball growing up cuz again, grew up with boys and she was always really tall (like 5'7 in 6th grade, 6ft by highschool). sports and art were her ONLY outlets, but she was always degraded and shamed by her dad and brother for art. her dad loved that she played sports though, one of the only things he was supportive about . until she got a little older and he decided that being a tomboy wasnt as endearing on a teenage girl.

i cannot explain how close jane and her parents were. she was an only child in a upper middle class house to a lawyer and a real estate agent so she was always spoiled rotten, taken care of, always told how beautiful and smart she was. hence why losing them is the most fucking detrimental shit to ever happen to her. she literally worhsips her parents. she's wore mothers wedding dress to her own wedding. her uncle(dads brother) walked her down the aisle holding a framed photo of her dad. she almost refused to walk during her university graduation because her parents couldn't be there, despite the years worth of hardwork and dedication she put into it.

mary(janes wife) was janes bestfriend in highschool. it was one of those crazy homoerotic female friendships. they were eachothers first kiss even when they thought they were straight ("oh lets practice kiss for our future bfs!").

my idea of ben kinda combines the idea of ben the kid who drowned, and BEN the experiment to put souls into a digital afterlife. ben bought majoras mask from some creepy neighbor at a garage sale, and the neighbor had like. this completely absurd theory that he could put himself into a game or something. so he ended up tricking several kids into buying the same majoras mask cartridge, killing them after they beat the game together, and their souls DID get trapped in the cartridge but it didnt do much for his theory... WHICH MEANS that BEN is a culmination of several people, kids and teens raging from like 7-19, but the ben we know is sort of like.. the only one who escaped the cartridge (he was the last one killed and the reason the man got caught for murder)? but he was stuck in said cartridge for about like 7 years before he was 'reawoken' so traces of others souls are in him. ITS REALLY COMPLICATED it makes sense in my head but idk. he has a lot of identity issues that come packed with having his childhood stolen from him.

he's so close to sally because he relates to her on that level. while their trauma was different, being a kid taken advantage of and fucking murdered is insane. despite coming from completely different time periods (sally died in the 1900s, ben died in the 2000s), ben can only find himself truly relating to sally on an emotional level. sure, him jeff and toby can laugh and play video games and wrestle and stuff, but sally is the only one who can even begin to understand what it's like to be a dead kid.

sally and ben kinda make a lot of comments about humans and stuff LOL. most of it is in the 'you ungrateful pieces of shit you THREW AWAY YOUR LIFE' but sometimes it's something more bittersweet. 'you lived to adulthood, you have so much, you can do so much, please keep going, there's so much left for you, don't let it go' etc etc. they can sometimes be the wisest in their perspectives of life, death, mortality. but theyre both so bitter and traumatized and hurt but it that it's mostly overshadowed by envy. that's why the two of them can be so close, even if they dont really sit and like.. philosophize about life. lmfao

ben has gotten into several like police and governemnt systems and removed so many cctv footage of everyone getting in trouble, or even wiped their shit from systems. he is like the main reason none of them are in jail unironically.

jeff is the only one who truly enjoys murder. he's a sadist at heart and has a fetish for all this blood and guts. toby and natalie did have their own periods in life where they killed for relief/as a power trip(toby only ever did it under orders, natalie took some sleezy guys home from bars). the rest of them either aren't killers, or don't do it by choice (brian and tim).

i was gonna ramble about nina next but im kinda embarrassed that i just spoke so much about them BAHAHAH OK THANKS ANON

[artistpicks]

Category is: The Art of GIF

Welcome to November’s Artist Picks series! This month, we’ve invited @catswilleatyou to share posts surrounding the theme, “The Art of GIF.”

Here is what they have to say about it below!

What does “The Art of GIF” mean to you?

The GIF is an art form that was born on the web. Videos existed in other places; paintings, photos existed in other places. GIFs just didn’t exist anywhere until the internet came along. Many artists were thrilled to be at the moment in art history when this medium was born. Even though the compression techniques are outdated and the functionality has been surpassed by other formats, the perfect infinite loop of the GIF has yet to be achieved by another file format. MP4s still have a hiccup when they start over. While GIFs are widely used for quick jokes and communication, many artists still believe there is more depth to this medium. I believe that as digital art continues to gain acceptance as a high art form, GIFs will eventually be realized as a cornerstone to it. To me, the art of GIF is about working within limitations and birthing something infinite.

Why did you pick these particular posts?

A few years ago I started creating GIFs that are Phenakistiscopes. I couldn’t find any resources on how to make Phenakistiscopes, but I found lots of tons of centuries old Phenakistiscopes that were making amazing GIFs. I sort of backwards engineered my own method of making them and I continue to explore this medium with GIFs. There’s a lot to be learned by limiting yourself to a small number of frames. I keep thinking I’m done making these but every time I work on one, I learn a new animation trick.

(Below are specific mentions of the artists @catswilleatyou chose posts from.)

@volvulent is a mysterious artist to me. I know nothing about their personal life. I’ve never been able to find them on other social media platforms. I feel so fortunate to have stumbled on their work many years ago. They are a complete master of organic form and hand drawn infinite loops. You can follow some of the shapes on these drawings for several seconds, and then when you go back and study the art closely, you discover that the whole looping sequence is only fraction of a second long.

@katecursed uses old and outdated technology in ways I’ll never understand. Tons of analog CRT TVs, oscilloscopes, old video games, and synths. I love it. She grew up around this stuff and is extremely knowledgeable. Her GIFs are timeless.

@alcrego is an absolute workhorse and in my opinion, a historically important GIF artist. He has an instantly recognizable voice using almost entirely black and white. I think he would even go so far as to say he only uses light. The minimalism is always deceptive—there is so much depth to his exploration of GIF as an artistic medium.

I’ve also chosen some very “classic” looking @kidmograph GIFs. I credit kidmograph with bringing the retro/video game style back into fashion about a decade ago. When he started posting this stuff, I hadn’t seen anything like it. Shortly after (and still to this day), there was a huge movement of artists that co-opted this approach. I wanted to include their work here because when you see this look, I want you to know where the echo started. I also want to say that this is just one of many tricks kidmograph has. They explore a wide range of styles and approaches, and they are continually evolving.

@mrdiv always had such a knack for color, compositing, and simplicity. When I was first learning 3D, they were a great artist for me to study because I saw how much emotion and reaction they can get with using very very little. I love the minimalism of their work.

I love how @maxcapacity incorporates vintage equipment in his process to create such wild psychedelic GIFs. They’re always pretty saturated with lovely colors. For me, there’s a heavy hitting moment with this work where I’m watching my childhood get spit back to me in perhaps a more truthful version than I even recall it. It’s hard to explain but the nostalgia lures me in, and then I’m cut with a darkness by them. There’s also some humor sprinkled in.

@zbags’s work is instantly recognizable with the way they use creepy lively eyeballs behind faces. Collin’s work is disturbing and fun. There’s always an added bonus in reading his wild descriptions and titles. When there was a file size limit to GIFs being posted on Tumblr, I was always impressed by their ability to get a very long and detailed animation into a small file. I think he’s doing lots of frame rate tricks I still don’t think I’ve ever figured it out.

Find out more about Artists Picks here!

[rickety-goose]

remember this?

so um it’s not this post sffsg but coming soon >:3

it's like a month and a half later (i think) but it's here! this blog passed a couple milestones in the last few months and i'd like to celebrate at last with a little casual giveaway >:)

i'm still going through a weird art funk, but i'm happy to offer an experimental color portrait of your character, like these for example:

this giveaway entry period will last a month, so until June 18th (11:59 pm GMT-4, to be extra precise <3), after which i'll be drawing 3 winners. to participate, simply like this post! oh and be a follower ig sdfsd

i will contact the winners on tumblr!

and there you have it, simple and unceremonious sdfsf :> i'm really grateful to be able to share my art with you all, it truly means a lot <3 so i encourage everyone to participate! followers old and new, whether you've been here for a day or a year, i'm happy to have you around <3 good luck!

additional technical details:

1 entry per person <3 (1 like = 1 entry)

will paint: your oc, a canon character

won't paint: real people, hateful/bigoted content, anything im not comfortable with

winners will have 72 hours to answer my initial message, after which i'll draw another name

please have a simple description of your character and their vibe + 2-3 refs ready <3

the following rules apply:

• The final portrait you will receive is a digital file, no physical good will be shipped • I reserve the right to refuse to do a portrait if I'm uncomfortable with a winner's request • All art is for personal use only You may, for example: • use the portrait or a part of it for personal materials (avatar, header, etc) • make personal prints • provide it as a character reference

You may not: • use the portrait for any commercial purposes • modify the portrait or claim it as your own work • redistribute or sell copies of the portrait • make NFTs • use it to train AI of any sort

• I may display the portrait or part of it on my portfolio website and/or other social media platforms

Don't hesitate to ask if you have any other question <3 <3 <3