#this was an art I had never posted. i was trying to do without lineart and as you can see.. it turned out very bad

[mel-loly]

-Cave..💎

[transformers-mosaic]

Transformers: Mosaic - "Ever The Pessimist"

Earliest evidence posted on November 29th, 2007

Story - Logan Rogan Script, Colours, Letters - wadapan Art - Andy Short

deviantART

wada sez: This is it, folks, we’re almost at the end: tomorrow will be the last post on the archive! But as for this strip—writer Logan Rogan clearly had a soft spot for Dreadwind and Darkwing, as for BotCon 2009, he self-published a full-length comic starring the characters: “Limelight: Dreadwind”. This one-page strip, however, was seemingly never completed; I found the finished lineart over on Andy Short’s deviantART, and hoped to track down the original script—but sadly, Short seems to have left the Transformers community, per his inactivity over on TFW2005, while Logan Rogan simply did not reply to my @ on twitter. Without a script to go off, I decided to try and reverse-engineer what the story in the comic might’ve been like, writing my own dialogue to suit the artwork. Keep reading for a full process breakdown.

From the character designs, it’s obvious that this strip is set in IDW continuity; Dreadwind and Darkwing appeared as part of a Decepticon infiltration unit on the planet Nebulos in Stormbringer (identifiable as the setting of this strip by the architecture of the alien city). They had a fairly minor role in the story, with the Nebulos scenes mostly serving to set the stakes for what Thunderwing might do to Cybertron. Darkwing seems to be the leader of the gang; he orders a token resistance against the monster to satisfy Megatron, planning to flee the moment things get rough.

They’re last seen in issue #3, seemingly having escaped—but in the artwork in this strip, Dreadwind is in a crater for some reason. There’s not a moment in the canonical events where this could’ve taken place, so they must’ve had one last run-in with Thunderwing as he was leaving.

I sketched out the rough shape of the script on my phone while doing some shopping. Here’s what I wrote:

Panel 1

DREADWIND: He’s coming BACK to finish us off.

DREADWIND (CONT’D): You know, I used to ADMIRE that guy. When the war was at its peak, he was like, “We are going to DESTROY this planet.” And he was so SURE of it. He literally turned himself into a MONSTER so HE could be the one to do it.

DREADWIND (CONT’D) : When you think about it, he was the ULTIMATE PESSIMIST.

Panel 2

DARKWING: He’s GONE back to Cybertron. RAZORCLAW is preparing to fight him.

DREADWIND: They’ll lose.

DARKWING: Megatron DOESN’T LOSE.

Panel 3

DARKWING: Look, we did it! Forget about phases 1-5, ol’ Thunderwing just took us straight to phase six. Mission accomplished.

Panel 4

DREADWIND: Megatron will see right through us, you know that? We FAILED to stop Thunderwing, and worse than that, we hardly even TRIED. Face it, we were never going to die to aliens or Autobots. It was always going to be our own team, breaking us down for scrap. That’s all we’re good for.

Panel 5

DARKWING: Right. Well are you gonna get up, or-

DREADWIND: -I’m up, I’m up.

Panel 6

DREADWIND: I bet all the good stuff got incinerated.

DARKWING: You never change, do you? EVER THE PESSIMIST.

My only requirement with the script was that I wanted to incorporate the title directly into the story, because I always liked it when Mosaic strips did that.

So yeah, fairly close to what I ended up with, I just tightened it up in a few places as I was getting it on the page. In Stormbringer itself, Dreadwind barely gets a speaking line; in fact, at one point I considered making Dreadwind near-silent, with most of the script just being Dreadwind’s inner monologue. You can imagine how this might’ve worked:

DREADWIND (NARRATION): He’s coming back to finish us off.

DARKWING: Looks like he’s gone back to Cybertron. They’re going to fight him.

DREADWIND (NARRATION): They’ll lose.

I liked the idea of Darkwing kind of reading his brother’s mind, while Dreadwind is so lost in his own sullenness that he’s constantly coming up with new worse-case scenarios in his head. In the end, I felt like the comic itself didn’t support the interpretation of Dreadwind as a particularly introspective character. In particular, Dreadwind later shows up (and dies) under Mike Costa’s pen, and during that appearance, he’s very talkative!

In the end, I tried to pitch the tone of the dialogue at exactly the halfway point between Simon Furman’s style in Stormbringer, and James Roberts’ style in More than Meets the Eye. The colouring style was also intended to fall halfway between Josh Burcham’s work on the former and Joana Lafuente’s work on the latter. This is because Skullcruncher, another member of the Nebulos infiltration unit, later reappeared as a stand-up comedian in More than Meets the Eye issue #45. I liked the idea that the rest of his infiltration crew are More than Meets the Eye characters by extension, if that makes any sense.

For the lettering, I simply referenced Robbie Robbins’ work on the original comic, using those rounded-rectangle speech bubbles with little nicks in the corners. I also looked to the original comic for inspiration for the colours, though obviously I can’t remotely compete with Burcham’s work. I spent a lot of time building up the atmosphere of the flames. In the final panel, there’s a dismembered arm, which I decided to identify as belonging to Ruckus by colouring it purple. To the Jack Lawrence reading this, sorry not sorry!

I wanted to do a character study of Dreadwind by taking his pessimism seriously, drawing a parallel between him and Thunderwing. Much of Stormbringer has an oddly straightforward environmentalist bent, and I wanted to inject some of my own cynicism regarding the future.

In the first panel, I wanted Dreadwind to say “he actually did it the absolute madlad”, but it just didn’t feel right for him to use the word “lad”, it would’ve been too human in that moment.

I liked the idea that, from Darkwing’s perspective, they kind of end up in a best-case scenario: they survive Thunderwing, and he practically does their job for them, cutting short what could’ve been years of boring subterfuge. Of course, Dreadwind would never see it that way!

The irony of the story, as I’ve scripted it, is something that would’ve been impossible for the story to account for as originally written in 2007—namely, although Dreadwind is mostly wrong in his predictions (Thunderwing is really gone, Megatron is really going to win, the Decepticons seemingly won’t care about anything that happened on Nebulos), he’s right in the worst way: both Darkwing and Dreadwind really will end up being ripped apart by their fellow Decepticons and used for spare parts, and it will be personal.

On another level, I think I wanted to inject a little bit of my own mixed feelings towards the Mosaic archive as a whole. Like, in the context of this project, I’m just a talker—people like Rogan, and Short, and all the others, they were doers. But now’s not quite the time to get into it. If you check back tomorrow, I’ll have much more to say on the experience of curating this archive. See you then...

[sanitizedbeanart]

Art Commissions!!!!!!!

I’m trying to save up for a thing soooo here are my prices 🥳🥳

My art style changes about every five minutes so if you want a specific style/like specific aspect of one drawing of mine please just point it out! I’m awful at staying consistent but I can absolutely copy myself. 😆😆😆

Prices for regular:

Busts:

Sketch = $7

Lineart = $10

Colored = $13

Shaded = $20

Half body:

Sketch = $10

Lineart = $15

Colored = $20

Shaded = $25

Full Body:

Sketch = $20

Lineart = $27

Colored = $30

Shaded = $40

Prices for chibi:

Busts:

Sketch = $5

Lineart/colored = $7

Shaded = $10

Half Body:

Sketch = $7

Linart/colored = $10

Shaded = $15

Full Body:

Sketch = $10

Lineart = $15

Colored = $20

Shaded = $25

Now some examples + what I would have charged for them. 😆

^$20, regular shaded bust.

^$40 per shaded non-chibi full body, but since the base is reused AND the extra clothing is complicated I’d probably charge about $20 for the second two so $80 total. This is a great example of a commission that would need a brief discussion before I can give you an official price! 😆

^$25 shaded chibi full body

^$10 shaded chibi bust

^$10 shaded chibi bust

^$20 shaded regular bust

^$20 sketched regular full body

^$20 regular shaded bust

^$20 regular shaded bust (This type of more complicated shading is the same price as the regular cell shading on busts, you just have to specific which you want! For anything more than a bust it would have to depend on the specific commission.)

Will Draw:

-Furries

-Dragons

-I’ll try my best with humans but full honesty I’m not that practiced with them 😆

-Animals

-Fantasy creatures, including from established fandoms/etc!

-Characters without formal references. Even a super simple notes app sketch does a lot, but if you just want to trial and error it out with me that’s fine too. :)

-Nudity, but only if YOU and the character are 18+. I’ll draw nudity for furries but not for dragons or animals, even if they’re sentient. Please don’t lie about your age, I’ll draw other stuff for you if you’re a minor!!

-Gore/horror :)

-Multiple characters! The price will probably just double depending on the positions, but you’d need to ask for specifics.

Will NOT Draw:

-Straight up NSFW.

-Anything naked for minors, as previously stated.

-Anything I’m not comfortable with!! Just ask.

-Complicated backgrounds. Feel free to ask what this includes. 😆

Other notes:

-You can post your commission anywhere (with credit preferably) but I still maintain general ownership. Basically you can’t use my art commercially, you can’t tell me not to post it on my own socials, you can’t claim it as your own, and you CAN NOT use it for NFTs and the likes. I’m also very much not a fan of generative AI so don’t even think about it. You can stick my art wherever you want otherwise!!

-Simple backgrounds (simple design, plain color, pride flag, etc) etc) totally free. Definitely ask for more info!

-Commissions with multiple characters depend, so definitely ask for a price/ect.

-If you get super mean with me half way through the process I will block you and you won’t get a refund!! I’ll send you everything I’ve completed so far and that will be it. I’ve never had to do this before so don’t worry too much but be polite please.

-I can refuse to draw anything for anyone and for any reason!!!

[diezmil10000]

Hi hi, hope you're doing well!! Wanted to ask if you could explain how you pick colours! They're always so appealing to look at... (If you could also explain how you pick blush colours it'd be great! I never manage to pick good ones, no matter how hard I try :'))

hi anon, i'm doing fine!! it's summer right now where i live and that's healing all my problems (⁠◡⁠ ⁠ω⁠ ⁠◡⁠)

i have recorded the process of some of my drawings and everything is posted in my youtube channel (in twitter too), so i'll drop the link here and try my best to explain the coloring part to you. the short answer is that none of the colors you see in my drawings are similar to those i initially picked.

i try to keep my lineart loose but i pay attention to the outlines so i can quickly select the outer parts, invert the selection and fill it with the bucket tool. my base colors are all 100% opaque and i don't use any fancy brushes here.

as to how i pick colors, i never use the color picker tool, i eyeball everything. that's important for me because i tend to make all of them warmer: the greens are dark yellows, the pinks are light reds, and everything that's close to blue is very desaturated. i do this even for drawings that turn out much different later, unless i have a very specific vibe in mind from the beginning. i also never use pure whites for anything, and if something is black i make it part of the lineart.

then i always color my lineart!! there's no trick to that, the layer is in normal mode and i just paint it with a darker color than what's below it. i usually add the shadows and highlights at this stage of the drawing too. you're going to kill me for this but shade with gray set in color burn or linear burn (never multiply). i just don't want to think about color variety at this stage because it makes things more difficult for later. sometimes i add textures and some basic color correction here (curves, color balance, layers set in overlay, etc.) but i mostly leave that for the next part.

as to how i choose blush colors, i usually pick the base color and move it towards the saturated end of the color wheel, and a bit more pink. sometimes i add a multiply layer and airbrush hot red over the base colors at low opacity. coloring the lineart with hot colors surrounding the blush areas helps a lot too :)

i also almost always duplicate the lineart, blur it and set it in linear burn (i paint this layer in a light gray). this adds a lot of depth to the drawing, especially if later combined with the bloom effect.

the key to why the colors in my art pop so much is that i don't enjoy drawing as much as i enjoy postprocessing pictures 😂🤣😅👌✌️👍 once i'm satisfied with the "base" colors i merge everything except the background, open a new canvas and go crazy with filters and textures. that's why i use ibispaint X even if i do the lineart elsewhere (krita), and even if it works a bit wonky with big canvases.

i do something different for each drawing here, so first i'm going to explain my reasoning so that you understand my process: i used to have a problem of using very strong colors that overshadowed my beloved lineart into which i had put a lot of effort, so my goal nowadays is to make everything look less contrasted without losing the visual impact of saturated colors. that way the lineart remains a strong point and not just a way to separate one color from another.

what i usually do is duplicate the new merged layer, set it to exclusion mode, add a gradient map and play with the opacity. then i duplicate that and do the same thing with another gradient or another blending mode. i tend to add like 3-6 layers of bullshit over my drawings, including textures and other filters like "bloom" or "sharpen". i understand everything that's going on there but i don't think too deeply about it, i just pick whatever looks best.

for the final touches i always pull up the saturation and contrast (since a lot of it gets lost in the process), and i usually have to manually change some colors (ibispaint X has a filter to do that) or tweak the curves. then i add chromatic aberration, noise set to overlay and little polka dots set to linear dodge.

here are some comparisons of the before and after of recent drawings. the 1st one is very subtle, but you can clearly see how much warmth and depth it gains it gets after all the postprocessing. the 2nd one is so different that i understand why you're curious about how i pick colors. i don't think i can replicate that look just from picking nice colors, there's a lot more going on!! the 3rd one personally feels like it had potential lost (i liked the yellow highlights), but the colors were too strong and all over the place, so the finished result looks more intimate and calm and i like it a lot more.

thank you for the interest anon, i'm very happy that you like the way i color things and i hope i have explained myself. good luck with your own journey!!

[dynayshe]

um. kinda need to vent now just to get this off my chest

yknow i always say, never trust how i feel about myself past 9 pm. but. considering the "hated my art from yesterday this morning" thing i just really hate how i never really met my own expectation of my art.

i posted that drawing not bc i like it, just bc it was already 4 am, i had spent way too much time on it and i really wanted to join this lil event this time. i want to draw every day. and i know, i won't like every thing i draw, im only spending a day on each drawing but. i feel kinda stupid about it, i just don't like how that turned out in the end, nor at any point. it never actually looked good to me, i forgot to put perspective n shit, the bg is absolute ass and it just feels so amateur.

i know i took a huge break from art i knoww i kinda am an amateur but i never expected to hate my art so much today. maybe in a month or a year but hating it while doing it kinda saddens me

and ughh this is mostly for digital art too. but like i got this huge ass display monitor for it i got csp for it my parents thought i would be drawing my whole life and here i am where the only thing i can stomach to show is tiniest fucking sketches in my notebooks. i can only sketch. that's it.

yknow what maybe I'd be good at storyboarding for animations bc this is kinda like destroying a sketch once u do the lineart. once i try to expand on the idea it turns to shit. or if i put color. like i can absolutely see some of my flaws and lacks. i don't know shit about color theory or picking a pallette and this fact doesn't disturb me that much knowing this is a sort of knowledge i can gain. but i want to see my drawings in color and. not look like shitshow. i guess that's why i have so many sketches. nothing can get past that point. it must stay this way or I'm gonna end up hating it

ugh im so frustrated w myself

I HAD SOO MUCH ENERGY YESTERDAY TOO. last night was amazing i sat and drew for hours without thinking about it's quality even for once. it was just a hobby and it was about only enjoying the moment.

of course posting it might have been the problem here but. i would like to think i don't let the numbers get to my head. im posting bc i wanna interact and share my ideas and make friends not to show it off. but idk maybe i don't understand myself well enough. maybe that is actually what im feeling upset over and i should focus on only improving myself

[aibouart]

So I’ve had an anon in my drafts for like a year now asking how to get better at being fast at art since I can be a bit speedy (I used to be faster but I’ve slowed down in some areas to take my time BDBDS)

Anyways, I have been thinking abt it constantly since then and decided to just make a video about it, but Vegas cONSTANTLY crashes on me and when I was doing it, I couldn’t upload it anyways due to my terrible internet and the length

SO I’ve decided to just say a summary of it, cuz like, ultimately it’s a lot of things but the primary thing is:

Keyboard shortcuts (and tools)

Fr, you can get super fast at digital art just by navigating your program efficiently. You don’t even need to be fast at the art thing itself (that part is just practice unfortunately). If you learn and apply shortcuts in your program (sorry mobile users I can’t help u there rn) then you can easily become a LOT faster without even needing to get better at art itself.

For example:

We already know ctrl-Z, ctrl-Y (or ctrl-shift-z for some programs), ctl-X, ctrl-v, ctrl-c

But some other shortcuts I use (this is in Paint Tool SAI, so you can look up your program’s as it might overlap!) are:

Holding space: bro this shit works for like every single program i swear. hold space and click and drag to move the canvas around, a lot faster than going to the scroll bars or using the preview (unless you want a large movement)

Ctrl A: this will select everything on your canvas, it won’t select all layers though but in conjunction with ctrl-x, ctrl-c, or your fill shortcut (ctrl-f for me) it means you’re lightning fast to do what you’re doing without having to use magic wand tool or selection tool. ctrl-a + ctrl-c + ctrl-v is super fast to just, select it all, copy it, and paste it. 

ctrl-alt: idk abt other programs, but holding ctrl-alt on SAI brings up the brush size wherever your mouse is. you can adjust the size on the spot itself without going to brush tab 

ctrl f: i don’t even use the bucket tool i just use this. it’ll fill anything in your selection (or the entire screen if u don’t have anything selected)

alt: holding this down while using a selection tool will make it deselect. no need to use a deselection tool or anything if u just hold this down (really good in conjunction w magic wand tool). I use this to go even faster by being sloppy with my selection tool, going to my lineart, holding alt and deselecting the areas that go out of the lines. a lot faster for me than trying to get the perfect selection right away.

ctrl d: deselects

c: this auto selects the invisible/eraser setting for any tool you’re using, so I just use this when using a pen or something to erase instead of the actual eraser tool

v: this swaps between the primary colour selected and the secondary one

ctrl-e: merges selected layer w layer below it

ctrl-shift-e: merges all layers (can get funky w folders, but if you select the very top layer it should work) this is esp useful if you’re sharing art by pasting it into stuff like discord, ctrl-shift-e, ctrl-a, ctrl-c, all copied, no need to screenshot it at all.

right click: eyedropper tool, you can hold alt as well but i use right click

there’s even more than these (pretty sure there’s one u can hold to rotate the canvas for example but i never use it). honestly, half the battle w digital art is getting used to your program. if u have access to keyboard shortcuts, using them will allow u to just go ham once u have them memorised (note that these took years for me to figure them all out, i def didn’t memorise them all in one week or anything. over steady application to my habits i got them down)

here’s a fast tutorial on filling in lineart stupid quickly!: https://aibouart.tumblr.com/post/182793937136/using-the-magic-wand-tool-to-try-and-fill-every

filling in ur colour now becomes as easy as click, click, click, invert, ctrl-f. u may need to clean some corners but otherwise it’s basically instantly filled. if ur program has magic wand tool it’ll prolly do this

https://gyazo.com/a5efd8695e7e0bda6667063168612823 (really quick example of selection tool, magic wand tool, alt, ctrl-f)

[cqtlatte]

hiii your art always make my day better, so hope u had a good day too. But can I ask what brushes you usually use in your arts? Like the way you use brushes and colors are so good TuT I can't fathom it sometimes. How do u make those kinds of textures. I'm new in this tumbler, so apologies if it's already been answered before. <33

Heyo anon, thanks for asking and no problem! I've answered this a couple of times before across all my platforms, but ig this is a good opportunity to answer and add to my carrd FAQ! <3 Let me break down what I use them for a bit too. (lots of blabbing below so I'll but a read-more tab)

Main:

 (sketching) Design pencil (default in CSP, you can probably find it on the assets store because it was from the earlier version of CSP)

(sketching/coloring/general use) G-pen

(sketching/coloring/general use) Dense watercolor (same case as the design pencil)

As for brushes that I use for texturing and painting, I use the Daub brush pack for CSP. My favorites come from the aenigma, pigmento, and basiliscus sets. You can find them on gumroad, or just google! I believe they have brushes for procreate and photoshop too but I think the brush packs aren't the same across platforms. 

For making the texture itself, it's kind of a random process that idk how to explain properly lmao. Let me link my Kokomi timelapse so you can see how much I jump around the canvas to carve out the textures:

 I like to use different blending modes and layer tons of different colors. The color jitter function is super amazing too for that purpose, but probably shouldn't be overused for the sake of balance. (personally still trying to avoid over-saturating my works with textures tbh)

To be 100000% honest though, I tend to jump around a lot, and I certainly don't use all of those brushes in every piece.

I used to lurk around a lot myself and hoard tons of brushes other artists were using, until I saw a comment of an artist I admire: "sometimes the brush you use really isn't important. Without practice the painting will be ugly."(not the most accurate translation probably because it was written in another language)

After that I had like… an epiphany moment where I really believed them, and drew a Bonanus fanart in June. I made the lineart with a g-pen (which I never used cuz I always thought I'd be somehow inhibiting my creative power using default brushes or something), and the piece ended up blowing up on twt much to my surprise.. LOL. After that, I started to care less about other's brushes and instead of looking for more, try to figure out how I could make cool textures and strokes with the ones I currently had at my disposal.

(said bonanus art)

This isn't a statement to say "stop looking for other artist's brushes, copying brushes bad, etc" because there is a LOT that you can learn from using other artist's brush inventory.

But you can also have a lot of fun drawing when you focus less about what other's use, and more about what brushes YOU are comfortable using + feels right to you. Sometimes you may even need to tweak them a bit in their brush settings instead of using their default form before they feel comfy for you! It's a matter of exploring and figuring out what works and what doesn't in your workflow, hehe.

Anyways I hope this answer helps as we all continue our art journey together. Sending positive vibes your way anon! <3

[wanderer-w00lf]

This comic and my experience

Look, this one looks familiar.

Oh boy... this one is a long one.

Where do I start...?

Maybe you guys need a bit of context real quick. Some time ago, a user called, Play tops decided to gather a couple of artist and ask about making a comic all together for the fandom. I was part of them, and of course I said yes. Everything could be quite normal there, like, we made the comic and that's it... right? well...

He told us several times that he was gonna help too, but when we where distributing the works, there was always an excuse. At fisrt it was: "I don't have that software" well, I worked the fist pages in a software he told me he had, so he could help, but he didn't; then he would always answer with a solid "I don't how to do that", like:

Script? NO

Storyboard? NO

lineart/inking? NO

Colours? NO

He would always said that he was feeling "left out" while I tried everything to make him part of it, but he would always deny.

After a lot of negatives and weeks holding it, I was growing tired, and this guy started to say.

"I don't have time" as his excuse.

Now, I know we as artist usually don't have that much time, especially because most of us are in college or highschool, but, this kept prolonging for months.

And, you wanna guess something? I was busy too, yet still, I had to find time however I could to make some drawings because, With only studying is not enough. If I'm an artist i need to have art in my accounts and portfolio, so yeah, his excuses where making me feel like I was wasting time.

One day I simply decided It was enough.

You all don't know, because basically I haven't shared it yet, but I have a lot of other comics I did in the past that for one reason or another I never finished or plublished, right now I have a few of those in an undefined hiatus, so feeling yet another one was going into the exact same direction made me angry.

So basically I started to working without him. I made everything, storyboard, lineart, colour, text. I was determined to finish it just out of pure spite. Spite to whom? to life, to Play tops, to every "friend" who ask to work together to finally leave without any warning and or response. I did it out of pure spite because I was tired and this comic was not gonna be another comic I put into the drawer in an undefined hiatus. So yeah.

My good pal Renzo was the other guy who wanted to make the comic and he was the greatest moral support in all of this; he made the script obviously, but he made it clear to me that he could not help me in another way, but if he could he was gonna try, and that was more than what playtops was giving us. He did help me all the way.

It was hard, and even tho I enjoyed every page I finished, that made me feel even more frustrated, because, the three pages that took us like 5-6 months, where completely finished in a week, all by myself.

At the end I finally finished the two stories and the relief I felt was, overwhelming. I "returned" the projetc to playtops because if someone else wanted the sequel they had to ask him.

And that's the story.

I kinda decided to remain a bit anonymous because, well I didn't wanted the people to say I was "Stealing" Playtop's work, and because I didn't want to fight in social media. You all people are toxic AF.

This is not a cancel post or anything like that; this is more like:

A me venting everything.

I usually remain silent no matter what, because that's how I am.

But, if i'm venting right now it's because I indeed have a motive behind.

Basically what I'm asking here is... You all want this comic in Tumblr?

If you don't I still have a couple other things I'm working on. I love this fandom I still have plenty more ideas I want to make and share with all of you.

[ollyou]

how do you draw so good?

AWHA?!?!?!!?.!? I’m so flattered you think I draw well….

I’ll probably sound cliché, but really, practice is what makes you better at something! However, I think there’s obviously much more to it than just “practice” alone. Like, what are you going to practice?

When I was a preteen, I would often try to copy the art styles of artists that had really good art. This actually led to me improving incredibly fast. There was a bit of a small incident during that time that scared me into almost never referencing others’ work again (I was a really dumb kid. I didn’t understand how bad copying others could be.) but I’ve been working on improving from that and letting myself reference other work for practice slowly yet surely.

So my main tip is to practice drawing like artists you look up to!! But KEEP IT TO YOURSELF UNLESS YOU HAVE PERMISSION TO SHARE HEAVILY REFERENCED WORK FROM THE ORIGINAL ARTIST!!

Many artists, myself included, hate when their work is heavily referenced and posted online. Our art styles are unique to us, and show our progress as artists. Plus, you will be restricting yourself heavily if you only use one artist’s work as a reference.

That may have been a totally unneeded paragraph, but trust me, you DON’T want to wind up like most of the naïve kids who got in trouble with bigger artists because you didn’t realize posting heavily referenced work without permission or credit is 9 out of 10 times unappreciated.

So, that’s where another point comes in! Use multiple artists’ work as references! But make something unique with it, too. If you like the way a certain artist draws eyes, incorporate that in your style! If you like the way another artist draws hair, incorporate that into your style too! If you like the way yet another artist does proportions, incorporate that into your— okay, you get it.

That’s the part of practicing with actual drawing. As for people who have shaky or wobbly lines and not much line depth, I’m not 100% sure how to give advice on that, because I personally have never struggled that much with drawing things (my lineart if I go slowly is really messy and wobbly, though). However, I’m sure the way you hold your pen(cil) has a big influence on the way your lineart looks. I would advise using quicker strokes when drawing, and continuing any lines with yet another quick stroke.

Basically, what I do for my lineart is clean up my messy lines. My lineart is quite messy or unintelligible sometimes, trust me.

But yeah! I’m not sure how much my advice helps, but if there’s anything in SPECIFIC you want to ask about art advice, I’m willing to try to answer! (This goes for anyone else reading this, too!) There’s a lot of stuff to be talked about that I couldn’t possibly fit in one post, like what blending modes I use for stuff, what brushes, settings, etc.

And I’ll get to that whenever someone asks for it!

[alanshee-keeper-of-realms]

Speaking from one artist to another, I saw a hurtful anon that insulted your artwork and that makes me angry for various of reasons — BECAUSE I'M A FUCKING ARTIST WHO WAS ONCE A BEGINNER (Sorry for my outburst, but I needed to get this off my chest)

Whoever sent you that without publicly giving you a positive constructive criticism or useful tutorials - they don't realize how beginning artists also exist. Art exist in many forms like illustration, digital, music, pictures and literatures. To call one art "shitty" isn't the best criticism to go around, but you can prove them wrong by asking them if they can do better OR you can keep on going to see how much love your art will receive that they'll stop giving awful comments. They can't stand a certain art style they don't like? Give tips and tutorials! Give kindness, and solutions. But I guess that'll be too much for them?

I never knew the Ninjago fandom was this toxic when people are calling some arts ugly. People have this weird but terrible mindset that certain art styles are better than the other. If the whole artists have the same art styles, it'd be pretty boring and repetitive to see, we'd rather have something new instead for a change. I love to see your art contributing for The Owl House fandom, welcome btw! I know people will love your art there and get more love and positivity. ^^

Thank you I am actually working on a Raine Whispers AU art piece for everybody from the Fanfic WIP I posted

The Song of the Owl Beast

That post really didn't bother me because of the shitty art comment(though it's understandable why it would upset other artists wish I could hug yall that would allow me)

It doesn't bother me because well I like my art and I know there's people out there that might like my art as well, just because a few people say that doesn't mean my art is bad itjust needs improved and I've always been actually quite like Eda (if we compare me to a character) people can throw things at me all they want but it takes a lot for me to be actually upset.

Like I always say, I'm only vocal when I'm actually upset over something. I'm silent when I'm not and it's okay,

I'm very proud of my style because I have a lineless art style that has taken me 4 years(ditched the lineart and sketch layer full time in 2019) to develop and learn and I'm still learning more about how to render it properly, but during this process I know it can be quite ugly. Especially when I'm doing my sketch layers before the rendering as you can see with Raine here I've gotten to that phase, and if I was to share it, it can look kind of uncanny valley haha

I still have to trim the face back down and correct the nose and eyes in general,

What did bother me about that Anon more so was being accused of tracing my art, because there is no way one can trace my art well at least not easily... because there's no lines to trace.

My art style is very very unique in the sense that outright my style doesn't even have a sketch layer to copy. It's stupidly hard for somebody to trace this sort of style where the artist has learned anatomy enough where they can shape the color into the shape one needs like I do.

One can try, but if you don't have enough experience, it won't turn out looking right. Basically, the closest comparison I can put it to is like molding clay only digitally and 2d, so I need to make it look 3d.

(Some anatomy practice fails haha)

I don't think there's anybody else.... at least that I've seen that does this type of style. But if there are people, I would love to know them, because honestly, I have felt alone with this certain art style and not really knowing what to call it or how to render. I know it's lineless, but the technique isn't like other lineless artists as they usually have sketch layers at least.

I appreciate the welcome into the fandom I've already felt very very welcomed just by the interactions I've already received, I haven't had my page this active in years, honestly all it took was me moving a fandom and I wish I had seen that sooner.

You guys really already have helped me in a way nobody else in the Ninjago fandom ever did and that's just opening my eyes even more to how toxic it unfortunately was, because this is all what I was just looking for is a supportive loving fandom that will accept me for all my crazy quirks and ideas.

You guys even got me to do my art and writing already! I hadn't felt inspired in weeks, especially after that retraumatizing event a couple of weeks ago,

I honestly was at the verge of quitting and then I started getting into Owl House and then on the Valana Alt, I started posting and my blog was so active right off the bat, something I again hadn't seen in years on this account. And then you wonderful anons came in telling me to keep going and I wanted to hug you and tell you thank you,

People are actually interacting with my posts, and here I've transferred over a few, and it doesn't matter to yall that I've double posted. You guys still reblog and like it. Some even make comments! And that for somebody like me who has been in a fandom situation where they didn't do that at all, that means the world to me guys honestly, and I will never be able to say it enough, you've already shown me support and love and for that again I can't say it enough

Thank you

[ask-whitepearl-and-steven]

In these apparently trying times of "lack of content" I was wondering if we could get a glimpse behind the tablet and see how you write! Could you talk about your process and how you keep track of things and parse out your story? Do you storyboard or write rigorous notes? Is it all in your head? I am super curious about your system.

Oh yikes I’m about to disappoint a lot of people. 

Okay, here’s the thing - I cannot physically keep notes because I get distracted and forget to write things down. I’ve tried keeping notebooks for WD!Steven stuff and I have come to accept that it’s only for show. I barely use it. I cannot use my memory on the effort of writing notes - I’d much rather use that energy to remember things in my head.

I brute-force everything through my mind palace. My mind... house... mindshack. 

My process is simple: 

Step 1) THINK

I constantly get asks that I feel might be good for the comics. I’ve made posts on this before but the main way I decide if I’ll use an ask is:

Is the ask addressed explicitly to Steven (or another character?)

Is the ask not giving away any fourth-wall-breaking information?

Is the ask actually ASKING Steven an open-ended question or TELLING Steven to do something?

If the ask is too vague (”so what do u like”) or gives away too much (“Steven don’t u think ur actually half-human? If Rose had a baby it would be half gem half human. Wouldn’t that be the same as u? You should ask Rose about a gem named Spinel I bet she would freak out!!!!!”) or if the ask is just pushing for Steven to do something instead of asking (”go to the moon base!”) then I almost always ignore it. 

Step 2) Storyboard!

After choosing a question, I’ll sit and… stare at my desk/the wall/twitter without seeing it and instead storyboard the entire comic in my head. Sometimes this happens in a matter of minutes. Sometimes I’ll work it over in my mind’s eye for days before I like it. This includes the dialogue.

Yes, I do this while driving. I have an hour drive to work. No, I have never been in an accident. My autopilot works really well. I guess. Probably. I often have no memory of the actual drive itself but the comic gets written. 

Step 3) Sketch!

Afterwards I go into my drawing program (MediBang Paint) and sketch out each individual panel on a layer. Sometimes the sketches are detailed. Sometimes they are just sloppy action lines to remind me what I’m going for.

I script in my head WHILE I’m drawing the sketches. I try out different lines as I go through each panel and see what fits the most. This sketching process takes about 3-5 minutes per panel. 

Step 4) Lineart!

After I’ve sketched at least 50% of the comic, I go back in and start doing lineart. I will do this mindlessly - it is only at this point that I allow myself to listen to a podcast, or music, or have a YouTube video running while I draw. (I cannot sketch/storyboard/script with any sort of noise on. Has to be dead silent.)

The initial lineart process takes about 10 minutes per panel if the panel is simple like the one above. If I go through the process of adding necessary details, patterns, or have to create phone background detail, or draw a background in general, then it will obviously take longer.

If I do color comics, it takes 3 times as long which is why I hate coloring.

For the Lapis arc I also added tones. It was not as annoying as coloring, but it still took me twice as long as an average panel because there was so much layering to be done between the water/lapis’ wings/backgrounds. It was not fun. 

Step 5) Dialogue 

After I finish the lines for ALL the panels, or at least 50%, I start going back in and finally adding dialogue and details. I do the dialogue all at once because it allows me to view the flow more naturally. I end up reading and re-reading the panels several times to make sure there are no repeating words and that it flows more or less like a normal conversation would.

This takes about… eh… an hour or so for an average 20-panel comic? 

The bulk of my editing is done at this stage. I will go back through and re-read the finished comic several times and try to weed out weird details or typos. 

If I find none, I post it to Patreon, because it’s a guarantee that I will find 3 more immediately afterwards. That’s how posting art to social media works. Also, many of my Patreon patrons are usually kind enough to point out any typos I’ve missed. (MediBang doesn’t have a spellcheck so don’t judge me too harshly…)

And that’s….. it. I post to Patreon, make any last-minute fixes if I have to, and then queue everything to tapas and tumblr. 

And then I immediately begin to worry about the next comic. Because… that’s how it works. 

I understand it’s not exactly a professional process. That’s because I’m not a professional! I’m self-taught, and this comic is meant to be for fun, not for profit. If I make a Season-finale comic or a season-start comic, I typically go through the same steps, except I add thumbnailing to the mix (drawing tiny copies of the pages on post-it notes to see how many pages I can fix it to.)

Hope that was… educational? I don’t know. Either way…

[zosonils-art]

👀 may we know more about rhythm man?

we sure may!!!!! rhythm dump under the cut as always

rhythm man was made to do a variety of tasks relating to sound! mostly he either does sound checks for important devices like hydrophones, sonar, seti listening devices, stuff like that, or he analyses the audio that they pick up in greater detail than any human or almost any computer can. someone [probably dr light, who created him] showed him a rhythm game pretty early in his life, and he instantly fell in love with the game genre and, more significantly, the concept of music itself. he's still doing the job he was designed for, but his real passion and arguably what he's better known for in-universe is creating music, which he uses his intricate understanding of audio to excel at

he makes a point of being a cool guy to be around! he's nice, fun-loving, and always has a joke ready. he's very encouraging of others, and thinks everyone should get to chase their dreams and do what makes them happy. when there's no bright side for him to look on, though, he doesn't really know how to act, and as such he feels uncomfortable confronting serious emotional situations and has a bad habit of repressing any negative feelings he doesn't know how to deal with and just letting them get worse. he might be developing some resentment towards his work for how much of his time it takes up that he'd rather be spending pursuing his interests, but oops that's not a fun feeling! better bottle it up and not think about it

all robots are neurodivergent but rhythm in particular has SO much undiagnosed adhd. he [probably] doesn't mind his job, but he can't pretend to be nearly as enthusiastic about it as he is his music, and tends to come off as distracted and spacey when he's at work. he's also capable of entering a hyperfocus-like state that temporarily re-allocates computing power usually dedicated to spatial awareness and sensory processing to focus on something else, which was designed to let him analyse audio with even more precision. rhythm occasionally uses this feature as intended, but more often finds himself turning it on while he's making music or playing a game to get into the groove more

he'll gladly enjoy any genre of music, but anything under the electronic umbrella is his favourite to listen to and create, especially bass music and all its subgenres! outside of genre preferences he likes songs with a lot of tiny bits and pieces and intricate details to notice - i think he'd really enjoy bill wurtz's music, for instance, due to just how much is going on in almost every song. he posts the music he makes online, and has a pretty sizeable following for both the novelty of a robot that makes music and the fact that everything he makes genuinely slaps super hard. being a robot, his criteria for 'good' music is all very simple and objective stuff like whether it's in key or has a time signature that makes sense or follows a pattern rather than just being random sounds, so he's able to appreciate almost any music for what it is and can name the number of songs he actively dislikes on one hand, although despite his best efforts to be forgiving he's a bit of an audio quality snob

the only sound he genuinely doesn't like is white noise, because the total lack of a discernable pattern or anything notable freaks him out. it's hard-coded into him to try and find meaningful noise in very fuzzy sound, and even if he analyses it back and forth on every level and concludes that it's just random aural static he's still left with a feeling of unease about it. his headphones have a sort of noise-cancelling mode that completely blocks out most background noise so he can maintain a conversation without constantly pausing to overanalyse everything he hears - without the noise cancelling he's got the world's worst case of auditory processing disorder. he's weak to psychic cry because it's just a really violent blast of white noise, and is one of the only bosses susceptible to its stunning effect because the sound freaks him out so badly he has to stop for a moment to force himself to ignore it

almost everything about rhythm came from the idea i had for his stage! i imagine it functioning as a sort of rhythm platformer where almost every moving part is timed to the beat of the stage music. it's the obligatory yoku block-spamming stage of the game, but in theory if you follow the music and jump across in time with the beat you'll make it through without much trouble [and maybe even have fun! in a stage with *yoku blocks!!*]. other stuff like constantly-spawning enemies and the attack patterns of rhythm himself would also be on that same beat cycle! as for theming, his stage is a mostly-vertical climb up a radio tower - wily's reprogramming takes his repressed frustration over not always getting to focus on his passion and upgrades it to outright spite, and he decides that actually you WILL listen to his mixtape whether you want to or not and proceeds to hijack the biggest radio tower in mosteropolis and override every single station with lofi beats to take over the world to

rhythm is the first robot master idea i ever had that wasn't a reference to something else, although for a pretty long time he was only a stage idea and a name. maybe that's why his design changed more throughout his development than any of the other guys [even between the sketch and the final lineart for this art i refined his look like 3 times]. initially he had a more 'tough'/punk-ish look, with spikes on his helmet and around his wrists and ankles, but i ended up phasing most of those elements out in favour of the led lights and generally less intimidating look. i briefly considered having his design reference rhythm heaven somehow, since it's my favourite rhythm game and the only one i'm any good at lmao, but nothing came of that - perhaps his stage enemies could have some rh references in their ranks instead, chuck some screwbots up there or something. he also had massive anime sunglasses at some point but it's better for that design to never see the light of day

he also likes dancing! hence his funky moves in the art. his body shape isn't compatible with every dance style what with the clunky robot limbs and having a stereo for a chest, and he definitely wasn't built for physical agility, but with a little practice he can pick up most dance moves no problem. he's definitely a dance battler, and i think he would love rhythm games that trick you into exercising like dance dance revolution or just dance. rhythm man does a frame perfect ddr tas in real-time on an actual cabinet

that about wraps it up for the rhythm infodump, thank you for asking about him!! as always here's the unfiltered and transparent versions of his artwork

[chaoslynx]

Hi! I'm curious, what's your art process like? I want to maybe learn some ways to learn better :') /gen /pos

Oh gosh, being asked this when I'm such a beginner is a little terrifying, but I'll try my best to answer!

Well, you see, my art process is quite complex but it all boils down to one thing: Ash Lynx. /j

Seriously though, here's kind of what I do! You can also see a timelapse of one of my first attempts at digital painting here on my Instagram (on the second slide)! I use a Wacom Intuos Small size tablet, and CSP on my laptop.

My first step is usually (not always) picking a reference. A couple of my pieces (like this one!) aren't from reference, but most are. I usually use stock photo websites like Unsplash to find references!

Say this is my reference. My first lines on the paper are to create a rough sketch based on it! Some of these end up rougher than others, but here's what my sketch looked like based on this image:

(Honestly, this is one of my nicer first sketches. Some of them are way rougher.) You can see that I didn't really want to deal with hands yet lol, so I kind of just roughed out where they are. Sometimes on the first sketch I'll rough out hair too, or other times I'll leave it like this.

If I'm trying a painting style, I make a more detailed first sketch, but skip the lineart step and go straight to color. I'm gonna discuss more about my lineart style here since I have more experience with it, but check out that Instagram post I linked to see kinda how I do painting!

Then I turn the sketch blue and do my lineart over it! Feel free to deviate from the sketch if things aren't working out. I often do lineart on several layers; like here, the eyes are on their own layer, as are the hands and camera. I think I overuse layers, though, so that's not for everyone lol. Here's what my final lineart looks like over the sketch!

Don't be afraid to redo lineart over and over. Sometimes I'll be like "maybe it'll look better with color!" and it never does 😭 So lineart is really important! It took SO many attempts to get his hands right on this one. I had the reference image open on my phone and was trying to draw pretty close to how the model in the stock image had her hands on the camera.

Next I hide the sketch layer and do flat colors. Sometimes I'll use the bucket tool for this, but a lot of times it doesn't work super well and I'll just color them in myself. Again I seriously overuse layers, so usually each flat color has its own layer. For black hair I usually switch the color wheel to blue, then pick something on the darker and grayer side.

Next up is lighting and shading! I have different strategies for this depending on the piece. Sometimes I use clipping layers over each color layer and just shade with the original color, shifted slightly on the color wheel. (I've been told not to shade in gray!)

For this one, though, I used a multiply layer for shading and an add glow for lighting. I knew I wanted to have a brick background, so I used an orangey-red color for the shading and lighting. I wanted my light coming from the upper left, so I kept that in mind. Then I lower the opacity on both until it looks decent! Here's with and without the lowered opacity. On this one I blended the shading and lighting layers in quite a bit, because I wanted it to look kind of soft.

On this one I also added blushies on his nose, ears, cheeks, and lips. I added a highlight on Eiji's hair (also on an add glow layer clipped to the hair color layer). I also put details into Eiji's eyes to make them sparkle! Here's zoomed in on his face so you can see the changes:

I added details on the camera to make it look a little more reflective and less boring, and to draw some attention to it.

For the background, I put a layer under Eiji and made it the dark red color I wanted. Then I put the bricks over it, blurred them, and reduced the opacity.

On this one I wanted the background to have kind of a grimy but ethereal effect, so I drew cracks along the bricks with reduced opacity, and drew specks of orange on an add glow with a really reduced opacity. I also added another lighting layer in front of Eiji but not clipped to him for the background lighting. Then I just added a noise layer with super reduced opacity, and put my watermark on it with an overlay layer!

Here's how the final piece turned out:

I hope this is helpful! I've only been drawing for a few months so I definitely have a lot to learn still. Let me know if you have any questions. (That's open to anyone!) Also if anyone has advice for me and/or this anon, I'm sure we'd both appreciate that! 💖💖💖

[franeridart]

Anon said: Not an ask, but I frickin love your art style! 👌

Ah heck, thank you so much!!!! <3

Anon said: I refuse to use Emojis but You. Do. Not. Need. To. Apologize. For. Taking. Breaks! We are not entitled to you and you are not required to provide art for us! These are stressful times, and even outside of these times, taking breaks from social medias is completely acceptable.

Thank you for the kind feeling!!! But it’s fine, I’m not beating myself up over it or anything, just apologizing for my habit of going on breaks without letting anyone know beforehand haha

Anon said: your outfit ideas are amazing ! do you have a source of insperation?

Thank you!!! I do a lot of people watching, and that’s about it tbh! I do look at fashion photos and magazines and, like, clothes displays in stores? when I happen across them, but most of my inspo when it comes to outfits starts from me watching people and liking how they’re dressed - in that sense I like watching vlogs and stuff like that too, people these days are so stylish...

Anon said: I really love your lineart and coloring style!! Would you mind sharing your brush settings? Or some art tips? If you don't want too this okay too, keep up the good work !!

Since my brush settings are a reward for my $6+ patreons, I don’t really feel like it’d be fair to share them! But you can probably find some old version of them in my art tips tag :D as for art tips... for lineart the only thing I can really say is to not overthink it and just go with the flow, whatever feels comfortable for you will make for the most visually pleasing lineart too, in my experience! Coloring is something I’m constantly experimenting with as well, but there too my usual mindset is “the easier and faster the better” - generally, I just use flats and then add shadows on them with any color that goes from light blue to pink-ish purple on a layer set on multiply, anything that makes it look fancier than that is just me adding small details like sparkles or shines or anything of the like!

Anon said: GUESS. WHOS. GETTING. OLD!!! me. It’s me.

Everyone is! Constantly! It’s how the passing of times works, terribly enough

Anon said: hi!!! as someone who really admires you as an artist, has very little experience in art and would /really/ like to get better at it, i'd like to ask you: how did you get so good at it? (apart from constant practice, of course, i realize how important that is!) this is coming from someone who really has no idea where to start! what was your starting point, and are there any tips you can give a complete beginner like me?

Hmmmmmmmmmmmm the thing is that drawing a lot really is all there is to it, but if I had to give one single serious tip for this it would be to find something you really really really really enjoy drawing and to just draw it - draw it badly if that’s the only way you know how to draw it, but make sure to always draw it while having fun, and slowly you’ll get better without even realizing you are. If you like a ship, draw that ship! If you like plants, draw plants! If you like animals, draw animals! It’s okay if you don’t know how to draw it, or if you feel like your skills aren’t good enough for what you mean to draw, because honestly I felt like that when I started too, and I still feel like that every time I pick up my pen, and I’m sure I’ll forever feel like that for as long as I’ll draw - my ideas will always be bigger than my skills, and maybe so will yours! So what’s it matter if you start drawing stuff beyond your skill level now or later? At least you’ll be having fun with it, and the only way to learn how to do something new is to go and do it, anyway

Anon said: hi! do you do commissions?

I don’t, sorry! Thank you for being interested, though!

Anon said: Hi there! So I'm rereading Quote Love Unquote (a classic for sure) and had the urge to go find the art you had made for it. And oops, like, two hours have gone by of me just scrolling through all of your older comics and art. I love it all SO MUCH. Your artstyle is just so damn enjoyable and all of your comics never fail to make me smile. I'm always looking forward to whatever you choose to make in the future regardless of fandom. Thank you for being awesome!!

God that’s such a nice thing to hear, thank you so much!!!!!! ( TT-TT)<3

Anon said: I made an ask before (u answered it dw) but u thought I was saying u missed my first one. U didnt! I was saying it made me so happy that u responded you’re an angel! Ily v much!!

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh that’s good then!! that’s very very good!!!!!! ily too!!!! <3<3

Anon said: How can one's art be soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo good?

Thank youuuuuuuu ;;;;;;;;;; I do!!! my best!! ( ;u;)9

Anon said: You like tododeku?

Yup!

Anon said: Zero grafity kisses are the opposite of the spiderman kiss

How so? :O

Anon said: Hi! This is seriously out of nowhere but I wanted to tell you I reread your Bokuto-Kuroo-Terushima tattoo au strip all the time because it's just so delightful and seriously cute. Polyfidelity is the kind of poly my partner and I practice and I don't see it played out too much, so to see a relationship like that with characters I love and an art style I adore fills me with such warm fuzzies. It's so so lovely. Have a great day!

I’m so damn glad to hear that!!!! In that sense that comic still means a lot to me, so I’m happy to hear it means something to you too!!

Anon said: Friendly reminder that I fucking love you.

I love you too anon!!!!!!!!!

Anon said: Ma lo sai che sei sempre più brava?

aaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!! (TTATT) grazie mille!!!!!!!!!

Anon said: Hi um did you know that 🤰🏻🤱🏻 this lady had her kid?????? wtf i didnt know

I can’t even see the emojis from desktop lmao but good for her!!! 

Anon said: hot take: jirou, momo, kami, and shinsou in a poly relationship.

You know what anon, you’re incredibly valid and I respect you

Anon said: I just absolutely love your art! Whenever I see it, it makes my day! Your Kiribaku stuff gives me life! Keep making beautiful art, and stay safe during this time!

Gosh, thank you!! You stay safe too, anon!!!!

Anon said: HOW do you draw cloths

You keep in mind that gravity is a thing and let your hand do kind of whatever while hoping no one will notice you have no clue what you’re doing!! (...seriously tho I never studied these things I just do whatever feels like and hope for the best hahaha any experienced artist looking at my stuff is probably wondering what the heck it is that I’m trying to do...)

Anon said: Your style is so amazing and distinctive. Everytime I see it I’m like OH ITS THEMMMM and get super stoked

That’s so cool to hear!!!!!!! I genuinely have no clue what makes my art mine, but I like knowing people can recognize it anyway! It’s such a neat thing!!!

Anon said: Were you the person who did those "stopping an angry...." posts? Am I remembering this wrong? If that was you, where could I find those?

Are you talking about my bakuboys comic? If so then it’s in my bakuboys tag! :D

Anon said: Hey, you’ve seemed kind of tired and sad lately. I’m not going to ask you if you’re okay because you’re probably not, but I wanted to say I really do hope you feel better soon!

!!!!!!!!!!!! Thank you so much ;;;; I’m doing my best!

[citrispace]

how do u keep the motivation? i want to get better so i like my art better but i genuinely just... do not enjoy drawing in my current state T_T feels like a chore

This got a lot longer than I was expecting so I'm going to put it under a read more!

Unless you're drawing for a job, art is all about fun!! If you're not having fun with what you're doing absolutely change it up. I've gone through periods where I just hated what I was drawing and honestly if you don't enjoy it, it's hard to improve!

When I'm in a rut I just go nuts and start drawing stuff completely out of my norm. If you normally do really polished art, do a whole bunch of pen on paper scribble drawings. Try abstract stuff. The first step is to just loosen up and have fun with art again. I go through phases sometimes where I can't stand lineart, so I just make lineless art. Figure out what you don't enjoy about the process and scrap it! Or, if you're really feeling burnt out, it's okay to take a break entirely. I've had long stretches (sometimes a month or so) where I drew very little, and returning to art at the end of the break felt refreshing in a way it would never have without that break.

Only work consciously on "improvement" when you're enjoying making art. Studies, gesture drawings, anatomy stuff, etc is always great, but always work on stuff you genuinely enjoy, as well. Turn your studies into your own characters! Doodle fanart on the margins! Drawing what makes you happy is the best way to be happy with your art.

And as hard as it can be, try your best not to compare your art to others. It's so easy to get discouraged. Your art is great because you made it with your own hands! Where your skill is now is not where it will be in five years! If you see someone's art you love, don't think "I'll never be this good", try to figure out what it is that you love so much about the art, and try to work on that. And not everything you do yourself has to be shown to an audience! I do lots of art just for myself or friends that doesn't get posted here, and I feel better experimenting with styles or making goofy bad art, because nobody will see it but me.

I'm sorry you're feeling frustrated with your art - it's a horrible feeling, especially when it's something you love, or have loved to do in the past. I hope some of this might have helped, and that you can get to a point again soon where you genuinely enjoy drawing. ❤️

[mcrmadness]

Madness draws: Behind the Scenes of the latest Farin&Bela pencil drawing.

Aka the one that’s also my icon, even when that was a big risk to take because normally I start hating the photos I have once drawn, especially if I have failed miserably. This is how the drawing itself turned out:

ATTENTION: The original post about that drawing, with better image, behind this link.

This post is solely about the process itself with lots of pictures and also plenty of gifs, because I promised to do one if people would like to see that and I got some comments saying that they’re looking forward for that. So, here’s now that post!

For starters I have to apologize for the terrible quality that is the photos. I used my phone camera only and never thought about posting them, I just took them as a reference for myself and to show the progress to a friend and only after finishing the drawing I noticed that the angle of the camera causes a huge impact on the perspective of the drawing, so I sometimes might have done useless work when I thought some perspective was wrong when it was actually the photo that was wrong and not my work! I mean, take a look at these photos of the finished piece:

You see that? I realized this when I took maybe the second photo of the Farin sheet and looked at it and couldn’t believe my eyes because I didn’t remember drawing his torsto THAT small! And then I looked at the drawing and was like “wtf???” because it looked nothing like in the photo and then it hit me...

Also, another thing that I learn was that I might need to pay more attention to the perspective of the whole thing also because when I draw, I sit at the table so I am constantly seeing the drawing from my perspective instead of looking at it from above so that’s probably also going to affect the way I draw. I try to keep that in mind in the future so I can avoid redrawing things again and again just because my perspective is different than the reference photo’s.

Also the giant forehead of Farin’s in the photo on the right might have caused me to laugh a bit too much but anyway, let’s continue~ Or more like: let’s start for real this time.

Here’s the reference photo to y’all:

What I did in photoshop was to draw a line between them to see how I can divide the photo on two A4 papers. I had been thinking about this photo for some time already because it’s one of my favorites (but now I just feel cringy looking at it after I have drawn it... goddamnit!), and I got this idea that I could try drawing it on two papers in case I fuck up so I can start over or try again without having to do twice the work! Which was actually a good decision because this was the first version of Farin:

And it was awful. I also realized I had never drawn Farin’s face from he front. I have drawn him before from the side a few times but maybe once it came out actually good so that was why I decided to do the 2 paper method - because I knew it was not going to be an easy job! Bela is relatively easy to draw so I knew already that I would not have too many problems with that one.

I struggled with Farin’s eyes the most, at first.

It took me a while to figure out how to do that white line in his lower lid. Keep in mind that this was my first face portrait in over 10 years so I was very, very rusty and I just didn’t remember how to draw like anything anymore. (The photo is tilted because Bela’s face is a bit tilted and my hand can’t draw anything that is not straight [lol] so I have to rotate the photo in order to even draw the sketch of Bela’s eyes.)

So I took my sketchbook and tried to do some eyes...

I was still struggling so much here until I remembered about blending. And I didn’t have my hopes high but grabbed the eyeshadow applicators (my fave tool for blending) anyway, and switched to my other sketchbook in case the paper was the issue and:

Blending. It was all about blending! So with that in mind, I realized I can continue and I don’t need to do these in my old way, everything doesn’t have to have a lineart done but some of the job is done not with the pencils but with the eraser.

Anyhow, the previous Farin looked really bad and was too big as well so I just discarded that and started a new sheet because the old lines were not coming off properly anymore. I don’t remember if this is the old face or new but I think this might still be the old one:

Yes it definitely is the old because look at those lines! This is the new sheet:

And in the photo you can see one of my pencils - I use Derwent Graphic pencils, it’s a 12 pencil set with very soft pencils, starting with H, F and HB and ending to 9B. With this one I used F, HB, B, 2B, 5B, 7B and 9B. The white pencil is actually my new love aka the eraser pencil Koh-I-Noor Hardmuth. It’s amazing, I recommend! I just didn’t order 10 new ones this other day. I actually used about 1,5 full eraser pencils on this drawing alone so that’s why 10.

Here’s a “little” gif of the process on Farin:

I felt crazy when I went for the shirt, and I felt like I was going crazy MEANWHILE drawing it but in the end I did it and I’m super proud of it!

Below is the reference photo, it was pain in the ass to follow all those lines with my eyes and try to find what was I drawing and where was I but I think I did good. That was a fun challenge.

Okay so, when I was done with the new lineart, I decided to go for the shading and blending because that’s what really makes the drawings to pop. I started with the left (his right, my left) side of Farin’s face because I’m right-handed, and in the first photo I had done just the left (right) eye and mouth and nose, but in the second there’s also the other eye done already:

Keep in mind this was not the last time I drew the eyes. Not even close.

Something was off with the right (left) eye so I had to do that one again and I noticed that when you blend but haven’t erased and cleaned it yet, it looks like a black eye :DDD So here’s the before and after images of that cleaning. (Cleaning = I draw, blend, erase, draw and blend more when needed and then erase again, and repeat this as many times as I need until it starts to look ready to my eye.)

So here Farin was “finished” but if you still remember the final piece or compare it to it, you might notice it looks quite different. And you’re right. But more about that later, because at this point I started to work on Bela.

It actually started really well - I also had to do the whole lineart again because it did not match the size of “finished” Farin. I don’t remember if this is the first or second eye but when I had drawn his eye for the first time, I noticed it was not in line with Farin so I had to redraw it. A gif of the progress:

What’s that brown paper I’m using, you may ask? Well I noticed that people have some sort of paper on top of their art to keep it from smudging and I have no clue what that is so here’s my poor artist recommendation: baking paper! I tested it and it works (if you just remember to keep it under your hand, that is...) so that is, in fact, baking paper! :DD

I have drawn Bela’s face a few times before and he’s just so much easier to draw. In fact I used 4-5 days on Farin but I managed to start and finish (this version of) Bela just in one day. And that means that out of 12 hours (because I literally used the whole day for drawing) I used maybe like... 5h or something on Bela. That’s how much easier he really is to draw.

I don’t know wtf is wrong with Farin’s face but he’s extremely difficult to draw and I’m not the only one who has been saying this. I guess he just looks so regular but still unique enough to be difficult to draw. Bela then again has features that are very unique and very... caricature-like? I mean that just by drawing his nose or chin you can make a comic book Bela look exactly like himself, and with more realistic style his eyes already do a lot, but Farin’s really the opposite. My comic book version of Farin is literally the most basic version I can draw, it’s how I draw those characters and the only thing that makes him look himself is the hair, and his nose in a side profile. So I think that’s why it’s so difficult to draw him because he doesn’t look too regular but still regular enough to make is a very challenging task to do properly.

So yeah, the same day as I started working on Bela, I was also “finished” with the drawing:

Also look at how different it looks like from this perspective:

With the reference photo open in photoshop and I don’t understand how Bela looks more like himself in my drawing than in the photo. Also when I showed the WIP to my brother, he said that I somehow had succeeded at making Farin look more like Farin than what he does in the photo even. It’s weird.

But we were still far from finished. I was going to use the fixative on this soon but it just kept snowing the whole week so I couldn’t so every time I walked past the drawings, I stopped to fix this and that. For days I kept telling myself “I’m done, I can’t do more than this, I can’t do better than this.” and considered the drawing finished but still kept fixing things. Every time I was “done” with the other drawing, I saw something to fix in the other one and once that was done, I felt like the first one wasn’t as good and had to fix something from it too. And that led to a cycle where the other drawing was always better than the other and the worse one needed to be fixed. In the end I was hating the whole process and myself and my skills and I was already ready to abandon this whole thing and call it a day and never ever show it to anyone “because I cannot draw”. The photo above, here’s a list of things I redrew after that:

Bela’s eyes, the right (left) one at least twice.

Bela’s nose.

Bela’s mouth a couple of times.

Farin’s eyes x588045028520

And a list of things I kept fixing and fixing:

Bela’s chin.

Bela’s neck shadows.

Bela’s hairline.

Farin’s whole face was tilted so I tried to fix that.

Farin’s face was too wide, which meant also partially redrawing the ear.

Farin’s hair was too long and wide too.

Farin’s nose.

Farin’s mouth might be the only thing I drew only once and I’m actually still extremely proud of how it came to be. I did the lips solely with blending so that was super exciting to notice how I can use it for drawing and don’t need the pencils for everything!

During Bela’s eyes and nose and mouth especially I was hating myself so much and I felt like I was taking the risk of ruining the whole thing and a few times I was certain that was what I had just done too, until I somehow was able to save it again. But because of that, I wasn’t able to make Bela’s mouth any lighter anymore, the color wasn’t just coming off the paper so had to use what was there and make it look like it’s how it’s supposed to be, too.

Here’s a gif about those changes on Bela - the first one has the old eyes and nose, the others have minor changed on the nose and mouth:

(The blacks probably don’t get any blacker in reality, I did add more color to it all the time but mainly it’s just the lighting and my phone camera changing the brightness.)

I did the final details on his nose without even using the reference photo anymore. The photo didn’t seem to make any sense anymore at all so I was just using my mechanical pencil and the blending tool and eraser to make is look better. To my eye it looked more like a very flat nose with a big tip of the nose and he doesn’t have a flat nose and I tried to get rid of that illusion. I still feel like it makes him look bit weird but I’m not entirely sure how. Maybe it was because of my improvisation, idk...

So, Bela was then finally finished for the last time. In the Farin piece his left (right) eye had been bugging me the whole time and I didn’t want to touch it but still I felt like I have to do something about it because it was bugging me way too much. I then figured I could draw the eye line by line and take a photo of it each time to see if it looks right already or not, maybe I could then avoid doing all the phases before I was sure what to think about it. I mean, now the only way to see if it was correct was to draw e.g. an eye from start to finish, I couldn’t see from just the lineart or unblended eye if it was in the right spot etc. And here’s that progress on a gif:

The gif about only the eye would look so nice if Tumblr didn’t make the gifs so HUGE - this one is actually only 300px or 400px or something:

Apparently I also wasn’t happy with the other eye because:

But good thing is: I really enjoy drawing eyes. I love seeing them to “come alive”, my favorite part was to eraser a bit of the color on the iris to make them look like they are actually shiny! It feels like something so small to do and yet it makes a huge impact on the drawing!

And here’s yet another gif of the whole Farin sheet with all of the changes, including the last changes that made his head narrower, and less tilted and more in line. Look at the left side of his head especially to see that:

I can also see his nose changing between the first few photos. I keep forgetting about that but yeah, I also fixed that a little at some point.

And last but not least, the whole drawing in some sort of a timelapse gif:

Last two are the same but just a photo and the scan of the finished drawing. I still keep seeing things I would do differently but no can do, I already used fixative on it, also to keep myself from obsessing with it any more :D And to use it as a study of some sort. I have never been able to draw a perfect pencil drawing and this isn’t one either. I probably never can draw perfect drawings from references.

I do enjoy the whole shading and blending process, so much so that when I was editing these photos, I just wanted to start drawing something so bad but I also figured that I start to lose motivation when I get to the point where everything should be finished but I just can’t make it perfect. Like the current WIP I have, all I should do is to get the proportions and perspective and the lines of their faces correctly and I would be ready but it feels more like a superpower some people possess and I’m not one of those. I don’t know what is it but I just feel that I cannot see. I don’t know how to explain it, but I can’t see what I try to do and somehow keep drawing everything the wrong way. Just like in this post’s drawing too. There’s still things that are wrong and I know what it is but I don’t know how to solve it. My hands just don’t listen to me and they can’t do what I think they should. I also think the reason I cannot draw perfect copies of photos is because you can always see my “handprint” in them. If I copy a photo, it will look like a photo and not like a drawing made by me. So I believe that in my drawing there’s always a part of me visible and I’m not entirely sure if it’s a good thing or not. On bad days it’s not a good thing, obviously. On good days? Well I guess it’s good then because it just means I have my own style which I really should appreciate. But I wish I had my style only when I want it to be visible, but I can’t control it. Just like I cannot write text by hand that would look like it was written with a computer, so I guess I should just try to get used to it, no matter how much it’d bug me sometimes.