#this was actually a sketch from 2019

[lidoshka]

Pomegranate

have a Lotor and mermaid!Keith

[phopollo]

Went looking back on a bunch of old art, and decided

It would he really fun to try and copy the old ways I used to sketch w/o trying to outright copy my old style just as a fun little warm up

And man

It's insane how much if a difference the subtle details in how I sketched made when it came time to line

(Ft Kaisa because she is my favorite subject to test out drawing things with now apparently)

[bluehexagone]

Realism is fun till it isn’t and I realize I’ve already committed too far and can’t just scrap it but I know it will take me too long so here are some sacrifices you may see finished later on

[undertalelover20xx]

Little sketch cause o just got a new notebook to draw on :)

[bookwyrminspiration]

you should draw fitz in a cardigan (if you want ofc)

i'm trying to remember how to draw him, and also how to draw in general, but I have. a quick little sketch of the boy :)

I think. he's very neat. and that I don't actually remember quite what a cardigan is, so I don't know if this counts. but nevertheless! i love him <3

[todayisafridaynight]

i have to drive for like two hours tomorrow and all i can think of is old people

[thecoolertails]

ok im not gonna post most of the danganronpa art i found when i was looking through my old stuff but i thought this was funny

[a-flappy-bat]

Control related sketches/doodles 🙃

[ashenberry]

(Runs in several hours late) SO WHICH OF YOUR OCS IS COMPARATIVELY LEAST DEVELOPED OR NEWEST?

oh fun i know the exact order to this due to the way i develop my ocs. ordered from oldest to newest ocs (bolded are the 5 that seem to be the only ones i talk on here, but there are. more)

Jasper & Rosin Lily & Anthony & Jayden & Rick Sam Mike & April & Austin Rose AJ & Dee Ace Robin

[starflight707]

im going to start drawing again (has been saying this to themself for 3 years)

[rockethorse]

Stocking Stuffer 1/5: A Bajillion Random Painting Recolours

Happy Holidays to all! While I'm proud that last year I finally managed to achieve a longtime goal of sharing a full TS2 Advent Calendar, I'm simply not gonna be able to pull it off this year. Nonetheless, the holidlay spirit has encouraged me to finish up and share a couple of things before the end of the year! I'll be sharing five little gifts over the next few arbitrary days. First up: A BUNCH of Maxis painting recolours.

One recolour each of A/B/C Stroke (yes, I still enjoy playing with these as three separate paintings) using vintage matchbook covers designed by Saul Bass for The Ohio Match Company.

Two recolours +frames for Abstrutionism; "Poppy Cake" by Adolf Fényes (1910), and then this edit of Christina's World by Andrew Wyeth (1948) to include Bella Goth (the original Tumblr poster has deactivated).

A recolour of Anonymous Masterpiece with these two digital paintings by user chestnutroan featuring their farmer Sim and his two alien daughters.

One recolour of the Arghist Soldier with "Friday Nights" by Deborah DeWit (2006), perfect for your novel-enthusiast Sims' reading nook.

One recolour of City Skyline with a fruit & veg painting by Twitter user snail_soup (you can buy a real print of this too if you like it!)

One recolour of the Fourth Element wall scroll with "From Stardust to Stardust - Raccoon" by user ArtOfMienda.

Four Vegetables recoloured with four deliciously juicy tomato paintings by artist Leah Gardner.

Geometry 101 recoloured with a beautiful palette knife painting by Lynn Boggess.

Two recolours of Grilled Cheese (you all know what Grilled Cheese looks like, c'mon); one vintage ad for Hollywood Diet bread which I cleaned/redrew to remove text/graphics, and then "Cloud Rows" by Ivan Eyre (2004).

In The Beginning (+frame) recoloured with "Little Thief" by Courtney / Trash Kitty Art (also available as an affordable IRL print).

Kitten vs. Yarn (+frame) recoloured with this goache painting by user ieafy.

"Until Tonight" by Mark Grantham (2019) slapped on Lady On Red.

Two recolours of Living Room; "Midwestern Summer Fun" by user ink-the-artist (you may wanna zoom in for a surprise), then "Girl On A Swing" (2000) by Andrew Macara.

One recolour of Marketing Print with the Beatles as drawn by other Beatles. I don't remember who drew who because I'm actually not much of a Beatles fan but I thought these sketches were really darling.

In Memory of Johnny Gnome (+frame) recoloured with a piece by Emma Roulette.

A recolour of My First Holiday with art from Twitter user heikala_art.

On Pointed Toes (+frame) recoloured with this digital painting by Twitter user catwheezie.

I fell in love with this Guinness ad so I tweaked it from the photo to fit on the Route 66 poster, then made an accompanying Simlish option.

A single Scruffles recolour (+frame) with this adorable cow illustration by Twitter user poodlewool.

Four recolours of the Sim Noir pop art print; three pieces by Al Parker I found through this Tweet (with some English removed) and then an edit of the original painting to look passingly familiar...

Two recolours (+frames) of Snoozing Enemies; "The Cat on the Pillow" by Adolf von Becker, and "Sleeping Sasha" by Lena Rivo.

Stiller Life (+frame) recoloured with this oil painting of McDonalds by artist Noah Verrier.

Two recolours (+frames) of Stumped Hound; "Shadow" by Tianyi Zhou and "cat falling off table" by user anasauruss.

The Muse recoloured with this Juxtapoz magazine cover by artist Josh Courlas.

And lastly, three recolours of Untitled (the Bella Goth pop art painting) with works by Hiroshi Nagai.

Download All Paintings @ SFS

[ranticore]

selected pages from Shapeshifter Problems, a small exploration of old old concept art & thoughts on shapeshifter tropes (specifically the question of the 'true form') i posted to patreon earlier this year. there's a bunch more haha. here's some OLD art and bg process for writing said the black horse. I don't like my old art but looking back at it I'm really happy how I've developed since, I used to make everything too sharp, straight-sided, or skinny. I had to make a conscious effort to change that and now it's so much better.

image transcriptions under the cut (just the text sorry)

Image 1: "These are more of those older designs - the horns were a deliberate play into devil imagery on Puck's part while giving Félix this form (all to cause more torment of course) but again I couldn't vibe with it. Such clear statements of intent didn't work for me.

The scars remain canon but not quite so stark, more a difference in texture (again, moving away from visual details). His forehead scar is ALWAYS there."

Image 2: "Félix. These are really old - from 2019-2020. They're the first attempts at Félix's horse form. At the time I was leaning into some goat-like attributes. I liked the idea of something that looked like an emaciated amalgam of many familiar creatures but if you look closer, it actually doesn't look like any animal at all. The original body shape and proportions were inspired by moose. I didn't know how to draw convincing horse shapes which is why he had these hands and claws for so long. I still draw the little flower wheel pattern on his sides sometimes... a secret just for me. His belly fur, squared off ear shape, and beard are still defining characteristics"

Image 3: "More old art from 2020. Bottom left is my first ever painting on my iPad using Procreate. I still prefer SAI for creature drawings, or at least the original sketches underpinning a lot of my art. Below on the bottom was my attempt at a scarier form for the character but I ultimately decided that it ran contrary to the atmosphere I was trying to create. Top left is my first 'real' horse painting and it includes the tail shape which has not ever changed, and feathers, which I nixed because I wanted to learn how to draw the feet and legs properly and not rely on covering them up with flowing hair (my favourite thing to draw)"

Image 4: "Like the black horse designs, these humanoid designs for Félix (circa 2019 - OLD art!) started very complex and simplified over time. I decided to avoid visual complexity, but made the mistake of solidifying specific 'rules' for how the Púca servants' bodies work, and I deeply regret this. Because I wrote Said the Black Horse in 2021, I was still operating under the old mindset and that caused it to become somewhat established canon.

In his original iteration his tattoos represented magical contracts between him and various faeries, so they were supposed to be always visible as a reminder of that contract.

<- a really early furry version, I was playing with the eye on the neck as a design feature. Ultimately I feel that although it looks cool, the medium he exists in is proser. So I needed to move away from visually complex designs and towards designs which were interesting to different senses instead."

Image 5: "As time went on the design simplified. I enjoyed making fun textures using procreate brushes. These designs lack his forehead scar but do include his impalement scar. If you've seen my Hanged Man card you'll know how he got that one. But when I made the charts like this about how his body 'worked' in 2020, again I ran into the same issue I always do when writing about faeries... the more I explain it, the most 'logic' and 'science' goes into it, the less it feels like a faery story to me. Overexplaining is anathema to the faeries of Inver. so even though I like these design notes they just don't fit in this setting."

[bettsfic]

hi betts! i hope you're doing well. there's something i want to ask: what is it called when you start noticing that your writing is getting worse over time?

i was looking at some of the stuff i wrote back in 2019 and they were pretty good. 2021's writing was still okay but the ideas were less solidly formed, in 2023's writing there's a distinct lack in dialogue. and today i tried writing again and i couldn't even write complete sentences. honestly i've thought about quitting writing altogether but ugh! the muses will still whisper to me sometimes and i can't do anything about it but suffer in silence.

as a more experienced author, do you have any advice on how to deal with something like this? i really don't want to quit just yet.

have you tried rewriting? i think sometimes when you see yourself getting "worse" at writing you're actually just getting faster at it. especially since you're writing in fragments, to me that says you might be getting your ideas on the page with more rapidity. every single sentence is carved out of every word in your vocabulary, and as you get faster at that process, you end up relying on familiar sentence structures and imagery. over the years, i've coached a lot of writers who see themselves get "worse" but actually it just means a change in their process: the fast draft and the slow draft. you get through the first one, it sucks, you rewrite it from scratch. and because you've already processed the scene in your head, you can take your time with it on the second pass, in the same way an artist creates a sketch and then begins creating layers on top of it. as you improve as an artist, you build endurance to put down more layers, but your initial sketches may get sketchier.

if you're already a rewriter, it may be a cognitive issue. writing takes an insane amount of brain power, so if you're writing at a time of day where your brain's clocked out, done making words, your writing might reflect that. things like depression, stress, med changes...all of that that impact your writing.

and lastly, you may have hit a writing ceiling! when that happens, a good idea is to try some particular challenge to put you out of your comfort zone. changing up the style, voice, structure, anything that can help push you to the next skill level.

don't quit! sometimes "i think i'm worse at writing" is secretly an opportunity to change things up.

[mcromwell]

Genuine question, sorry if it's dumb -

How do you work when there's something on the line? I find I freeze, and it's just so much more difficult to properly organize myself to produce something I'm proud of. But you've been to conventions, and you sell your work, so I'm assuming you feel pressure at least *sometimes.* do you work with it? Around it?

Hey Tymbul, it's not a dumb question, it's actually a really good one. I can only answer it to the best of my own abilities, in regards to my own art and practice, so mileage may vary.

This feeling of something being is "on the line" was what burned me out hard in 2019/20. I'd been making and sharing art for decades and all the while my thoughts took the shape of, "it has to be GOOD, it has to SAY something, it needs to hit X and Y requirement to be worthy" etc. Wherever that habit of pressuring myself came from, it wasn't helpful. I would glare at the blank page and curse every sketch I made because it (and by extension, myself) wasn't ever good enough.

I knew something had to change, so I changed. I began trying to make art with no pressure. Instead of pushing myself I let my foot off the brake. I changed the way I talked to myself about art. "I'm going to make this as good as I can. And if I can't, there's always next painting." I began starting a piece with fast, easy, not-precious stuff--random paint smears, doodles, gesture sketches. The pressure was off when all I had to do was start with trash and play around. If it just wasn't working and I had to scrap it or start over, oh well, it was just trash. I still run into this pressure today, though. Growth ain't linear and all that. Old habits die hard. I have to snap myself out of it with a feral screeching JUST THROW PAINT ON IT RRRRRRRRGH and I can usually let up on the brakes enough to get it going. It's a journey.

I like to think of this in terms of dog training. If you punch your dog and yell at it, that dog is going to have fear and doubt and won't be a healthy dog capable of performing the tasks you ask of it. But if you use positive reinforcement, they develop confidence and become dependable and sturdy. If you sit down to make art and every time its a barrage of IT HAS TO BE GOOD! YOU HAVE TO BE PROUD OF IT! EVERY NEW PIECE HAS TO BE BETTER! IF IT ISN'T YOU'LL BE A FAILURE! WHY AREN'T YOU DRAWING YET then man, that dog is cowering in the corner, it is not going to sit or fetch or anything. What if instead you said, "Okay! Time to make something. Let's do warm-ups and thumbnails to prepare so I'm ready to jump in. I am open to surprising myself by making something I'm excited about, but I won't beat myself up if today isn't that day. I know by doing this I'm practicing and getting better, it is never a waste." You are much more likely to Do a Thing if that thing feels good to do. That's just being an animal, man. Positive feedback.

To be honest, though, I still haven't found a successful way to make commissions less like pulling teeth. My method of art-making is to fuck around and find out and that's not a conducive method for a comm, which usually has a ton more expectation and strict parameters and my nemesis: Should-Look-Like. I am good at some things, I am not good at comms. Progress is not linear. I am still learning. My efforts to let up on the brakes made it so the car was a lot harder to control... for better or worse.

Hope this helps. Mostly, my advice is to find out how making art can feel good to you and then make a ton of it. Make more art than you think you should. It gets easier. And don't punch your dog.

[saysike-skedoodles]

NEMESIS BIRTHDAY WOOOOOOOOO

HAPPY BIRTHDAY NEMESIS!!!!! HOPE YA LIKE THE CAKE- do alien crabs like cake- I hope so cuz I can't provide cake made out of human meat, unfortunately.

Why the heck would I celebrate a roller coaster's birthday, you may ask? Because I can. That's why. Jokes aside I'm SO surprised to know of Nemesis turning 30 years old. But also happy that it can probably stand another 30 years now with its new retrack it got :] I know this isn't the usual art you'll see from me but I genuinely have such a love for Alton Towers you won't BELIEVE the chokehold this park has had on me since late 2019. I kinda wanna get into coaster art a lot more cuz listening to the soundtracks, watching videos and researching about them is just not enough for me. I need to draw the damn rides. Soooo, if you see sketches of the Marmaliser, ride tracks and such pop up, that's why. That's all I gotta say really, uhhh, stream the Alton Towers soundtrack on whatever music platform you listen to music on, I tell ya, from someone who loves theme parks, the music is actually so good.

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[all content I post is automatically 13+ if not stated in the title or the content itself]

[datura-tea]

holy shit this year marks 10 years of this blog and moz!! i can't remember the exact date i started posting here - my archive says i have one post from november 2013 but let's disregard that - but i do remember it was around late 2014/early 2015 :)

^ one of the very first moz art pieces i ever drew, for fallout week 2015!!

memories and art through the years under a read more bc it got long

2014 → baby's first rpg!! i started playing fnv on my cousin's jailbroken xbox late 2013 and finished mid 2014 and i loved every minute of it. i remember waking up at 8am and playing almost nonstop until 2am the next day haha!

i didn't play moz on my first playthrough - but i did start creating a character that would eventually become her: a shorthaired ex-boxer who punched her way through obstacles when diplomacy failed. i remember she spent a lot of time with boone. i liked him then, because he saved my ass more times than i can count. but i digress. this is draft 1 moz essentially

2015 → this is the year that i was doing my thesis so i could graduate but i was so depressed and stressed about it that i distracted myself by replaying fnv on pc, where i played through the dlcs for the first time. i fell in love with the dlcs' oversarching story; particularly ulysses, who i became obssessed with, especially since i couldn't find any content of him at the time. in the game, i played as moz; i had most of her personality and choices down, but her backstory was still up in the air.

fun fact: this was an existing sideblog that i remade to be a fallout blog so i could look for ulysses content, and when i couldn't find any, i made some myself, featuring moz as my main courier six. originally, i didn't ship them, but eventually i ended the year as a courier/ulysses otp shipper.

this was the year i started drawing digitally - my uncle let me borrow a drawing tablet and i used an old copy of photoshop i pirated hehe

2016 → i graduated this year!! and promptly fell deeper into my depression. this was the year that it got so bad that i had to be medicated. through it all, this blog and moz and ulysses and my fandom friends were with me. and for that i am truly grateful :) this was the year i figured out how to lock transparent pixels so that i could color my lineart lol

2017 → i started hammering out moz's backstory this year i think. there's a lot of sketches of her and her family in my files. i experimented with shading and backgrounds here but that experimentation was pretty short-lived

2018 → i started using references seriously!!!! i did a lot of oc on oc kissing this year, featuring mostly moz and many friend ocs haha

2019 → didn't draw much this year. actually this year was a blur and i can't remember much from it except from it being the year of my terrible no good bad copywriting jobs... anyway i did manage to continue my courier/ulysses brainrot and make this piece, which i'm still proud of

2020 → pandemic time. i spent a lot of time asleep at home and i think this was also the year i started doing commissions?? shoutout to anyone who has ever commissioned me - thank you so much, i truly appreciate it!!

2021 → i switched from my old-ass pirated photoshop to clip studio paint and never looked back. also i did a bunch of commissions for my grandmother's surgery, which failed, and i distracted myself from the sadness by drawing my ocs over and over and playing disco elysium

2022 → by this year, i've got moz down pat and have started vaguely developing other ocs instead. but she's still always at the back of my mind

2023 → i bought new brushes from true grit texture supply and immediately found new favorites that i started using for everything. i tentatively started incorporating background elements in some pieces!

2024 → while it's still too early to say where this year will lead me art-wise, i will say that i started experimenting in realistic paint studio (which i bought in 2021, the same time as clip studio paint) a few days ago and i'm liking the results so far. we'll see!

all in all, these last 10 years have been quite a ride, but i'm glad i stuck around and i'm glad you guys stuck around too!! much much love 💖💖💖