#tried this messier style of rendering

[itsnicsalad]

amazing digital circus!! this pilot was super fun🎪

[alitgblog]

speculating what the s8 islanders will look like as an excuse to draw lol idk why im not going in order here's the sports physiologist

ok so obviously my art style is a bit simpler than the game's and I didn't take a ton of time to render it but I think the elements are there and here's my reasoning (warning this is long lol)

the disclaimer is I read the application once and then started drawing so I think in my head I got it confused and thought this was gonna be the Bobby/Rafael cutesy fun guy of the season and rereading it now I realize I am wrong, but I still stand by certain choices.

Sports physio/cycling thing was a big thing for this. I think he shouldn't have very defined abs but the game will draw him like that. Cyclers tend to have skinnier torsos but bigger thighs/legs and I didn't draw the legs bc I'm lazy but know that in my head, he's got thick thighs. I didn't draw him with like a huge chest or arms also because of that, but because it's still LITG, he does have some definition on his arms, just not a lot. I really think I could see this guy working in sports physio.

And because he takes care of people for a living and is the "big romantic," I think he needs to look very charming, to a point where he's almost disarming. (This is where I got it in my head that he's the Bobby/Raf of the group bc lover boy vibes. Personality wise he feels like Rohan imo who is similar). Therefore I drew a lot of his features as very soft (softer jawline, fleshier nose) but also just big round eyes to draw you in. I looked at Tyrique from love island season 10 for a bit of inspo because I think he's got such a pretty face but still is pretty masculine, and he has big round eyes so that's why I did that.

I also decided on curly hair, in part because of my confusion with Bobby/Rafael, but also I think it adds to the charm because it's clearly styled but tries to look effortless. I used a younger picture of Dev Patel for it. That's also why he has a little bit of facial hair to help age him up but also works with the aesthetic I was going for. The piercings are fully a self indulgent add-in, I just it's attractive.

Ok so this is where it gets confusing because I did intially draw some sharper features on him and had a different color palette for his skin and hair. I was imagining him as "spicy white" just because Bobby and Raf are mixed so they would change it up just slightly for this guy. I think nothing that's too contrasting to make him look brooding like Joyo. So initially this was definitively a tanned white guy with curly reddish brown hair, some facial hair, and a defined nose, and then I was like this is really close to Rocco. So I changed some features and some colors and here we are now at ethnically ambiguous? I'm not gonna think too hard about the ethnicity of this character because this is fake and it's fusebox's problem when they release the real character.

Looking back, if I redrew the character, I'd go for full or half South Asian just because I did use dev patel as a hair reference. But also maybe just hopeful because aside from Angie, the other South Asian rep in recent memory I can think of is Marshall (messy), Ozzy (messier), and Suresh (messiest), so I just think we should get a cute one. (also Priya, Rohan, and Arjun who aren't nearly as bad but only one of those is a LI and they're sort of dead right now so)

anyway overall the process of drawing him was kind of a mess because I had confused some things in my head and like I said, was accidentally drawing Rocco (underrated design btw) but this was the first one I did and I don't think I'm right, this is just a fun little activity for me and he's the first one I drew so I wasn't very sure about a lot of things.

so if you read this far congrats for getting though my ramblings. The next ones I'm doing aren't nearly as complicated 😂😂

[eriisaam]

It's that time again, time for "I spam multiple polls on you and then run off to do errands". Yay~

So. Summoner OCs. As you know, we're nearly done wrapping up all of the six in sprite form at least, with the only odd one out currently being Eclair (and his alt as Magni) before they've all collectively graduated to 'actually has an up-to-date visual on them for once' status.

The original plan after this was to then go and make ref sheets based on the visuals given by the sprites.

But then the art meme invasion happened, and now I'm stumped. So, that brings me to this latest bout of questionaires with the gist being: "Shit. What now?"

So first question (this'll be rapid-fire-repeated for the sake of slotting the polls in proper, sorry in advance, I hate it too): What should I prioritize first? It's for-sure related to the summoners at least (other OCs exists, but they're still baking in the oven at the moment, give them a bit more time), but the question comes in what's next and what now for them.

Of the possible choices, we have:

A) Ref sheets (like initially planned).

Pros:

Tries to document as much as possible of certain details to the summoners from multiple angles.

Has a more finalized and uniform documentation and idea on things from drawn details to color palettes and such.

Get a more closer-up view of what the FEH sprites originally conveyed, including details simplified, too tiny to see in detail, or straight up skipped due to either the angle or the simplification of the sprites.

Cons:

It's a LOT of details to unpack. Including certain alt details, including details that might not fit in a single sheet, and so on. It's a pretty big project that'll take a bit of time per summoner I feel.

In terms of immediate reference, you now already have the FEH sprites to have a more immediate general idea of what each summoner looks like in their 'default' state, so this is a more detailed walk-back of much of what you already know by now.

Worth noting:

That's not to say I also might not have other drawings on the side that escape containment (especially if I get stumped on specific parts and try to visualize it mid-work, like what happened with Magni-Eclair), but for the most part, there'll be quite the ref sheet flood.

I'm also torn likewise on whether to do the ref sheet with minimal (thin) lineart (neater than sketch but around the same idea) or to go all-in on the usual stronger lineart (mostly out of concerns whether or not it conveys properly or the line thickness might get mistaken as overdetails).

B) This big-ass compilation of OC meme prompts hmrg brought to my attention (thanks~)

Pros:

Conveys a lot of prompt ideas and alts that I've been sitting on that a quick cautionary glance at the prompts hit the nail on the head of giving it a good platform to bring certain prompts up.

Silly times for silly moments in a lot of these. It's a lighthearted break from being either informative or dark-heavy-handed lately. (Well, some of them anyways...), and since a lot of these memes are based around capturing moments or pointed context, less word vomit this time.

They're fairly small, straightforward, and isolated, compared to a lot of these being bigger or fuller spreads (especially the ref sheets).

Cons:

Certain prompts might be about things I already just did and reiterating what you already know very recently even. Not all of them, but some of them (ex: the sudden spike of attention to Ephrel/Spectailis and again likewise with Eclair/Magni).

Derails reference based prompts and collections compared to a lot of these. This gives visuals to key moments of their lore, but is a lot less referential compared to the other two options here.

Many, MANY parts to the meme as a whole, so Summoner OC tag is gonna have quite A Time...

Worth noting:

I'm also torn on whether or not to do this sketch style (again, quicker, but somewhat messier), proper art style (fully rendered) or the aforementioned compromise (lineart, flatter colors, simpler shades) so that's a whole other discussion about how to approach it too.

I'm also going to properly break this down into individual parts, rather than dump the entire compilation on everyone's heads, and more than likely, it'll rotate across the six summoners, rather than be uniformly on one each.

C) This other big-ass meme quite a bit of you had been chipping away at for a good while before that I've been watching other people work on for a time (Henlo buds, nice to see your summoner alts 💖)

Pros:

Much more detailed and pointed look at the summoners and their specific alts (compared to the haphazardness of the other two, especially the other OC prompt meme) and even pokes at a lot of the rarer alts the other two options might gloss over.

Lore for alts not necessarily plot-centric compared to the others which tend to focus on alts or the moments that inspired them. It gives a chance to see or hear about seldom-seen or seldom-discussed alts.

Cons:

Basically the same as the second option where they'll be broken up into a LOT of parts, a lot of tag spam, and a lot of word vomit to go with. Not to mention it might single out a summoner, rather than rotate among them, so you're gonna be especially spammed multiple times over by one summoner in particular out of the rest.

There's also a lot of lore attached to the fleshed out alts too... which people might be a lot less patient of the essay floods to go with. hrm...

Worth noting:

I'm also only going to focus on one summoner at a time, which leaves it up in the air of which summoner even goes through these gauntlet of alts in the first place.

Whether or not the five who DIDN'T get picked right away also go through it is up in the air, but in the hypothetical scenario all six of them got a go on Summoner Alt's Wild Ride, that means you take all the concerns of this and multiply it by six.

-

Which brings us to the second half of this questionaire: What's a good bare minimum here?

As you saw recently, I tried to experiment around with a good grasp on what is the bare minimum to aim for before something's presentable enough to share. The last two things that flew by were sketches I felt were my new bare minimum (cleaned up sketchy lines with enough cleaning to fix details, overlap, or early-sketch jank to convey the main idea, but no attention otherwise to being neat and tidy, adding weight like cleaned up lineart, and either no color and shading or doing it more sloppy style in the future).

In the past, my previous bare-minimum used to be to at least get them to lineart level, give or take a much more emphasis on color-flats or much simpler cel-shade if even that. The former was way quicker and I had an easier time getting more art out (especially "give general ideas of what I'm trying to convey" pieces rather than fully-realized pieces) while the latter is tidier and at least more presentable, short of going all-in from start to finish with rendering and the whole nine yards.

There WILL be a return to art-that's-fully-realized, but how do you guys feel so far about the sketchy-lines (quicker but little to no line-weight and less stress on tidiness) versus the inked-lines (as close to final lineart as possible with lines, but takes a bit longer)? A good comparison of what I mean is compare for instance the last bit I did with Magni-Eclair versus pretty much all of Sharena Week.

-

So for poll 1 or 2...

[elvhendis]

Hiya, I’m in love with your painterly pieces, genuinely gorgeous. If you don’t mind me asking, what kinds of brushes do you use?

For context, I’ve been making an effort to get my transitions between values less abrasive (since I got into the habit of leaving them at the roughest stage possible and making up for it with “tactical” overlays) but my end results tend to end up muddy, and when they don’t I can never pinpoint what I did differently. I have a suspicion it’s because I almost exclusively use a very hard oil brush — I do like a coarse look but there’s a line of how much of it is personal style and how much of it is plain poor judgement. Would I be better off using a softer edged brush for that in between stage, or is it just something I need to push through without “blaming the tools”, so to speak?

Hi!! First of all I'm flattered, I'm so glad you like my art 🥺

Keep in mind that I'm using Photoshop, so the brushes only apply to that. For rendering I mostly use Istebrak's skin and blending brushes! She used to sell them in separate packs, now she sells them all in a bundle . I mostly use her angled skin brush and wispy skin brush, those give me the smoothest results. For blocking I use her dry oil brush, though lately I've actually started using a brush that a dear fellow artist was kind enough to send to me! I love to use it for hair especially. For blending and smoothing everything out I use Istebrak's smudging brushes. I've been using her brushes for years and never really switched since they work really well for me, but I'm sure there are tons of other brushes out there that do the same trick!

I'm probably not the best person to ask about this kind of stuff though, because I LOVE when paintings actually look painterly and textured, with visible brush strokes etc, and I've tried to move away from overly rendering and smoothing everything out, but it's difficult for me because as soon as I see a brush stroke my brain yells "smooth it!!!" so yeah, I don't quite know how to balance everything myself yet. Generally I try to preserve the most detail and keep everything smooth around the focal point (so, since I mostly do portraits, that means the face/eyes) and allow myself to keep stuff messier in other areas (the hair, etc). I hope that makes sense?

Basically my process looks like this: I start by blocking in the values with hard brushes (like the dry oil brush) and as I get further into the process I start using the skin brushes on lower opacity in combination with the eye dropper method to slowly blend everything together, and as I'm doing that I also use the smudge brush to blend unwanted edges and creases and make everything look smooth. (for me, smudging is really the key sometimes)

I feel like this is a terrible explanation but I hope it at least helps you a little? Like I said, I feel like I'm still in the process of figuring all of it out myself, it takes some experimentation to learn what works and what doesn't, but I'm sure in the end we'll all get there 💚

[fallenangelofsaltart]

result:

tried out a messier style in this one. loved how the metal rendering turned out.

[storiesforallfandoms]

bon appetit ~ david dobrik

word count: 1646

request?: yes!

“Hiya! Can you write about David in the BA test kitchen, but instead of Carla, Y/N is filming with him? Thanks 😇🧡”

description: david may not like seafood, but he really likes the bon appetit host, so he decides to cook seafood with her to impress her, however it doesn’t exactly go as he plans

pairing: david dobrik x female!reader

warnings: swearing

masterlist

David’s eyes almost widened as the host for Bon Appetit’s ”Back to Back Chef” approached him as he entered their filming kitchen. She was a young girl, about his age, and she was absolutely adorable, wearing a grey apron and her hair pulled back in a ponytail.

“Hey! You must be David!” she said, extending a hand to David. “I’m (Y/N), I’ll be hosting the video with you today.”

“It’s nice to meet you (Y/N),” David said, shaking her hand. “Are you, like, an actual chef? Like graduated school and everything? You’re so young!”

(Y/N) laughed. “Yeah, I’m an actual chef. I’m not long graduated culinary school, actually. I have a friend who works with Bon Appetit and they were gracious enough to hire me fresh out of school. I do mainly video for younger audiences, like videos with well known YouTubers, couple simple recipe videos or baking videos.”

“That’s so cool!” David said. He tried not seem as flustered as he felt, but it was hard when he was looking down at this absolutely beautiful woman, whose smile was so bright it was infectious. “So, what are we making today?”

“It’s a surprise. Go put an apron on, we’ll start filming.”

David did a mock salute, causing (Y/N) to laugh again, before he went off to grab an apron that matched hers.

The cameras and the food was already set up, so all that needed to be done was for the cameras to start rolling. When David was ready to go, they started filming. (Y/N) smiled brightly at the camera as she started.

“Hey guys! It’s (Y/N), and I’m here in the Bon Appetit test kitchen today with David Dobrik - ”

She paused as she motioned towards David. He waved to the camera and greeted, “Hi guys!”

“ - and today we’ve got our usual 20 minutes to make Vietnamese style summer rolls, and we’re gonna see how David does following along with me through verbal instructions only.”

David tried not to let the dread show on his face, especially not with the cameras rolling. Of course, they food they were preparing was seafood, and David hated seafood.

You don’t have to eat it, he thought to himself. Just cook it, and do a good job cooking it so you can impress the cute chef.

After a quick introduction, the two of them turned back to back and started their cooking. (Y/N) sounded so professional as she told him what to do, and behind him he could hear her already miles ahead on the recipe than he was.

As he twisted the head off of a shrimp, as instructed, and gagged as the smell of seafood filled his nose. “I hate seafood.”

“Really?!” (Y/N) asked in shock.

“Yeah, it’s my least favourite.”

“Well shit, we picked the wrong recipe then, didn’t we?” (Y/N) laughed. “It’s whatever, you don’t have to eat it. I’ll be the one trying yours, I can also eat my own or give it to someone else who’s here.”

“This is so gross,” David said as he cut the shrimp with a pair of scissor. “You know what this feels like?”

“What does it feel like?” (Y/N) asked.

“It feels like I promised a girl I was going to make dinner for her, and I lied, and now I have a chef in my ear helping me out with the date as she’s sitting in the room watching me.”

“Have you done that before?” (Y/N) asked him after giving him the next step of the recipe.

“I haven’t, no. I usually let girls know I’m an awful cook before dates so they don’t get their hopes up about cooking. Has a guy ever tried to do that to you before?”

“Only once, it was early on in my college years and I met this guy through Tinder and I guess he didn’t read my bio cause I had written that I was in school for culinary arts and he offered to make me something to eat and claimed he was the best cook ever and he was like a chef in the making.”

“What was he really?”

“A McDonald’s employee.” The two laughed together. “Like he had absolutely no idea what he was doing and I could tell. I didn’t say anything the whole date until the end, where I said, ‘your cooking was good, but as a culinary chef in training, I’m a little offended that you lied and said you were a chef in the making but couldn’t even made something as simple as fries from potatoes’. Needless to say, we both agreed not to go on a second date.”

“Okay, noted. Don’t tell you I’ll cook for you on a date.”

(Y/N) stopped a moment, David’s words causing her to falter a little. She could barley remember what they were doing or what step she was on. She stared at the shrimp in her hand for a long time, trying to remember what to do. Behind her, David was smirking at his ability to render her speechless.

They continued to cook together, but David noted the slight stutter (Y/N) had now, and her tendency to forget what she was doing or what step was next. He was hoping this was a good thing, and that he didn’t just make things totally awkward by making a joke about them going out on a date.

The mood lightened as (Y/N) and David began making jokes back and forth while they cooked, and she seemed to be coming back to how she was before.

“You’re a natural at this it seems,” (Y/N) commented as they were coming to the end of the recipe. “You’ve been following really well, do you think yours is gonna come out well?”

“I definitely do,” David said. “It looks pretty good, for seafood.”

“I love seafood, how do you expect us to go on a date when you’re gonna judge me for wanting seafood?”

It was (Y/N)’s turn to smirk at the lack of a response from David. She giggled to herself as she began to set up the plate for the reveal they were about to do. “Okay, reveal in three, two, one.”

(Y/N) burst into laughter as she looked at David with a rice paper wrapper on his face, like a face mask. He smiled and took it off his face, happy to get a laugh out of her.

“Yours looks so good,” (Y/N) said, marvelling at his cooking. “It’s almost exactly like mine, it just looks a little messier on the inside but that’s fine it’ll taste the same.”

The cameras cut long enough for the two to set up their trying station. David eyed the summer rolls nervously, wondering if he wanted to taste them or not. The two sat down and the camera was rolling again.

“You don’t have to eat it if you don’t want to,” (Y/N) reminded him. “I wanna try yours though and tell you how you did.”

“I’ll try it, but I want you to try mine first so I can gain the courage to eat it,” David joked.

(Y/N) chuckled and playfully rolled her eyes before taking one of David’s summer rolls and dipping it into the dipping sauce on the place. She took a bite and a smile came across her face, accompanied by a delightful moan.

“They’re so good!” (Y/N) said. “For someone who says he can’t cook, you did fantastic with these.”

“Thank you!”

David picked up one of (Y/N)’s summer rolls and took a big bite out of it. He chewed the roll in his mouth for some time, feeling himself beginning to gag from the taste of both seafood and mango. He eyed (Y/N), who was watching him with an amused smile, before he quickly stood and raced for the garbage can behind him while (Y/N) burst out laughing.

“(Y/N), that was fucking delicious!” David exclaimed, causing (Y/N) to laugh even more.

When the video ended, a crew came to start cleaning up the kitchen. (Y/N) and David discarded their aprons and helped to clean up the mess the best they could.

“I can’t believe you ate that,” (Y/N) commented with a slight chuckle. “You know you didn’t have to, we could’ve given it to someone else.

“I wanted to,” David shrugged. “Besides, it wasn’t that bad. I think it was mainly the texture I didn’t like too much, plus the taste of the mango with it. It was weird.”

“Both mango and seafood can be an acquired taste,” (Y/N) agreed.

They were both silent for some time. The cleaning was long over, and it was time for David to go and start filming for his own vlog. He awkwardly ran his fingers through his hair as he stood in front of (Y/N), who was looking up at him in an almost expectant way. David wasn’t really sure what to say, or how to say what he wanted to say.

“I had a really great time today,” he started, lamely. “It was a lot of fun, even if I didn’t really like the food.

“I had a good time, too!” (Y/N) responded. “Maybe...we could do this again...but like without the cameras?”

David almost sighed in relief that she made the first move. It meant that she actually wanted to, and he wasn’t about to shoot his shot and be rejected.

“I’d love that,” he said. “Are you doing anything tomorrow? You could come over and teach me how to cook something we both like at my place. Just send me the recipe and I can pick up the stuff.”

(Y/N) smiled brightly. “I’d love that.”

“It’s a date then.”

[dansiere]

—    BASICS.

▸     IS    YOUR    MUSE    TALL    /    SHORT    /    AVERAGE ? Pearl stands at 5′10″ (178 cm) which renders her rather tall whenever compared to most women/humans in general. However, compared to most Gems she seems of average height. After all, she is easily dwarfed by Gems that stand higher in Homeworld’s hierarchy such as quartzes, jaspers, agates, bismuth, or, most strikingly diamonds. There are some exceptions, however. Pearl (i.e) towers over most peridots, lapis, sapphires, larimar and rubies. 

▸      ARE    THEY    OKAY    WITH    THEIR    HEIGHT ? She is not necessarily bothered by it but isn’t too fond of it either. Pearl is rather self-conscious about her appearance, given how much of it is linked to her status as former servant. The underlying discomfort notwithstanding; similar to her age, her height is but a number to her. 

▸      WHAT’S    THEIR    HAIR    LIKE ? Predominantly peach in colour, it can be considered orange from time to time [you may call her a ginger]. It’s relatively short & cut in a pixie cut at the front while styled up in the back. It reaches slightly beneath chin-length when wet but usually keeps its form due to well, Gem magic. Pearl used to wear a messier version of her standard hairstyle in her “youth”; indeed, during the war, she proudly donned a more “wild” look to complement her status as a renegade, whereas her hairstyle during her days spent in servitude featured a ‘rosebud’ kind of cut. Shortly after Rose’s death & Steven’s birth, Pearl eventually donned a very tidy & clean-cut look [for reasons that I will elude on further below]; no hair is allowed to pop out of its place. -- her hair itself is surprisingly soft & fluffy to the touch. 

▸     DO    THEY    SPEND    A    LOT    OF    TIME    ON    THEIR    HAIR     /    GROOMING ? Sadly, yes. She does not need to tend to her form per se but does so anyway in order to keep up a flawless & orderly appearance at any given time. -- however, ever since CYM, Pearl has gradually become more laid-back again & thus donned a messier hairstyle more reminiscent of the one worn during the war.

▸      DOES   YOUR   MUSE   CARE   ABOUT   THEIR   APPEARANCE   /   WHAT    OTHERS    THINK ? Absolutely, yes. While she will never admit it, Pearl is very, very self-conscious out of various reasons (one being her abysmal self-esteem). Never one to bring up physical attributes (why, in theory, she does not necessarily believe that she has much to offer in that regard. Her body is a hardlight projection & she perceives it as such), she is nonetheless hyperaware of what exactly her appearance entails. Pearls are designed to look "pretty” & are EASILY recognized based on their lanky & delicate built (i.e their noses, slim & rather ‘androgynous’ physique, posture, voice, & even more ‘individual’ traits such as hairstyle or the colour of their clothes). Needless to say, the fact that she possesses the physical traits of a pearl will always mark her as something or someone ‘special’ in a negative sense; more an object than a person, to be exact. Due to that, she has been changing her form quite often in the past, always trying her utmost to go against any classically pearl-esque trait.

—    PREFERENCES.

▸     INDOORS    OR    OUTDOORS ?  both ▸     RAIN   OR    SUNSHINE ?  sunshine, though she is fascinated by Earth’s weather in general. ▸     FOREST    OR    BEACH ?  again, both even though she has a preference for the beach due to basically having lived right next to one for approx. 5000 years. ▸     PRECIOUS    METALS  OR    GEMS ?  ... hm. Swords. ▸     FLOWERS    OR    PERFUMES ?  flowers by a long shot. ▸     PERSONALITY  OR    APPEARANCE ? personality; though admittedly, she developed quite the type regarding appearance. It is canon that most of her ‘flings’ resembled Rose.   ▸     BEING    ALONE    OR    BEING    IN    A    CROWD ?  being in a crowd; she feels at unease in both cases but loneliness is something she is absolutely terrified of (she is prone to self-isolation during or after a breakdown, however: partially out of the desire to punish herself); Pearl is someone who needs people around her, preferably two. She may retreat to her room rather often or like to sit outside on her own but she only feels truly at ease whenever Garnet, Rose / Steven & Amethyst are in her proximity. ▸     ORDER    OR    ANARCHY ?  order, without a doubt. Her younger self was certainly more fond of anarchy, however. It is also important to state that she sometimes WISHES she could simply solve her problems in a duel again; after all, to her, as a fan of logic, fighting is less stressful than dealing with her emotions. ▸     PAINFUL    TRUTHS    OR   WHITE    LIES ?  white lies., without a doubt. Pearl is an excellent liar; not necessarily by choice but... well. She is fairly good at twisting words. ▸     SCIENCE    OR    MAGIC ?  science. ▸     PEACE    OR    CONFLICT ?  another quite difficult choice; while she fights for peace, conflict is where she thrives. It is one of those ironic cases in which a person defines or rather defined herself by participating in a war & for Pearl the war was ... well, detrimental to her identity. She romanticizes it to NO END. ▸     NIGHT    OR    DAY ?  both; it does not make much of a difference to her in the end. She might prefer night time simply because she loves to stargaze but well. She is fond of the sun too. ▸     DUSK    OR   DAWN ?  dawn; Pearl loves watching the sun rise. ▸     WARMTH    OR    COLD ?  again, it makes no difference. Pearl cannot feel either. ▸     MANY   ACQUAINTANCES    OR    A    FEW    CLOSE    FRIENDS ?  few close friends; as I stated earlier, she needs people around her because she cannot really be alone. That urge notwithstanding, Pearl is a very introverted person who struggles with social norms; in fact, she often forces herself to socialize to a ridiculous degree. In SU:Future, she is constantly trying to meet new people that are capable of a) giving her the validation she requires, b) still fill the hole that Rose left & c) to distract herself from whatever uncomfortable thoughts are on her mind post-CYM. Her prime focus remains the Crystal Gems, but it is safe to say that she is lowkey trying to emulate an environment she revelled in during war times; she likes to be admired by people since it gives her confidence & stability. -- there is a reason why she calls her human acquaintances “her fanclub”. ▸     READING    OR    PLAYING    A    GAME ?  reading; she loves games that include strategic thinking or logic in general, however. Or anything that allows her to ramble on & on about topics of interest.

—    QUESTIONNAIRE.

▸      WHAT    ARE    SOME    OF    YOUR    MUSE’S    BAD    HABITS ? She is a nervous wreck; a mess. Pearl’s biggest issue is her inability to let go of the past or deal with her emotions in a healthy way. Her tons of personal growth notwithstanding, she is fond of white lies & emotional self-destruction. While she is usually selfless by nature, most of her rather reckless actions have proven to be quite damaging to those around her (i.e. Garnet, Amethyst, Steven & even herself). Pearl is furthermore emotionally unstable & spins out of control hard & fast, is prone to extreme jealousy, possessiveness & obsession may it be with Rose or details/symmetry, what if’s & cleanliness as such. Pearl is quick to judge, over-protective, terribly patronizing at times (even though she does not mean to be), incredibly controlling & just “does too much” whenever pushed. She is also fond of blaming herself in quite the fatal way & lives “inside her head” way too much. Low-self esteem & lack of confidence leads to her lashing out rather than handling situations in a calm manner; while appearing steady & being quite the strategist, she can turn into a bundle of nerves within a second, usually yielding to hysteria & knee-jerk reactions that do more harm than good. -- she means well & she is a very loving/caring person who has her heart in the right place but sometimes she just... messes up. After all, she never truly had the time to deal with her own myriad of trauma & it shows. 

▸      HAS    YOUR    MUSE    LOST    ANYONE    CLOSE    TO    THEM ?      HOW    HAS    IT    AFFECTED    THEM ? Yes, her partner/lover Rose Quartz. It is a loss that is still haunting her 16 years after the other’s death; needless to say, she did not handle it well at all. While she knew that Rose would die to give birth to Steven (mainly due to her having been told in advance / her suspecting so after Rose fell in love with Greg), Pearl held on to the thought of her ‘changing her mind’ until the very end. When the time came, Pearl utterly collapsed. She spent the first few months in utter self-isolation (either sitting next to Rose’s statue at the fountain or in her room, laying on her back & staring at the wall / ceiling or knees to her chest), barely speaking to anyone; the very mention of Rose or Steven made her burst into tears. It went so far that she... basically tried to shatter herself after around six months. Pearl was, however, stopped by Garnet who showed herl a future in which Steven would come to grow & live alongside them, just how Rose had wanted it to be. Pearl still poofed herself but emerged later with a changed form, apologizing for her behaviour & swearing to never try something that selfish ever again.

     Her newfound hope notwithstanding; coercing herself to function normally (after just a year) despite her looming agony put a serious strain on her & most of her already damaged relationships to the other two remaining Crystal Gems. She stopped confiding in Garnet, & her relationship to Amethyst broke apart; she was moody, screamed at the others, ran away, lost focus during missions which eventually endangered the life of her comrades & her own. She got poofed several times & as a consequence took longer to regenerate up until the point were she got more & more lethargic, volatile & eventually depressed with no drive, trying her utmost to function via hyperfixating on Steven. Additionally, she (i.e) developed a neurosis & a serious obsession with cleanliness & details as a consequence, busying herself with her role as Steven’s caretaker & housekeeping duties, with Garnet serving as her rock in her weakest & most volatile moments. -- she eventually managed to make the conscious decision to move on around Steven’s 15th birthday & has been working on herself ever since. Needless to say, it is a slow progress.

▸      WHAT    ARE    SOME    FOND    MEMORIES    YOUR    MUSE    HAS ?   Most of Pearl’s happy memories pivot around pretty much everything that happened during the Gem War, with a heavy focus on whatever Rose & her did together. -- one of the most striking experiences she told Steven about was the discovery of the Lunar Blossom Grove that ended with her & Rose “dancing all night” in a pause between several battles, or the time she sat on top of a cliff above Strawberry Fields, where Rose & her made the promise to stay on Earth & spend their future together. Other happy memories include heroic battles alongside Garnet & Bismuth, fusions between her & Rose or discovering Earth’s beauty. She has thousands of memories that go into the same direction which she will fondly talk about whenever asked. 

▸     IS    IT    EASY    FOR    YOUR    MUSE    TO    KILL ? Yes. She is a veteran who fought in a thousand-year war for Earth’s independence. She shattered & poofed various Gems; efficient, precise & took no risks. 

▸      WHAT’S    IT    LIKE    WHEN    YOUR    MUSE    BREAKS    DOWN ? Oh, it’s ugly. She gets very emotional (hysterical, almost); a lot of tears, a lot of balled fists & screaming. In the worst cases, she gets aggressive, vocal, & even physical from time to time. She will punch walls, shatter objects, run her hands through her hair. She will lash out, say things that HURT & won’t apologize either. Most part of the time, Pearl runs off whenever it is too much. When alone, she will usually collapse & cry until she can’t no more. After that follows a period of her staying silent for hours. -- sometimes she calms down & pretends nothing ever happened or tries to make up for her actions by doing favours for those she has hurt.

▸      IS    YOUR    MUSE    CAPABLE    OF    TRUSTING    SOMEONE    WITH    THEIR    LIFE ?

Partially yes, partially no. Pearl does not value her life as much as she should. The only person she ever blindly trusted was Rose & even that came around to bite her in the end. She trusts Garnet to always have her back & watch over her, while she herself considers Steven & Amethyst people she ought to protect. -- however, Pearl is the type to willingly throw herself off a cliff almost immediately if it will spare someone she loves from an untimely end.

▸      WHAT’S    YOUR    MUSE    LIKE    WHEN    THEY’RE    IN    LOVE ? Pearl is an extremely romantic person; usually very physical & devoted, she will go miles for her s.o (imagine every romance movie cliche ever & you may get a good idea of how she will behave). Rather old fashioned, she is the kind of person that writes love letters or poetry; the kind that takes her s.o. to secluded places to spend the night with dancing under the stars, bring flowers or wine & simply take the time to make her s.o. feel loved. She is passionate through & through; her love is the yearning kind, extremely loyal, thoughtful, and all-consuming. Why, if Pearl falls for someone, she falls very, very hard.

tagged by : @foxcharmed, expect a letter from my lawyer soon. This meme came for me. tagging :  @reantte, @huntershowl, @kissafist, @ndeavor, @spiraledheart, @spnel, @carvedbones, @handspoken, & @enshijou.

[therealstoodmuffin]

Dead Red Sky, and a Life line. by Stoodmuffin

Now, whatever your personal opinions are of this picture is, I have to say that this one is important to me. Not because it's better or worse than the other's, but it is basically one of the most important pieces in the Experimenting process I have done as of late. Context. I through out 99% of my art from Art 10/20/30 (High school art classes). I wanted to try and recreate one of those pieces. From memory. From over a decade ago. No references/no direct related references. Now, context for THAT context, for those interested: My art teacher loved me as much as she wanted to smack me over the head. She saw me as this brilliant expressionist painter. She saw me and my art in her's and her own. She'd talk about how we were both messy, and approach things from the inside out rather what most folks do. Especially in Art. Or how she would put it "Teaching people to let go and be messy is harder than teaching people to refine." Or rather, teaching someone to colour in the lines is harder than teaching someone to colour in the lines. Basically, people climb up a latter to get from the bottom to top, I was trying to figure out how to climb down the ladder. Enough metaphors for you? Well, okay. So, if it wasn't obvious enough I wanted to do art for cartoons and comics, even back then. Or even before. Though I can't say that I wanted that consistently through out my childhood, I CAN say I wanted to draw what ever I thought was cool at the time. So a lot of my inspiration from art was and is IPs verses VIP classical painters and movements. I drew more from things like Power Rangers and Pokemon than I did Picasso or Leonardo. And that frustrated her. She didn't get why I would want to do hyper-labour repetitive drawing than big, expressive, emotional pieces. And to further our frustration with each other, I didn't necessary understand her teaching methods? Like, Disney life draws loins for YEARS before they do a cartoon Lion. But, I, we, were different, right? If I was a bigger, messier, looser drawer... wouldn't it make sense for me to draw Scar (which would have less detail) and work my way UP to a real lion? If I was learning backwards, wouldn't it make sense for me to practice, say, rubber hose styles to get approximation of figure and THEN start life drawing? That is it's own topic of discussion, and I think the answer is more complex than I, her, or other Art teachers/Students want to accept. But needless to say, there was tension, even though we had a mostly good relationship. That's why My expressionist piece and my Cubist piece we so important. I could really show her that I figured out how to take those refinements and make my big expressive things more precise. I could finally flex my art muscles AND give her what she wanted. This was an easy A. Except, it wasn't. I started out super strong in both concept and design. Expressionist, dark, emotional, not two surreal but surreal enough. Off putting, but compositionally strong. Problem. The green Sky and read worked really well, probably better in the original. The Mermaid was off center, so it wasn't a "center focus" composition. Something I had been dinged for on other's pieces that year. I can't remember what specific colour choices killed the tension of the piece, but as soon as I put that Mermaid up... I accidentally lost all of the energy that came from the red and green sky. That was a common theme in that art class. I was close. Some ways, closer than I had ever been to make something that stood out. That met both my teacher's and my creativity needs. That wasn't me blowing off instructions and demonstrating I actually LEARNED stuff. But I would either mess up one thing or not stop adding stuff to the point... that it wasn't like, not good. It was just. Good. Not great or excellent. But, more than alright. In fact I think she still liked it. But I could tell she was disappointed. It got so frustrating that she was keep pressuring me to show my portfolio to the local art school, and I just couldn't. I couldn't handle being so close and yet still missing one key ingredient. I couldn't handle that it was my own vision or love of what I did that was holding me back. It made me mad. So frustrated. Policy was that if we didn't pick up our art, it was tossed. Pretty sure I never did, or tossed it even if I had. Never bothered to apply to art school because I just thought I couldn't make it. And Knowing I probably wasn't going to be an anime/manga creator (I wasn't as big of weeb as I was in middle school, but I still was in highschool) I had set my sites on teaching in Japan. That's what my degree was going to be for (that didn't turn out as planned, either). But, even if I am still working out the kinks or learning, or that I created it through infrequent doodles, my current style has technically be been formed after many years. Ever since that day I still doodled, learned, re-learned, forgot, and re made again. That Even though I still don't full understand the basics she tried to teach me, or that I often start and stopped, I never REALLY gave up on Art. You can see in things like the Landscape photo, or other things that I have drawn, that I have tried to re tap into the skill sets I had when I was younger. I NEED to play with them if I want my cartooning skills to improve. For example, things like this make me focus on the basics in ways I often forget to do when I am just doodling - Line - Shape - Colour - rendering (Shading) - composition Like I will actually remember to thing in terms of fore/middle/and back ground, actually fitting stuff on a page rather than just drawing 180 medium shots.   It makes me blatantly more aware of my flaws: like missing details/ over adding, not being aware of where the light is hitting an object/ 2D vs 3D, shaky lines and yadda yadda. And just like how certain studies with marker in real life helped me try to draw things right the first time to not over correct, this study makes me try and force me to think in the terms of art. Not just doodling or shit posting, but actual art. TL;DR: This pick being "good" or "bad" means less to me. Not completely irrelevant, but second to that I m recreating old works from almost a decade ago straight from my brain. In access to re access and channel the things I was good at before, with my cartooning style, and trying to capture and master the basics that I struggle with. It ain't perfect. But it's an important step and I'm PROUD OF IT DARN IT. lol So, here you go. An updated piece that you can't compare to the original. Hope you like?

[haydennation]

A Star Reborn: Elle Magazine Interview (February 2008)

No matter how romantic, dissolute, or beatnik he played it, Hayden Christensen just couldn’t lose the long arm of Star Wars. Until, that is, he starred in this month’s hotly anticipated, Jumper and ditched Darth Vader for good. Interview by Sarah Bernard When George Lucas plucked Hayden Christensen from teen-TV obscurity to play Darth before he was dark in Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones, it was a career making break. It was also the kind of opportunity that could set up a young actor to fail spectacularly. Christensen wouldn’t have been the first 19 year old to let fame turn him into an intolerable party boy, or the first to flame out, Mark Hamill-style. But Christensen’s post-Vader life hasn’t followed either of those scripts. Since hanging up his lightsaber, he has made a handful of small films, the best of which was Shattered Glass, which he also produced. His portrayal of journalist-turned-plagiarist Stephen Glass, complete with dorky glasses and khakis, was a perfectly creepy rendering of ambition and desperate defiance. In Factory Girl, the Andy Warhol biopic, he played a Dylan-esque musician. The movie was so god-awful that Christensen has never seen it. “And I don’t think I ever will,” he says. He had originally signed up to play Bob Dylan, but Dylan didn’t like the way the film portrayed his relationship with Edie Sedgwick and threatened to sue. “The producers called a week later saying, ‘We can’t call him Bob Dylan.’ I said, ‘Okay, I can play Bob in my head,” says Christensen, who more or less worships the singer. But Dylan saw the final cut and still wasn’t pleased. Most of Christensen’s scenes had to be scrapped, and those that did survive had to be completely redubbed so that he sounded less Dylan-like. “It was really depressing,” the actor says. In 2007’s Awake, he played a wealthy businessman (his wife is played by Jessica Alba) who finds himself conscious during heart surgery. The film came and went in a weekend. When Christensen tried to bolt from the premiere’s screening, he says Harvey Weinstein, the film’s producer, told him, “I’ll sit next you with handcuffs if I have to.” In this odd collection of projects, there is a through line: characters who are not quite what they seem at first, possessing a mix of innocence and malevolence. Those are the parts that Christensen loves to play and what attracted to the starring role in this month’s Jumper, a sci-fi thriller about a bank robber with a talent for teleportation. It’s directed by Doug Liman, who turned Matt Damon into an assassin with a soul in Bourne Identity and matched Brad and Angelina in Mr. and Mrs. Smith.  “I think people who see this film will view Hayden as having emerged they viewed Matt as having emerged…[But the reality is, both Matt and Hayden had done phenomenal work before,” says Liman. “You just had to look at Good Will Hunting and Shattered Glass to see there was a star there.” Christensen is not one of those celebrities who always craves an audience, as he sits in a Tribeca bar in New York City answering questions, he’s wearing a Bathing Ape baseball cap pulled low over his brow. His features are so delicate, they’re almost pretty. In fact, he was the face of Louis Vuitton Menswear in fall-winter 2004-2005. (“He reminds of a young Paul Newman,” says Simon Kinsberg, who co-wrote Jumper as well as Mr. and Mrs. Smith and the third installment in the X-Men franchise.) The actor’s idea of fun is manning the excavator on the farm he recently bought an hour north of Toronto, the city where he grew up and where his family still lives. Like any good Canadian kid, he was hockey-obsessed and dreamed of playing for the Maple Leafs. He also played competitive tennis, and when he was a ball boy at the Canadian Open, he was nearly clocked with a racquet hurled by a tantrumming John McEnroe. (A clip of the near miss made the nightly news.) Christensen’s mother, Ali, and father, David, ran a communications consulting business together. He has an older brother, Tove (who now heads, with Hayden, a production company, Forest Park Pictures), and two sisters: Hejsa, a former junior world trampoline champion, and Kaylen. The whole clan spent time in Australia during the filming of Star Wars, where Christensen’s sisters even became tight with George Lucas’ daughters. When Lucas invited the girls along on a yacht vacation, Hejsa really hit it off with the boat’s captain. They married a year and a half ago in Antigua, with Lucas in attendance. “She’s sort of responsible for me having the career that I have,” says Christensen, “and I’m indirectly responsible for her family.” Listen to him talk, and it’s hard to believe he isn’t just a farm boy himself. For one thing, he mumbles. He also slurps his Coke like a little kid. Then orders another.

“I thought I had a sense of what it meant to be a down to earth, regular actor,” says Liman. “Then I met Hayden, and suddenly everyone else seems like a primadonna.” During one of many reshoots, Liman realized his star’s hair has gotten longer and lighter from the sun. “Hayden’s like, ‘no problem,’” says Liman. “He gets the scissors and the trimmer out and cuts his own hair in my bathroom! I’m terrified because we have some shooting coming up and if I mess up his hair, someone’s going to kill me. I go, ‘Are you sure you should be putting those scissors to your hair?’ He goes, ‘I was cutting my hair through the whole movie.’” “He is so sweet and so humble and approachable, and loving,” adds Jessica Alba. “He literally hugs everybody on the crew and knows all their first names, every day. He’ll say good morning, give everyone a hug. He’s so present and happy and sweet. It’s crazy. And then you’re like ‘Oh, he’s Canadian.’” ‘Menschy’ is how Kinberg describes him. “So much that wondered when I’d get to see the other side.” It’s an earnestness with an edge, like a scrim that’s hiding something uglier, messier, darker. “He’s incredibly good at lying,” says Jamie Bell, his Jumper costar. “That element of ‘I’m totally pulling the wool over your eyes.’ He’s good at that.” Darth Vader is a cartoon version of this of course. There were lots of intense stares and heavy brows in that performance. But to be fair, Star Wars has never been known for its thespianism, and delivering stilted dialogue with imaginary droids against a green screen doesn’t leave an actor much room for subtlety. Maybe Christensen was reacting to that when he played Sam Monroe, the pill-popping part time prostitute teenage son of Kevin Kline in 2001’s Life as a House. In the opening scene, Sam wakes up, sniffs a rag doused with paint thinner, sticks his head through a noose in his closet, and jacks off, until the clothes rack collapses on top of him and his mom opens the door. And that’s before the title sequence is finished. Christensen threw himself into Sam both emotionally and physically. He says ‘It was my means of rebelling,” from Star Wars one assumes. He shed 25 pounds on a diet of salad and water, dyed his blond hair black and cobalt blue, and shaved his legs to look as young and sickly as possible. The result was a performance with vulnerability and angst and full-fledged rage, all twined together like a heap if twisted steel. And because Life as a House came out before Attack of the Clones, it was actually Sam in all his Goth glory (piercings, eye shadow), not the falling Jedi Knight, who introduced the actor to the movie going public. He earned a Golden Globe nomination for his work in House, as well as a fair amount of tortured teen credibility. At that point, tortured teens were something of a Christensen specialty. In 2000, the year he got Star Wars, he was living in Vancouver and playing Scott Barringer, a drug addicted, sexually molested teenager on Fox Family’s Higher Ground. When he was summoned to Lucas’ Skywalker Ranch in Northern California for a face-to-face reading with Natalie Portman, he threw up on the ride there. It was his and Portman’s chemistry that the unknown Canadian was the one. “Hayden is immediately appealing, both in person and on screen, because he knows how to balance his strength with his sensitivity,” Lucas emails. “I think he has a great acting career ahead of him.” The filming of Attack of The Clones and then Revenge of the Sith consumed a good five years of Christensen’s life-an eternity in the career of a hot young actor. He tried moving on, focusing on indie films, sharing the stage in London in 2002 with Jake Gyllenhaal in Kenneth Lonergan’s This Is Our Youth, a play about three rich-kid slackers in 1980s New York. Still he could not get away from Star Wars. Boxes of paraphernalia continued to arrive. “They have to send me one of everything produced,” he says. “It’s nuts. The first I opened: ‘Oh that’s cool. A little figurine of me,’ All sorts of lunch boxes, potato chips. I don’t even open them anymore. I had to get storage space because my parents’ basement overcrowded. My mom was like, ‘Enough!’” So when his agent told him about Jumper, he didn’t jump at it. “They said it was sort of science fiction, there was a franchise possibility,” he says. “And I was like, ‘does this really sound like something I’d be keen to do? I was franchise scared.” Then he found out it was being directed by Doug Liman, who has a way of infusing an emotional quotient into the star roles of his big budget action pictures. The first meeting between them was, according to both, like a great first date. Christensen has a farm. Liman has a farm. Christensen was off to a flying lesson that day. Liman is a pilot. The director invited Christensen to his apartment in New York, where they met with Kinberg and with Bell, who’d already been cast. (Liman had begun filming Jumper with Tom Sturridge as the lead, then halted production because Sturridge looked too young for the part, Kinberg says.) Christensen plays Davey, a callow young guy with a sweet, sexy girlfriend (Rachel Bilson) and the secret superpower to ‘jump’ teleport himself anywhere in the world by picturing the place. Thinking he’s the only one with such skils, Davey is blithely breaking into banks and living the high life in Manhattan when one day, a white-afroed Samuel L Jackson (Christensen’s Star Wars costar) shows up and tries to get medieval on his ass. Jackson, part of a jumper secret police, doesn’t want rogue teleporters jumping about. Disrupts the universe, you see. Liman and the crew discussed the script and debated what a jump would look like. “We started improvising, throwing out ideas,” says Christensen. A week later, Liman called and asked him back to do it all again. When Christensen was finally offered the part, the group continued to meet as a collective several times a week. “My character’s way of dealing with things is he doesn’t confront his problems. He’s always avoiding them. One day I was saying to Jamie, ‘My superpower is I can run away from anything.’ And Doug was like, ‘Wait, wait, wait! That’s your character! The fundamental undercurrent.”   It is the perfect superpower for a guy: the ability to literally bail when things get tough. “A very guy thing, yeah.” Christensen says with a laugh. Jumper was the opposite of the closed door ways of Star Wars, where they’re George’s characters,” the actor says. “I was stepping into something preexisting.” Now he was getting to be part of that defining process and he was thrilled. Not that Liman’s defining process is any cake walk. For him, scripts are never finished and actors are ever in discovery mode. Often they’d shoot a scene one way, discuss it, come up with a better idea, and shoot again. This happened whether they were on a soundstage in Toronto or on location in Tokyo, Paris, Prague, London, or Rome, where they got permission to film inside the Colosseum, the first film to do so in decades. Liman is also spontaneous, to the extreme. Driving through Times Square with Bell and Christensen, he decided that it would be good to get them fighting in traffic. So he stopped the van, ordered them out, and manned the camera himself as his starts rolled around on the pavement mid the cars and pedestrians. A good portion of the film has Christensen pummeling himself onto the floor, up against walls. Says Bell, “Hayden was tortured on this movie.” Well, not entirely tortured. Reports are that Christensen and Bilson are dating-there are pictures of her feeding him, of her puppy getting into his Ferarri, of her and Christensen running errands Best Buy-but he refuses to discuss it. What he will say is, “She’s awesome. She’s a very, very beautiful girl. She’s special. She’s one the sweetest, most gentle, kindhearted people I’ve ever met.” Christensen’s Jumper performance may be the one that finally overrides everything else on his resume. “Doug is really good at making guys look cool,” says Kinberg. Liman couldn’t agree more: “I have the reputation for getting just the right actor at the right point in their career. I think people will say I just did it again.” But even a director as self-confident as Liman is no match for the Force. Christensen tells how, on a recent head clearing trip to the Bahamas, he stopped in at a ‘really local, really basic market’. And there on the shelf was an ancient box of cereal with his mug as Anakin in that signature shag. Says Christensen; “I wanted to go up and ask the guy, ‘Are you sure that should still be on the shelf?’”